An internal review of a discipline: journal editors\u27 opinions of paradigm development within speech communication

A review of the literature on paradigm development within academic fields revealed that researchers have drawn distinctions between disciplines with greater paradigm development (discussed as discipline-wide consensus) and disciplines with lesser paradigm development. Several of these investigations centered on paradigm development and evaluative criteria used by academic journal editors for judging scholarly work. The purpose of this study was to ascertain Speech Communication journal editors\u27 opinions of paradigm development within their field. A two-part survey was developed and mailed to eleven editors of the major Speech Communication journals. Data generated from the survey were analyzed using a descriptive methodology. Part A of the questionnaire was a partial replication of Beyer\u27s (1978) research concerning journal editors from ten major journals in four disciplines: Physics and Chemistry (greater paradigm-developed fields), and Sociology and Political Science (lesser paradigm developed fields). Degree of paradigm development within Speech Communication was examined through journal editor policies and practices concerning: difficulty in arriving at decisions for accepting or rejecting a manuscript, article length, manuscript revision, and length of time between manuscript submission and publication. The mean, range, and mode statistics were used to derive editorial practices within Speech Communication. Mean scores from four fields investigated by Beyer (1978) were then descriptively compared to mean scores from Speech Communication in order to see where Speech Communication fit on the continuum of greater to lesser paradigm development. Part B of the survey was initially tested through a Pilot Study administered to five faculty members in the Department of Speech Communication, Portland State University. They were asked to act as if they were editors of a major Speech Communication journal for the purposes of completing the questionnaire. Respondents were requested to answer several open-ended questions related to their views of paradigm development in the field and to comment as to whether or not they believed paradigm was an indicator of discipline maturity. Data were content analyzed. Responses to the Pilot Study assisted in the conceptual refinement and placement of questions in Part B. Part A and Part B were then combined in the Survey of Editors questionnaire and administered to eleven Speech Communication editors-in-chief. All of the editors completed and returned the survey. The results of the study showed that while Speech Communication journal editors believe there are paradigms operating within the discipline, they indicated a concern that paradigm development could preclude the maintenance of an eclectic perspective. Therefore, they do not think that paradigm is a sign of discipline maturity. In addition, the editors expressed a desire to improve the quality of scholarship within the field but that some kind of organizing principle is needed to facilitate this improvement. Finally, based on the results of this study, the discipline of Speech Communication was found to be a lesser-developed paradigm field

Challenges and Directions in Formalizing the Semantics of Modeling Languages

Developing software from models is a growing practice and there exist many model-based tools (e.g., editors, interpreters, debuggers, and simulators) for supporting model-driven engineering. Even though these tools facilitate the automation of software engineering tasks and activities, such tools are typically engineered manually. However, many of these tools have a common semantic foundation centered around an underlying modeling language, which would make it possible to automate their development if the modeling language specification were formalized. Even though there has been much work in formalizing programming languages, with many successful tools constructed using such formalisms, there has been little work in formalizing modeling languages for the purpose of automation. This paper discusses possible semantics-based approaches for the formalization of modeling languages and describes how this formalism may be used to automate the construction of modeling tools

In response to 'Celebrate citation: flipping the pedagogy of plagiarism in Qatar'

In her article (http://uobrep.openrepository.com/uobrep/handle/10547/335947) Molly McHarg makes several points that I agree with, particularly that for the majority of students the plagiarism is not deliberate but is due to a lack of understanding of how to reference correctly

Texts reading texts, sacred and secular: two postmodern perspectives

The language, themes and imagery of the Bible have been read and re-written in texts across time. In the Revelation of John, the Hebrew Bible echoes and is re-invented, just as, in James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824), many explicit and implicit readings and interpretations of the Bible are offered. In this thesis, these readings of the Bible, and the ways in which Revelation and Hogg's Confessions have themselves been read, are considered from two postmodern perspectives.The validity of reading the Bible as literature is defended in the Introduction to the thesis by demonstrating that many of the problems which might prevent such a reading, such as the multiplicity of available manuscripts and the undefined role of the author/editor, also have to be overcome by those working in the field of literary studies. In the following chapters I suggest that postmodern ideas of marginalisation and deconstruction offer new contexts in which to read both Revelation and Hogg's Confessions. In Part 1 of the thesis (Chapters 2 and 3), I argue that readings of the Confessions which are sensitive to the "ex-centricities" ofthe text enable new readings of Revelation from the same perspective. In Part 2 (Chapters 4 and 5), I suggest that readings of Revelation from the perspective of deconstruction open up new possibilities for readings of the Confessions.Chapter 2 argues that Hogg's understanding of the Bible and its interpretations may be regarded as marginal in a postmodern sense. Readings of the Bible offered in the Confessions, and in other examples of Hogg's work, demonstrate this "ex-centricity". When, in Chapter 3, Revelation is read in a way which highlights its marginalised status within society, its readings of the Hebrew Bible take on new significance. Both texts are shown to offer readings which are subversive and sceptical of the claims of the dominant master narratives of their time. The insights of postmodernism illuminate these previously silenced "ex-centricities".In Part 2 of the thesis, various modern readings of Revelation and the Confessions are discussed, and their inadequacies are demonstrated from the perspective of deconstruction. In Chapter 4, a reading of Revelation from the perspective of the "abyss" makes possible a reading of the Confessions in which Robert's assumed culpability is questioned and Gil-Martin's role is redeemed. When the burden of explanation of every ambiguity in the novel is lifted, the horror of the text stands without any natural and supernatural explanation, and is placed within the locus of everyday experience. A new reading of Revelation is offered in Chapter 5 which foregrounds the nightmarish aspects ofthe text, and re-considers the conflicting roles assigned to the Christ character. When Revelation is read as a nightmare, the text is robbed of its status as scripture. When the text's apparent message about the necessity of choosing God over Satan is deconstructed, the boundary between the lost and the saved is blurred.Out of the context of postmodernism, new ways to approach texts have arisen. Two of these, a sensitivity to a text's marginalised status and deconstruction, have offered new ways to read both Revelation and the Confessions. Reading the two texts side by side in these ways disturbs and challenges traditional readings of them both

Spartan Daily, October 6, 1994

Volume 103, Issue 25https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/8595/thumbnail.jp