Crowdsourcing Change: An Analysis of Twitter Discourse on Food Waste and Reduction Strategies

Food waste has emerged as a major issue in the United States as the nation collectively sends more than 133 billion pounds of food to its landfills every year. In September 2015, the USDA and EPA announced an initiative to cut U.S. food waste in half by 2030. Between 2015 and 2016, nearly 100,000 posts about food waste have been published on Twitter, a microblogging platform that has been a hub of “slacktivism” since its inception in 2006. Using a conceptual framework of social cognitive theory, online activism, and crowdsourcing, we analyzed food waste conversation participants’ demographics, online communities, and proposed solutions. Data analysis was conducted with listening software Sysomos MAP and a qualitative content analysis of conversation content. The analysis revealed that more than 2,000 U.S. users engaged in the conversation, forming four discrete conversation communities led by influencers from government, news media, and environmental organizations. Proposed solutions to the food waste crisis included domestic or household behavior change, food-waste diversion and donation, recycling and upcycling, consumer education, and governmental action and policy. We recommend using Twitter to mine, test, and deploy solutions for combating food waste; engage with influential users; and disseminate materials for further research into the behavioral implications of online activism related to food waste

When Language Breaks

In “Logic and Conversation,” H. P. Grice posits that in conversations, we are “always-already” implying certain things about the subjects of our words while abiding by certain rules to aid in understanding. It is my view, however, that Grice’s so-called “cooperative principle” can be analyzed under the traditional Heideggerian dichotomy of ready-to-hand and present-at-hand wherein language can be viewed as a “mere” tool that sometimes breaks. Ultimately, I contend that the likening of language to a tool allows for a more robust understanding of it and conversational failures, while ontologically recategorizing language as an object of sorts

Dialogue Games for Crosslingual Communication

We describe a novel approach to crosslingual dialogue that supports highly accurate communication of semantically complex content between people who do not speak the same language. The approach is introduced through an implemented application that covers the same ground as the chapter of a conventional phrase book for food shopping. We position the approach with respect to dialogue systems and Machine Translation-based approaches to crosslingual dialogue. The current work is offered as a first step towards the innovative use of dialogue theories for the enhancement of human–human dialogue

Foundational Issues in Educating Young People for Understanding and Appreciation of the Religions in Their Communities

This is a conceptual paper considering some of the foundational issues that a teacher needs to have at least considered (if not resolved) when he or she sets out to encourage students to understand and appreciate the variety of religions in their communities. The first issue is that of what to call the enterprise; the second relates to assumed hierarchies of religions and the barriers these can impose on genuine education about religions; the third issue is that of the fundamentalist student; the fourth issue is the pervasive presence of religious history especially when religion has been the oppressor; the fifth, the position of the believing student in the conversation; and the sixth, the development of critical thinking about religions. All of these foundational issues provide rich content for educators’ reflections, reading, and discussions with colleagues and dialogue with students

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

Reenactment: An embodied cognition approach to meaning and linguistic content

A central finding in experimental research identified with Embodied Cognition (EC) is that understanding actions involves their embodied simulation, i.e. executing some processes involved in performing these actions. Extending these findings, I argue that reenactment – the overt embodied simulation of actions and practices, including especially communicative actions and practices, within utterances – makes it possible to forge an integrated EC-based account of linguistic meaning. In particular, I argue: (a) that remote entities can be referred to by reenacting actions performed with them; (b) that the use of grammatical constructions can be conceived of as the reenactment of linguistic action routines; (c) that complex enunciational structures (reported speech, irony, etc.) involve a separate level of reenactment, on which characters are presented as interacting with one another within the utterance; (d) that the segmentation of long utterances into shorter units involves the reenactment of brief audience interventions between units; and (e) that the overall meaning of an utterance can be stated in reenactment terms. The notion of reenactment provides a conceptual framework for accounting for aspects of language that are usually thought to be outside the reach of EC in an EC framework, thus supporting a view of meaning and linguistic content as thoroughly grounded in action and interaction

Smart Conversational Agents for Reminiscence

In this paper we describe the requirements and early system design for a smart conversational agent that can assist older adults in the reminiscence process. The practice of reminiscence has well documented benefits for the mental, social and emotional well-being of older adults. However, the technology support, valuable in many different ways, is still limited in terms of need of co-located human presence, data collection capabilities, and ability to support sustained engagement, thus missing key opportunities to improve care practices, facilitate social interactions, and bring the reminiscence practice closer to those with less opportunities to engage in co-located sessions with a (trained) companion. We discuss conversational agents and cognitive services as the platform for building the next generation of reminiscence applications, and introduce the concept application of a smart reminiscence agent