The Uses and Meanings of the Female Title Ms.

This article examines the use of the female title Ms. by students, faculty, and staff at a Midwestern university in the United States using data generated with the written survey used by Donna Lillian (1993) in a similar study in Canada. Findings show that faculty are fairly consistent in their understanding of Ms. as a neutral title to be used for all women and are more likely to choose this title than students and staff. Student responses show a wide range of meanings for Ms., with the meanings ‘young’ and ‘single’ being the most common. Female students were far less likely to select Ms. than male students, showing a gender gap in the student data that is not seen in the staff and faculty reponses. These data show multiple meanings and patterns of female title use in the United States today, with little evidence pointing toward a decrease in this variation

Biodiversity Communication at the UN Summit 2020:Blending Business and Nature

Biodiverse ecosystems play a key role in maintaining life on earth. In response to rapid declines in biodiversity throughout the world, the UN Biodiversity Summit 2020 brought together world leaders to discuss potential solutions. We draw on cognitive linguistics, critical discourse analysis and ecolinguistics in analysing the summit contributions. All speakers blended vocabulary from the fields of BUSINESS and NATURE; in doing so, they were able to advocate solving biodiversity loss by implementing approaches commonly found in business. In addition, three main ‘moves’ were employed in these speeches: (i) the state of nature was lamented, (ii) the interdependent relationship between humans and nature was mentioned and (iii) a call to action was given. It is argued that relying on the BUSINESS–NATURE blend for solutions to environmental problems serves to maintain the status quo and may obscure pathways to transformational change. Linguistic strategies for more effective environmental communication are suggested

Immigration, integration and Leitkultur in German newspapers: competing discourses about national belonging

This research examines the use of terms for social groups in Germany, specifically Personen mit Migrationshintergrund ‘people with migration background’, Türken ‘Turks’, and Biodeutscher ‘ethnic German(s)’ in online discussions about the integration of immigrants into German society. These terms construct essentialist social categories that focus on ethnic background as inherent in cultural behavior, which makes integration for members of these groups impossible. Further, in some cases naming stigmatized groups is no longer necessary, as the discourses about members of these groups are so strong that the mere mention of particular cultural practices is enough to indicate who the unwanted members of society are. However, competing discourses, which challenge the use of these terms and the discourses of alterity, are also part of the discussion of national belonging exemplified in these data

Expression and interpretation of emotions in multilingual psychotherapy:A literature review

This review aimed at presenting the findings of 19 original studies that were published in the period from 2000 to 2022 in order to outline the current state of the art in the field of emotion communication (i.e., expressing and interpreting emotions) in multilingual psychotherapy. This analysis involves in particular the studies that investigate multilingual phenomena (e.g., code-switching and language-mixing) that occur during psychotherapeutic sessions when client and therapist can speak more than one language, as well as the articles that research emotion communication in this multilingual setting. With this in mind, the articles selected for this review are divided into two main categories: linguistic phenomena in multilingual psychotherapy and emotion communication in multilingual psychotherapy. Results of the studies in the current analysis reveal that code-switching remains one of the main linguistic phenomena that arises in the area of multilingual psychotherapy. Switching languages in therapy tends to be considered as beneficial for both client and therapist. Besides, findings suggest a connection between speaking L1/LX and one's identity (e.g., feeling different depending on the language). Additionally, studies that investigate emotion communication in multilingual psychotherapy show that an individual's first language (L1) is predominantly viewed as more emotionally charged than their language(s) learned later in life (LX). However, some studies also demonstrate that the relationship between L1 and LX is more fluid and context-dependent than it has traditionally been regarded. Propositions are given for future research in the field of emotion communication in multilingual psychotherapy.</p

State-Based Markers of Disordered Eating Symptom Severity

Recent work using naturalistic, repeated, ambulatory assessment approaches have uncovered a range of within-person mood- and body image-related dynamics (such as fluctuation of mood and body dissatisfaction) that can prospectively predict eating disorder behaviors (e.g., a binge episode following an increase in negative mood). The prognostic significance of these state-based dynamics for predicting trait-level eating disorder severity, however, remains largely unexplored. The present study uses within-person relationships among state levels of negative mood, body image, and dieting as predictors of baseline, trait-level eating pathology, captured prior to a period of state-based data capture. Two-hundred and sixty women from the general population completed baseline measures of trait eating pathology and demographics, followed by a 7 to 10-day ecological momentary assessment phase comprising items measuring state body dissatisfaction, negative mood, upward appearance comparisons, and dietary restraint administered 6 times daily. Regression-based analyses showed that, in combination, state-based dynamics accounted for 34-43% variance explained in trait eating pathology, contingent on eating disorder symptom severity. Present findings highlight the viability of within-person, state-based dynamics as predictors of baseline trait-level disordered eating severity. Longitudinal testing is needed to determine whether these dynamics account for changes in disordered eating over time