Impoliteness as a vehicle for humour in dramatic discourse

This study aims to investigate the proposed complementary relationship between impoliteness (as a form of aggression), and humour (as a form of entertainment). Taking the fictional film As Good As It Gets, I draw from a number of scenes involving the main protagonist Melvin Udall. Although this character is extremely offensive to others, the film is classified as a romantic comedy. As such, it offers a good basis on which to test out my ideas regarding the proposed relationship between impoliteness and humour, and more importantly, how and why we may feel the need to laugh at what is essentially socially proscribed and disturbing behaviour. My work, then, contributes to two main academic fields of interest: with regards the field of impoliteness I demonstrate why offensiveness can be entertaining by making specific links with humour theory, and within the field of stylistics I show how a multi-disciplined approach to character analysis can offer us richer observations and interpretations of behaviour, than would otherwise be available through analysis of models in isolation

Proceedings of the 2010 Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik

Sinn & Bedeutung - the annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Semantik - aims to bring together both established researchers and new blood working on current issues in natural language semantics, pragmatics, the syntax-semantics interface, the philosophy of language or carrying out psycholinguistic studies related to meaning. Every year, the conference moves to a different location in Europe. The 2010 conference - Sinn & Bedeutung 15 - took place on September 9 - 11 at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, organized by the Department for German Studies

A mixed method investigation into the impact of activation therapy with and without word finding for people with aphasia

Background Information Impairment based therapy studies for people with aphasia indicate that therapy which involves word finding practice can help people with aphasia find words. Research has also suggested that the impact of therapy can generalise to other words not used in therapy and that it can have a positive impact on communication skills and feelings of wellbeing. This research project introduces a novel word finding therapy. Activation therapy was designed for people with all types of aphasia, even those who have difficulty representing their own views or cannot express their thoughts at all. There is very little evidence base to support a word finding therapy that does not involve overt word finding practice and this limited support is based on the results of three separate therapy studies and its beneficial impact on the word finding skills of five people with aphasia. This therapy trial compared the impact of activation therapy with and without word finding to see if its impact was contingent on the opportunity to practise word finding out loud. It was also designed to evaluate two additional therapy outcomes; the impact of activation therapy on sentence grammar and its impact on the experience of living with aphasia. Methodology This research was designed to conform to therapy trial standards as far as practicable. Seven people with aphasia and their therapy trial partners volunteered to participate in this study. All participants had suffered a left sided cerebrovascular stroke and were at least nineteen months post onset of their aphasia. Participants were diverse in terms of aphasia severity, type of aphasia, age, and pre stroke occupation, however they were all united in their need to receive more aphasia therapy than they had been offered. ttps were related to participants in different ways and were either spouses, partners, parents or the offspring of the seven participants with aphasia. The research design was informed by aphasia therapy trial precedents and followed an “a b a c a” design. Participants were provided with three pre therapy assessment sessions, six activation therapy with or without word finding sessions, three mid therapy assessment sessions, a further six sessions of activation therapy with or without word finding, and finally three post therapy assessments. Random allocation to counterbalanced pathways, verification of stable baselines, and three types of control tasks were used to address possible threats to the integrity of the crossover research design. Participants completed three 260 word finding assessments in each assessment phase. Participants and their therapy trial partners were also interviewed during each assessment phase. Assessments of sentence comprehension and non-verbal problem solving were conducted during pre and post therapy assessment phases and were used as two of the control measures from which the impact of activation therapy could be inferred. Initial word finding assessments were used to identify words which had caused word finding difficulties. For each participant, the words that they had found difficult to say were allocated to one of three equivalent word finding sets, activation therapy with word finding set, activation therapy without word finding set and a control group set. During activation therapy sessions participants listened to the therapist describing each word. Descriptions included at least eight relevant pieces of information about the word. Its appearance, function, most obvious feature, location, category membership, co-ordinates, closely related objects, synonyms, antonyms, subtypes, parts, use in collocations, use in idioms, use in frequent sentences and idiosyncratic associations. Participants were then asked to identify the object that had just been described from an array of five pictures that contained the target picture and four of its coordinates. The only difference between the two activation therapy techniques was that activation therapy with word finding sessions included participants practising saying the word that had just been described and participants were provided with the opportunity to practise saying the word eleven times before listening to the description of the next therapy item. Results Statistical analysis of group results suggested that activation therapy improved the word finding skills of the seven participants with aphasia. A lack of comparable improvement in control tasks suggested that improved word finding skills could be attributed to activation therapy rather than other possible factors such as improved attention, executive functioning, therapeutic alliance or other non-specific effects of attending Speech and Language Therapy sessions. There was however, no statistical difference between the impact of activation therapy with word finding and activation therapy without word finding, suggesting that spoken word finding practice was not an essential part of successful word finding therapy. Grammatical analysis of word, phrase and sentence level output elicited during therapy experience interviews identified only one indicator of the generalisation activation therapy to everyday speech. All seven participants used longer noun phrases after twelve weeks of aphasia therapy. Finally, thematic analysis therapy experience interviews with participants and their therapy trial partners suggested that activation therapy had resulted in positive perceptions of changes in language use and participants’ relationships with themselves, their close others and their interactions with people in the wider community, the other others. Triangulation and integration of these findings suggested that activation therapy may have altered the accessibility of nouns and noun syntax which was apparent in word finding assessments and spontaneous language use. Discussion This small scale therapy trial supports the implementation of aphasia therapy for people who are not happy living with their aphasia. Three complementary evaluation methods identified the meaningful impact of activation therapy in improved word finding in assessments, improved noun phrase structure, and enhanced wellbeing, a triangulation and integration of converging evidence. In this therapy trial, changes in word finding skills could not be attributed to overt word finding practice. The need to practise words is a notion that has guided aphasia therapy research and has framed the way that outcomes have been measured in this field. It has also dictated the type of participant that can take part in research and by implication has affected which type of person with aphasia can be provided with intervention that is evidence based. The equal impact of activation therapy with and without word finding on the words analysed in this therapy trial can be explained by both prominent models of single word processing, interactive and modular. Analysis of meaning word finding difficulties and generalisation to words not targeted in therapy aligned more closely to the interactive models of conceptualisation of single word processing. Neither model adequately explained the overuse of plural markers and relative lack of sound processing difficulties experienced by the seven participants in the study. It is hoped that the findings of this small scale therapy study may contribute to future discussions about the nature of word finding with and without aphasia. It is also hoped that it this study will contribute to the evidence base that supports the implementation of aphasia therapy for those who live with language difficulties

RFID Technology in Intelligent Tracking Systems in Construction Waste Logistics Using Optimisation Techniques

Construction waste disposal is an urgent issue for protecting our environment. This paper proposes a waste management system and illustrates the work process using plasterboard waste as an example, which creates a hazardous gas when land filled with household waste, and for which the recycling rate is less than 10% in the UK. The proposed system integrates RFID technology, Rule-Based Reasoning, Ant Colony optimization and knowledge technology for auditing and tracking plasterboard waste, guiding the operation staff, arranging vehicles, schedule planning, and also provides evidence to verify its disposal. It h relies on RFID equipment for collecting logistical data and uses digital imaging equipment to give further evidence; the reasoning core in the third layer is responsible for generating schedules and route plans and guidance, and the last layer delivers the result to inform users. The paper firstly introduces the current plasterboard disposal situation and addresses the logistical problem that is now the main barrier to a higher recycling rate, followed by discussion of the proposed system in terms of both system level structure and process structure. And finally, an example scenario will be given to illustrate the system’s utilization

Understanding discourse markers in interpreter-mediated police interviews

Despite the growing prevalence of interpreter-mediated police interviews, this area remains widely under-researched as the focus of research on legal interpreting has been the discourse of the courtroom. Scholars have challenged the myth of literalism and demonstratedinterpreters’ lack of awareness of pragmatic aspects of language. Working with Goffman’s(1981) participation framework and Sperber & Wilson’s (1995) relevance-theoretic approach to pragmatics, this study builds on previous work on the use of discourse markers(DMs)by interpreters (e.g. Berk-Seligson, 1990; Hale, 1999, 2004)in order to investigate whether interpreters’ treatment of DMs effectively promotes or hinders direct contact between theparties. In particular, its aim is to show how interpreters convey implicatures triggered by a DM in the original utterance in order to match the intention of the speaker, analysing the impact that resulting “shifts in footing” (Wadensjö, 1998) may have on the different stages of the enhanced cognitive interview.My data consists of five police interviews involving four NRPSI-registered interpreters, two language combinations (English-Italian and Portuguese-Italian), and both suspects and a vulnerable victim. Findings show that not only are DMs often omitted, but they are also added in renditions of utterances which do not contain corresponding expressions. While some of these added DMs can be attributable to the interpreter, others must be treated as being attributed to the original speaker in the sense that they give rise to an interpretation of that speaker’s thoughts and thought processes. I show that in a relevance-theoretic frameworksuch additions can be shown to be compatible with the requirement of an invisible nonparticipating interpreter set by Codes of Practice.Since the effectiveness of interrogation is affected by the extent to which interpreters and officers have an understanding of interpreters’ practice in this area, my research suggests the need for a more nuanced conceptualisation of Codes of Practice and extensive training for interpreters and interviewers in sociological and pragmatic aspects of interpreted encounters

Proceedings of the Eighth Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics CliC-it 2021

The eighth edition of the Italian Conference on Computational Linguistics (CLiC-it 2021) was held at Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca from 26th to 28th January 2022. After the edition of 2020, which was held in fully virtual mode due to the health emergency related to Covid-19, CLiC-it 2021 represented the first moment for the Italian research community of Computational Linguistics to meet in person after more than one year of full/partial lockdown

Figure

This open access book shows how figures, figuring, and configuration are used to understand complex, contemporary problems. Figures are images, numbers, diagrams, data and datasets, turns-of-phrase, and representations. Contributors reflect on the history of figures as they have transformed disciplines and fields of study, and how methods of figuring and configuring have been integral to practices of description, computation, creation, criticism and political action. They do this by following figures across fields of social science, medicine, art, literature, media, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Readers will encounter figures as various as Je Suis Charlie, #MeToo, social media personae, gardeners, asthmatic children, systems configuration management and cloud computing – all demonstrate the methodological utility and contemporary relevance of thinking with figures. This book serves as a critical guide to a world of figures and a creative invitation to “go figure!

Figure: Concept and Method

This open access book shows how figures, figuring, and configuration are used to understand complex, contemporary problems. Figures are images, numbers, diagrams, data and datasets, turns-of-phrase, and representations. Contributors reflect on the history of figures as they have transformed disciplines and fields of study, and how methods of figuring and configuring have been integral to practices of description, computation, creation, criticism and political action. They do this by following figures across fields of social science, medicine, art, literature, media, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Readers will encounter figures as various as Je Suis Charlie, #MeToo, social media personae, gardeners, asthmatic children, systems configuration management and cloud computing – all demonstrate the methodological utility and contemporary relevance of thinking with figures. This book serves as a critical guide to a world of figures and a creative invitation to “go figure!

Figure

This open access book shows how figures, figuring, and configuration are used to understand complex, contemporary problems. Figures are images, numbers, diagrams, data and datasets, turns-of-phrase, and representations. Contributors reflect on the history of figures as they have transformed disciplines and fields of study, and how methods of figuring and configuring have been integral to practices of description, computation, creation, criticism and political action. They do this by following figures across fields of social science, medicine, art, literature, media, politics, philosophy, history, anthropology, and science and technology studies. Readers will encounter figures as various as Je Suis Charlie, #MeToo, social media personae, gardeners, asthmatic children, systems configuration management and cloud computing – all demonstrate the methodological utility and contemporary relevance of thinking with figures. This book serves as a critical guide to a world of figures and a creative invitation to “go figure!

Lifelines

Harris Solomon takes readers into the trauma ward of one of Mumbai’s busiest public hospitals, narrating the stories of the patients, providers, families, and frontline workers who experience and treat traumatic injury from traffic