Locating the 'Age of Prescriptivism' in Late Modern periodical reviews: a corpus-assisted discourse analytic approach

This paper reports the findings of a corpus-based study of prescriptive and normative discourses in Late Modern English review periodicals, using a purpose-built diachronic corpus of review articles published during the period 1750–1899. Drawing on established protocols from Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies and systematic comparison of 15 sub-corpora, it identifies decades during which prescriptive discourses were most frequent. This distributional pattern provides empirical evidence of an ‘Age of Prescriptivism’ in periodical reviewing, during which prescriptive discourses reached their zenith. Whilst the label ‘Age of Prescriptivism’ has been applied to a number of periods of English in recent decades, the findings reported here show clearly that the eighteenth century was the locus of prescriptive activity in the review periodical genre. The innovative application of corpus-based discourse-analytic methodologies for the identification of normative trends reported in this paper also has potential implications for studying prescriptivism as a sociohistorical linguistic phenomenon in other diachronic contexts

Pinpointing prescriptive impact. Using change point analysis for the study of prescriptivism at the idiolectal level

This paper presents a single-author case study which demonstrates that the statistical modelling technique change point analysis (CPA) can provide compelling evidence of prescriptive impact at an idiolectal level. It has been hypothesized that Late Modern English review periodicals consistently pushed a prescriptive agenda, and that this impacted language use ( McIntosh, 1998 ; Percy, 2009 ). A lack of empirical research has, however, left these claims unsubstantiated, partly because evaluating prescriptivist endeavours has proven challenging. Using a purpose-built 3-million-token idiolectal corpus spanning 7 decades, this paper reports that it is possible to discern a striking change in usage. Use of CPA enables this change to be located precisely, and correlated to the author’s exposure to a prescriptive review of her work. In demonstrating how effectively CPA can provide a sophisticated correlation indicative of causality, this paper showcases the suitability of this technique to the study of prescriptivism

Intervention effectiveness following gender-based violence and forced migration: A critical systematic literature review and synthesis of qualitative studies from the voice of the client

Aim. This systematic review aims to understand effective therapeutic interventions from the voice of the client; female forced migrants, post-migration who have endured and survived gender-based violence. Background. Professionals are implementing therapeutic interventions for this population whose experiences convey both vulnerabilities and resiliencies, yet a common understanding of what effective interventions are has not yet been established in the literature. Design. Systematic narrative review and synthesis of literature. Data sources. Electronic database search sources included ScienceDirect, SAGE, PubMed, and Scopus. Professionals in the field, think tanks, and research organizations were also consulted to locate texts which could contribute to the review. Review methods. A systematic narrative review and synthesis was undertaken including academic and grey literature. To begin, general search terms were used to include all relevant texts. The selection of final literature was then narrowed by defining inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results. A total of nine texts were identified for the final synthesis of findings. The representation of women the studies focused on was narrow. However, four core themes were identified: professional preparedness and perspective, intentional progression of therapeutic themes, interprofessional collaboration and referrals, and culturally-informed therapy. Conclusion. Four core themes describing effective interventions for female forced migrants who are victim/survivors of gender-based violence have emerged from current gray and academic literature. These themes may impact the effectiveness of implementing programs and therapeutic interventions for clients within this population in the future

Peptide Therapy

Abstract Peptide therapy is a type of alternative medicine. The science behind why peptides are beneficial is apparent in many standard medications used every day. Studies have been done on different peptides and how their usage can benefit healing. Peptides are naturally found in the body but can also be made artificially. They can be used as additional therapy or alone. The purpose of this study will be focusing on two peptides and the many valuable capabilities they possess. Several studies regarding the effects of Thymosin Beta 4 (Tβ4) and Body Protective Compound (BPC) 157 were utilized to further explain the benefits of peptide therapy. Peptide therapy is an interesting concept that stems from the basis of the pathophysiology of the human body

Polarized Discourses of Abortion in English: A Corpus-based Study of Semantic Prosody and Discursive Salience

Amidst ongoing global debate about reproductive rights, questions have emerged about the role of language in reinforcing stigma around termination. Amongst some ‘pro-choice’ groups, the use of pro-life is discouraged, and anti-abortion is recommended. In UK official documents, termination of pregnancy is generally used, and abortion is avoided. Lack of empirical research focused on lexis means it is difficult to draw conclusions about the role language plays in this polarized debate, however. This paper, therefore, explores whether the stigma associated with abortion may reflect negative semantic prosody. Synthesizing quantitative corpus linguistic methods and qualitative discourse analysis, it presents findings that indicate that abortion has unfavourable semantic prosody in a corpus of contemporary internet English. These findings are considered in relation to discursive salience, offering a theoretical framework and operationalization of this theory. Through this lens, the paper considers whether the discursive salience of extreme anti-abortion discourses may strengthen the negative semantic prosody of abortion. It, therefore, combines a contribution to theory around semantic prosody with a caution to those using abortion whilst unaware of its possibly unfavourable semantic prosody

Intervention effectiveness following gender-based violence and forced migration: A critical systematic literature review and synthesis of qualitative studies from the voice of the client

Aim. This systematic review aims to understand effective therapeutic interventions from the voice of the client; female forced migrants, post-migration who have endured and survived gender-based violence. Background. Professionals are implementing therapeutic interventions for this population whose experiences convey both vulnerabilities and resiliencies, yet a common understanding of what effective interventions are has not yet been established in the literature. Design. Systematic narrative review and synthesis of literature. Data sources. Electronic database search sources included ScienceDirect, SAGE, PubMed, and Scopus. Professionals in the field, think tanks, and research organizations were also consulted to locate texts which could contribute to the review. Review methods. A systematic narrative review and synthesis was undertaken including academic and grey literature. To begin, general search terms were used to include all relevant texts. The selection of final literature was then narrowed by defining inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results. A total of nine texts were identified for the final synthesis of findings. The representation of women the studies focused on was narrow. However, four core themes were identified: professional preparedness and perspective, intentional progression of therapeutic themes, interprofessional collaboration and referrals, and culturally-informed therapy. Conclusion. Four core themes describing effective interventions for female forced migrants who are victim/survivors of gender-based violence have emerged from current gray and academic literature. These themes may impact the effectiveness of implementing programs and therapeutic interventions for clients within this population in the future

Religion, Post-Religionism, and Religioning: Religious Studies and Contemporary Cultural Debates

The interaction between the contemporary study of religion and contemporary cultural debates has tended to be marked by indifference, and there have been relatively few attempts to engage with the discourses of postmodern theory. In this paper I examine some of the ways in which recent anthropologists have sought to question some of their basic disciplinary assumptions with regard to the 'culture concept', particularly by putting forward strategies of 'writing against culture' or by writing culture in more dynamic terms (as cultural or culturing). This insight, which is relevant in itself to the contemporary study of religion, can be extended to a re-evaluation of the 'religion' concept, which I suggest could be reconstructed in terms of practice theory as religious practice or religioning. In conclusion I argue that to maintain its relevance within the broad field of contemporary humanities scholarship, the discipline of religious studies needs to aligrt itself more clearly (theoretically and methodologically) with the dynamic interface between the approaches of cultural anthropology, cultural theory, and other postmodern' theoretical discourses