The United States Climate Alliance : a communicative action perspective

On June 1, 2017, US President Trump announced the United States decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. This announcement sprouted a lot of debates and criticisms, locally and internationally. Later that same day, the governors of Washington, New York and California announced the formation of the United States Climate Alliance to act towards the goal of the Paris Agreement despite the decision of the US federal government. It did not take long until they become 23 member US state governments that is made up of half of the US population. The Alliance serves as a forum where the US governors interact towards their action to fight climate change and commit efforts towards the goal of the Paris Agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 26-28% by 2025. This thesis asks how do the Trump administration justify its decision to withdraw from the Paris agreement despite being the second largest emitter in the world. It finds that the Trump administration positions American people (coal manufacturing businesses, taxpayers, working class, families) as victims of the withdrawal narrative. It also finds that it puts itself in the hero narrative, asserting in putting and protecting America first for the welfare of Americans. It demerits the Paris Agreement as a bad deal, big disadvantage to American economy, redistributing wealth of United States to the exclusive benefits of other countries. It also asks how does the US state governors disputed the withdrawal. It finds that the US governors condemned the withdrawal as “shameful” and “irresponsible”, thus forming the United States Alliance to act towards Paris Agreement goals and urging other US state governors to join the important action towards security with the shared understanding of the reality of climate change.submittedVersionM-I

The experiences of environmental inspectors and company representatives during environmental inspection meetings

During environmental inspection meetings the conversations between environmental inspectors and company representatives are an important part of the society’s legislation on environmental management, since the degree of understanding between these parties is important for how excellent environmental standard would be attained in the society since. Therefore, if these conversations do not work effectively, it may result to less efficient implementation of environmental solutions, which may result to health or environmental risk. The aim of the study is to describe and discuss the communication experiences between the environmental inspectors and the company representatives during these meetings, and to identify the dilemmas they encounter and how they try to improve upon such conversational problems. In order to get an in-depth understanding of their experiences semi-structured interviews and observations were carried out with the participants involved, in five different municipalities in Skaraborg County. The investigation revealed that although the company representatives have the rights to deny the inspectors decision during and after meetings, they however see the inspectors as having power over them because they are endowed with the authority to enforce environmental legislations in the society. However some company representatives did also subtly exercised power during some of the occasion. Attitude and anxiety also emerged as important factors that could positively and negatively influence the outcome their meetings. Finally the more the involved actors understand each other the better the environment is properly taken care of

Language use in reconciliation: the case of Nigerian Bauchi State Shariah commission

Reconciliation is interactional and useful to society in helping resolved misunderstandings, especially in the context of family conflicts. However, the existing literature revealed fewer studies been done to examine and give insights into the language use during reconciliation proceedings. Therefore, this study explores the language used in the reconciliation of the Nigerian Bauchi State Shariah Commission. The study is closely related to forensic linguistics as it connects language use, its meaning and interpretation within a legal paradigm. Specifically, this study is an initial attempt to identify: the types of speech acts (SA) used during Reconciliation Case Proceedings (RCP), the politeness strategies employed and to explore the ways in which the participants manage the reconciliation acts using Grice’s cooperative principle. This study is conducted to analyse the naturally occurring situations, capable of influencing the course of one’s life which is lacking in the Nigerian judicial context. Data for the study were obtained from 12 Reconciliation Case Proceedings of family disputes and marital issues of 72 participants through audiovisual recordings and observations. A qualitative method was used with the thematic data analyses. Searle's taxonomy of speech acts theory, Brown's and Levinson's politeness theory and Grice's cooperative principles (CP) were utilised to interpret and explain the findings of the study. The findings revealed the existence of six major types of Speech Acts with 27 emerging subcategories. The study also identified seven major types of politeness strategies and 34 subcategories. Four major CP maxims and 11 submaxims were found, that showed the participants’ cooperative efforts in achieving successful resolution of disputing issues during the RCP. Theoretically, this study has confirmed, and expanded the basis of Speech Acts, politeness strategies and CP in the academic terrain of correlating language, law, crimes / offences and trials. This study also contributed in providing the sociopragmatic perspective of utilizing the speech acts theory in the Nigerian shariah-based judicial context and classes of people, locally and globally, in understanding the role and use of these acts and strategies particularly to shariahbased RCP. The emergence of formalities and other Face Threatening Acts in RCP has clearly shown that the concept of “face” extends to communal perspective in contrast to Brown’s and Levinson’s individualistic perception

Overconnected, under-engaged: when alienation goes online

The emergence and development of Internet enabling communication technology has created new possibilities for people to interact and has changed the culture of communication more generally. This thesis analyses the way that these developments have impacted the social world and the communicative relations between individuals who live in it. To do so, I put research on online communication into contact with the Marxist and first-generation Critical Theory discourse of ‘alienation’. Using ‘alienation’ as a methodological lens, I draw out the similarities and differences between the contemporary social world and the alienating socio-economic-political systems of earlier periods of capitalism. I argue that contemporary capitalism has structured online communication so that it distorts intersubjective relations between individuals. Consequently, the relationship between the contemporary individual and the social world in which they live represents a distinct and new form of ‘alienation’. The thesis is divided into three parts: alienation, subjectivity and contemporary alienation. First, I conduct an exegesis of the tradition of theorising alienation that runs from Karl Marx through to the first-generation Critical Theorists. I establish alienation as a critical concept and examine how capitalism’s domination of that relationship has gradually widened as that system has developed. Second, drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of the account giving subject and Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition, I reconstruct an account of the individual as a communicative subject. I engage with Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action to establish a theory of the social world as constituted through intersubjective communicative relationships. In the final part of thesis, I argue that the contemporary social world is formed by online and offline communicative ecosystems and discuss the contemporary socio-economic-political system. Finally, I bring together the themes of the thesis to describe the distinctive features of contemporary alienation

Sistemas de workflow : analise da area e proposta de modelo

Orientador: Jacques WainerDissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Matematica, Estatistica e Ciencia da ComputaçãoResumo: A presente dissertação enfoca os sistemas de workflow, que se inserem no contexto mais abrangente de software de suporte ao trabalho colaborativo. Sistemas de workflow podem ser definidos como sistemas cujo objetivo é "auxiliar as organizações na especificação, execução, monitoramento e coordenação do fluxo de trabalho em um ambiente de escritório distribuído" [Bul92]. Identificamos, através de análise da literatura da área, fatores estruturais em jogo em sistemas deste tipo, e demonstramos que as abordagens adotadas atualmente cobrem apenas parcialmente o espectro de possibilidades. Identificamos ainda omissões semânticas dos modelos ou especificações. O modelo conceitual que propomos procura tanto ampliar o poder semântico disponível nas direções apontadas pela análise, quanto corrigir os problemas estruturais detectados. Em especial, são atacados os seguintes problemas: . Propomos a ampliação do poder semântico através da oferta de um conjunto abrangente de ações básicas e elementos de sincronismo que englobam o tratamento de eventos assíncronos, atividades batch e atividades replicadas; . Apresentamos os fundamentos para um ambiente de execução fortemente orientado a dados, em que tanto objetos de sistema (como especificações de processo, p.ex.) quanto objetos de aplicação são tratados de maneira uniforme; . Tratamos o problema da alocação de executores de forma mais abrangente, permitindo a existência de atividades coletivas e o uso de estratégias de alocação diferenciadas, como balanceamento de carga de trabalho, round-robin e assim por diante. . Discutimos também os requisitos adicionais de comunicação introduzidos pela existência de atividades coletivas, cujo objetivo é o de manter a sinergia entre os participantes de cada atividade (a difusão de awareness).Abstract: A special category of collaborative systems, the Workflow Systems, are discussed. Such systems can be defined as "systems that help organizations to specify, execute, monitor, and coordinate the flow of work items within a distributed office environment" [Bul92]. We identify basic structural and semantic issues in such systems, and show that improvements can be made over current systems by offering a better coverage of both aspects. We then propose a new conceptual model that tries to fill the detected gaps both by providing a stronger, more expressive specification language and a more comprehensive execution environment. In particular, the following issues are covered: Basic actions and synchronization elements are proposed for asynchronous events, batch and replicated activities. We propose a strongly data-oriented execution environment, where both application and system objects (such as specifications) area treated in a uniform way. We present a broader solution to the agent scheduling problem, that allows one to use different allocation strategies, such as load-balancing, round robin and so on, and that lets many agents to be associated to collective activities. Collective activities give rise to special communication needs, that are treated in the broader awareness diffusion context.MestradoMestre em Ciência da Computaçã

Information systems in organisations

This research explores two separate but related lines of enquiry - the business value of individual applications and the social and organisational impact of information systems. From this research it is clear that information systems have immense potential to change organisations. The conventional view focuses on the value that organisations can obtain through greater efficiency or new activities made possible by specific applications. But experience suggests that many organisations fail to gain the value expected. This research was started with the aim of attaining a greater understanding of the business value that information systems could offer organisations and finding ways by which organisations could assess and realise this value. The research has adopted a variety of methodological approaches and this integrating paper assesses the choices made and locates the papersin relation to the literature on information systems research methodology. The nine research papers taken together demonstrate that is business value is a complex concept and difficult to measure in practice. The research finds that the business and organisational environments are key factors in achieving the business value to be reaped from the range of benefits that each type of IS application offers. The research also demonstrates why IS evaluation practice continues to pose problems for researchers and practitioners. This integrating paper situates the work within the relevant literature on information systems research, assesses the contribution of the research papers to information systems research and concludes with a discussion of future research that flows from this work

Co-Speech Gesture in Communication and Cognition

xv, 256 p. : ill.This dissertation stages a reciprocal critique between traditional and marginal philosophical approaches to language on the one hand and interdisciplinary studies of speech-accompanying hand gestures on the other. Gesturing with the hands while speaking is a ubiquitous, cross-cultural human practice. Yet this practice is complex, varied, conventional, nonconventional, and above all under-theorized. In light of the theoretical and empirical treatments of language and gesture that I engage in, I argue that the hand gestures that spontaneously accompany speech are a part of language; more specifically, they are enactments of linguistic meaning. They are simultaneously (acts of) cognition and communication. Human communication and cognition are what they are in part because of this practice of gesturing. This argument has profound implications for philosophy, for gesture studies, and for interdisciplinary work to come. As further, strong proof of the pervasively embodied way that humans make meaning in language, reflection on gestural phenomena calls for a complete re-orientation in traditional analytic philosophy of language. Yet philosophical awareness of intersubjectivity and normativity as conditions of meaning achievement is well-deployed in elaborating and refining the minimal theoretical apparatus of present-day gesture studies. Triangulating between the most social, communicative philosophies of meaning and the most nuanced, reflective treatments of co-speech hand gesture, I articulate a new construal of language as embodied, world-embedded, intersubjectively normative, dynamic, multi-modal enacting of appropriative disclosure. Spontaneous co-speech gestures, while being indeed spontaneous, are nonetheless informed in various ways by conventions that they appropriate and deploy. Through this appropriation and deployment speakers enact, rather than represent, meaning, and they do so in various linguistic modalities. Seen thusly, gestures provide philosophers with a unique new perspective on the paradoxical determined-yet-free nature of all human meaning.Committee in charge: Mark Johnson, Chairperson; Ted Toadvine, Member; Naomi Zack, Member; Eric Pederson, Outside Membe

Initiating system innovation: A technological frames analysis of the origins of groupware projects.

This research explores the origins of information systems innovation through two case studies of groupware projects. The thesis argues that the study of the origins of projects has an important role in explaining the subsequent events during the more formal implementation activity. This is particularly so in the case of groupware, where a substantial literature has emerged describing and analysing the unpredicted outcomes of such projects. The research is based on a model of systems adoption as a continuous process, and with the choices and decisions taken at an early stage with regard to technology having significant effects on the adoption across time. The analysis of the early stages of a project can be significant in explaining subsequent levels and degrees of system use. It is argued that in order to provide a more complete description of the adoption process one needs to go back to the origins of a project and to examine the choices and decisions made during that period. This period of initiation of groupware projects has received little attention in CSCW research and scarcely more in the broader IS field. The purpose of this thesis is both to address this absence of scrutiny and to argue for its significance. The thesis presents a detailed review of CSCW and related literature, and explores how and to what extent the initiation of projects has been considered and addressed within this field. The thesis then develops a research framework to explore initiation, based on a synthesis of the contextualist approach with a cognitive model based on Orlikowski's notion of technological frames. The thesis then applies the framework in the analysis of two interpretive case studies of the initiation of groupware projects. These case studies were conducted in the British Oxygen Company (BOC) and the Bank for International Settlement (BIS). These studies produce an account of initiation activity that offers a particular emphasis on how time plays multiple roles in the process, linking content, context and process. These roles include, in addition to conventional 'clock time', time as an indicator, time as an era, and time as measurement and control. The findings also illustrate the duality of individuals' technological frames; that is, individuals' frames are both the basis and the consequence of the choices and decisions made by those same individuals. The analysis explores how and to what extent changes in the organisational or cultural setting (context and process) can have an impact on frames of reference, and how they are shared and communicated