Bringing Wreck

This paper critically examines non-adversarial feminist argumentation model specifically within the scope of politeness norms and cultural communicative practices. Asserting women typically have a particular mode of arguing which is often seen as ‘weak’ or docile within male dominated fields, the model argues that the feminine mode of arguing is actually more affiliative and community orientated, which should become the standard within argumentation as opposed to the Adversary Method. I argue that the nonadversarial feminist argumentation model primarily focuses on one demographic of women’s communicative styles – white women. Taking an intersectional approach, I examine practices within African American women’s speech communities to illustrate the ways in which the virtues and vices purported by the NAFAM fails to capture other ways of productive argumentation

Interpretation, 1980 And 1880

This article reviews recent methodological interventions in the field of literary study, many of which take nineteenth-century critics, readers, or writers as models for their less interpretive reading practices. In seeking out nineteenth-century models for twenty-first-century critical practice, these critics imagine a world in which English literature never became a discipline. Some see these new methods as formalist, yet we argue that they actually emerge from historicist self-critique. Specifically, these contemporary critics view the historicist projects of the 1980s as overly influenced by disciplinary models of textual interpretation models that first arose, we show through our reading of the Jolly Bargemen scene in Charles Dickens\u27s Great Expectations (1860 61), in the second half of the nineteenth century. In closing, we look more closely at the work of a few recent critics who sound out the metonymic, adjacent, and referential relations between readers, texts, and historical worlds in order sustain historicism\u27s power to restore eroded meanings rather than reveal latent ones

Reversing the direction of time: Does the visibility of spatial representations of time shape temporal focus?

While people around the world mentally represent time in terms of space, there is substantial cross-cultural variability regarding which temporal constructs are mapped onto which parts in space. Do particular spatial layouts of time – as expressed through metaphors in language – shape temporal focus? We trained native English speakers to use spatiotemporal metaphors in a way such that the flow of time is reversed, representing the future behind the body (out of visible space) and the past ahead of the body (within visible space). In a task measuring perceived relevance of past events, people considered past events and present (or immediate past) events to be more relevant after using the reversed metaphors compared to a control group that used canonical metaphors spatializing the past behind and the future ahead of the body (Experiment 1). In a control measure in which temporal information was removed, this effect disappeared (Experiment 2). Taken together, these findings suggest that the degree to which people focus on the past may be shaped by the visibility of the past in spatiotemporal metaphors used in language

TEACHER INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES IMPACTING RURAL, HIGH-POVERTY STUDENT ACADEMIC OUTCOMES

There is an abundant amount of interest among educators surrounding what actions can be taken by the government, local representatives, school boards, administrators, and teachers to assist rural, high-poverty students flourish academically. An uninspiring truth related to this subject is many times, a student receives the education the state and local communities are able to provide based on the quality of teachers they are able to retain and the resources available. Instructional strategies teachers implement could influence the quality of education students receive and could leave a community in a constant cycle of dependency and hardship. The purpose of this qualitative study is to determine how teachers of differing instructional effectiveness levels conceptualize their practice as it relates to Marzano’s Nine High-Yield Instructional Strategies and how their perceptions of their instructional practice relates to student achievement in rural, high-poverty schools. The population included in this study include 16 elementary school teachers. MAP Growth scores, teacher proficiency of the nine instructional strategies data, and interview responses were collected and analyzed. In these specific settings, certain teachers yield incredible student academic results while others maintain the status quo and do not experience the same student academic outcomes as their professional peers. The instructional practices teachers in rural, high-poverty schools implement to close the achievement gap between their students and other students nationwide, has the potential to assist them in reaching their full scholastic aptitude and their futures, limitless

National Board Certification: The Impact on Teaching Practices of Three Elementary Teachers

During the past century the educational reform movements focused on the need for highly qualified teachers based on research surrounding the effects on student achievement related to the quality of the teacher (Busatto, 2004). The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) was created in 1987 in response to the increasing focus placed on having quality teachers (Berg, 2003; Humphrey, Koppich, & Hough, 2005; NBPTS, 2011). The NBPTS is an organization governed by teachers that emphasizes sound instructional practices and improving teaching. The standards for National Board Certification are based on solid research that recognizes education practices that result in improvement in student achievement (NBPTS, 2012b). If the National Board Certification process identifies effective teachers, then the classroom practices of those teachers should demonstrate research-based best practices in their everyday instruction. The purpose of this study was to explore the everyday instructional practices of 3 Nationally Board Certified (NBC) teachers who taught grades 4 and 5 in east Tennessee. This study was a multi-site, qualitative study that included classroom observations, semi-structured interviews, and checklists to conduct descriptive and evaluative case studies involving 3 Nationally Board Certified teachers who taught in counties located in east Tennessee. Research conducted by Marzano, Pickering, and Polluck (2001) identified 9 best practices of effective teachers; those practices were used as a framework for observation. Through observations and interviews the researcher investigated the teaching strategies used by 3 NBC teachers and how those strategies compare to the 9 best practices identified by Marzano et al. (2001). Further, the researcher sought to understand how the National Board Certification process impacted those strategy choices. Findings for this study support the following 3 conclusions. First, this research study revealed that the participating Nationally Board Certified teachers use research-based best practices regularly in their classrooms. Second, the NBC process makes a positive impact on instructional practices in the classroom according to the 3 teachers in this study. Last, the NBC process made a difference in the reflective practices of the 3 participants in this inquiry

Sounding the body: the role of the Valsalva mechanism in the emergence of the linguistic sign

The main aim of this study, conducted within STEELS, a gestural theory of the origins of speech, is to set out a proposal as to the possible role of the Valsalva mechanism in the emergence of the linguistic sign. STEELS posits that in the earliest forms of speech developed by Homo, vocomimetic laryngeal resonances of nonlinguistic origin were integrated into LV (laryngeal + vowel) protosyllables referring back to oro-naso-laryngeal (ONL) actions such as breathing, sneezing and coughing. It further posits that these protosyllables were conceptually mapped to non-ONL bodily actions making use of the Valsalva manoeuvre, such as lifting, birthing, and defecating. This claim, which stems from a submorphemic analysis of certain Proto-Indo-European “body-part” roots projected back, within a gestural framework, to the emergence of speech, suggests that the vocomimetic protosyllables posited would have become (self-)referential through a neurocognitive process of recurrent, somatotopically-driven pattern-extraction.Le but principal de cette étude, menée dans le cadre de la TSG, théorie gestuelle des origines du langage articulé, est d’explorer les contours de l’éventuel rôle qu’a pu jouer le mécanisme de Valsalva dans l’émergence du signe linguistique. La TSG postule que dans les premières conformations du langage développées par Homo, des résonances laryngales à caractère vocomimétique d’origine non linguistique ont pu être incorporées dans des protosyllabes de type LV (laryngale + voyelle) renvoyant auto-référentiellement à des actions bucco-naso-laryngales (BNL) telles que respirer, éternuer ou tousser. Elle postule également que ces protosyllabes ont pu être projetées sur des actions corporelles autres que BNL faisant appel à la manœuvre de Valsalva, telles que soulever, enfanter ou déféquer. Cette affirmation, fondée sur une analyse submorphémique de certaines racines du proto-indo-européen renvoyant au corps, rétroprojetée dans une perspective gestuelle jusqu’à l’émergence du langage articulé, laisse penser que les protosyllabes vocomimétiques postulées seraient devenues (auto-)référentielles au moyen d’un processus neurocognitif impliquant l’extraction de schémas récurrents de traits formels somatotopiquement mu

A Connectionist Approach to Embodied Conceptual Metaphor

A growing body of data has been gathered in support of the view that the mind is embodied and that cognition is grounded in sensory-motor processes. Some researchers have gone so far as to claim that this paradigm poses a serious challenge to central tenets of cognitive science, including the widely held view that the mind can be analyzed in terms of abstract computational principles. On the other hand, computational approaches to the study of mind have led to the development of specific models that help researchers understand complex cognitive processes at a level of detail that theories of embodied cognition (EC) have sometimes lacked. Here we make the case that connectionist architectures in particular can illuminate many surprising results from the EC literature. These models can learn the statistical structure in their environments, providing an ideal framework for understanding how simple sensory-motor mechanisms could give rise to higher-level cognitive behavior over the course of learning. Crucially, they form overlapping, distributed representations, which have exactly the properties required by many embodied accounts of cognition. We illustrate this idea by extending an existing connectionist model of semantic cognition in order to simulate findings from the embodied conceptual metaphor literature. Specifically, we explore how the abstract domain of time may be structured by concrete experience with space (including experience with culturally specific spatial and linguistic cues). We suggest that both EC researchers and connectionist modelers can benefit from an integrated approach to understanding these models and the empirical findings they seek to explain

Conceptual and lexical effects on gestures: the case of vertical spatial metaphors for time in Chinese

The linguistic metaphors of time appear to influence how people gesture about time. This study finds that Chinese English bilinguals produce more vertical gestures when talking about Chinese time references with vertical spatial metaphors than (1) when talking about time conceptions in the English translations, and (2) when talking about Chinese time references with no spatial metaphors. Additionally, Chinese English bilinguals prefer vertical gestures to lateral gestures when perceiving Chinese time references with vertical spatial metaphors and the corresponding English translations, whereas there is no such preference when perceiving time references without spatial metaphors. Furthermore, this vertical tendency is not due to the fact that vertical gestures are generally less ambiguous than lateral gestures for addressees. In conclusion, the vertical gesturing about time by Chinese English bilinguals is shaped by both the stable language-specific conceptualisations, and the online changes in linguistic choices

The computer as an irrational cabinet.

This thesis and its accompanying project are concerned with the use of digital technology in the representation of material culture. The thesis aims to find ways of using such technology that are appropriate to our present needs and to its potential. The computer is a technology which we understand, interact with and relate to through metaphor. I propose that many of the metaphors through which we understand it invoke the idea of an enclosed space. The use of such a trope might seem suitable when using computers for representing museum collections, or material culture in general, since it invokes the enclosed space of the museum. I examine how this idea of enclosure is manifested in computer developments such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. I also look at how these developments are congruent with perspectival modes of visual representation privileged in the modern era. I argue that such metaphors and forms of representation, whether manifested in visual arts, the museum, or computer applications are problematic, bound up as they are with modern western ideas of mastery and transcendence, which are presently being subjected to critiques from various quarters. Throughout the modern era there have been forms of representation which have contested the dominant visual mode of modernity. These include the art of the Baroque in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and, in this century, the work of the Surrealists. In contrast to the rational, orthogonal space of modernity, both these deal with complex and fragmented representations of spaces and time. Such developments have been discussed as forms of representation appropriate to contemporary concerns about knowledge They also have a corollary in computing developments, such as multimedia and hypermedia, Yet, I argue, those working in multimedia have in the main failed to exploit the potential of such developments to enable new ways of representing knowledge. I propose looking to both the Baroque and Surrealism to find possible models and strategies for use in multimedia in the representation of material culture. In relation to this I describe practical work done in conjunction with this thesis which uses these models as the basis of a piece of multimedia software for the representation of material culture