Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

Digitometric Services for Open Archives Environments

We describe “digitometric” services and tools that add value to open-access eprint archives using the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. Celestial is an OAI cache and gateway tool. Citebase Search enhances OAI-harvested metadata with linked references harvested from the full-text to provide a web service for citation navigation and research impact analysis. Digitometrics builds on data harvested using OAI to provide advanced visualisation and hypertext navigation for the research community. Together these services provide a modular, distributed architecture for building a “semantic web” for the research literature

Limits of Kansei – Kansei unlimited

This article discusses momentary limitations of the Kansei Engineering methods. There are for example the focus on the evaluation of colour and form factors, as well as the highly time consuming creation of the questionnaires. To overcome these limits we firstly suggest the integration of word lists from related research fields, like sociology and cognitive psychology on product emotions in the Kansei questionnaires. Thereafter we present a study on the wide range of Kansei attributes treated in an industrial setting. Concept words used by designers are being collected through word maps and categorized into attributes. In a third step we introduce a user-product interaction schema in which the Kansei attributes from the study are positioned. This schema unfolds potential expansion points for future applications of Kansei engineering beyond its current limits

Bridging boundaries across genre traditions : a systemic functional account of generic patterns in biodata

Accepted ManuscriptPublishe

Manipulating texture and cohesion in academic writing: A keystroke logging study

Research has repeatedly shown that problems arise when students are asked to link information co-textually and contextually across larger phases of discourse. Within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), a text-oriented theory of language, co-textual and contextual links are analyzed and operationalized in terms of textual and logical metafunctions, both of which work together to connect and enable experiential and interpersonal metafunctions. While most writing studies to date have investigated text as product (synoptic approach), there has been increasing interest in studying text as an evolving process (dynamic approach). The current study contributes to this emerging research by examining the real-time choices made by six student writers. Drawing on keystroke logging software (Inputlog), it explores writers’ revision choices within the systems of theme, information, and identification, in conjunction with the logical metafunction. Results indicate that complex choices contribute to unfolding cohesiveness and information flow, where choices in specificity and congruency are key contributors to managing texture while also manipulating complexity and context-dependency. Overall findings suggest that students may benefit from an explicit focus on the nominal group as a means to create and maintain texture and cohesion through over-specification, classification (pre-modifiers), and qualification (post-modifiers)

The representation of conflict in the discourse of Italian melodrama

This paper is part of an extensive study of cinematic dialogue in a variety of film genres in Italian, which aims to address the disregard for the verbal plane that characterises film theory and, particularly, genre theory. Assuming a pragmatic and functional semantic perspective, it analyses the scripted dialogues in films against the backdrop of the literature on real life discourse. The focus of the paper is confrontational talk in Italian melodramas from early 1960s to the present. Conflict in such films is, to an extent, comparable to the cooperative sequential rebuttal of speakers' turns that typically occurs in comedies. However, melodramas are also marked by more incisive and subtle patterns of confrontation that can be summarised as 'disaffiliative dysfluency'. The forms of such break in the conversational flow are discussed and illustrated with selected scenes from a number of films

Marking the Moral Boundaries of Class

This article welcomes the recent renewed interest in the topic of class within sociology and cultural studies. This comes after a long period – from around the middle part of the 1980s and into the 1990s – during which social class was dismissed as a mode of understanding socio-economic and cultural conditions on the part of both academics and mainstream political organisations alike. Working-class formations in particular came under scrutiny, increasingly seen to be in terminal decline and fragmentation through the impact of post-industrialisation processes set in train in western economies from the turn of the 1980s onwards. The demise of heavy industry – steel, coal, textiles, for instance – profoundly altered working-class communities, transforming the material world and cultural life of the British working class, powerful developments reinforcing the \'end of class\' debate. Allied to this, the emergence within the academy of new theoretical frameworks associated with postmodern thought claimed to undermine traditional understandings around class. This article insists on the continuing significance of class and does so by focussing on an important recent response to the class debate, Andrew Sayer\'s The Moral Significance of Class (2005). This book stakes a lucid claim for the importance of recognising class as a powerful determining factor of subjectivity. While drawing upon aspects of Sayer\'s theoretical framework and argument to examine class experience, it is also the intention of the article to supplement Sayer\'s work by developing related theoretical propositions derived from the writing of Raymond Williams and the Russian linguist and cultural critic Volosinov/Bakhtin.Working Class; Experience; Structure of Feeling; Recognition; Language; Identity

The Genre of Research Writing: The Value of Personalised Feedback and Instruction

Non-native English speaker Higher Research Degree (HDR) students or L2 writers encounter numerous difficulties in developing native-like competencies in their research writing. Current research in the systemic functional linguistics argues that students’ repertoire of interactive and interactional features enhances their writing process. However, many L2 students are thrown in the deep end in their research writing process. In some universities, Academic Language Learning (ALL) advisors assist these students by reviewing their work and providing necessary feedback. The purpose of this study was to examine the difficulties experienced by such L2 writers as identified by ALL advisors who review their work in their thesis drafting process. The study analysed ten draft chapters from L2 students’ theses writing reviewed by ALL advisors. The study found that several discourse and metadiscoursal features have been recognised as impeding factors in effective communication. Personalised feedback and instruction from language experts can influence students’ writing and drafting process. Such findings provide insights and implications for developing discourse competencies for both L1 and L2 academic writers. The study also provides pedagogical implications for teachers of all students as academic writing is a genre that needs explicit focus in teaching programs at all levels