Virginia Woolf meets Wmatrix

Le logiciel WMatrix, créé par Paul Rayson, permet une analyse stylistique comparée d’un texte au regard d’un corpus de référence, c’est-à-dire un corpus représentant un « style d’anglais » pertinent pour la comparaison. Pour cette étude expérimentale, j’ai choisi la nouvelle de Virginia Woolf intitulée « The Mark on the Wall » (1917) comme texte soumis à l’étude. Cette étude s’est révélée assez concluante en ce qu’elle a permis de mettre en lumière des mots- clés ainsi que d’autres items que j’avais, de manière impressionniste, jugés pertinent d’un point de vue stylistique et thématique

Politeness: West and East

The present paper was planned for this issue of our journal, which Geoffrey Leech and I intended to devote to Politeness phenomena across cultures. It is based on his article titled “Politeness: Is there an East-West Divide?” (2005) which he suggested as a theoretical framework and includes results of our discussions held during our personal meetings and our epistolary exchange. Unfortunately the final version of the paper was never read by Geoffrey Leech for the reasons we all sadly know. Nevertheless I decided to publish it as a tribute to him in the knowledge that the result was not going to have the degree of excellence it would have had if he were still with us today. I therefore apologise for any mistakes or misinterpretations of his thoughts that might be found in the paper. The aim of this article is to sum up the main ideas of Politeness Theory presented earlier in Leech 1983, 2003, 2005, and other publications and discuss how that theory applies (or fails to apply) to other languages, with the main emphasis on the Russian language and culture. The term ‘maxim’ used in Principles of Pragmatics (Leech 1983) is avoided here as much as possible, as it implies some kind of moral imperative, rather than a pragmatic constraint. Instead, a single constraint, which comprehends all the maxims (the Maxims of Tact, Generosity, Approbation, Modesty, Agreement, Sympathy), and is called the Grand Strategy of Politeness (GSP), is used. The GSP says: In order to be polite, S expresses or implies meanings which place a high value on what pertains to O- his/her wants, qualities, obligation, opinion, feelings (O = other person[s], [mainly the addressee, i.e. H = hearer]) or place a low value on what pertains to S (S = self, speaker). The essential point is that these are not separate, independent constraints or maxims: they are instances of the operation of the GSP as ‘super-maxim’ which is an overarching framework for studying linguistic politeness phenomena in communication. The following hypothesis will be put forward, and supported by limited evidence: that the GSP provides a very general explanation for communicative politeness phenomena in Western languages such as English, Eastern languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and Slavonic languages such as Russian as well with a few examples from other languages. This is not to deny the importance of quantitative and qualitative differences in the settings of social parameters and linguistic parameters of linguistic politeness in such languages. A framework such as the GSP provides the parameters of variation within which such differences can be studied. We do not imply that ethnic cultures are homogeneous and unchanging entities, and do not disregard the fact that generalizations about any culture can be dangerous as things may be different in different sub-cultures or discourse systems within the same ethnic culture. Therefore we are speaking here in very general terms, as we believe that there is a common core which distinguishes one communicative culture from another. Further still there are some general characteristics of behaviour which can be observed in different cultures (1). Hence this article argues that, despite differences, each of the languages and cultures discussed herein constitute a more or less unified system in terms of politeness norms and strategies, and that the GSP can be used as a tertium comparationis to study politeness phenomenon across languages and cultures

Placebo effect of an inert gel on experimentally induced leg muscle pain

Purpose: This study examined the therapeutic effects of an inert placebo gel on experimentally induced muscle pain in a sports therapy setting. It aimed to investigate the degree to which conditioned analgesia, coupled with an expectation of intervention, was a factor in subsequent analgesia. Methods: Participants were sixteen male and eight female sports therapy students at a UK University. With institutional ethics board approval and following informed consent proce- dures, each was exposed to pain stimulus in the lower leg in five conditions, ie, conditioning, prebaseline, experimental (two placebo gel applications), and postbaseline. In conditioning trials, participants identified a level of pain stimulus equivalent to a perceived pain rating of 6/10. An inert placebo gel was then applied to the site with the explicit instruction that it was an analgesic. Participants were re-exposed to the pain stimulus, the level of which, without their knowledge, had been decreased, creating the impression of an analgesic effect resulting from the gel. In experimental conditions, the placebo gel was applied and the level of pain stimulus required to elicit a pain rating of 6/10 recorded. Results: Following application of the placebo gel, the level of pain stimulus required to elicit a pain rating of 6/10 increased by 8.2%. Application of the placebo gel significantly decreased participant’s perceptions of muscle pain (P = 0.001). Conclusion: Subjects’ experience and expectation of pain reduction may be major factors in the therapeutic process. These factors should be considered in the sports therapeutic environment

Conversational Grammar- Feminine Grammar? A Sociopragmatic Corpus Study

One area in language and gender research that has so far received only little attention is the extent to which the sexes make use of what recent corpus research has termed “conversational grammar.” The author’s initial findings have suggested that the majority of features distinctive of conversational grammar may be used predominantly by female speakers. This article reports on a study designed to test the hypothesis that conversational grammar is “feminine grammar” in the sense that women’s conversational language is more adapted to the conversational situation than men’s. Based on data from the conversational subcorpus of the British National Corpus and following the situational framework for the description of conversational features elaborated in the author’s previous research, features distinctive of conversational grammar are grouped into five functional categories and their normed frequencies compared across the sexes. The functional categories distinguish features that can be seen as adaptations to constraints set by the situational factors of (1) Shared Context, (2) Co-Construction, (3) Real-Time Processing, (4) Discourse Management, and (5) Relation Management. The study’s results, described in detail in relation to the biological category of speaker sex and cultural notions of gender, suggest that the feminine grammar hypothesis is valid

ANALYTICAL TEST STRUCTURE MODEL FOR DETERMINING LATERAL EFFECTS OF TRI-LAYER OHMIC CONTACT BEYOND THE CONTACT EDGE

Contact test structures where there is more than one non-metal layer, are significantly more complex to analyse compared to when there is only one such layer like active silicon on an insulating substrate. Here, we use analytical models for complex test structures in a two contact test structure and compare the results obtained with those from Finite Element Models (FEM) of the same test structures. The analytical models are based on the transmission line model and the tri-layer transmission line model in particular, and do not include vertical voltage drops except for the interfaces. The comparison shows that analytical models for tri-layer contacts to dual active layers agree well with FEM when the Specific Contact Resistances (SCR) of the contact interfaces is a significant part of the total resistance. Overall, there is a broad range of typical dual-layer-to-TLTLM contacts where the analytical model works. The insight (and quantifying) that the analytical model gives on the effect of the presence of the contact, on the distribution of current away from the contact is shown

Run-time performance and power optimization of parallel disparity estimation on many-core platforms

This paper investigates the use of many-core systems to execute the disparity estimation algorithm, used in stereo vision applications, as these systems can provide flexibility between performance scaling and power consumption. We present a learning-based run-time management approach which achieves a required performance threshold whilst minimizing power consumption through dynamic control of frequency and core allocation. Experimental results are obtained from a 61-core Intel Xeon Phi platform for the above investigation. The same performance can be achieved with an average reduction in power consumption of 27.8% and increased energy efficiency by 30.04% when compared to DVFS control alone without run-time management

The principles of communicative language use

The paper aims to overview some typical principles of communicative language use in a cognitive pragmatic approach applying a reductionist method in order to demonstrate that the well-known principles can be reduced to a very general rationality (economy) principle. After briefly reviewing the principles the paper re-evaluates them and provides a new classification of them relying on the definition of ostensive-inferential communication. The principles which can be divided into rationality and interpersonality principles are really principles of effective information transmission on objects and selves. They refer to two kinds of language use: informative and communicative ones. The only principles valid for only communicative language use are the communicative principle of relevance and the principle of communicative intention suggested in the present article. Finally, the paper reduces all rationality and interpersonality principles to a very general rationality principle, i.e., the cognitive principle of relevance

Historical ‘signposts’ and other temporal indicators in the Czech lexicon

This article posits that the Czechs employ a great many historical markers, previously applied to other events of national importance, which help to shape collective memory and right the ‘wrongs’ of the past. It is argued that these temporal indicators share a number of clearly defined characteristics, and that their use is too systematic and calculated to be merely a function of the constraints of the lexicon. The first part of the study considers in detail questions of semantics (especially the distinction between denotation and connotation), the lexicographical sources available to the researcher, and the lexical ‘signpost’ in context, while the second part focuses on practical examples of lexical re-appropriation since 1918, with particular reference to dictionaries and the Czech National Corpus.University of Wolverhampto