In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 182-186 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation Rhetoric and Community: Studies in Unity and Fragmentation. Studies in Rhetoric/Communication. Ed. J. Michael Hogan. Series ed. Thomas W. Benson. Columbia, SC: U of South Carolina P, 1998. Pp. xxxviii + 315. $39.95. Based on papers and critical responses presented at the Fourth Biennial Public (...) Address Conference, which was held at Indiana University in 1994, this collection of fourteen essays by leading rhetoric scholars concentrates on the relationships among rhetoric, community, and fragmentation. Organized into three broad sections entitled "Race, Gender, and Community," "War and Community," and "Artistic and Scientific Community," the book contributes to ongoing conversations about the roles of language, symbolism, differences, metaphors, myths, hegemony, economic class, pluralism, and multiple consciousness in unifying the United States. A preface and a conclusion by J. Michael Hogan, who edited the collection, provides an orientation and summary for this new volume in the University of South Carolina Press series devoted to Studies in Rhetoric/Communication.The preface frames the book's contribution as a response to a belief that "a growing number of social and political commentators fear that the United States has lost all sense of 'community'--that repository of shared purpose, values, and traditions which historically has defined the American character" (xii). Hogan amplifies, "The signs of stress and fragmentation appear everywhere, not just in our national political and cultural dialogue but in all of the various communities that define our social lives--our families, our neighborhoods, our towns and cities, our professions, and our social and cultural associations" (xii). The preface situates the book in this concern about a "lost" unity that once upon a time typified the United States. But this "lost" community is a mythic representation of a past that has never existed in the United States, except possibly in the imaginations of people habituated to dominant roles. Stephen H. Browne's comments about restoration projects in general are germane: "The work of restoration has [End Page 182] never come easy for Americans, not least of all because it presumes a state that never existed and the appeal to which is almost always self-interested" (75).Describing the fourteen contributors as sharing "a common bond," Hogan asserts, "recognizing that communities are largely defined, and rendered healthy or dysfunctional, by the language they use to characterize both themselves and others, all share an abiding concern with how communities are constituted and sustained--or, in some cases, threatened and disrupted--by the words their leaders choose to characterize both themselves and others" (xv). Hogan emphasizes a question that he reiterates with slight changes in the conclusion: "Can feminist or ethnic and racial communities successfully sustain and celebrate their own identities without alienating themselves from the larger community?" (295; similarly, xxiii). But if all members of a community are responsible for unity and fragmentation, if we are unwilling to assign responsibility for fragmentation to subordinated community members, it may be necessary, consciously, to reverse the dynamics of power implicit in Hogan's question, by asking: "Can groups that have had a history of dominating others--both beyond and within the borders--sustain their own identities and still relate productively to the community?" In addition, because the English language is a communal inheritance, it may be revealing to ask, in a reversal of the book's focus on "community," how are notions of individualism sustained in the United States?Roderick P. Hart's introduction, "Community by Negation--An Agenda for Rhetorical Inquiry," focuses on a rhetoric of hate as practiced by both the political right and the political left. Hart inquires "whether it is possible to have community without hate" (xxv). This question is necessary in any serious discussion of rhetoric, fragmentation, and community; yet calculated opportunism and economic exploitation may be misnamed and obfuscated in language depicting a rhetoric of "hate." Indeed, Lu-in Wang, a legal scholar, suggests that these other motives may be more common than animus in so-called "hate crimes." Live interviews with convicted killers... (shrink)

In gloomy and despairing times, we who work for liberation generate light and joy. We experience this every time we work together to defend our communities, when we fight to win collective victories, when we build something new. Much of the time these experiences are in marches and meetings – really important spaces for movement work. But here we want to amplify the usefulness of collective study, and share some thoughts about why Harsha Walia’s new book Border and Rule would (...) be a great place to start if you might like to try a political kind of book club. (shrink)

The hypothermia experiments performed on humans during the Second World War at the German concentration camp in Dachau have been regarded as crimes against humanity, disguised as medical research. For almost 50 years, scientists maintained that the study produced valuable, even if not totally reliable, information. In recent years, the results from the Dachau hypothermia project were glamorized with life-saving potential and a heated ethical dialogue was activated about the use of life-saving but tainted scientific information. In the wake of (...) the debate, an in-depth examination of the scientific rigour of the project was performed and revealed that neither the science nor the scientists from Dachau could be trusted and that the data were worthless. The body of medical opinion accepted the unfavourable determination but a few scientists and ethicists have continued to endorse the validity, of at least parts, of the Dachau hypothermia data. The conduct of the scientific communications about the Dachau hypothermia experiments by the scientific and ethical communities invites serious consideration of a possible ethical misadventure. It appears that for almost 50 years, the results of the study had been endorsed without careful examination of the scientific base of the experiments and that secondary citation of relevant original material may have been commonly employed. These infractions contributed to a myth that good science was practised by the Nazis at Dachau. The more recent emphasis on the life-saving potential of the Dachau data, without citation of credible supporting evidence, has also been misleading. Similarly, acceptance of a determination by an in-depth examination that the 'whole' Dachau project if flawed with simultaneous endorsement of the validity of 'parts' of the results, poses an ethical problem. It is advisable that before seeking ethical consultation about the use of unethically obtained data, scientists should examine the quality of science behind the controversial information and ethicists should verify the integrity of the material prior to engaging in a dialogue. (shrink)

This introductory text is a critical theory toolkit on how to how to make use of Karl Marx's ideas in media, communication and cultural studies. Karl Marx's ideas remain of crucial relevance, and in this short, student-friendly book, leading expert Christian Fuchs introduces Marx to the reader by discussing fifteen of his key concepts and showing how they matter for understanding the digital and communicative capitalism that shapes human life in 21st century society. Key concepts covered include: the (...) dialectic, materialism, commodities, capital, capitalism, labour, surplus-value, the working class, alienation, means of communication, the general intellect, ideology, socialism, communism, and class struggles. Students taking courses in Media, Culture and Society; Communication Theory; Media Economics; Political Communication and Cultural Studies will find Fuchs' concise introduction an essential guide to Marx. (shrink)

This research explored the feasibility of using multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis in novel combination with other techniques to study comprehension of epistemic adverbs expressing doubt and certainty (e.g., evidently, obviously, probably ) as they relate to health communication in clinical settings. In Study 1, Australian English speakers performed a dissimilarity-rating task with sentence pairs containing the target stimuli, presented as “doctors' opinions.” Ratings were analyzed using a combination of cultural consensus analysis (factor analysis across participants), weighted-data classical-MDS, and cluster (...) analysis. Analyses revealed strong within-community consistency for a 3-dimensional semantic space solution that took into account individual differences, strong statistical acceptability of the MDS results in terms of stress and explained variance, and semantic configurations that were interpretable in terms of linguistic analyses of the target adverbs. The results confirmed the feasibility of using MDS in this context. Study 2 replicated the results with Canadian English speakers on the same task. Semantic analyses and stress decomposition analysis were performed on the Australian and Canadian data sets, revealing similarities and differences between the two groups. Overall, the results support using MDS to study comprehension of words critical for health communication, including in future studies, for example, second language speaking patients and/or practitioners. More broadly, the results indicate that the techniques described should be promising for comprehension studies in many communicative domains, in both clinical settings and beyond, and including those targeting other aspects of language and focusing on comparisons across different speech communities. (shrink)

Dialogue theory, although it has ancient roots, was put forward in the 1970s in logic as astructure that can be useful for helping to evaluate argumentation and informal fallacies.Recently, however, it has been taken up as a broader subject of investigation in computerscience. This paper surveys both the historical and philosophical background of dialoguetheory and the latest research initiatives on dialogue theory in computer science. The main components of dialogue theory are briefly explained. Included is a classification of the main (...) types of dialogue that, it is argued, should provide the central focus for studying many important dialogue contexts in specific cases. Following these three surveys, a concluding prediction is made about the direction dialogue theory is likely to take in the next century, especially in relation to the growing field of communication studies. (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

Tourism literature has shown there is a disagreement amongst academics conducting tourism research as to whether tourism is an academic community, academic study, and/or academic discipline. These three terms are used loosely and change in meaning depending upon the author, source, context, and discipline of the author(s). The following paper identifies tourism’s current position in academia using these three ideas of academic acceptance as tools to guide the discussion. Also guiding the discussion are ideas from tourism scholars and Kuhn’s ideas (...) of what constitutes a discipline. The discussion leads to a debate about “truths” in tourism research. Recommendations regarding the advancement of tourism in academia via theory construction in the academic field of tourism are presented. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of linguistic communication must explain how it is that, through the interpersonal exchange of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, the communicative preconditions for the acquisition of testimonial knowledge regularly come to be satisfied. Without an account of knowledge-yielding communication this success condition for linguistic theorizing is left opaque, and we are left with an incomplete understanding of testimony, and communication more generally, as a source of knowledge. This paper argues that knowledge-yielding communication should (...) be modelled on knowledge itself. It is argued that knowledge-yielding communication occurs iff interlocutors coordinate on truth values in a non-lucky and non-deviant way. This account is able to do significant explanatory work: it sheds light on the nature of referential communication, and it allows us to capture, in an informative way, the sense in which interlocutors must entertain similar propositions in order to communicate successfully. (shrink)

Theoretical concepts that explain transnational mass or social communication are rather unsophisticated. After twenty years of research on media ‘globalization’, academic thinking in this field is still vague and definitely requires more effort. One reason as to why theory is so unconvincing is that most researchers are experts for the ‘translocal’ but not for the ‘local’. Our language skills and methodologies are particularly limited when we try to understand if and how transnational media do or do not affect non-Western (...) societies. To get out of this methodology trap we need a better integration of media studies and the so-called area studies. Currently, media and communication studies, despite all efforts, are ‘international’ only in a very limited sense. There is a dire need for better integration of Asian, African, Latin American, North African and Middle Eastern media studies into theoretical debates. (shrink)

In this study we empirically map the field of media and communication studies by focusing on relationships between cognitive dimensions on the one hand and material dimensions on the other. Our analysis, which focuses on the field of MCS in Switzerland, identifies two clusters of research institutions representing distinct strands of research in the field. Results show how these two strands differ in terms of their resource base, institutional positioning and recognition, teaching and transfer activities, as well as (...) activities of scientific production. Similarities and differences in these dimensions serve to explain the general evolution of the field. (shrink)

Beginning with a focus on the ethical foundations of caregiving in health and expanding towards problems of ethics and justice implicated in a range of issues, this book develops and expands the notion of care itself and its connection to practice. Organised around the themes of culture as a restraint on caregiving in different social contexts and situations, innovative methods in healthcare, and the way in which culture works to position care as part of a rhetorical approach to dependency, responsibility, (...) and justice, The Ethics of Carepresents case studies examining institutional responses to end-of-life issues, the notion of informed consent, biomedicine, indigenous rights and postcolonialism in care and theoretical approaches to the concept of care. Offering discussions from a variety of disciplinary approaches, including sociology, communication, and social theory, as well as hermeneutics, phenomenology, and deconstruction, this book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in healthcare, medicine, justice and the question of how we think about care as a notion and social form, and how this is related to practice. (shrink)

The analysis of social communication in other-than-human animals poses several theoretical challenges due to the complexity of individual and extra-individual variables. Some previous studies have found a valuable solution in Uexküll’s work by expanding and adapting its usage for the study of communication in a heurtistic manner. An Umwelt analysis provides a theoretical toolbox, which allows researchers to take an emic perspective on the lives and phenomenal world of other animals. However, Umwelt and its elaborations do not (...) allow for a clear distinction between acts of perception and communication and seem to ignore factors that escape the specific communication contexts under analysis. Thus, moving away from the existing linear and cyclical approaches to communication, we propose a complementary approach to the study of social communication by combining Barnlund’s transactional model of communication with Umwelt theory and the functional circle more specifically. Our elaborated model conceives social communication as the process of creating meaning through the interaction of two subjects and emphasizes the role of species-specific and individual features in its creation. Our goal is to re-evaluate the research on social communication of other-than-human animals by advocating for the theoretical and empirical potential of Umwelt, especially pertaining to animals with complex Umwelten. Our model offers a valuable solution to the analysis of intraspecies communication that accounts for the role of private and public cues as well as the subjects’ specific behaviors, messages, and context in the creation of meaning. (shrink)

This short piece of communication has the sole purpose of identifying some evidence, supporting our view regarding a possible missing environment-nurturing cultural value. Here, we attempt to examine the presence of cultural studies within the boundary of waste management research.

Individuals of some animal species have been taught simple versions of human language despite their natural communication systems failing to rise to the level of a simple language. How is it, then, that some animals can master a version of language, yet none of them deploy this capacity in their own communication system? I first examine the key design features that are often used to evaluate language-like properties of natural animal communication systems. I then consider one candidate (...) animal system, bird song, because it has several of the key design features or their precursors, including social learning and cultural transmission of their vocal signals. I conclude that although bird song communication is nuanced and complex, and has the acoustic potential for productivity, it is not productive – it cannot be used to say many different things. Finally, I discuss the debate over whether animal communication should be viewed as a cooperative information transmission process, as we typically view human language, or as a competitive process where signaler and receiver vie for control. The debate points to a necessary condition for the evolution of a simple language that has generally been overlooked: the degree of to which the interests of the signaler and receiver align. While strong cognitive and signal production mechanisms are necessary pre-adaptations for a simple language, they are not sufficient. Also necessary is the existence of identical or near-identical interests of signaler and receiver and a socio-ecology that requires high-level cooperation across a range of contexts. In the case of our hominid ancestors, these contexts included hunting, gathering, child care and, perhaps, warfare. I argue that the key condition for the evolution of human language was the extreme interdependency that existed among unrelated individuals in the hunter-gatherer societies of our hominid ancestors. This extreme interdependency produced multiple prosocial adaptations for effective intragroup cooperation, which in partnership with advanced cognitive abilities, set the stage for the evolution of language. (shrink)

경건을 정의하는 표면적 기획에 관한 한 『에우튀프론』은 정의(定義) 대화편이고 종교 이야기다. 그러나 『변명』 및 『크리톤』과 이루는 삼부작이라는 심층적 기획에 착안하면, 그것은 단순히 경건의 정의 이야기에 머무는 것이 아니라 경건과 정의(正義)를 어떻게 나누고 가르칠 것인가를 다루는 소통과 공감이야기요 교육 이야기다. 이 소통-교육 이야기는 소크라테스의 ‘인간애’를 특징적으로 부각하는데, 그 주된 면모는 ‘자신을 내어줌’이다. 이 작품에서 지혜 주장을 하는 에우튀프론은 정작 그것의 나눔에 ‘인색’한 반면, 무지 주장을 하는 소크라테스는 오히려 대화 상대에게 물음 제공자로서 ‘자신을 내어주는’ ‘인간애’를 드러낸다. 그의 ‘인간애’는 자신의 아포리아에 더해 남들도 (...) 자기처럼 아포리아에 빠져 무지 고백자가 되게 만드는 소통과 공감의 작업이며, ‘가르치지 않는 교육’이요, 질문을 통해 제자 자신이 스스로를 개선하고 계발하는 데 연습상대로 이용할 수 있도록 자신을 내어주는 에로스다. ‘자신을 내어줌’은 소크라테스 식 대화에서 논변의 소유권을 상대에게 귀속시키는 태도와 궤를 같이하는 소크라테스 식 소통-교육의 요체다. 배울거리를 넘겨주고 반대급부로 돈을 요구하는 소피스트적 교육과 달리 소크라테스적 소통-교육은 ‘주고받음’, 즉 공감과 공유를 중시한다. 자기 것 일부, 즉 배울거리를 넘겨주는 대신 자신 전체, 즉 영혼을 상대가 이용할 수 있게 온전히 내어준다. 『변명』 삼부작에서 소크라테스는 설득과 소통보다 진실과 정의에 몰두하는 『변명』에서부터 출발하여 『크리톤』에서는 설득과 공감으로, 『에우튀프론』을 통해서는 소통과 교육으로 차츰 문제 지평을 넓혀 간다. 이는 진실과 정의의 진정성이나 공유 의도만이 아니라 소통-교육의 성공, 즉 공유의 성취에까지 주목하는 플라톤의 문제의식의 발전을 반영한다. 그것에 따르면 교육은 소통을, 소통은 교육을 필요로 한다. 즉, 소통되는 교육이어야 하고, 교육적인 소통이어야 한다. (shrink)

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays explores (...) the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a 'must read' that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture and Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law's representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University, Australia. (shrink)

The literature on mass communication is now dominated by "objective sociological "approaches. What makes the work of Stephenson so unusual is his starting points: his frank willingness to adopt a "subjective "and "psychological "approach to the study of mass communication. In short, this is an internal analysis of how communication processes are absorbed by individuals. The theory of play is not a doctrine of frivolity, but rather a way in which Stephenson gets at such sensitive areas of (...) communication theory as what is screened out and why. Without a notion of the play element in communication one would be led to imagine that every televised docudrama would be immediately lived out by every adolescent. Clearly, this is not the case. People can distinguish quite well between imaginary and real events in mass communication contexts. "The Play Theory of Mass Communication "is a work that studies subjective play, how communication serves the cause of self-enhancement and personal pleasure, and the role of entertainment as an end in itself. In short, for those who are tired of cliche-ridden volumes on the political hidden messages and meanings of communication, or the economic management of media decisions, this volume will come as a refreshment, a piece of entertainment as well as instruction. But with all the emphasis "on "aspects, Stephenson's volume is shrewdly political. He takes up themes ranging from the reduction! of international tensions to the happily alienated worker to such pedestrian events as the reporting of foreign Soviet dignitaries in their visits to democratic cultures. This is, in short, an urbane, wise book--sophisticated in its methodology and critical in its theorizing. (shrink)

The Journal of Mass Media Ethics publishes case studies in which scholars and media professionals analyze a particular ethical problem. Cases are drawn from actual experience in newsrooms, corporat...

Le numérique bouleverse les savoirs, et depuis quelques années a émergé le concept de digital humanities (humanités numériques), paradigme à travers lequel les sciences de l’homme et de la société prennent acte de ce devenir. Cet ouvrage, qui s’inscrit évidemment dans cette dynamique, pose cependant en principe que les digital humanities ne sont qu’une dimension de ce qu’il faut appréhender plus largement comme les digital studies, lesquelles concernent toutes les formes de savoirs, théoriques aussi bien que pratiques. Il soutient (...) autrement dit que le numérique constitue une mutation globale des savoirs sous toutes leurs formes (scientifiques, artistiques, politiques, sociaux au sens le plus large, pratiques dans tous les domaines) qui pose des questions épistémologiques fondamentales et radicalement nouvelles. Le contexte géopolitique de cette réflexion — qui a donné lieu à la constitution d’un réseau international par l’Institut de recherche et d’innovation (cf. digital-studies.org) — est l’émergence d’une industrie planétaire des savoirs pour laquelle l’Amérique du Nord tente de constituer ce que l’on appelle désormais un smart power. (shrink)

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book characterizes a notion of type that covers both linguistic and non-linguistic action, and lays the foundations for a theory of action based on a Theory of Types with Records (TTR). Robin Cooper argues that a theory of language based (...) on action allows the adoption of a perspective on linguistic content that is centred on interaction in dialogue; this approach is crucially different to the traditional view of natural languages as essentially similar to formal languages such as logics developed by philosophers or mathematicians. At the same time, he claims that the substantial technical advantages made by the formal language view of semantics can be incorporated into the action-based view, and that this can lead to important improvements in both intuitive understanding and empirical coverage. This enterprise uses types rather than possible worlds as commonly employed in studies of the semantics of natural language. Types are more tractable than possible worlds and offer greater potential for understanding the implementation of semantics both on machines and in biological brains. (shrink)

Recently a number of complex electrophysiological responses to neurotransmitters have been observed that cannot be described as simple excitation or inhibition. These responses are often characterized as modulatory, although there is no consensus on what defines modulation. Morphological studies reveal certain neurotransmitters stored in what might be release sites without synaptic contact. There is no direct evidence for nonsynaptic release from CNS sites, although such release does occur in the periphery and in invertebrates. Nonsynaptic release might provide a basis (...) for diffuse one-cell-to-many communication, but it might also simply be a means of sending the transmitter to a broader area of a single neuron than occurs in typical synapses. Several kinds of macromolecules have been found to be transported in a retrograde direction – and in some cases transsynaptically. There have been suggestions that some neurons may release more than one type of transmitter. Particularly intriguing is the possibility of release of substances that modulate actions of a primary transmitter. Taken together this range of evidence suggests that neurons may use a variety of forms of molecular communication in addition to traditionally described synaptic transmission.Several authors have suggested modes of communication distinct from classical synaptic transmission and have classified released substances using terms such as neurohumor, neurohormone, neuroregulator, and modulator. These suggestions have the heuristic value of drawing together diverse kinds of data, but it remains to be established that the pieces fit together in that fashion – for example, that complex electrophysiological effects are associated with substances released nonsynaptically. In order to reduce confusion, a flexible, generic approach to nomenclature for substances released from neurons and for hypothetical modes of communication is recommended. Some behavioral implications of nonconventional transmission are considered. (shrink)

Social externalism must allow that subjects can misunderstand the content of their own thoughts. I argue that we can exploit this commitment to create a dilemma for the view’s account of communication. To arrive at the first horn of the dilemma, I argue that, on social externalism, it is understanding which is the measure of communicative success. This would be a highly revisionary account of communication. The only way that the social externalist can salvage the claim that mental (...) content is central to explaining communicative success is by adopting an account which gives unacceptable diagnoses as to the success of communicative exchanges. This is the second horn of the dilemma. Contrastingly, certain internalist views of content, which deny that subjects share thought content, do not face the dilemma. I argue that, as such, we should prefer accounts of communication which deny that subjects speak the same language. (shrink)

"Lawyers and the law have long been the object of popular criticism and satire for the obscurity and incomprehensibility of their language. Legal Discourse provides a novel historical and systematic account of the language of the legal institution together with a sustained criticism of legal exegesis and `legalese' more generally. In the first part of the work the doctrinal history of the legal discipline and its concepts of language, text and sign are examined and assessed. In the second part the (...) contemporary disciples of linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies are brought to bear upon the task of constructing a theory of legal discourse as a linguistics of legal power" -- Backcover. (shrink)

How did social communication evolve in primates? In this volume, primatologists, linguists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists and philosophers of science systematically analyze how their specific disciplines demarcate the research questions and methodologies involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of social communication in primates in general, and in humans in particular. In the first part of the book, historians and philosophers of science address how the epistemological frameworks associated with primate communication and language evolution studies have (...) changed over time, and how these conceptual changes affect our current studies on the subject matter. In the second part, scholars provide cutting-edge insights into the various means through which primates communicate socially in both natural and experimental settings. They examine the behavioral building blocks by which primates communicate, and they analyze what the cognitive requirements are for displaying communicative acts. Chapters highlight cross-fostering and language experiments with primates, primate mother-infant communication, the display of emotions and expressions, manual gestures and vocal signals, joint attention, intentionality and theory of mind. The primary focus of the third part is on how these various types of communicative behavior possibly evolved, and how they can be understood as evolutionary precursors to human language. Leading scholars analyze how both manual and vocal gestures gave way to mimetic and imitational protolanguage, and how the latter possibly transitioned into human language. In the final part, we turn to the hominin lineage, and anthropologists, archeologists and linguists investigate what the necessary neurocognitive, anatomical and behavioral features are in order for human language to evolve, and how language differs from other forms of primate communication. (shrink)

This paper mainly studies the communication performance of visible light communication link in fire smoke environment. Compared with the previous studies, this study no longer only considers a single wavelength and considers the influence of smoke and background light noise. Firstly, the variation of background light noise caused by sunlight during a day was analyzed, then signal-to-noise ratio and bit error rate of the visible light communication link in fire smoke environment with different visibility were (...) calculated, and finally, the variation of received power with the angle β between the LED optical axis and the communication link was analyzed. The results show that, during a day from 07:00 to 18:30, background light noise first increases and then decreases, BER changes in the same trend and reaches the maximum at about 13:00, while SNR changes in the opposite trend and reaches the minimum at about 13:00. When visibility is 100 m, the maximum difference of SNR between 7:00 and 13:00 is about 19 dB, and the maximum difference of BER is about 5.3E-10. At 7:00, the maximum difference of SNR is about 13 dB between the visibility of 1 m and the visibility of 100 m, and the maximum difference of BER is about 1.44E − 11, and received power decreases with the increase of β. In addition, SNR increases with visibility of fire smoke environment, and BER changes in the opposite trend. Lastly, in order to enhance the performance of visible light communication in fire smoke environment, this paper gives the transmitting power scheme. (shrink)

IntroductionAcademic integrity policy that is inaccessible, ambiguous or confusing is likely to result in inconsistent policy enactment. Additionally, policy analysis and development are often undertaken as top down processes requiring passive acceptance by users of policy that has been developed outside the context in which it is enacted. Both these factors can result in poor policy uptake, particularly where policy users are overworked, intellectually critical and capable, not prone to passive acceptance and hold valuable grass roots intelligence about policy enactment.Case (...) descriptionThe case study presented in this paper describes the actions of a community of practice at a regional Australian university to deconstruct and translate ambiguous academic integrity policy into a suite of accessible academic integrity resources that were intelligible to staff and students, and which assisted academic staff to consistently enact policy. The paper narrates the formation of the CoP, the tangible and intangible value it created, the social learning practices enacted by its members, its grassroots policy work and the material resources produced from that work.Discussion and evaluationAn evaluation of the CoP was conducted using a value creation framework to explore its immediate value, potential value, applied value, realised value, and reframing value. These values were considered at each stages of the CoP’s lifespan. The evaluation was a useful process that demonstrated the wide-ranging value created by the CoP. Six insights were drawn from the evaluation which promote understanding of the value created for a university by a CoP, particularly in contributing to academic integrity culture over a sustained period of time.ConclusionsThis paper contributes to a research gap on specific examples of discretion within rule-based systems. It illustrates how academics and members of the CoP used their discretion to interpret and enact academic integrity policy within a higher education setting. Drawing from the evaluation of the CoP we argue for greater understanding of the grass-roots contribution of academic and professional staff to academic integrity policy translation and enactment. (shrink)

The name Charles Sanders Peirce is associated with the science of signs called semiotics, which studies the sign as the carrier of meaning that is placed in the center of his work. Peirce developed a system of concepts that describe how the sign as such is understood by the mind. For the conditions of its interpretations Peirce established various so-called interpretants for the explanation of signs associated with the utterer and interpreter and a shared process that enables the (...) class='Hi'>communication between communicators. Further to the renovation of the theory of rhetoric and communication, we show that medium and communication must be understood within the framework of his theory in association to the sign and the object. Throughout his manuscripts the triads of his concepts are realized in the text in rhetorical tricola as terms of his philosophy. In comparison to Aristotle’s Rhetoric, which employed the sign as a means for reasoning, we will show how Peirce developed techniques of reasoning based on Aristotle’s work and his model of mental understanding of the sign while foreshadowing a theory of communication that aims at describing the exchange of information in a model. (shrink)

The idea that verbal communication involves a species of mindreading is not new. Among linguists and philosophers, largely as a result of Grice’s (1957, 1967) influence, it has long been recognized that the act of communicating involves on the part of the communicator and the addressee mutual metarepresentations of each others’ mental states. In psychology, the coordination of common ground and attention in conversation has been pursued in a variety of studies (e.g. Clark and Marshall, 1981; Bruner, 1983).

The paper attends to the increasingly heated debate on the local, the global versus the glocal approaches in transcultural brand communication with an examination of how Disneyland performs emotional branding on social media across US to Hong Kong and Shanghai. Integrating insights from brand communication with linguistics, the present study develops a framework to examine how Disneyland builds emotional attachment of the public to the brand via brand personality appeals and use of interactional features. It is found that (...) on a global-local continuum, brand personality traits exhibit strong globalization propensity whereas interactional features demonstrate strong localization tendency in Hong Kong and Shanghai. Variations also exist in the means of emotional branding between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Finally, the paper provides an account for the differences between Hong Kong and Shanghai and concludes that neither the local approach nor the global approach but the glocal approach can tackle the challenge of transcultural brand communication and that future studies in this area should be oriented further to uncovering the global-local nexus in the process. (shrink)

이 글의 목적은 딥러닝 알고리즘의 발전으로 인한 ‘문제’를 제대로 설정하는 것이다. 딥러닝의 놀라운 성과로 인해 인공 지능에 대한 대중적 관심이 높아지면서 알고리즘의 지적 ‘능력’으로 인한 ‘지배’의 문제가 관심을 모으고 있다. 이 글은 이러한 인공 ‘지능’의 문제와 ‘지배’의 문제가 현재의 문제가 아니라는 진단, 그리고 인공 ‘감정’으로 문제의 중심을 이동시키자는 제안도 적절치 않다는 판단에서 출발한다. 현재의 문제는 인간 지능과는 매우 이질적인 방식으로 일함에도 소통에 직접 영향을 미치는 기계 지능과의 ‘관계’ 문제이다. 이 관계 문제를 다루기에 적합한 개념은 기계와의 단순한 상호작용을 넘어서는 언어적 관계를 (...) 다룰 수 있는 개념이자 상대의 마음 속 내용과 무관하게 성립하는 ‘소통’ 개념이다. 에스포지토는 이중의 우연성에 따른 정보, 통지, 이해의 세 가지 선택으로 하나의 소통 단위를 규정하는 루만의 소통 개념을 참조해 ‘인공 소통’의 문제를 제시하였다. 그는 사용자와 알고리즘의 상호작용에서 사용자 자신의 관점의 이중화를 통해 일어나는 가상 우연성이 이중의 우연성을 가능하게 한다고 본다. 필자는 현재의 문제가 인공 소통의 문제로 설정되는 것에 동의하면서도, 에스포지토가 소통과 행위의 관계와 귀속 문제를 다루지 않는다는 점에 주목한다. 알고리즘에 대한 행위 귀속이 이루어지지 않는 현재의 상황에서 인공소통의 사회적 영향은 제한적이다. 그래서 인공 소통의 문제를 잘 풀기 위해서는 귀속의 문제를 다루어야 한다. (shrink)

Recent studies of naturalistic face‐to‐face communication have demonstrated coordination patterns such as the temporal matching of verbal and non‐verbal behavior, which provides evidence for the proposal that verbal and non‐verbal communicative control derives from one system. In this study, we argue that the observed relationship between verbal and non‐verbal behaviors depends on the level of analysis. In a reanalysis of a corpus of naturalistic multimodal communication (Louwerse, Dale, Bard, & Jeuniaux, ), we focus on measuring the temporal (...) patterns of specific communicative behaviors in terms of their burstiness. We examined burstiness estimates across different roles of the speaker and different communicative modalities. We observed more burstiness for verbal versus non‐verbal channels, and for more versus less informative language subchannels. Using this new method for analyzing temporal patterns in communicative behaviors, we show that there is a complex relationship between verbal and non‐verbal channels. We propose a “temporal heterogeneity” hypothesis to explain how the language system adapts to the demands of dialog. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the difficult task of balancing access to misinformation with respect for patient decision-making. Due to its innate antagonism, the paradigm of “physician paternalism” versus “patient autonomy” may not adequately capture the clinical relationship. The authors hypothesized that most patients would, in fact, prefer significant physician input as opposed to unopinionated information when making medical decisions. There is a lack of empirical data corroborating this in the United States. To that end, a survey was distributed to (...) 650 individuals through Amazon Mechanical Turk, of which 499 responses met pre-determined quality criteria. Most respondents believed their doctor's insight would be better than their own if injured or gravely ill. When asked to affirm preferences separately, a significantly higher proportion of respondents preferred guidance from their doctor when making medical decisions compared to being presented with unopinionated information ( p < 0.001). Encouragingly, 93.1% believed that the doctor's primary goal was their health. When asked directly to compare physician guidance to unopinionated information, 69.1% respondents stated they would prefer physician guidance. We found a consistent association between educational/economic background and affirmative responses ( p < 0.001), suggesting particular attention should be paid to patients that are disadvantaged with respect to these demographic factors. The belief in a shared goal, and a consistent preference for physician input, suggests that patients endorse a more collaborative view of the clinical dynamic than is suggested by the paternalism-autonomy paradigm. This pilot study suggests physicians should not be afraid to communicate conviction with regard to treatment decisions. (shrink)

Digital communication between a patient and their clinician offers the potential for improved patient care, particularly for young people with long term conditions who are at risk of service disengagement. However, its use raises a number of ethical questions which have not been explored in empirical studies. The objective of this study was to examine, from the patient and clinician perspective, the ethical implications of the use of digital clinical communication in the context of young people living (...) with long-term conditions. A total of 129 semi-structured interviews, 59 with young people and 70 with healthcare professionals, from 20 United Kingdom -based specialist clinics were conducted as part of the LYNC study. Transcripts from five sites were read by a core team to identify explicit and implicit ethical issues and develop descriptive ethical codes. Our subsequent thematic analysis was developed iteratively with reference to professional and ethical norms. Clinician participants saw digital clinical communication as potentially increasing patient empowerment and autonomy; improving trust between patient and healthcare professional; and reducing harm because of rapid access to clinical advice. However, they also described ethical challenges, including: difficulty with defining and maintaining boundaries of confidentiality; uncertainty regarding the level of consent required; and blurring of the limits of a clinician’s duty of care when unlimited access is possible. Paradoxically, the use of digital clinical communication can create dependence rather than promote autonomy in some patients. Patient participants varied in their understanding of, and concern about, confidentiality in the context of digital communication. An overarching theme emerging from the data was a shifting of the boundaries of the patient-clinician relationship and the professional duty of care in the context of use of clinical digital communication. The ethical implications of clinical digital communication are complex and go beyond concerns about confidentiality and consent. Any development of this form of communication should consider its impact on the patient-clinician-relationship, and include appropriate safeguards to ensure that professional ethical obligations are adhered to. (shrink)

A psychiatric advance directive (PAD) is a communication tool that promotes patients’ autonomy and gives capacitated adults who live with serious mental illnesses the ability to record their preferences for care and designate a proxy decision maker before a healthcare crisis. Despite a high degree of interest by patients and previous studies that recommend that clinicians facilitate the completion of PADs, the rate of implementation of PADs remains low. Research indicates that many clinicians lack the necessary experience to (...) facilitate the completion of PADs and to use them, and, as a consequence, do not effectively engage patients about PADs. This study developed practical recommendations for clinicians to improve their ability to communicate and facilitate PADs. We (1) thematically analyze definitions of PADs published in 118 articles across disciplines, and (2) present our recommendations for enhanced communication in clinical practice that emphasize patient-centeredness, usefulness, and clarity, aligned with evidence-based practices that put patients’ autonomy and understanding first. While there is no one-sizefits- all script to engage patients in complex conversations, our recommended strategies include an emphasis on patients’ autonomy, the adaptation of word choices, the use of metaphor not simile, and checking for patients’ understanding as effective methods of clinical communication. (shrink)

The recent exchange between Robert Brandom and Jürgen Habermas provides an opportunity to compare and contrast some aspects of their systems. Both present broadly inferential accounts of meaning, according to which the content of an expression is determined by its role in an inferential network. Several problems confront such theories of meaning - one of which threatens the possibility of communication because content is relative to an individual's set of beliefs. Brandom acknowledges this problem and provides a solution to (...) it. The point of this paper is to argue that it arises for Habermas's theory as well. I then present several solutions Habermas could adopt and evaluate their feasibility. The result is that Habermas must alter his theory of communicative action by contextualizing the standards for successful communication. (shrink)

Figurative communication (the use of metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole and irony) provides economy of expression, clarity, persuasiveness, politeness, evaluation, and communication of emotions. However, it also increases the potential for misunderstanding in situations when people lack shared background knowledge. This book combines theoretical frameworks with empirical studies that measure the effectiveness of different approaches to the use of figurative language in advertisements, to show how to maximise the benefits of creative metaphor and metonymy in global advertising. It highlights (...) how subtle differences in colour, layout, and combinations of different kinds of figurative language affect the reception and appreciation of creative advertising, shedding new light on the nature of figurative communication itself. With a balance between theory, experiments and practical case studies, this book is accessible for academics in linguistics and communication studies, as well as advertising and marketing professionals. (shrink)

Orang-utans played a communication game in two studies testing their ability to produce and comprehend requestive pointing. While the ‘communicator’ could see but not obtain hidden food, the ‘donor’ could release the food to the communicator, but could not see its location for herself. They could coordinate successfully if the communicator pointed to the food, and if the donor comprehended his communicative goal and responded pro-socially. In Study 1, one orang-utan pointed regularly and accurately for peers. However, they (...) responded only rarely. In Study 2, a human experimenter played the communicator’s role in three conditions, testing the apes’ comprehension of points of different heights and different degrees of ostension. There was no effect of condition. However, across conditions one donor performed well individually, and as a group orang-utans’ comprehension performance tended towards significance. We explain this on the grounds that comprehension required inferences that they found difficult – but not impossible. The finding has valuable implications for our thinking about the development of pointing in phylogeny. (shrink)

There is ample evidence that the success or failure of language learning is influenced by psychological processes in learners' minds. This review attempted to review the related studies on the relationship between English as a Foreign Language learners' emotional intelligence, communication apprehension, and self-efficacy. Few studies have been done on the correlation between self-efficacy and emotional intelligence. A positive significant correlation between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy has been confirmed in the literature. Studies have shown that interpersonal (...) relationships, self-awareness, problem-solving skills, self-adequacy, self-confidence, self-actualization, and stress tolerance can act as mediator variables in the correlation between self-efficacy and emotional intelligence among EFL learners. Moreover, the related studies have shown that emotional intelligence is significantly correlated with communication apprehension. The investigations have accentuated the mediating role of learners' willingness to communicate and academic achievement in the correlation between emotional intelligence and communication apprehension. The correlation between communication apprehension and self-efficacy has been verified in the related literature. Finally, the pedagogical implications are expanded to foster language learning quality. This review also provides some suggestions for further research to elucidate our viewpoints over emotional variables and their interactions with each other. (shrink)

Teaching is hypothesized to be a species-typical behavior in humans that contributed to the emergence of cumulative culture. Several within-culture studies indicate that foragers depend heavily on social learning to acquire practical skills and knowledge, but it is unknown whether teaching is universal across forager populations. Teaching can be defined ethologically as the modification of behavior by an expert in the presence of a novice, such that the expert incurs a cost and the novice acquires skills/knowledge more efficiently or (...) that it would not acquire otherwise. One behavioral modification hypothesized to be an adaptation for teaching is ostensive communication—exaggerations of prosody and gesture that signal intent to transmit generalizable knowledge and indicate the intended receiver. On this view, the use of ostensive communication in conjunction with the transmission of generalizable knowledge constitutes evidence of teaching. Oral storytelling appears to meet these criteria: Indigenous peoples regard their traditions as important sources of ecological and social knowledge, and oral storytelling is widely reported to employ paralinguistic communication. To test this hypothesis, descriptions of performed narrative in forager societies were coded for the use of 14 ostensive-communicative behaviors and the presence of generalizable knowledge. Although biased toward North America, the study sample comprised 53 forager cultures spanning five continents, 34 language families, and diverse biomes. All cultures evinced the predicted behaviors. Results suggest that foragers use storytelling as a mode of instruction, thus providing cross-cultural evidence of teaching in forager populations. (shrink)

Feminist research is inherently linked to action, since it integrates scholarship with activism and seeks a fundamental social change. As such, it studies communciation processes as action-oriented on two complimentary levels: action within – the perpsective of meanings created as a result of active negotiations with texts by specifically socially-situated audiences; and social action – the perspective that understandings of human communication should be applied for the improvement of social life. Such a perspective emphasizes subjectivity as the central (...) form of knowledge-making and studying, it encourages reserachers' reflexivity upon their personal, social and political positioning, it prioritizes interdisciplinary and multidimensional cooperation, it encourages non-hiereachical and empowering researcher-researchee relationships, and redefines a host of ethical research-related issues. The result is a series of challenges to normative assumptions about conducting and presenting science, and about the value of social knowledge and its emancipatory implications. A variety of case-studies applying feminist perspectives to communication research will be presented to illustrate these issues from the areas of news, advertising, children's culture, media texts and construction of gender identities, and the use of new technologies. The implications of the feminist approach to the redifinition of communication studies, and its possible contribution to bridging theory and practice, research and social change, academy and everyday life, will be highlighted. (shrink)