Dialect on Trial: Raciolinguistic ideologies in perceptions of AAVE and MAE codeswitching

It is known that listeners map speakers’ voices to racial categories and that such identification can have harmful social, political, and economic consequences for African American Vernacular English (AAVE) speakers (Baugh 2003, Grogger 2009, Rickford and King 2016). While this work has focused on the production of linguistic cues used to perceive speakers’ race, recent research on the white listening subject (Flores and Rosa 2015) has advocated investigating listeners’ raciolinguistic ideologies, regardless of whether speakers command standardized or stigmatized varieties (Rosa and Flores 2017). This paper explores social perceptions of a bidialectal African American speaker when he uses African American Vernacular English (AAVE) compared to Mainstream American English (MAE). The speaker, a 32-year-old African American professor from California, recorded AAVE and MAE versions of a (2 minute) passage accounting his weekend activities, made to resemble an alibi in a criminal justice proceeding. Utilizing a matched-guise design, 116 undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to hear the account spoken in either AAVE or MAE, without background information about the speaker. A majority of participants identified the speaker as Black, as having less than a college degree, and as coming from a lower/working-class background, though listeners hearing the AAVE guise were more likely to perceive the speaker as Black and less educated than those in the MAE guise. Further, participants in the AAVE condition perceived the speaker as more likely to be involved in a gang compared to the MAE condition. That the speaker’s codeswitching resulted in racialized differences in some ratings (e.g., race, education, gang status), but not in others (e.g., class, credibility, trustworthiness) raises questions about whether codeswitching can ameliorate the well-established consequences of anti-Black stereotypes for AAVE speakers. Regardless of the presence or absence of AAVE features, ideologies attached to Black voices can still yield associations with legible Black tropes

“It Keeps Going and Going and Going”: The Expansion of False Advertising Litigation Under the Lanham Act

To improve the conduction band alignment and explore the influence of the buffer-absorber interface, we here investigate an alternative buffer for Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) solar cells. The Zn(O, S) system was chosen since the optimum conduction band alignment with CZTS is predicted to be achievable, by varying oxygen to sulfur ratio. Several sulfur to oxygen ratios were evaluated to find an appropriate conduction band offset. There is a clear trend in open-circuit voltage Voc, with the highest values for the most sulfur rich buffer, before going to the blocking ZnS, whereas the fill factor peaks at a lower S content. The best alternative buffer cell in this series had an efficiency of 4.6% and the best CdS reference gave 7.3%. Extrapolating Voc values to 0 K gave activation energies well below the expected bandgap of 1.5 eV for CZTS, which indicate that recombination at the interface is dominating. However, it is clear that the values are affected by the change of buffer composition and that increasing sulfur content of the Zn(O, S) increases the activation energy for recombination. A series with varying CdS buffer thickness showed the expected behavior for short wavelengths in quantum efficiency measurements but the final variation in efficiency was small

Perspektif Feminisme dalam Memahami Permasalahan Hak Asasi Manusia Kelompok Queer di Kota Semarang, Indonesia

Hak Asasi Manusia seharusnya merupakan konsep yang dijunjung tinggi oleh negara dengan sistem demokrasi, salah satunya adalah sexual rights. Oleh karena itu, penegakan HAM bagi kelompok minoritas seksual juga harus menjadi perhatian pemerintah demokratis, termasuk pelindungan kelompok minoritas seksual queer. Kelompok queer ini sejatinya sudah ada dan berkembang dalam budaya asli Indonesia seperti pembagian gender suku Bugis yakni Calalai, Calabai, dan Bissu. Meskipun demikian, penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa penindasan dan diskriminasi terhadap kelompok queer masih marak terjadi. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan teknik pengumpulan data melalui wawancara terarah (guided interview) dengan LSM Rumah Pelangi Semarang. Data-data yang terkumpul tersebut kemudian dianalisis menggunakan teori feminisme, gender, dan queer. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan aktor serta bentuk penindasan terhadap kelompok queer di Indonesia, serta adanya ambiguitas dan distorsi dalam pemahaman seksualitas pada masyarakat Indonesia yang terhegemoni sistem patriarki, menjadi penyebab terjadinya diskriminasi ini.

Perspektif Feminisme dalam Memahami Permasalahan Hak Asasi Manusia Kelompok Queer di Kota Semarang, Indonesia

Hak Asasi Manusia seharusnya merupakan konsep yang dijunjung tinggi oleh negara dengan sistem demokrasi, salah satunya adalah sexual rights. Oleh karena itu, penegakan HAM bagi kelompok minoritas seksual juga harus menjadi perhatian pemerintah demokratis, termasuk pelindungan kelompok minoritas seksual queer. Kelompok queer ini sejatinya sudah ada dan berkembang dalam budaya asli Indonesia seperti pembagian gender suku Bugis yakni Calalai, Calabai, dan Bissu. Meskipun demikian, penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa penindasan dan diskriminasi terhadap kelompok queer masih marak terjadi. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif dengan teknik pengumpulan data melalui wawancara terarah (guided interview) dengan LSM Rumah Pelangi Semarang. Data-data yang terkumpul tersebut kemudian dianalisis menggunakan teori feminisme, gender, dan queer. Hasil dari penelitian ini menunjukkan aktor serta bentuk penindasan terhadap kelompok queer di Indonesia, serta adanya ambiguitas dan distorsi dalam pemahaman seksualitas pada masyarakat Indonesia yang terhegemoni sistem patriarki, menjadi penyebab terjadinya diskriminasi ini.

Rhetorics of Species Revivalism and Biotechnology:A Roundtable Dialogue

This informal dialogue contextualises and explores contemporary practices of nonhuman animal gene-modification in de-extinction projects. Looking at recent developments in biotechnology’s role in de-extinction sciences and industries, these interdisciplinary scholars scrutinise the neoliberal impetus driving ‘species revivalism’ in the wake of the Capitalocene. Critical examinations of species integrity, cryo-preservation, techno-optimism, rewilding initiatives and projects aimed at restoring extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth and bucardo are used to map some of the necessary restructuring of conservation policies and enterprises that could secure viably sustainable —and just—futures for nonhuman animals at risk of extinction. Authors question what alternatives are being ignored in the wake of technoscientific responses to the climate emergency and interpret the motivations, tactics and tools responsible for commodifying nonhuman animals down to the cellular level. Our conversation on the messy relations within endangered ecologies offers alternative strategies and approaches to how environmental governance addresses the climate and biodiversity crises today

Rhetorics of Species Revivalism and Biotechnology – A Roundtable Dialogue

This informal dialogue contextualises and explores contemporary practices of nonhuman animal gene-modification in de-extinction projects. Looking at recent developments in biotechnology’s role in de-extinction sciences and industries, these interdisciplinary scholars scrutinise the neoliberal impetus driving ‘species revivalism’ in the wake of the Capitalocene. Critical examinations of species integrity, cryo-preservation, techno-optimism, rewilding initiatives and projects aimed at restoring extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth and bucardo are used to map some of the necessary restructuring of conservation policies and enterprises that could secure viably sustainable – and just – futures for nonhuman animals at risk of extinction. The authors question what alternatives are being ignored in the wake of technoscientific responses to the climate emergency, and interpret the motivations, tactics and tools responsible for commodifying nonhuman animals down to the cellular level. Our conversation on the messy relations within endangered ecologies offers alternative approaches to environmental governance and strategies for addressing the climate and biodiversity crises today

Bridging the International Law-International Relations Divide: Taking Stock of Progress

International law (IL) and international relations (IR) have long been considered separate academic enterprises, with their own theoretical orientations, methodologies, and publishing outlets. The net effect has been that the insights and research findings of one discipline have largely been unknown or ignored in the other. This has occurred despite the commonality of focusing on many of the same substantive interests, namely international cooperation in general, issues of war and peace, environmental regulation, and trade. This has led to numerous calls over the past two decades to bridge the international law and international relations divide. Yet one recent work claims that the frequency of such appeals have exceeded the number of efforts to fulfill those suggestions. Others have claimed that there are large and growing intersections between the fields. How much progress has been made in the last two decades toward bridging the gap between international law and international relations? Various claims have been made, but little systematic evidence has been produced. In particular, the evidence offered has not necessarily been able to document the form and depth of the international relations-international law interface. This study examines the progress, or perhaps the lack thereof, made over the last twenty years in bringing together the disciplines of international law and international relations. In doing so, we survey two leading journals in international law and five prominent journals in international relations over the period 1990-2010, searching for cross-pollination of ideas and approaches. We also examine an interdisciplinary journal, the primary purpose of which has been to facilitate collaboration across the two disciplines. When considering the international law journals, we look at the extent to which social science methods and objectives, as well as international relations subject matter, have been reflected in the articles. In international relations journals, we consider whether international law has become a subject matter of scholarly inquiry, given that it was largely ignored for many years. The goal is to track over time the intersection of the two disciplines and describe the extent and type of their interaction. We begin with a discussion of how the two disciplines became separated after an early period of convergence, explain the fundamental bases that led to the divide, and characterize their contemporary differences. We then examine the various pleas for integration and how these might be accomplished. We note some recent trends toward reconciliation between IL and IR. These sections serve as a prelude to our empirical analysis of published articles, where we describe our choice of journals and the dimensions of analysis. We present our findings on whether and by how much the gap between international law and international relations has been bridged. This includes an overview of the international law articles studied, specific analyses of law and political science journals respectively, and a consideration of an interdisciplinary journal. Finally, we summarize our findings and discuss their implications for the future of IL-IR research

Real-time crowding information can help contain Covid-19

A study shows that when people have crowding information about medical practices, they tend to select less crowded ones - by Martin Adam, Dominick Werner, Charlotte Wendt and Alexander Benlia