2,324 research outputs found

    Culture shock and student engagement

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    Euphemisms in South African English economic discourse: Socio-cultural aspects

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    South African English economic discourse remains underexplored despite its significance in shaping public perception and policy in the region. One of its critical understudied facets are euphemisms, which are heavily influenced by historical and social background and play a crucial role in moderating sensitive issues and managing communication across diverse societal norms. This study aims to fill this gap by identifying how euphemisms reflect and respond to South Africa’s socio-cultural setting. The study involved compiling a corpus of approximately 500,000 words sourced from speeches, interviews, and publications by South African specialists with subsequent identification of euphemisms. As a results, 338 euphemisms were found in the corpus. Through continuous sampling, the study then identified, categorized, and quantitatively assessed the socio-cultural aspects of euphemisms across various economic discussions. According to the study results, euphemism in South African English economic discourse correspond to five main thematic groups: Economic and Racial Inequality, Corporate Governance and Ethics, Impact of Migration, Healthcare Economics, and Influence of Globalization. Each thematic group demonstrates patterns of euphemisms occurrence that reflect intentional communication efforts to address or mask sensitive socio-economic issues. The study results posit that euphemisms emerge as a frequently leveraged linguistic device moderating South African English economic discourse. They reflect an adaptive response to South Africa’s socio-cultural setting where managing the multifaceted societal norms and historical sensitivities is imperative for effective communication and policy dissemination. The study argues for closer examination of the linguistic composition of South African English economic discourse. The findings contribute to the fields of sociolinguistics and intercultural communication as they expose how euphemisms function as a tool for managing complex socio-economic processes

    Communicative strategies and tactics of speech manipulation in intercultural business discourse

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    The study considers the communicative strategies and tactics of linguistic manipulation used by the representatives of professional communities speaking two national varieties of English, British and American, to identify the content and functional-pragmatic characteristics of communicative strategies used in the framework of intercultural business communication in general, and in the framework of two specific genres in particular, presentations and business interviews. The authors also provide general analysis of some gender aspects of speech behaviour in intercultural business communication. The study is conducted along the lingua-pragmatic and socio-cultural lines of research with evaluation of data backed by quantitative analysis. Research material is represented by business discourse texts used by American and British male and female respondents. The authors make inferences about the manipulative nature of communication, single out some of its key features, and present an outline of gender-based differences encountered in professional discourse. The study ultimately holds that gender-based parameters of communication can be described as flexible, which is essentially due to the extensive scope of contextual settings to be considered

    Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

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    Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

    Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an