“All languages have ‘emotive interjections’ ” —and yet emotion researchers have invested only a tiny research effort into interjections, as compared with the huge body of research into facial expressions and words for emotion categories. This article provides an overview of the functions, meanings, and cross-linguistic variability of interjections, concentrating on non-word-based ones such as Wow!, Yuck!, and Ugh! The aims are to introduce an area that will be unfamiliar to most readers, to illustrate how one leading (...) linguistic approach deals with interjectional meaning, and to start a discussion about an interdisciplinary research agenda for the study of emotive interjections. Examples are drawn from English, Polish, and Cantonese. (shrink)

Historically, interjections have been treated in two different ways: as part of language, or as non-words signifying feelings or states of mind. In this paper, I assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of two contemporary approaches that reflect the historical dichotomy, and suggest a new analysis which preserves the insights of both. Interjections have a natural and a coded element, and are better analysed as falling at various points along a continuum between ‘showing’ and ‘saying’. These two notions (...) are characterised in theoretical terms, and some implications of the proposed approach are considered. (shrink)

Historically, interjections have been treated in two different ways: as part of language, or as non-words signifying feelings or states of mind. In this paper, I assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of two contemporary approaches that reflect the historical dichotomy, and suggest a new analysis which preserves the insights of both. Interjections have a natural and a coded element, and are better analysed as falling at various points along a continuum between `showing' and `saying'. These two notions (...) are characterised in theoretical terms, and some implications of the proposed approach are considered. (shrink)

Natural semantic metalanguage assumes that interjections’ meaning is principally conceptual. However, the expressive character of immediate interjections requires the rejection of any conceptualist approach to their meaning. When compared with vocabulary for which a conceptual account is most plausible, immediate uses of interjections appear to fail a basic requirement on the postulation of conceptual meaning.

Emotive Interjections in British English: A corpus-based study on variation in acquisition, function and usage constitutes the first in-depth corpus-based study on the use of emotive interjections in Present Day British English. In a novel approach, it systematically distinguishes between child and adult speakers, providing new insights into how they use Ow!, Ouch!, Ugh!, Yuck!, Whoops!, Whoopsadaisy! and Wow! in everyday spoken language. It studies in detail their acquisition by children and pinpoints changes and developments in their use (...) throughout early childhood. The study highlights particularities displayed by child and adult speakers in general and identifies crucial differences regarding how adults use emotive interjections depending on whether they are interacting with children or other adults. This book thus offers an exhaustive overview on the functions of emotive interjections based on thorough empirical research and will appeal to linguists concerned with pragmatics, child language acquisition, the expression of emotion and interjections. (shrink)

Might Interjections Encode Concepts? More Questions than Answers This paper reflects on the conceptual nature of interjections. Although there are convincing reasons to claim that interjections do not encode concepts, arguments can be adduced to question such claim. In fact, some pragmatists have contended that they may be conceptual elements. After reviewing both the non-conceptualist and conceptualist approaches to interjections, this paper discusses some reasons that can be given to reconsider the conceptuality of interjections. Nevertheless, (...) it adopts an intermediate standpoint by arguing that the heterogeneity of interjections, with items incorporated from other lexical categories, and the openness of the word class they constitute, which results in the coinage of certain interjections or the innovative usage of some elements, could indicate the existence of a continuum of more and less conceptual items. In any case, this paper suggests that those items with conceptual content would not encode full concepts, but some schematic material requiring subsequent pragmatic adjustments. (shrink)

Résumé Les Communia gramatice, un compendium grammatical anonyme rédigé autour de 1250 dans le milieu éclectique de la Faculté des arts de Paris et contenu aujourd’hui uniquement dans le manuscrit 16617 du fonds latin de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, traitent entre autres du statut linguistique de l’interjection. La notion de signification, au sens de contenu de connaissances et de rapport référentiel entre un mot et son signifié, y joue un rôle fondamental : la principale difficulté onto-grammaticale présentée par l’interiectio (...) étant précisément de déterminer la nature de sa signification. L’auteur anonyme des Communia gramatice pose clairement la distinction classique entre la signification d’une émotion et la signification d’un concept, mais y apporte des nuances intéressantes de nature cognitive : nous sommes à une époque où la philosophie naturelle aristotélicienne vient tout juste de rencontrer la grammaire spéculative typiquement parisienne.The Communia gramatice, an anonymous grammatical compendium emanating from the eclectic mediaeval Faculty of Arts of Paris and only preserved nowadays in the manuscript 16617 of the Bibliothèque nationale de France’s latin claim, deal, among other things, with the linguistic status of interjections. The notion of meaning, as a content of knowledge and a referential connection between a word and his signified, is fundamental : the main onto-grammatical problem with interjections being precisely that the nature of their meaning is quite uncertain. The anonymous author of the Communia gramatice clearly poses the standard distinction between the meaning of a feeling and the meaning of a concept, but puts into it some interesting thoughts of cognitive subject-matter : these theories belong to a time when the Aristotelian natural philosophy just met the typical Parisian speculative grammar. (shrink)

Jerome, the vir trilinguis, frequently makes pertinent observations on linguistic features of Hebrew. The present note offers a discussion of his comments specifically relating to Hebrew interjections. In doing so, it illustrates how in approaching the ‘foreign’, Semitic language material, Jerome relies on the Latin artigraphical tradition, i. e. the tradition of Latin grammars and literary commentaries.

Cette étude vise à reconstruire la fonction dramatique des interjections attestées dans la première partie des Euménides (ὠή, ἰοὺ ἰοὺ, πυπάξ, ὢ πόποι, ἰώ), afin de montrer les effets que peuvent produire dans le texte les emplois ou les contre-emplois d’une interjection donnée.

Goddard proposes a three-partite division of emotive interjections, which is helpful in delineating this heterogeneous set of phenomena. The distinction also explains inconsistencies between Goddard’s and previous findings: While his study demonstrates variability across languages in word-like primary interjections, previous work investigating noise-like interjections has found evidence for universality. Such cross-culturally consistent, categorical perception of emotional signals can be explained as emerging from bottom–up information without the need for top–down learning via language or interjections.

Cette étude vise à reconstruire la fonction dramatique des interjections attestées dans la première partie des Euménides (ὠή, ἰοὺ ἰοὺ, πυπάξ, ὢ πόποι, ἰώ), afin de montrer les effets que peuvent produire dans le texte les emplois ou les contre-emplois d’une interjection donnée.

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 205 Seiten: 37-86.

Advertisers’ increasing use of embedded advertising formats makes it more difficult for consumers to identify persuasive intents in advertiser messages. However, only if consumers identify these intents and categorize messages as advertising, can they activate advertising-specific reception strategies which might result in lessened persuasion effects. The fact that consumers regularly miss persuasive intents in non-traditional advertising environments, we suggest in this article, carries epistemological and methodical implications. To better appreciate these implications, we argue for a more systematic adoption of a (...) constructivist approach in advertising research. Some established concepts in advertising research such as the persuasion knowledge model and advertising literacy already implicitly follow a constructivist rationale. However, to more fully exploit the potential of a constructivist approach, we review communication concepts that inform advertising research, clarify why a constructivist approach increases the explanatory power of advertising research, and discuss challenges for research designs. (shrink)

The interjection of pneumatology in both theologies of interreligious dialogue and in the theology-and-science conversation comes together in this volume. The resulting Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue opens up to new pneumatological perspectives on philosophical cosmology and anthropology in interdisciplinary and global context.

Interjections, such as those in the title, together with a few similar devices, when qualifying clauses expressing truth-conditions, or that such conditions have been satisfied, are entitled 'force-amplifiers'. Disputes between deflationary and inflationary truth-theories sometimes are assumed to turn on the supposed pivotal role that these devices are construed as playing in the interpretation of the clauses they qualify. I argue that they are not dispensable add-ons. Moreover, even in their absence the relevant clauses giving truth-conditions permit interpretations that (...) are not deflationary-friendly. I maintain that this is a significant fact about the use to which writers put them. I then defend, a thesis about force-amplifiers that makes them indispensable to the interpretation of the relevant clauses, and that renders certain moves unavailable to popular deflationist treatments. (shrink)

If someone says, “Asians are good at math” or “women are empathetic,” I might interject, “you're stereotyping” in order to convey my disapproval of their utterance. But why is stereotyping wrong? Before we can answer this question, we must better understand what stereotypes are and what stereotyping is. In this essay, I develop what I call the descriptive view of stereotypes and stereotyping. This view is assumed in much of the psychological and philosophical literature on implicit bias and stereotyping, yet (...) it has not been sufficiently defended. The main objection to the descriptive view is that it fails to include the common-sense idea that stereotyping is always objectionable. I argue that this is actually a benefit of the view. In the essay's final part, I put forward two hypotheses that would validate the claim that stereotyping is always morally or epistemically wrong. If these hypotheses are false—which is very likely—we have little reason to build moral or epistemic defect into the very idea of a stereotype. Moreover, we must abandon the seemingly attractive claim that judging individuals based on group membership is intrinsically wrong. (shrink)

People sometimes use speech to interfere with other people’s speech, as in the case of a heckler sabotaging a lecture with constant interjections. Some people claim that such interference infringes upon free speech. Against this view, we argue that where competing speakers in a public forum both have an interest in speaking, free speech principles should not automatically give priority to the ‘official’ speaker. Given the ideals underlying free speech, heckling speech sometimes deserves priority. But what can we say, (...) then, about situations in which heckling clearly seems to infringe upon people’s civil liberties, in a way that intuitively justifies intervention? In such cases, we argue, heckling infringes upon people’s associative freedom. We present and defend an ethical framework for the institutional management of ‘Speech Fights’, geared around this insight. (shrink)

This excerpt from our collective biography emerges from a dialogue that commenced when Noel interjected the concept of ‘becoming-cyborg’ into our conversations about Annette’s experiences of breast cancer, which initially prompted her to interpret her experiences as a ‘chaos narrative’ of cyborgian and environmental embodiment in education contexts. The materialisation of Donna Haraway’s figuration of the cyborg in Annette’s changing body enabled new appreciations of its interpretive power, and functioned in some ways as a successor project to Noel’s earlier deployment (...) of cyborgs in what he now recognises as a ‘posthumanising’ of curriculum inquiry. Noel’s subsequent experiences with throat cancer drew us towards exploring the possibilities that concepts such as Deleuze and Guattari’s machinic assemblage and Karen Barad’s ontoepistemology offer as a mean of thinking the meetings of bodies and technologies in educational inquiry beyond Haraway’s hybrid cyborg. Through both collective biography and playfully scripted conversations with other theorists we explore what it means to perform diffractive interpretations and analyses in posthumanist educational inquiry. Our essay also contributes to contemporary conversations about the uses of collaborative biographical writing as a method of inquiry in educational research. (shrink)

Lodged in an impasse between questions of environmental justice and modes of capitalisation in the green economy, indeterminacy is a vulnerable and porous relation. Pollution activates a potentiality in the organism to be otherwise, to generate certain kinds of tumours, mini-deaths or mutations. Toxicity has an intermediary status that launches a mobility of effects that is often fragmented through sense organs, affirming forms of non-identity in biopolitical relations. Organisms are receptive to such bodily reconfigurations precisely because they are open to (...) the material communication of the world. In contrast to the “hidden labour” of indeterminacy in capitalist modes of capture, this article crafts an analytics of indeterminacy as an interjection in the politics of environments. Through dispersants in the Gulf of Mexico and military bees, two economies of indeterminacy are discussed. Drawing on Georges Bataille’s notion of political economy, I argue that what is required is an economy of radical inequivalence; an excessive engagement with the possibilities of indetermining forces to make fleeting marks. (shrink)

Fallacies of relevance, a major category of informal fallacies, include two that could be called pure fallacies of relevance-the wrong conclusion fallacy and the red herring digression, diversion) fallacy. The problem is how to classify examples of these fallacies so that they clearly fall into the one category or the other, on some rational system of classification. In this paper, the argument diagramming software system, Araucaria. is used to analyze the argumentation in some selected textbook examples of pure fallacies of (...) relevance. A system of classification of these fallacies is proposed, and criteria for determining whether an example should be classified as wrong conclusion or red herring are formulated. A key difference cited is that in a case where the red herring fallacy has been committed, even if the argument may go to a wrong conclusion, there is evidence of the use ofa deceptive tactic of diversion. Textual evidence must indicate that the arguer deliberately interjects a distracting controversy to lead the respondent away from the real issue to be disputed. (shrink)

In Mental Acts Professor Peter Geach asserts that “‘The same’ is a fragmentary expression, and has no significance unless we say or mean ‘the same X’, where ‘X’ represents a general term … ” In Reference and Generality Geach interjects the following note: “I maintain that it makes no sense to judge whether x and y are ‘the same’, or whether x remains ‘the same’, unless we add or understand some general term ‘the same F’.” Here, as in Mental Acts, (...) he goes on to say that not any general term will serve to complete ‘the same’ constructions; only substantival terms will suffice for this purpose. Finally, in his article, “ldentity,” Geach asserts that “When one says ‘x is identical with y’, this … is an incomplete expression; it is short for ‘x is the same A as y’, where ‘A’ represents some count noun understood from the context of utterance—or else, it is just a vague expression of a half-formed thought.” (We should not, incidently, conclude from this last remark that Geach thinks all and only count nouns are substantival terms. (shrink)

Kaurna, the language of the Adelaide Plains, is an awakening language undergoing revival since 1989 (Amery 2016). Though little knowledge of Kaurna remains in the oral tradition and no sound recordings of the language as it was spoken in the nineteenth century exist, a surprising number and range of emotion terms were documented. A great many of these involve thetangka‘liver’ followed bykuntu‘chest’,wingku‘lungs’,yurni‘throat’ andyurlu‘forehead’, whilstmukamuka‘brain’ andyuri‘ear’ are involved in cognition. The role ofpultha‘heart’ is minimal. But these are not the only means (...) to talk about emotions.Muiyu‘pit of the stomach’, a more elusive term, which may or may not be located in a body part andyitpi‘seed’ are also central to emotions. These three termstangka‘liver’,muiyu‘pit of the stomach’ andyitpi‘seed’, appear to be viewed byTeichelmann & Schürmann (1840)and especiallyTeichelmann (1857)as seats of emotion. In addition, there are a range of other means to express emotion, simple verbs and interjections.This paper will discuss in detail the historical documentation, its interpretation and the ways in which this documentation is used today. In the context of re-introducing a reclaimed language, such as Kaurna, how to talk about emotions can become the topic of serious and sometimes unresolved debate. The title of a book of poetry (Proctor & Gale 1997) ended up having two translations, one involvingtangka‘liver’ and the otherpultha‘heart’. Historical phrases expressing emotions are often co-opted in names, speeches, poetry and written texts. (shrink)

AT PHAEDO 96A-C Plato portrays Socrates as describing his past study of "the kind of wisdom known as περὶ φυσέως ἱστορία." At 96c-97b, Socrates says that this study led him to realize that he had an inadequate understanding of certain basic concepts which it involved. In consequence, he says at 97b, he abandoned this method and turned to a method of his own. But at this point in the dialogue, instead of proceeding immediately to describe his method, Plato has him (...) interjecting a complaint concerning Anaxagoras and his view that everything should be explained in terms of Mind. His complaint is that Mind would order things in the best possible way and that, therefore, an account of things in terms of Mind would amount to showing that they are ordered in the best possible way. But Anaxagoras did not show this and, instead, offered other kinds of explanations of the various phenomena. Socrates is not just criticizing Anaxagoras here for not doing what he set out to do; he makes it clear, for example at 99b-c, that he believes that the best kind of explanation of the phenomena would be to show that they are ordered in the best possible way. But he was unable to discover an explanation of this kind, either for himself or from others, and so turned to a method which he calls "second best". The actual description of this method is contained in two passages, 99e5-100a7 and 101d5-e1. Between these passages, Socrates invokes the doctrine of Forms and, in particular, the formula. (shrink)

Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their iconicity in relation to part-of-speech differences and differences between the sensory domain they relate to. First, we replicated previous findings showing that onomatopoeia and interjections were highest in iconicity, followed by verbs and adjectives, and then nouns and grammatical words. We further show that words with meanings related to the senses are more (...) iconic than words with abstract meanings. Moreover, iconicity is not distributed equally across sensory modalities: Auditory and tactile words tend to be more iconic than words denoting concepts related to taste, smell and sight. Last, we examined the relationship between iconicity and systematicity. We find that iconicity in English words is more strongly related to sensory meanings than systematicity. Altogether, our results shed light on the extent and distribution of iconicity in modern English. (shrink)

Ernst Mayr''s contributions to 20th century biology extend far beyond his defense of certain elements in evolutionary theory. At the center of mid-century efforts in American evolutionary studies to build large research communities, Mayr spearheaded campaigns to create a Society for the Study of Evolution and a dedicated journal,Evolution, in 1946. Begun to offset the prominence ofDrosophila biology and evolutionary genetics, these campaigns changed course repeatedly, as impediments appeared, tactics shifted, and compromises built a growing coalition of support. Preserved, however, (...) were designs to balance the community and journal with careful equation of status and explicit partitioning of responsibilities within the working coalition. Choice terms such as cooperation and unity carried a strong political message. Mayr''s editorship ofEvolution provides a superb example of these balancing efforts. The mid-century infrastructural activities described herein also represented aggressive attempts to leverage control across several layers of community. Leaders of these campaigns sought: (1) to promote evolutionary studies as a modernized research discipline and place it at the center of American biology, (2) to promote evolutionary studies within existing disciplines — e.g. systematics, genetics, and paleontology, (3) to foster certain research styles within evolutionary studies, and (4) to emphasize certain solutions to prominent research questions. Throughout, Mayr interjected his priorities, tactics and energy. (shrink)

Some spoken words are iconic, exhibiting a resemblance between form and meaning. We used native speaker ratings to assess the iconicity of 3001 English words, analyzing their iconicity in relation to part-of-speech differences and differences between the sensory domain they relate to. First, we replicated previous findings showing that onomatopoeia and interjections were highest in iconicity, followed by verbs and adjectives, and then nouns and grammatical words. We further show that words with meanings related to the senses are more (...) iconic than words with abstract meanings. Moreover, iconicity is not distributed equally across sensory modalities: Auditory and tactile words tend to be more iconic than words denoting concepts related to taste, smell and sight. Last, we examined the relationship between iconicity and systematicity. We find that iconicity in English words is more strongly related to sensory meanings than systematicity. Altogether, our results shed light on the extent and distribution of iconicity in modern English. (shrink)

Contrary to dictionaries, a non sequitur isn’t “any statement that doesn’t follow logically from previous statements”. Otherwise, every opening statement would be a non sequitur: a non sequitur is a statement claimed to follow from previous statements but that doesn’t follow. If the sentence making a given statement doesn’t contain ‘thus’, ‘so’, ‘hence’, ‘therefore’, or something else indicating an implication claim, the statement isn’t a non sequitur in this sense. But this is only one of several senses of that expression, (...) which, contrary to appearances, is a unitary common noun more properly written as one word: non-sequitur or nonsequitur. Above a nonsequitur was, roughly speaking, a conclusion of an invalid premise- conclusion argument, but not every such, only those that were stated to follow from premises that had been stated. Every informative proposition is the conclusion of an invalid argument. Anyway, nonsequiturs were not arguments. However, the expression ‘nonsequitur’ also means “invalid premise- conclusion argument”. It also means something like “fallacious reasoning” as in ‘Abe’s proof of the big-bang hypothesis is a nonsequitur’. The English noun is also used for an irrelevancy, an abrupt change of topic, or for any of many other expressions that are gratuitous, inappropriate, incongruous, or in some other way out of place. The English noun is derived from the Latin expression ‘non sequitur’, which is not a common noun but a sentence variously meaning “it isn’t in sequence ”, “it doesn’t follow”, “it is out of order”, etc. A statement that begins ‘in the second place’ is a nonsequitur if the previous sentence lacked implication of something like ‘in the first place’ or if it contained something similar to ‘in the third place’. In fact, a true implication claim can be a nonsequitur if there is no reason for making it. If Ben says ‘Hence, Abe swims and Abe swims’ in reply to Carl’s statement ‘Abe swims‘, then Ben may well be committing a nonsequitur. Many conversation stoppers are nonsequiturs. This lecture surveys and analyses a wide selection of uses of ‘nonsequitur’ in logic and logic-related literature. -/- END OF DRAFT 4 -/- NOTE 091215: When Rick Perry was discussing possible withdrawal from the race—unfortunately not the human race but the Republican race—a reporter reminded him that just last week Donald Trump predicted the Perry withdrawal. Perry interrupted with “A broken clock is right once a day”. -/- If you did not know Perry you might think his reply was a brilliant diversionary nonsequitur. If you know Perry you might think his reply was a stupid nonsequitur. -/- For the record, he did say ‘once a day’, not ‘twice a day’. BTW, my interjection ‘unfortunately not the human race but the Republican race’ was also a nonsequitur. (shrink)

Could it be that Deleuze's most lasting legacy will lie in his ‘Postscript on Control Societies’, a mere 2,300-word essay from 1990? While he discussed computers and new media infrequently, Deleuze admittedly made contributions to the contemporary discourse on computing, cybernetics and networks, particularly in his late work. From the concepts of the rhizome and the virtual, to his occasional interjections on the digital versus the analogue, there is a case to be made that the late Deleuze has not (...) only influenced today's discourse on new media but also proposes an original set of arguments about society and politics at the turn of the new millennium. Focusing on the ‘Postscript on Control Societies’ and a handful of texts that surround it, we will reconstruct an image of what it means to live in the information age. This will have consequences for how we define the digital and the analogue, what the computer means, and ultimately provide some insight into one of the more elusive terms in all of Deleuze, the superfold. (shrink)

Recognition of sarcastic statements has been a challenge in the process of sentiment analysis. A sarcastic sentence contains only positive words conveying a negative sentiment. Therefore, it is tough for any automated machine to identify the exact sentiment of the text in the presence of sarcasm. The existing systems for sarcastic sentiment detection are limited to the text scripted in English. Nowadays, researchers have shown greater interest in low resourced languages such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Indonesian, etc. (...) To analyse these low resource languages, the biggest challenge is the lack of available resources, especially in the context of Indian languages. Indian languages are very rich in morphology which pose a greater challenge for the automated machines. Telugu is one of the most popular languages after Hindi among Indian languages. In this article, we have collected and annotated a corpus of Telugu conversation sentences in the form of a question followed by a reply for sarcasm detection. Further, a set of algorithms are proposed for the analysis of sarcasm in the corpus of Telugu conversation sentences. The proposed algorithms are based on hyperbolic features namely, Interjection, Intensifier, Question mark and Exclamation symbol. The achieved accuracy is 94%. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Holly Flora’s published dissertation is a critical contribution to scholarship of the origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, a text strongly associated with the preaching and prayer habits of the early Franciscan order and perhaps the most representative example of the late-Medieval devotional and pictorial phenomenon often summarized as the “Vita Christi tradition.” For almost a century, art historians have invoked the MVC to explain iconographic innovations in late-Medieval (...) and Renaissance art, in particular the emergence of apocryphal images of the early life of Christ. In contrast to these earlier art-historical uses of this text, Flora advocates for a re-contextualization of the MVC. She joins scholars, in particular Isa Ragusa, who suggest that the didactic content and devotional strategies of the MVC reflect a particularly Franciscan strain of the Vita Christi, one aligned with the cura monialium , and argues that it was probably composed by a Franciscan friar for the spiritual benefit of a Poor Clare. The MVC’s distinctive emphasis on themes of virginity, silence, and enclosure support this interpretation, as do a series of interjected prompts or imperatives for the reader to visualize herself participating in poignant events that underscore the humanity of Christ and promote affective devotion. Flora sees the MVC as an attempt by a friar to reconcile the competing Franciscan notions of the vita activa and vita contemplativa in the interests of a cloistered nun under his care; the performative devotional strategies offered by the MVC would have afforded her the means to engage actively—even if only virtually—in a life of extreme poverty or to engage in charitable public giving as exemplified by the lives of Christ and the Virgin, opportunities Flora suggests were not readily available to a cloistered nun.Association of the MVC with the Poor Clares is bolstered by the manuscript that probably contains the closest witness to the original version of this text . The author’s compelling consideration of the textual, material, and pictorial content of Ms. ital. 115 supports the claim that it was made in Pisa around 1340–50 for the community of Poor Clares at the convent of San Martino. Although written on paper rather than parchment and painted in a humble watercolor technique, Ms. ital. 115 contains the lengthiest extant pictorial cycle of any version of the MVC, a characteristic that agrees with the image-centric devotional practices of medieval nuns. Flora’s comparison of those few MVC manuscripts that contain pictorial cycles of comparable length casts into relief those discrete iconographic characteristics of the Ms. ital. 115 cycle. Most telling are ubiquitous images of women that resemble Poor Clares, regular sewing companions of the Virgin, whose presence indicates the illuminators’ attentions to the interests and identities of their audience.Having established Ms. ital. 115’s Clarissan context, the remainder of the Devout Belief of the Imagination is a consideration of a Poor Clare’s interaction with the manuscript. Flora describes this experience as an intensely emotional didactic process that begins with instruction and culminates in imaginative devotional performances where Mary constitutes the main paradigm for female monastic conduct. The extensive account of the Virgin’s childhood in the Temple, for example, supplies a progressive lesson for a young nun on the virtues of discipline and devotion. The culmination of this spiritual maturation process is the extraordinary text-image structure of the Circumcision of the Christ child by his Mother. Not only does this event resonate with Franciscan typology, but as Flora demonstrates, Mary’s privileged position in sharing the suffering of Christ offers a powerful introduction to the affective devotional strategy that structures the viewer’s experience of the remainder of the manuscript. Extended pictorial sequences that follow metaphorically address the cloistered condition of a Poor Clare viewer and her particular spiritual needs. The Holy Family’s Flight into Egypt and their.. (shrink)

In his 1622 work The Assayer, Galileo commented on the necessity of mathematics for understanding the natural world. "Philosophy is written in this very great book. . . . It is written in mathematical language and the characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures." More than 300 years later, debating math education at the 1958 International Congress of Mathematicians, French mathematician Jean Dieudonné interjected: "Down with Euclid! Death to triangles!".

This book offers a new perspective on current semantic theory by analysing key aspects of linguistic meaning and non-truth-conditional semantics. It applies non-truth-conditional semantics to various areas of language and critically considers earlier approaches to the study of semantic meaning, such as truth-conditional semantics, Speech Act theory and Gricean conventional implicatures. The author argues that those earlier approaches to linguistic semantics do not stand up to close scrutiny and are subject to a number of counterexamples, indicating that they are insufficient (...) for a comprehensive and unified account of linguistic semantics.<BR> An alternative framework is then presented based on recent developments in the field, demonstrating that it is possible to provide a unified account of linguistic semantics by making two fundamental distinctions between (a) conceptual and procedural meaning and (b) explicit and implicit communication. These two distinctions, combined with the various levels of representation available in linguistic communication, allow researchers to capture the variety of linguistic meaning encountered in natural language. The study includes a discussion of a number of areas within linguistic semantics, including sentence adverbials, parentheticals, discourse/pragmatic connectives, discourse particles, interjections and mood indicators. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy, Spirit, and RevitalizationWalter B. Gulick (bio)The assumptions of democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life are, first, that we don't already know how best to order our common life and, second, that we don't know what the abstract ideals of empathy, emancipation, and equity entail in the concrete.—Michael Hogue1In American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World, Michael S. Hogue grounds his proposal for a political theology in (...) a critique of American exceptionalism and its supportive "redeemer symbolic."2 In the Anthropocene era, Hogue states, American exceptionalism "legitimates the extraction of diverse forms of value and justifies the externalization of diverse costs" (29) with unconscionable costs to the natural environment and international justice. As indicated in the passage quoted above, Hogue's reaction to the rigid assumptions supportive of American exceptionalism is to offer a humble acknowledgement of political fallibility coupled with what he terms "a theopolitics of resilient democracy" (184; see also 3–6).My concern in this essay is largely practical. I will focus on discerning what intellectual, emotional, and communal resources might be drawn upon to further develop and actually effect the needed changes that Hogue so ably points out. Relatedly, I will inquire into who the most likely candidates are to devote energy to the reconstruction of social structures and practices so that they express values that Americans at their best uphold. Finally, I will reflect upon the role that spiritual ideals and communal practices might play in energizing effective democratic action. [End Page 5]I. Hogue's Critical and Constructive TasksHogue's overriding interest is to outline an epistemic/axiological/environmental/political stance that does not give rise to the various sorts of injustices and dysfunctions that mark the Anthropocene era, especially our allegiance to policies that eventuate in what he calls "climate wickedness." The alternative vision he embraces develops pragmatic naturalism as a method of inquiry and exposition. His reflections are especially indebted to the thought of Dewey, James, and Whitehead (78–82). During a time when e-words are normally associated with forms of electronic communication, Hogue offers instead two trios of e-words with another sort of significance—one that signifies a stance he wishes to overcome and one that communicates what he hopes to achieve. Our current era is unfortunately in thrall, he says, to extraction, externalization, and exception, whereas what we should strive for is a society marked by empathy, emancipation, and equitability. Well put. He presupposes that democratic governance, deeply embedded in American history, ought to serve as the vehicle for achieving what the positive set of e-words promotes. To this end, Hogue quotes appreciatively from Dewey's article, "Democracy is Radical": Democracy "is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural" (170). This understanding of democracy slumbers now; what might it take to reawaken it? And if reawakened, what changes might be made to establish the more nearly equitable political influence that is basic to the promise of democracy?Hogue, recognizing in good pragmatic fashion the importance of consequential change, states, "In contrast to foundationalist commitments to antecedents and precedents, pragmatic naturalism commits to a prospective concern with consequents" (80). Foundational commitments to antecedents may certainly impede needed change, but surely attention to the historical events and practices that gave rise to current problems is needed to avoid repeating previous errors. Hogue refers to Whitehead's vision of social symbolism, suggesting that "social change can be catalyzed by the improvised revision of existing symbolic repertoires or the innovative formation or subversive interjection of new symbols" (99). I'm not fully convinced by Whitehead's claim. I suspect that many of our social problems are rooted below the linguistic level in an array of affective issues that elude symbolic adjustment. New strategies are needed to counter the prevalence of fear and resentment in society as promoted for political and commercial reasons and tied to Hogue's strongly voiced recognition that we live in an uncertain world.Here is my understanding of how Hogue both frames our current social and cultural situation and what he says might begin to remediate these circumstances. [End Page... (shrink)

In recent decades, the analysis of phraseology has made use of the exploration of large corpora as a source of quantitative information about language. This paper intends to present the main lines of work in progress based on this empirical approach to linguistic analysis. In particular, we focus our attention on some problems relating to the morpho-syntactic annotation of corpora. The CORIS/CODIS corpus of contemporary written Italian, developed at CILTA – University of Bologna (Rossini Favretti 2000; Rossini Favretti, Tamburini, De (...) Santis in press), is a synchronic 100-million-word corpus and is being lemmatised and annotated with part-of-speech (POS) tags, in order to increase the quantity of information and improve data retrieval procedures (Tamburini 2000). The aim of POS tagging is to assign each lexical unit to the appropriate word class. Usually the set of tags is pre-established by the linguist, who uses his/her competence to identify the different word classes. The very first experiments we made revealed how the traditional part-of-speech distinctions in Italian (generally based on morphological and semantic criteria) are often inadequate to represent the syntactic features of words in context. It is worth noting that the uncertainties in categorisation contained in Italian grammars and dictionaries reflect a growing difficulty as they move from fundamental linguistic classes, such as nouns and verbs, to more complex classes, such as adverbs, pronouns, prepositions and conjunctions. This latter class, that groups together elements traditionally used to express connections between sentences, appears inadequate when describing cohesive relations in Italian. This phenomenon actually seems to involve other elements traditionally assigned to different classes, such as adverbs, pronouns and interjections. Recent studies proposed the class of ‘connectives’, grouping all words that, apart from their traditional word class, have the function of connecting phrases and contributing to textual cohesion. From this point of view, conjunctions can be considered as part of phrasal connectives, that can in turn be included in the wider category of textual connectives. The aim of this study is to identify elements that can be included in the class of phrasal connectives, using quantitative methods. According to Shannon and Weaver’s (1949) observation that words are linked by dependent probabilities, corroborated by Halliday’s (1991) argument that the grammatical “system” (in Firth’s sense of the term) is essentially probabilistic, quantitative data are introduced in order to provide evidence of relative frequencies. Section 2 presents a description of word-class categorisation from the point of view of grammars and dictionaries arguing that the traditional category of conjunctions is inadequate for capturing the notion of phrasal connective. Section 3 examines the notion of ‘connective’ and suggests a truth-function interpretation of connective behaviour. Section 4 describes the quantitative methods proposed for analysing the distributional properties of lexical units, and section 5 comments on the results obtained by applying such methods drawing some provisional conclusions. (shrink)

To Bauman the incongruities of life are best reflected in an analytical effort that moves between perspectives without forcing them into a synthesis. He seems to arrogate the right to inconsistency when operating from points of view. This violates a curious requirement of scholarly discourse: an author is free to select his conceptual framework and method — but once they are selected, he must stick to them. This practically inviolable rule of consistency might come (as Bauman himself suggests) from the (...) juridical pretensions sociology had from its birth. Consistency gives an aura to academicians who feel called to legislate, judge and legitimize. To Bauman, however, truth in judgement, reality in empirical studies and responsibility in practical affairs are approached by a constant movement between incongruous points of view.These ambitions make heavy demands on the composition of his writing. In many stretches of linear argument, imagery is interjected, showing lateral connections and complications — conversely, in many pieces of interpretation causal explanations intrude. A discourse with all these boundary violations is rather suspect in modern eyes. When Bauman contaminates the purity of analytical lines with terminology from other branches, he is demonstrating in a stylistic way that our reality is multitudinous — be it premodern enchantment, ambivalence in modernity or liberated postmodern polyvalence. (shrink)

This paper examines contemporary Catholic higher education and its unique role in preparing graduates, who have been grounded in natural moral law, to respond to the bioethical questions of the day. The importance of the commitment by both administration and faculty to articulating and embracing the mission of Catholic higher education as they prepare graduates for a culture of relativism is presented. Curricular objectives, content, and teaching strategies are provided which address the most relevant bioethical dilemmas of the day. The (...) importance of an integrated approach to examining these dilemmas, as well as a grounding in core content in philosophy and theology for all graduates, regardless of discipline of concentration, are presented. The interjection of government mandates into the void of bioethical resolutions is examined in relationship to the rights of conscience. The paper concludes with examples of best practices, showing the role of Catholic higher education as uniquely suited to advance the common good. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 11.4 (Winter 2011): 705–734. (shrink)

The acoustic dimension of political philosophy has rarely attracted serious attention, in part because scholars have tended to assume that political theories, ideas, and concepts, exist as abstract entities that are often noiselessly communicated in written texts. And yet, the noisy communication of political ideas whether in the form of Socratic dialogues, Churchillian orations, or in the hushed tones of focus group conversations treasured by deliberative democrats today, has a rich political history and a continuing relevance. This paper will focus (...) on five performative modes for the communication of political ideas: the monologue, the dialogue, the oration, the interjection, and the noisy crowd. While this list may not be exhaustive, it will be used here as a starting point for further exploration. I will contend that in each of these performative modes, the communication of political ideas is framed by the noise of actual, or textually imagined kinds of political speech designed to underscore the validity of the ideas conveyed. One of the most important reasons for traversing this variable performative and acoustic terrain today is to enable us to hear and to listen to political speech amid the potentially polluting hum of political white noise. (shrink)

Boston Monday Lectures: Biology, a book of popular essays by the American orator Joseph Cook first published in 1879, was derived from a successful lecture series at Boston's Tremont Temple in 1878 that expertly synthesised the scientific scholarship of the day for public consumption and attempted to show that science was in harmony with religion and the Bible. Writing with clarity and conveying excitement to the lay audiences who flocked to hear him, Cook's lectures became extremely popular around the world. (...) Biology focuses on evolution, immortality and materialism. In 13 lectures, Cook discusses topics including T. H. Huxley and John Tyndall's ideas on evolution, Rudolf Hermann Lotze's thoughts on theism, and microscopy. Cook's lectures on immortality all begin with 'Does Death End All?' before probing further into a philosophical aspect of immortality. Cook interjects short essays, which he calls 'preludes', on subjects as diverse as political patronage and Daniel Webster's death. (shrink)

In this discussion I take it for granted that proper names are words of a language, are not mere interjections or burps. I also take it for granted that for any proper name “N. N.” there is some general term “A” that gives the relevant criterion of identity; repeated use of “N. N.” involves an intention to keep on saying things about one and the same A, or as I shall put it for short “N. N.” is a name (...) for an A. An intention to keep on referring barely to the same thing is, as lawyers say, void for uncertainty. These theses have been denied, but I think not reasonably. Some very silly arguments have been used recently: e.g. an argument from the logical possibility of Protean change is put up to show that a proper name may attach to a thing no matter what sort it comes to belong to. (shrink)

In this discussion I take it for granted that proper names are words of a language, are not mere interjections or burps. I also take it for granted that for any proper name “N. N.” there is some general term “A” that gives the relevant criterion of identity; repeated use of “N. N.” involves an intention to keep on saying things about one and the same A, or as I shall put it for short “N. N.” is a name (...) for an A. An intention to keep on referring barely to the same thing is, as lawyers say, void for uncertainty. These theses have been denied, but I think not reasonably. Some very silly arguments have been used recently: e.g. an argument from the logical possibility of Protean change is put up to show that a proper name may attach to a thing no matter what sort it comes to belong to. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Otot ha-Shamayim: Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Version of Aristotle’s “Meteorology.” by AristotleSteven HarveyAristotle. Otot ha-Shamayim: Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew Version of Aristotle’s “Meteorology.” Translated and edited by Resianne Fontaine. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995. Pp. lxxx + 268. Cloth, $108.50.This modest, seemingly unimportant, volume is in fact a surprisingly fascinating text that should be of interest to all historians of philosophy. Under the rather boring guise of an edition (...) and English translation of a medieval Hebrew translation of an early ninth-century Arabic translation of Aristotle’s Meteorology, this book is destined to be ignored by most historians of philosophy and even by those who have a special interest in Aristotle. This is a shame, and it is the goal of this brief review to alert the reader to the book’s value.The Hebrew translation of the Meteorology is, to be more precise, a creative translation of an inadequate Arabic version of the text, corrected, interpreted, and expanded on the basis of the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes, by a philosopher struggling to understand what was for him a seminal text of Aristotle’s. The philosopher-translator was Samuel Ibn Tibbon, best known for his faithful translation into Hebrew of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed. What is immediately significant about the translation of the Meteorology, which was completed in 1210, is that it was the first text of Aristotle’s to be translated into Hebrew and, as far as is known, the first Hebrew translation of any philosophic or scientific work of a non-Jew. For the philosophically inclined Jew who did not know Arabic and who had struggled through Maimonides’s Guide without the benefit of translations, paraphrases, or even commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics and other prerequisite writings on natural science, the translation must have been an eagerly awaited and much welcome work. But why, of all things, the historian of philosophy will ask, the Meteorology? And however much appreciated the translation may have been in 1210, what possible use could an English translation of this patchwork Hebrew translation of a garbled and abridged Arabic translation of perhaps a Syriac translation of the Greek original or compendium of the Meteorology have for us today when we have a fine Greek edition of the text and modern translations from that edition?There were good reasons not to translate the Meteorology first. In contrast to most of Aristotle’s writings on natural science which existed in impressively reliable Arabic translations, the Meteorology existed in a poor and incomplete one. Ibn Tibbon comments in his Introduction to the translation that “errors and omissions” in the Arabic translation are evident from the context, from a comparison with Alexander’s commentary and the lemmata found therein, and from a comparison with other Aristotelian works that existed in trustworthy translations. The text could not simply be translated, [End Page 130] but needed to be reconstructed on the basis of a careful study of the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias, Averroes, and the other commentaries that were available. Yet, even if the text had existed in a reliable translation, the tradition of text-study required that the sciences be studied in a proper order and this meant—as is clear from the opening words of the Meteorology—beginning the study of natural sciences with the Physics and turning to the Meteorology only after completing On the Heavens and On Generation and Corruption. Ibn Tibbon acknowledged this, and, in fact, interjected in his own name (27, 29) that “all the statements the philosopher has [made] thus far, are introductory remarks taken from earlier discussions in other books.... Someone who has not previously acquired knowledge and learning from his books that precede this one, will understand very little of this introduction.” Unfortunately for Ibn Tibbon’s reader, it would be forty years before any of those books or epitomes of them would be translated into Hebrew. Resianne Fontaine, in her wide-ranging and informative Introduction (xi–xii), brings support for A. Ravitzky’s suggestion that Ibn Tibbon’s decision to translate the Meteorology was motivated by his personal interest in the text... (shrink)

On January 29, 2021, a police officer with the Rochester, New York, Police Department pepper-sprayed a 9-year old Black girl who had been handcuffed and forced into the back of a police car. In the struggle that proceeded this moment, an officer yelled at the girl with obvious frustration, “You’re acting like a child!” In this essay, I consider how the girl’s quick retort —“I AM a child!”—interjected a truth into the struggle that had been all but ignored by the (...) armed adults on the scene. I consider how the truth embedded in this girl’s call exposes the lies of law enforcement and, in doing so, lay the seeds of abolitionist imaginings—a call for a system, a world, that would treat a Black girl as if she were a child. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 67-70 [Access article in PDF] Response to Mary J. Reichling, "Intersections: Form, Feeling, and Isomorphism" David Stevenson Vassalboro, Maine Mary J. Reichling's essay regarding the three concepts, form, feeling, and isomorphism, is lucid, well structured, and aptly supported by research of other music education philosophers. She states her purpose in the opening paragraph: "to examine and to elucidate various aspects of these (...) three concepts in her [Susanne Langer's] writing, as they are fundamental to an understanding of her aesthetic theory and to the construction of a philosophy of music and music education."A philosophy of music education must be the focus in all ensuing debate, and must remain of paramount importance. Arguments, especially dialectic arguments, are not won or lost; they merely strip away the outer garments until more and more of the truth is exposed. My thoughts regarding Reichling's essay are offered in this vein.Reichling amply makes the point that music is a dynamic moving form. She asserts that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content," clarifying further by saying that "By content Langer is designating the form's import or meaning." And she offers other examples of dynamic, moving forms, among them, "forms created by movements of clouds or fog through the mist and early light." [End Page 67]At this point, perhaps interjecting the notion of perception is in order. I would suggest that the cloud formations offer no content or meaning outside of the viewer's perceptions or imagination. Music (art), being the nebulous subject that it is, ensconced in subjectivity and steeped in perception, both interpersonal and intrapersonal at the same time, exists to be taken by individuals, each at his or her own level of accomplishment, understanding, and interest. Therefore, does the meaning inhere in the form, as Langer and Reichling assert, or is it assigned by the listener (in the case of music) or by the viewer (in the case of the cloud formation)? "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite."1 William Blake's observation notwithstanding, the truth is that perception is the only thing that we have with which to view our existence. I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that reality does exist. However, we mere mortals lack the ability to view the world through anything other than our own perceptions. The knowledge or meaning gained through contemplation of the form is, in all likelihood, quite different for each observer.Likewise, imagination and conceptual ability play a role in interpreting what the senses have perceived. Langer, and by quotation, Reichling, offers the notion of a red dot placed on the rim of a spinning wheel that appears to the viewer as a red circle. "When the spinning stops, the form, the red circle, evaporates. Did it really exist? Does it have ontological status? Is it merely an illusion?" I asked my students to close their eyes and imagine a spinning wheel with a red dot placed on the rim. I asked them, "As the wheel spins, do you see the dot?" The answer was that they saw a red circle. Did they really see a red circle, or even a spinning wheel? Of course not, we were in a music classroom. Yet they were able to conceptualize or imagine the image, and I would suggest that that carries more weight in the realm of art than does actual ontological status.The problem with the experiment of the preceding paragraph is that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content, writing that it is not possible 'to divorce the logical form from its one embodiment or expression.'" In the subsequent paragraph Reichling states, When the music stops, when the ballet is concluded, when the play ends, when the wheel stops spinning, memory may remain but the content (content as meaning-my parenthetical interjection), the feeling, the red circle, the image the dancer created is gone. Is this illogical or has knowledge... (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis play is based on the author’s ethnographic and archival research on the French philosopher Henry Corbin’s years in Tehran, Iran. Corbin taught in Tehran between 1947 and 1978 at the Institute of Philosophy, which he founded. The play is a dialogue between a fictional university student, Ali, and his mentor, the French philosopher Henry Corbin, with interjections from the angel of history. Ali is trying to come to grips with his love of Islamic mystical philosophy and its dangerous (...) appropriation by political actors of the time, as well as with a deeply personal mourning. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. (shrink)