SSLD: a French SMS to Standard Language Dictionary

This paper presents a methodology to semi-automatically build up a dictionary out of an SMS corpus. First, we describe the three-step approach that extracts the dictionary entries from the corpus and we detail the smart manual sorting performed on the dictionary. Then, we give a panorama of SMS phenomena observed in the dictionary. Finally, we survey the current limits of our methodology and the related improvements that can be made to it

‘Please, sir, can I have some more?’ Food, lifestyle, diets: Respect and moral responsibility

This article is about respect for food, responsibility for lifestyle and diet and responsibility for those who suffer from lack of food. After some general reflections on food, feasts, flatulence, taboos and waste, I argue that we have a responsibility to live a healthy lifestyle, but that there are also morally good reasons for taking risks with our health as we cherish other goals and values. Then I discuss situations, using the example of obesity, in which people are not free to choose their lifestyle. Governments and doctors have responsibilities in enabling people to chose healthy eating habits, e.g. by facilitating access to healthy foods and by criticizing scientifically unfounded weight loss diets. I continue to defend that we need to respect food and those who prepare it, and that we have a moral responsibility to contribute to the solution of the food gap in the world. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved