Fifty Fuzzily Gone, Many More to Go: An Appreciation of Fuzziness’ Present and an Outlook on What May Come

Fifty years of Fuzziness represents a good chance to look back on the rich history of the discipline and the scientists that were part of this history, and at the long and varied course of one of the few really innovative, disruptive ideas of the last century, including the development of its many applications. But instead we would like to take this interesting opportunity to discuss the present state of affairs, especially in relation to the application of Fuzziness to the cognitive domain. From such reflections a possible path is defined toward the evolution of Fuzziness, under the umbrella of computational intelligence, toward an all-encompassing experimental science of language, reasoning, and cognition

Chinese elements : a bridge of the integration between Chinese -English translation and linguaculture transnational mobility

[Abstract] As the popularity of Chinese elements in the innovation of the translation part in Chinese CET, we realized that Chinese elements have become a bridge between linguaculture transnational mobility and Chinese-English translation.So, Chinese students translation skills should be critically improved; for example, on their understanding about Chinese culture, especially the meaning of Chinese culture. Five important secrets of skillful translation are introduced to improve students’ translation skills

Entrepreneurial Literary Theory: A Debate on Research and the Future of Academia

Across the world at present, researchers and teachers are being exhorted to become entrepreneurial. Universities are being restructured accordingly. The debate presented in this book considers what that involves and portends for academia. Literary studies are often regarded as the most resistant to – unfit for – entrepreneurial purposes. Literary research is therefore taken as a baseline for this debate. The uneasy place of literary research within profit-driven academia is revealing of the prevailing conditions for scholarship in all areas. Questions that are raised and discussed here include: What does doing research for the public good mean? What is the relationship between profits and benefits from research? What are applied and basic research? Are concepts of academic freedom and disinterestedness meaningful? What is the relationship between corporate and academic research? Are skills and knowledge different? Can pursuits like close reading and text interpretation be made profitable? What is literary value and how can it be measured? Can the literary system be modelled to profitable ends? Can university teaching be automatized? What are the differences between a standard publication agreement and a scholarly publication agreement? How can digital and open-access academic publication be made profitable? Does the academic monograph have a future? What sorts of knowledge and skills inform entrepreneurial leadership

A rhetorical analysis of the joint sitting on the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held at Parliament on 15 April 2003

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-164)

The Construction of Destination Images in Jordan: Modelling Tour Guide and Tourist Inputs, Interactions and Consequences

Destination image is recognised and extensively researched as a key factor in tourism development. However, the construction of destination image during the tourist consumption experience has suffered from a paucity of theorisation, not only in regard to patterns of destination image as perceived by tourists during a visit, but also in regard to patterns as projected by tour guides. This exploratory research aims therefore to provide in-depth understanding of patterns of destination image as actually constructed by tourists and tour guides during the consumption experience. The research adopted an interpretivist qualitative paradigm of empirical ‘Straussian’ grounded theory to investigate the phenomenon of destination image construction in Jordan. Thirty five tour guides were interviewed, followed by participant observation of a group of twenty USA tourists undertaking a guided tour of Jordan. Twelve of these USA tourists were then interviewed, along with their designated guide. Findings demonstrated that destination image was constructed at regional, national and site levels, specifically the Middle East, Jordan and local Jordanian sites such as Petra. A variety of tour guide impressions were identified and categorised thematically into a number of different types of constructed image such as ‘official’, ‘personal’, ‘dressed up’, ‘distorted’, ‘poignant’ and ‘relatively realistic’ images. Similarly, pattern analysis of the tourists’ perceptions in regard to visited destinations uncovered a further range of themed categories, to include ‘fuzzy’, ‘relatively realistic’, ‘dynamic’, ‘static’, ‘peculiar’ and ‘deteriorated’ images. This research contributes to methodology by demonstrating the efficacy of participant observation in revealing the complexity of destination image. It also advances theoretical knowledge around issues related to tour guiding and destination image. Finally, valuable implications are provided for strategic image management and marketing, as well as for enhancing tour guides professionalism

Wounds of the past: Trauma and German historical thought after 1945

My dissertation is an intellectual history of trauma and historical thinking in postwar Germany. I argue that the traumas of the Second World War generated a paradigm shift in German historical thought, as experiences of dehumanization, exile, imprisonment, destruction, and genocide destabilized narratives of progress and ignited critical reconsiderations of history’s meaning, goal, and purpose. I focus on the work of a grouping of intellectuals whom I term “postprogressive,” who traced the origins of these contemporary catastrophes back to the philosophy of history and worked to create historical visions centered not on progress, but on alternative poles such as the cosmos, order, and plurality. Through readings of their manuscripts, correspondence, and published writings, I contend that these thinkers’ theoretical output constituted attempts to understand and overcome the trauma they had endured by radically rethinking the conceptions of history that had engendered it. Furthermore, I demonstrate how this process of reorientation worked beside and against dominant discourses of forgetting and coming to terms with the past, revealing a project of delegitimization of the past that has not been recognized by historians. In reconstructing these philosophical efforts, I offer “delegitimization” as a novel paradigm for understanding of German intellectuals’ relationship with history in the postwar era. This research speaks to different sites of confluence between ideas, politics, and bodies. Foremost, it offers a history of intellectual survival that is methodologically and theoretically significant to global histories of post-catastrophic thought and culture. Rather than being silenced by the horrors of the Second World War, these figures continued to think against catastrophe, allowing them to be understood alongside a range of post-colonial, post-traumatic, and post-imperial discourses. This dissertation also theorizes and models intellectual history as the study of orientations, rather than of discreet ideas or concepts. This allows for an interpretation of the relationalities that organize sets of ideas into relationships of similitude or dissimilitude, antagonism or cooperation, recognition or mutual incomprehension. Furthermore, drawing on methodologies developed in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of critical trauma studies, I highlight how the attempts of these thinkers to delegitimize and sublimate their trauma diverged from normative clinical conceptions of working-through and reintegration. These heterodox engagements with trauma and history also complicate dominant scholarly understandings of postwar Germans’ relationship with the past through their incompatibility with binaries focused on repression and acknowledgment. By approaching trauma as both an object and as a critical lens, my project articulates the historical potency of trauma in moments and manifestations that are elided by hegemonic clinical and cultural norm