Slurs’ meaning is highly unstable. A slurring utterance like ‘Hey, F, where have you been?’ (where F is a slur) may receive a wide array of interpretations depending on various contextual factors such as the speaker’s social identity, their relationship to the target group, tone of voice, and more. Standard semantic, pragmatic, and non-content theories of slurs have proposed different mechanisms to account for some or all types of variability observed, but without providing a unified framework that allows us to (...) understand how different contextual factors simultaneously influence slurs’ interpretation. To address this issue, I argue that slurs convey dimensional qualities such as, e.g., ‘negative valence, neutral arousal, high dominance’ instead of discrete emotional categories such as ‘contempt’. Then, I translate this hypothesis into a game-theoretic model of slurs’ interpretation inspired by Heather Burnett’s pioneering work on identity construction. This new model, called ‘Affective Meaning Games’ (AMG), captures the variability of slurs and integrates pragmatic reasoning within an independently motivated psychological understanding of emotional states. (shrink)

This paper critically examines the philosophical underpinnings of current experimental investigation into animal affect-related decision-making. Animals’ affective states are standardly operationalised by linking positively valenced states with “approach” behaviours and negatively valenced states with “avoidance” behaviours. While this operationalisation has provided a helpful starting point to investigate the ecological role of animals’ internal states, there is extensive evidence that valenced and motivational states do not always neatly align, namely, instances where “liking” does not entail “wanting” (and vice versa). To address (...) this limitation, this paper proposes the (re-)integration of dominance as a dimension of affect. In particular, I argue that dominance, construed as a measure of organisms’ self-assessed behavioural control, can provide the necessary nuance to understand animal affect-related decision-making. Thus, after addressing the theoretical and methodological challenges related to incorporating dominance into a definition of “core affect”, this paper introduces the “Valence-Arousal-Dominance” model of animal affect. This model is explored for its potential applications in two domains. Firstly, in the study of animal affect-related decision-making under predation risk, and secondly, in the study of animal wellbeing. Through these applications, this model aims to bring experimental paradigms of animal affect-related behaviour closer to ecologically relevant scenarios. (shrink)

This paper explores nicknaming practices, focusing on their capacity to derogate and establish power differentials within a group. By examining ethnographic and psychological data, this paper contends that pejorative nicknames can contribute to unjust intra-group hierarchies and thus operate analogously to slurs within small social circles. Like expressions targeting social groups based on gender or ethnicity, pejorative nicknames can indeed elicit deep offence regardless of the speaker’s intentions or whether they occur within speech reports. Moreover, this paper advances a framework (...) suggesting i) that both forms of verbal aggression index multiple dimensional qualities such as “negative valence”, “neutral arousal,” and “high dominance” rather than discrete emotional categories such as “contempt” or “anger”, and ii) that the expression of high dominance in social interactions underlies their capacity to offend. Additionally, it translates this hypothesis into a Bayesian model of sociolinguistic variation inspired by Heather Burnett’s work on identity construction, thus integrating pragmatic reasoning into a psychologically informed framework for interpreting emotional cues. (shrink)

This investigation is a conversation-analytic study of Mexican Spanish news interviews. It focuses on the question-answer adjacency pair in which interviewees are questioned, directly or indirectly, by the interviewers about the legality of their wealth in light of corruption allegations. The questions examined display strategies to generate news: content questions elicit a contrast; statement formulated questions followed by a request for confirmation give the opportunity to accept or deny the allegations, in contrast to statements which create a confrontational context. Non-type-conforming (...) answers evade answering and type-conforming answers contain resistance elements. The IE minimize the allegations by repairing and providing a downgraded version, or use other resources to suggest that their activities are of common order, hence not newsworthy. The IE display evasion by addressing only certain elements of the question and counter the allegations by casting doubt on the professionalism of the IR. (shrink)

This paper argues that all-purpose pejoratives such as ‘jerk’ or ‘bastard’ are just plain vanilla descriptions of personality traits that are generally seen as impairing for the self and for interpersonal relationships across different contexts. Thus, all-purpose pejoratives derogate their referents through generalized conversational implicatures: it is common knowledge that those who use these terms accept certain kind of (negative) evaluations and that uses of those terms express such evaluations. One of the main advantages of this approach is that it (...) can be extended to more ‘thick’ pejoratives such as ‘wimp’ or ‘chicken’, which, as Kaplan (1998) himself suggested, are ‘purely descriptive’ of personality traits that are generally seen as ‘personal failings’. Before defending this theory, I criticize i) the standard assumption that allpurpose pejoratives are expressive and ii) the alternative semantic view that allpurpose pejoratives are conventionally associated with a judge parameter. (shrink)

Resumen El presente artículo describe una tipología de saludos y despedidas del español de México basada en datos observacionales de hablantes jóvenes del municipio de Metepec. El artículo también hace un contraste de datos observacionales y datos intuitivos referentes a los formatos de saludos y despedidas. En cuanto a la tipología, los saludos y las despedidas reportados se categorizan en tres y cuatro tipos respectivamente (saludos: hola, vocativos, la construcción interrogativa ¿Qué …?; despedidas: adiós, bye, imperativo del verbo cuidar y (...) despedidas temporales), y cada categoría cuenta con características y subcategorías particulares. La comparación entre los datos observacionales y los intuitivos en general indica que los datos observacionales no coinciden con los datos intuitivos; sin embargo, al ahondar en su contraste se identifican algunas similitudes particulares. (shrink)

The development of information and communication technologies offers innovative opportunities to establish business strategies focused on customer value co-creation. This situation is especially notable in the banking industry. e-Banking activities can support competitive advantages. However, the adoption of e-banking is not yet well-established among consumers. In this sense, the technology acceptance model is considered essential in studying consumer behavior applied to adopt a particular technology. According to the TAM model, this study analyses the factors which influence bank customers to adopt (...) e-banking to facilitate their banking services and support the process of value co-creation. Consequently, the authors examine five main aspects of the technology adoption model to provide a broad understanding of bank customers’ consumption of e-banking. A partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis is conducted to evaluate proposed relationships between factors and customers’ e-banking adoption. (shrink)

Swear words are highly colloquial expressions that have the capacity to signal the speaker's affective states, i.e., to display the speaker's feelings with respect to a certain stimulus. For this reason, swear words are often called 'expressives'. Which linguistic mechanisms allow swear words display affective states, and, more importantly, how can such 'affective content' be characterized in a theory of meaning? Even though research on expressive meaning has produced models that integrate the affective aspects of swear words in a compositional (...) framework, there is extensive evidence that swear words cannot be assigned a single or stable affective interpretation across contexts. For example, even though expletive adjectives (e.g., 'damn'), particularistic insults (e.g., 'bastard') and slurs (e.g., 'wop') typically express (and elicit) negatively valenced affective states, they can also be interpreted positively in some contexts. Thus, inspired in recent developments in formal sociolinguistics, I propose an 'indexical' approach to affective meaning. Under this approach, an affective expression is associated with a set of affective qualities, anyone of which may emerge at a given context depending on the interpreter's prior assumptions about the speaker's affective states and/or relation with the target of the swear word. To define this set, also called 'indexical field', I will use the dimensions pleasure, arousal and dominance, standardly employed in cognitive psychology to characterize and measure affective episodes. In this dissertation, thus, the affective meaning of an expression is given by the set of affective states it typically conveys within a linguistic community, but its interpretation at a given context is established by taking into account the interpreter's prior assumptions about the speaker's affective states and/or attitudes with respect to the target of the affective expression. (shrink)

We present a Hilbert-style axiomatization of a recently introduced logic, called G'3 G'3 is based on a 3-valued semantics. We prove a soundness and completeness theorem. The replacement theorem holds in G'3. As it has already been shown in previous work, G'3 can express some non-monotonic semantics. We prove that G'3can define the same class of functions as Lukasiewicz 3 valued logic. Moreover, we identify some normal forms for this logic.

The present investigation studies buying and selling encounters in a Mexican fruit and vegetable shop. It is a conversation-analytic study that shows aspects of the institutional character of these interactions, their overall organisation and sequential structure. It suggests that the core sequential structure of these encounters consists of two base adjacency pairs, buying and selling. In particular, the analysis describes the preparatory characteristics of the pre-expansions that precede the product request formulations, the linguistic composition and sequential positioning of request formulations, (...) the insertions of the buying adjacency pair and the sequencing of the commercial exchange which is described as the climax of the institutional event. The designs of the first pair part of the selling adjacency pair and the product request formulations are presented as clear instances of the referential framework or common ground shared by seller and customer. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBased on the case of Rosa, a nine‐year‐old girl who was denied a therapeutic abortion, this article analyzes the role played by the social in medical practice. For that purpose, it compares the different application of two similar pieces of legislation in Costa Rica, where both the practice of abortion and sterilization are restricted to the protection of health and life by the Penal Code. As a concept subject to interpretation, a broad conception of medical necessity could enable an ample (...) use of the therapeutic exception and a liberal use of both surgeries. The practice of therapeutic sterilization has been generalized in Costa Rica and has become the legitimate way to distribute contraceptive sterilization. In contrast, therapeutic abortion is very rarely practiced. The analysis carried out proposes that it is the difference in social acceptance of abortion and sterilization that explains the different use that doctors, as gatekeepers of social morality, make of medical necessity. (shrink)

La participación masiva de los jóvenes respecto a los sucesos políticos estuvo aquietada por muchos años; sin embargo, con el posicionamiento de las comunicaciones a nivel global, la generación millennial se va involucrando cada vez más. Es así que en el marco de la democracia representativa de develar una participación cada vez más activa, ahora los jóvenes comunican su sentir y su postura, mostrando su conformidad o disconformidad con las decisiones y acontecimientos políticos. Partiendo de esta premisa, y con un (...) enfoque mixto, se aplicó un cuestionario de 16 preguntas a 3474 millennials, estudiantes de institutos superiores y tecnológicos ubicados en Lima; además, se realizó un análisis de las declaraciones de académicos y jefes de Estado, así como de casos internacionales donde se destaca la participación de esta generación, como aconteció en la Primavera Árabe y en otros sucesos ocurridos en Sudamérica, para vislumbrar las brechas que se abren en la estructura política del Perú. (shrink)

The objective of this research study was to determine if psychological distress, anxiety, and academic self-efficacy predict satisfaction with studies in Peruvian university students during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional and predictive design was used, in which 582 Peruvian university students participated, 243 men and 339 women, between the ages of 16 and 41. Student’s t-statistics were used to analyze the differences in scores of psychological distress, anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and satisfaction with studies based on the sex of the participants, (...) Pearson’s R was used for the analysis of correlations between variables, and multiple linear regressions were used to evaluate the predictive model. In the analyses, the significance level was set at 0.05. The results show that men have higher levels of psychological distress, anxiety, and academic self-efficacy than women do ; high levels of psychological distress correlate with high levels of anxiety and low levels of satisfaction with studies and academic self-efficacy ; high levels of anxiety correlate with low levels of satisfaction with studies and academic self-efficacy ; and high levels of academic self-efficacy correlate with high levels of satisfaction with studies. Academic self-efficacy was also found to predict satisfaction with studies. This concludes that, although there are significant correlations between psychological distress, anxiety, academic self-efficacy, and satisfaction with studies, academic self-efficacy is the variable that most predicts satisfaction with studies in Peruvian university students. (shrink)

We present a Hilbert-style axiomatization of a recently introduced logic, called G'3 G'3 is based on a 3-valued semantics. We prove a soundness and completeness theorem. The replacement theorem holds in G'3. As it has already been shown in previous work, G'3 can express some non-monotonic semantics. We prove that G'3can define the same class of functions as Lukasiewicz 3 valued logic. Moreover, we identify some normal forms for this logic.

I make some remarks about whether evidence of valenced responses constitutes evidence of valenced states, and therefore of sentience, in organisms.

The journey through the history of nursing, and its philosophical and political influences of the moment, contextualizes the interest that arose about the nurse–patient relationship after World War II. The concept has always been defined as a relationship but, from a phenomenological approach based on a historical, philosophical, psychological and sociological cosmology, it is possible to re‐conceptualize it as ‘caring interaction’. Under the vision of aesthetics and sociopoetics, the object of nursing care is the most delicate, vulnerable and unrepeatable raw (...) material: the person, whose feelings and reciprocity, which must be considered. In addition, it involves the adoption of the socio‐critical paradigm, as it considers the importance of actively involving the person, not just patient anymore, or their family in the nursing cares, optimizing the reciprocity inherent to this interactivity. In short, our philosophical and epistemological approach to the concept of nurse–patient relationship proposes a new conceptualization of it as a caring interaction. (shrink)

La extraordinaria pretensión de la praxiología -- La abstracción y los límites de la imaginación paradigmática -- Epistemología y economía -- La contradicción, vicio formal o cifra de contenido? -- Nudos y vacios, el fundamento pragmático de los principios lógicos -- Ambigüedad y comunicación -- Cómo ve la ciencia un filósofo -- "Las teorías de la relatividad de Alberto Einstein y sus implicaciones filosóficas" -- Educación y lenguaje.

In relationships ‘I’ and ‘you’ become ‘we’; despite individual differences, couples obtain an interdependent identity due to their shared interactions. During a serious illness, biological and biographical disruptions can put any reciprocal relationship under strain. Through intermedial analysis of Judith Fox’s photographic project, I Still Do: Loving and Living with Alzheimer’s, I will explore ways the couple make sense of illness, how illness is communicated through text and image and also to identify the limits of representation. Here the photographs, I (...) argue, solidify their relationship and echo the stuck-in-the-present state of mind brought on by Alzheimer’s. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é propor, de modo simples e saudável, uma releitura transformadora na relação entre os ministérios ordenados e a missão leiga, sobretudo no tocante à espiritualidade laical como colaboração eclesial. Com efeito, desde o tempo de Jesus, o protagonismo leigo, como cooperador à evangelização sempre foi ressaltado e muito bem aproveitado pelo Mestre; dessa forma, nota-se o quanto a Igreja carece hoje dessa ajuda primordial. Não por menos, o Concilio Vaticano II, no decreto Apostolicam Actuositatem, diz que (...) o fiel leigo é indispensável á missão da Igreja. Assim, entre tantas orientações, o mesmo decreto convoca a renovar e valorizar o ardor missionário com o apostolado leigo no interior da Igreja. Nesse sentido, é urgente a aplicação do pedido solicitado no Concílio Vaticano II para os tempos atuais, visando à sua concretização e não ficar somente em uma longínqua teoria. É nesta óptica, que a V CELAM, realizada em Aparecida, enfatiza mais uma vez a indispensabilidade do leigo como colaborador profícuo na missão eclesial. Por fim, vemos em muito a realização exemplar de muitos fiéis leigos batizados em seu exercício de ministros não-ordenados que oferecem subsídios riquíssimos para santificar a vida na Igreja. (shrink)

The status of photography within medical arts or humanities is still insecure. Despite a growing number of published photographic essays that disclose illness experience of an individual and how illness affects close relatives, these works have received relatively little scholarly attention. Through analysis of Joshua Lutz’s Hesitating Beauty which documents his mother who was suffering from schizophrenia, this article will explore how the photographic essay attempts to reconstruct a dialogue between mother and son out of fragmented, broken and undeveloped communications, (...) and in the process how it challenges representation itself, on which it is dependent. The focus of the analysis is on identifying and illuminating the intimate space that opens between the photographer and the photographed person and that provides new forms of communication as well as uncovers existing forms of knowledge that is shared between them. This paper will also assess the political and cultural significance of such representation. (shrink)

The expression of emotion works as an argumentative tool in the case of Spanish emigration and its depiction in the media. I have made a comparative analysis of two different political contexts to observe different social parameters at work: the current democratic system and the post-Spanish Civil War dictatorial regime. In both cases, they are exploited by third parties to validate a particular political stance. The analysis made in this work draws on Edwards’ ‘emotion in use’ and the lexical framework (...) within Martin and White’s ‘appraisal model’. The way emigration is emotionally verbalized determines issues such as responsibility. Negative emotion remarks require some agent to be blamed, normally the government for its economic policies, whereas the positive ones have a reinforcement effect and work as a bonding mechanism to the system. Judgment and Affect are found to be interrelated. More specifically, and following Martin and White’s terminology, Affect may work as a graduation instrument in the expression of Judgment. (shrink)

Processing data streams arriving at high speed requires the development of models that can provide fast and accurate predictions. Although deep neural networks are the state-of-the-art for many machine learning tasks, their performance in real-time data streaming scenarios is a research area that has not yet been fully addressed. Nevertheless, much effort has been put into the adaption of complex deep learning (DL) models to streaming tasks by reducing the processing time. The design of the asynchronous dual-pipeline DL framework allows (...) making predictions of incoming instances and updating the model simultaneously, using two separate layers. The aim of this work is to assess the performance of different types of DL architectures for data streaming classification using this framework. We evaluate models such as multi-layer perceptrons, recurrent, convolutional and temporal convolutional neural networks over several time series datasets that are simulated as streams at different speeds. In addition, we evaluate how the different architectures react to concept drifts typically found in evolving data streams. The obtained results indicate that convolutional architectures achieve a higher performance in terms of accuracy and efficiency, but are also the most sensitive to concept drifts. (shrink)