The development of conversational and communication skills

This thesis investigates the development of children's conversational and communication skills. This is done by investigating both communicative process and outcome in two communication media: face-to-face interaction and audio-only interaction. Communicative outcome is objectively measured by assessing accuracy of performance of communication tasks. A multi-level approach to the assessment of communicative process is taken. Non-verbal aspects of process which are investigated are gaze and gesture. Verbal aspects of process range from global linguistic assessments such as length of conversational turn, to a detailed coding of utterance function according to Conversational Games analysis. The results show that children of 6 years and less do not adapt to the loss of visual signals in audio-only communication, and their performance suffers. Both the structure of children's dialogues and their use of visual signals were found to differ from that of adults. It is concluded that both verbal and non-verbal communication strategies develop into adulthood. Successful integration of these different aspects of communication is central to being an effective communicator

A MEETING OF MINDS ACROSS THE WORKSPACE: COMMON GROUND IN COLLABORATIVE DESIGN

This thesis reports an exploration of how the use and construction of external representations through methods of signalling and conversational grounding, support the sharing of ideas for spatial design tasks and how that support changes as a function of access to a shared works pace, external representations and memory support. Further aims of the study were to develop a coding scheme to identify the use of language in establishing and maintaining mutual understanding between collaborators. Pilot studies identified appropriate tasks relating to visual problem-solving design tasks for use in the main studies. For the main studies, video recordings were obtained, coded and time-stamped and analysis of the duration of grounding and activity codes, as well as concurrent grounding and activity, was carried on the impact of tasks and constraints on communication. For the first study 36 pairs of participants were used to investigate collaborative problem-solving and visual access to a shared workspace was varied. For the second study, 30 pairs of participants were used to investigate how ‘learned’ solutions are communicated. Again visual access to a shared workspace was varied, together with the manipulation of the opportunity for communicators to have access to external representations and memory support. Evidence was obtained to support the principles of ‘co-operation' and 'least collaborative effort' in conversation. Differences in the use and construction of external representations were discussed in terms of compensations, and changes in dyadic interactivity, made as a function of limitations in the media settings and the purpose of the joint activity. Other issues emerged relating to perceived communication efficacy as a result of a divided workspace focus and competition between problem-solving and grounding resources. These findings have implications for design cognition and communication as well as the technological support offered to support such activities

Legal Education and Public Policy: Professional Training in the Public Interest

A recurrent problem for all who are interested in implementing policy, the reform of legal education must become ever more urgent in a revolutionary world of cumulative crises and increasing violence. Despite the fact that for six or seven decades responsibility for training new members of the public profession of the law has in this country been an almost exclusive monopoly of a new subsidized intellectual elite, professional teachers of law, and despite much recent ferment and agitation among such teachers, little has actually been achieved in refashioning ancient educational practices to serve insistent contemporary needs. No critics have been more articulate in lamenting this failure than the professional law teachers themselves. What they think they have done to legal instruction may be recapitulated as a transition from lectures, to the analysis of appellate opinions, to confusion. Not atypical of the common indictment are the words of one eminent self-critic: blind, inept, factory-ridden, wasteful, defective, and empty

Pomobabble: Postmodern Newspeak and Constitutional Meaning for the Uninitiated

A parody of postmodern writing

Language use and gender in the Italian parliament

This thesis deals with gender construction in the Italian parliament. The increase of female politicians in the public sphere in Italy and throughout the world justifies the investigation of their language use, in relation to that of their male counterparts. In this project, I analyse the use of three linguistic phenomena: 1. forms of address; 2. Noi forms; and 3. Violence metaphors. The common aim of the investigations into these three linguistic phenomena is to examine the construction of gender at its intersection with political roles in 13 parliamentary debates on the topic of violence against women occurred in the Camera dei Deputati (Lower Chamber) during Parliament XVI, which ran from 2008-2011. The findings concerning the use of institutionalised forms of address reveal that both gender groups still tend to mostly use masculine unmarked terms when addressing female politicians (in singular and plural forms). More positively but still not wide-spread, the analysis shows that (semi-) marked forms are slowly appearing, e.g. Signora Ministro, where only the (marital) status form is replaced with the feminine form. The findings for noi forms indicate that both male and female MPs tend to associate themselves with other politicians. In addition, female MPs also tend to construct themselves as ‘female politicians’ and as ‘women’, perhaps in a quest for visibility and legitimation of their position in the Camera dei Deputati (and) in a male chauvinist society. The investigation of Violence metaphors is interesting for their relation to the topics of debate and the gender bias that describes these metaphors as ‘masculine’ (Philip, 2009; Koller, 2004; Koller & Semino, 2009). Female MPs employ more Violence metaphors than their male counterparts in these debates. The investigation of Ground Confrontation metaphors further reveals that the scenarios constructed by female and male politicians equally present violence as an abstract phenomenon for which no one seems to be responsible

State of New Hampshire. Reports, 1903-1904, volume III.- Biennial.

Sometimes issued both annually and biennially; Each vol. contains the reports of various departments of the government of the state of New Hampshire; Includes attorneys general\u27s opinion

Journal of the Senate of the 40th General Assembly of the State of Iowa, 1923

The published daily journals of the transactions of the Senate for the legislative session and the official bound journals printed after adjournment for previous legislative sessions

Constitutional Limitations on Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations and Governmental Exactions, 2013 edition

This electronic book is published in a searchable PDF format as a part of the E-scholarship Repository of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. It is an “open content” casebook intended for classroom use in courses in Constitutional Law, Land Use Control, and Environmental Law and. It consists of 130 odd judicial opinions (most rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court) carefully selected from the two hundred years of American constitutional history which address the clash between public sovereignty and private property. The text considers both the personal right to liberty and the personal right in property. The readings provide an historical context, and an up-to-date focus on many of the constitutional issues facing today’s Supreme Court: imperium versus dominium; the public trust, inverse condemnation, the navigation servitude, “regulatory takings”; “judicial takings,” the “navigability” boundary on federal power; the “public use” limitation on eminent domain; the balance between property rights and First Amendment liberties; the “essential nexus” between government prohibition and purpose; the fine line between taxation and expropriation, and; commerce power limitations on Congress’s law-making. Special attention is directed at the Supreme Court’s 2012 decision concerning the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). The court cases in this work have been grouped into thirty seven sessions. Most sessions consist of four or five cases, and the related statutes, if any. The materials are intended to be economically, politically and legally evocative and to provide an assignment appropriate for a class hour of discussion. The text consists of non-copyrighted material and readers are free to use or re-mix it in whole or part. The tightly-edited cases may be readily borrowed for use in other courses. No rights are reserved.https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/books/1061/thumbnail.jp