LIGHT AND AFFECTS FROM A COMPARATIVE POINT OF VIEW

Light metaphors occurring in Chinese philosophy and Stoicism are of special interest for the unique ways they channel potentialities of the self. In this paper I apply ideas from cognitive linguistics to examine selected structural features of these metaphors. I also build on these ideas by presenting a framework regarding affects to assist in disclosing what is at stake for differing Chinese and Stoic technologies of the self. The paper adopts a high-level perspective to see these broad philosophical implications, interleaving discussions of Chinese philosophy (mainly views associated with Daoism), Stoicism (bringing into relief important differences from these views), and contemporary research on socially constructed affects. This triadic comparative approach aims to shed new light on some root assumptions built into the projects of self-cultivation that are at the core of Chinese and Stoic worldviews

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

Spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in dance performance

In this paper we present a study of spectators’ aesthetic experiences of sound and movement in live dance performance. A multidisciplinary team comprising a choreographer, neuroscientists and qualitative researchers investigated the effects of different sound scores on dance spectators. What would be the impact of auditory stimulation on kinesthetic experience and/or aesthetic appreciation of the dance? What would be the effect of removing music altogether, so that spectators watched dance while hearing only the performers’ breathing and footfalls? We investigated audience experience through qualitative research, using post-performance focus groups, while a separately conducted functional brain imaging (fMRI) study measured the synchrony in brain activity across spectators when they watched dance with sound or breathing only. When audiences watched dance accompanied by music the fMRI data revealed evidence of greater intersubject synchronisation in a brain region consistent with complex auditory processing. The audience research found that some spectators derived pleasure from finding convergences between two complex stimuli (dance and music). The removal of music and the resulting audibility of the performers’ breathing had a significant impact on spectators’ aesthetic experience. The fMRI analysis showed increased synchronisation among observers, suggesting greater influence of the body when interpreting the dance stimuli. The audience research found evidence of similar corporeally focused experience. The paper discusses possible connections between the findings of our different approaches, and considers the implications of this study for interdisciplinary research collaborations between arts and sciences

A cognotive stylistic analysis of a selection of contemporary egyptian novels

[ES] Esta tesis doctoral ofrece un comprensivo análisis cognitivo de tres novelas egipcias de autores contemporáneos: Book of Sands (2015) de Karim Alrawi; Taxi (2016) de Khalid Al Khamissi y The Day the Leader Was Killed (1985) de Naguib Mahfouz. Mediante la implementación de los marcos teóricos de Text World Theory (Werth, 1999; Gavins, 2007) y Blending Theory (también conocida en español como la teoría de integración conceptual) (Fauconnier and Turner, 2002), esta tesis persigue tres objetivos principales. En primer lugar, demostrar cómo la Text World Theory ayuda al lector a entender la narración como una estructura conceptual constituida por tres capas conceptuales interrelacionadas: the discourse-world, text-worlds y sub-worlds. En segundo lugar, evidenciar el papel fundamental que desempeña la Blending Theory en la correcta interpretación de metáforas a nivel de oración, además de exponer cómo la ironía y el humor que surge de la colisión de elementos incongruentes en estos constructos metafóricos se utilizan para criticar aspectos políticos y socio-culturales presentes en Egipto. Por ultimo, esta tesis busca ilustrar cómo la combinación de la Text World Theory y Blending Theory representa un método efectivo que permite entender las novelas desde niveles micro y macro textuales. Para este fin, se ha seleccionado la Text World Theory como marco discursivo para el macroanálisis de Book of Sands, mientras que la Blending Theory se ha utilizado para el análisis detallado de metáforas a nivel oracional en Taxi. Estos análisis revelan que cada una de las teorías aborda aspectos específicos del texto literario, poniendo en valor su combinación como una estrategia efectiva que comporta una investigación holística de las novelas egipcias seleccionadas, exponiendo así sus complejidades e intersecciones. Por este motivo, ambas aproximaciones se han integrado en el análisis de The Day the Leader Was Killed. Esta integración ha demostrado ser una herramienta de análisis útil al permitir, tanto al lector nacional como internacional, la comprensión completa de la narración y la revelación de mensajes ocultos y realidades encubiertas de la sociedad egipcia

The emerging structure of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: where does Evo-Devo fit in?

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) debate is gaining ground in contemporary evolutionary biology. In parallel, a number of philosophical standpoints have emerged in an attempt to clarify what exactly is represented by the EES. For Massimo Pigliucci, we are in the wake of the newest instantiation of a persisting Kuhnian paradigm; in contrast, Telmo Pievani has contended that the transition to an EES could be best represented as a progressive reformation of a prior Lakatosian scientific research program, with the extension of its Neo-Darwinian core and the addition of a brand-new protective belt of assumptions and auxiliary hypotheses. Here, we argue that those philosophical vantage points are not the only ways to interpret what current proposals to ‘extend’ the Modern Synthesis-derived ‘standard evolutionary theory’ (SET) entail in terms of theoretical change in evolutionary biology. We specifically propose the image of the emergent EES as a vast network of models and interweaved representations that, instantiated in diverse practices, are connected and related in multiple ways. Under that assumption, the EES could be articulated around a paraconsistent network of evolutionary theories (including some elements of the SET), as well as models, practices and representation systems of contemporary evolutionary biology, with edges and nodes that change their position and centrality as a consequence of the co-construction and stabilization of facts and historical discussions revolving around the epistemic goals of this area of the life sciences. We then critically examine the purported structure of the EES—published by Laland and collaborators in 2015—in light of our own network-based proposal. Finally, we consider which epistemic units of Evo-Devo are present or still missing from the EES, in preparation for further analyses of the topic of explanatory integration in this conceptual framework

In the Beginning Was the Verb: The Emergence and Evolution of Language Problem in the Light of the Big Bang Epistemological Paradigm.

The enigma of the Emergence of Natural Languages, coupled or not with the closely related problem of their Evolution is perceived today as one of the most important scientific problems. \ud The purpose of the present study is actually to outline such a solution to our problem which is epistemologically consonant with the Big Bang solution of the problem of the Emergence of the Universe}. Such an outline, however, becomes articulable, understandable, and workable only in a drastically extended epistemic and scientific oecumene, where known and habitual approaches to the problem, both theoretical and experimental, become distant, isolated, even if to some degree still hospitable conceptual and methodological islands. \ud The guiding light of our inquiry will be Eugene Paul Wigner's metaphor of ``the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in natural sciences'', i.e., the steadily evolving before our eyes, since at least XVIIth century, \ud ``the miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics''. Kurt Goedel's incompleteness and undecidability theory will be our guardian discerner against logical fallacies of otherwise apparently plausible explanations. \ud John Bell's ``unspeakableness'' and the commonplace counterintuitive character of quantum phenomena will be our encouragers. And the radical novelty of the introduced here and adapted to our purposes Big Bang epistemological paradigm will be an appropriate, even if probably shocking response to our equally shocking discovery in the oldest among well preserved linguistic fossils of perfect mathematical structures outdoing the best artifactual Assemblers

ELF-mediated modal metaphors of ‘inclusion’, ‘exclusion’ and ‘seclusion’ in an online discussion on Covid-19 fake news: A case study in cross-cultural Cognitive Linguistics

This paper introduces a case study in cross-cultural Cognitive Linguistics focused on the variable use of English modal verbs conveying new Covid-triggered experiential metaphors conceived by a focus group of multicultural participants in online discussion. The group was composed of Italians, Greeks and migrants from Nigeria, Morocco and Yemen, all non-native speakers of English – a language that they used as a ‘lingua franca’ (ELF) while participating in the intercultural interaction taking place in the computer- mediated dimension of a virtual university classroom. The case study intended to determine whether the group’s pragmatic use of modals introducing novel metaphors actually diverged from habitual high/low- context schemata related to the multicultural participants’ different native sociolinguistic communities. Schema divergence was assumed to be prompted by the particular ‘emotion-raising’ topic chosen for the case study – namely, the probable fake news on the causes of the Covid-19 pandemic, as they were conveyed by three journalistic texts submitted for discussion. More specifically, the case study explored the new cognitive metaphors of ‘inclusion’, ‘exclusion’, and ‘seclusion’ developed by the participants in relation to their social and psychological involvement with the topic – which eventually developed further to encompass the positive and negative consequences of pandemic, including the obligation to stay at home and communicate exclusively online, with the related issues of gender and ethnic discrimination, or rather empowerment. What stands out in this case study is that the more the participants were emotionally involved in such a topic, the more markedly their specific ELF variations emerged in the discussion. This is assumed to be due to the fact that the participants unconsciously perceived such ELF variations as more spontaneous and familiar for the immediate expression of their emotions and opinions, insofar as these variations have developed from the natural transfer of their native-language structures into the non-native English language they used. Indeed, precisely these ELF variations allowed the conveyance of the new metaphors for the expression of the participants’ unprecedented experience of forced lockdown and online communication through the so-called ‘metaverse’ replacing reality. In such a virtual context, the participants in the online debate who were migrants from the high-context cultures of Nigeria, Morocco, and Yemen unexpectedly developed novel low-context epistemic metaphors of ‘inclusion’ triggered by their sense of a possible freedom from their native social constraints granted by remote communication mode without the use of video, which would conceal their ethnic and socio-cultural features. On the contrary, participants from the middle/high-context cultures of the Southern European countries of Italy and Greece showed a strengthening of the stereotypical high-context deontic metaphors imposing ‘exclusion’ and ‘seclusion’

“Windows” of Time, Part II: Documenting Temporal and Embodied Epistemology in Musicians

As an extension to the earlier paper “Windows” of Time: Memory, Metaphor, and Storytelling as Documents, this paper examines how those documents both inform and are informed by temporal epistemology and embodied knowledge. They serve to document both temporal and embodied epistemology in the ongoing process of musical knowledge building, in music performance, as well as in teaching and transmission contexts. To illustrate in greater depth how these documents are situated between temporal and embodied knowledge, Irish traditional music examples are drawn from five renowned musicians as a kind of case study. A model representing the documents’ situation and function is presented and described. Future research into “craft” domains, meaning knowledge domains that involve both artistry and craftsmanship such as culinary professionals and instrument-builders, will further explore these documents as well as their relationships to both temporal and embodied epistemology