Anti-social media

To inform the discussion over free speech and hate speech, this study examines the way racial, religious and ethnic slurs are employed on Twitter. Executive summary: How to define the limits of free speech is a central debate in most modern democracies. This is particularly difficult in relation to hateful, abusive and racist speech. The pattern of hate speech is complex. But there is increasing focus on the volume and nature of hateful or racist speech taking place online; and new modes of communication mean it is easier than ever to find and capture this type of language. How and whether to respond to certain types of language use without curbing freedom of expression in this online space is a significant question for policy makers, civil society groups, law enforcement agencies and others. This short study aims to inform these difficult decisions by examining specifically the way racial and ethnic slurs (henceforth, ‘slurs’) are used on the popular microblogging site, Twitter. Slurs relate specifically to a set of words, terms, or nicknames which are used to refer to groups in a society in a derogatory, pejorative or insulting manner. Slurs can be used in a hateful way, but that is not always the case. Therefore, this research is not about hate speech per se, but about epistemology and linguistics: word use and meaning. In this study, we aim to answer two following questions: (a) In what ways are slurs being used on Twitter, and in what volume? (b) What is the potential for automated machine learning techniques to accurately identify and classify slurs

‘Jaysus, keep talking like that and you’ll fit right in’- an investigation of oral Irish English in contemporary Irish fiction

This project is an interdisciplinary and comparative investigation of the reproduction of linguistic features of Irish English (IrE) present in contemporary IrE fiction. To do this, a corpus of over 1 million words comprising 16 works of fiction published in the Republic of Ireland by 8 authors was compiled: the Corpus of Contemporary Fictionalized Irish English (CoFIrE). The goal of this thesis, therefore, is to determine 1) which are the most frequently reproduced features of IrE orality in contemporary IrE fiction, 1a) how realistic is their fictional portrayal when contrasted against real spoken uses, 2) what does the use of the most frequently reproduced features in the corpus encode with regard to speaker identity, and 3) in what manner may modern Irishness be encoded through the reproduction of pragmatic items in fiction. Utilizing a variety of interdisciplinary methodologies, including Corpus Stylistics, Corpus Linguistics, Sociolinguistic, and Pragmatic techniques, the thesis identifies signature linguistic features that are thought to be representative of IrE in the corpus via quantitative and qualitative, comparative corpus analysis. To evaluate the level of realism inherent in the fictional rendition, the findings are contrasted against the Limerick Corpus of Irish English and the BNC2014. A second corpus comprising books by one of the CoFIrE authors, i.e. Paul Howard, was also compiled. Thus, the Ross O’Carroll-Kelly Corpus (CoROCK) was created given this series’ reputation for being a chronicler of modern Ireland and because of the high frequency of IrE orality reproduction these books were found to contribute to CoFIrE. Two case studies on non-standard, non-traditionally IrE high frequency intensifiers are conducted on CoROCK to better answer the research questions regarding the potential indexation of modern Irishness through speech reproduction in fiction. Finally, by evaluating the type of speaker identity these features may index when used in contemporary fiction, this thesis determines the type of modern Irishness that appears to be encoded through fictional speech representations.N

Implicit displays of emotional vulnerability: A cross-cultural analysis of unacceptable embarrassment-related emotions in the communication within male groups

One of the previously widespread sociolinguistic theories about gender differences was related to differences in the expression of emotion. Women's language was stereotypically associated with emotional expressivity, whereas male language was connected to a lack of affect and toughness evincing (cf. Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet 1992). With regard to gender differences in the expression of emotion, in this article, I provide a brief overview of the existing research findings pertaining to males' expressions of emotion, followed by an examination of embarrassment-related expressions of emotions and the role of paralinguistic cues in this respect. To accomplish this, I adopt a contrastive focus based on analysis of male talk in Ukraine and Austria that will enable the identification of the likely differences and similarities in expressing emotional vulnerability

Evaluation of Michael Berry’s Translation of To Live from Metafunctional Approach

Standing distinctively out from his other works, To Live signifies the sharp turning of Yu Hua’s writing style from avant-garde experimenting to the mature novel narrating. The English Version To Live translated by the American scholar Michael Berry made its appearance in 2003, winning generous appreciation of the American readers from all walks of life. Compared with the extensive study conducted on the original text, the study of the English version, especially its C-E translation, is relatively few and limited. To assess the C-E translation of the novel, the thesis adopts a feasible approach from systemic functional linguistics—metafunction theory. Based on the three metafunctions, this paper makes a detailed comparative study between the original text and its corresponding translation so as to find out the merits and demerits of the C-E translation as well as the underlying causes. This thesis makes an objective study of the C-E translation of the English version, intending to provide constructive reference for the objective judgment of Berry’s version as well as the improvement of the future translation

Literature and the construction of reality

In this article I consider the idea that Glasersfeld’s “radical constructivism” offers an ideal framework for putting in place such a reality of the best fit for us. Along with this, I examine also the fundamental biological and epistemological limitations that we are faced with when trying to fathom objective reality and, secondly, the inescapable gap between language – which we use as a primary cognitive tool in our attempt to comprehend the world. The paper then show that literature – especially fiction – best meets the criteria for addressing these gaps and constructing such a model of reality in line with what radical constructivism proposes

Lines of beauty: propaganda, the poster, and the pictorial trope

Propaganda conceived for distribution via the medium of the pictorial poster creates artwork that can be productively examined from an aesthetic as well as political perspective. When this artwork is primarily restricted to conflict propaganda from the second decade of the twentieth century, the temporal and contextual considerations assist in focussing the poster’s role as a functional object, not only within a propaganda campaign but also within the wider visual ecology of an era.For the poster to operate as an effective means of propaganda distribution, the propagandist requires composition that incorporates constructs capable of attracting the viewer. In isolating a particular construct, its manifestation has the potential to be utilised as a tool in the unpacking of the imagery; consequently the concept of a propagandist promotion of an alternate reality as a challenge to a current real, and the prospective movement from one to the other, can be literally and figuratively conveyed via its employment as a pictorial trope. In this regard, the construct deemed to represent not only movement, but movement at its most beautiful thereby forming a focus for attraction, is the serpentine curve that in 1745 William Hogarth scribed and titled the line of beauty (Hogarth, 1997 p6).In concentrating on the poster within the wider genre of early twentieth century visual conflict propaganda, and creating new associations with aesthetic and metaphoric concepts pertaining to the line of beauty, this research becomes the articulation of how each contributory element within the artwork’s construction ‘respectively influences the identity and the economies of the other’, thereby providing ‘a model by which to focus and rethink’ these relationships (Ostrow, 2005 p226). The line of beauty serves as both cause and effect of the process by which the relationships are reconsidered, thus provoking an innovative discourse as to the potential impact of the whole upon the visual culture field

Approaching the Performance of Experimental Music on the Flute

This dissertation serves as a commentary to two recitals: a recital of chamber music which took place in July 2014, and a solo recital in June 2015. The first chapter looks at the definition of experimental music and its characteristics through the exploration of writings by composers and performers, considering the selection of repertoire that abides by these ideas, along with a brief look at performance practice. The second chapter serves as a performance commentary to the chamber works Why Patterns? by Morton Feldman and Flutist and Guitarist by Christian Wolff. The third chapter serves as a performance commentary to the works Headlong by Christopher Fox and 947 by Alvin Lucier. Both the second and third chapter examine the composer’s aesthetic concerns, along with recordings and writings around experimental music to inform the performance approach. Finally the conclusion looks at the significance of the experimental performer and how a performer may approach future works

Emotion without a Word: An Analysis of Bengali Emotions and Their English Translation

Using Bengali texts and their English translations done by a set of English speaking native Bengali translators and another set of native English translators, we analyze how two specific Bengali emotion words (obhiman and lajja) have mapped onto English. In translating lajja translators use only three English words while for obhiman they choose an array of words with no consistency. This indicates that no English word represents a concept that is close to obhiman’s meaning suggesting that the concept represented by a particular emotion word in one language may not be totally captured in another language. Additionally, the findings indicate emotion words represent concepts with fuzzy borders (as suggested in scripts hypothesis) instead of dots in affect grids as envisioned in evaluation-potency-activity measurements. Such concepts vary in the spectrum of events they denote and in the degree to which they overlap. Subsequently, we, drawing from skopos theory, argue that cultural contexts in translation studies need to be considered rather than looking for exact equivalence of these emotion words

The language of suffering: Media discourse and public attitudes towards the MH17 air tragedy in Malaysia and the UK

‘If it bleeds, it leads’, events characterised by fatalities, are likely to attract high levels of media coverage. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate public discourses on the MH17 tragedy in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. First, corpus-based discourse analysis was employed to explore the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy MH17 in four selected Malaysian and British newspapers. In addition, an attitudinal study examining 50 Malaysian and 50 UK nationals’ perceptions of the tragedy was conducted. Keywords analysis revealed an overall tendency for the news media to construct the air tragedy through classifications between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Specifically, important ‘Us’ (Malaysian elites) and non-important ‘Other’ (non-Malaysian) in the Malaysian newspapers, versus good ‘Us’ (the West) and evil ‘Others’ (Russia) in the British newspapers. The attitudinal analysis shows, for both the Malaysian and the UK respondents, the most salient associations with the MH17 tragedy related to ‘conflicts’