Cyber Places, Crime Patterns, and Cybercrime Prevention: An Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis approach through Data Science

For years, academics have examined the potential usefulness of traditional criminological theories to explain and prevent cybercrime. Some analytical frameworks from Environmental Criminology and Crime Analysis (ECCA), such as the Routine Activities Approach and Situational Crime Prevention, are frequently used in theoretical and empirical research for this purpose. These efforts have led to a better understanding of how crime opportunities are generated in cyberspace, thus contributing to advancing the discipline. However, with a few exceptions, other ECCA analytical frameworks — especially those based on the idea of geographical place— have been largely ignored. The limited attention devoted to ECCA from a global perspective means its true potential to prevent cybercrime has remained unknown to date. In this thesis we aim to overcome this geographical gap in order to show the potential of some of the essential concepts that underpin the ECCA approach, such as places and crime patterns, to analyse and prevent four crimes committed in cyberspace. To this end, this dissertation is structured in two phases: firstly, a proposal for the transposition of ECCA's fundamental propositions to cyberspace; and secondly, deriving from this approach some hypotheses are contrasted in four empirical studies through Data Science. The first study contrasts a number of premises of repeat victimization in a sample of more than nine million self-reported website defacements. The second examines the precipitators of crime at cyber places where allegedly fixed match results are advertised and the hyperlinked network they form. The third explores the situational contexts where repeated online harassment occurs among a sample of non-university students. And the fourth builds two metadata-driven machine learning models to detect online hate speech in a sample of Twitter messages collected after a terrorist attack. General results show (1) that cybercrimes are not randomly distributed in space, time, or among people; and (2) that the environmental features of the cyber places where they occur determine the emergence of crime opportunities. Overall, we conclude that the ECCA approach and, in particular, its place-based analytical frameworks can also be valid for analysing and preventing crime in cyberspace. We anticipate that this work can guide future research in this area including: the design of secure online environments, the allocation of preventive resources to high-risk cyber places, and the implementation of new evidence- based situational prevention measure

Irony and Parody in a Spanish Translation of Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman: A Relevance-Theoretical Approach

This paper seeks to explore the translation of irony and parody. The theoretical framework followed will be relevance-theory, which has highlighted that the expression of a certain attitude may be common to these two figures. The work under analysis will be a Spanish rendering of Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman, which criticism has regarded as a parody of nineteenth-century Victorian fiction. It will be assumed that for readers to be able to cope with the meaning of parody and irony, they will have to go beyond the propositional content expressed in the utterances in which these resources are found. Furthermore, their translation will necessarily require strategies that go beyond the "literal" level of the words through which irony and parody are expressed. Our contention is that the proposals put forward by relevance theory may be useful in this respect, since they stress the importance of the inferential recognition of the speaker's communicative intention. Both such recognition and its reflection in the target text, in such a way that it requires no extra processing effort from the readership are the main aspects to be faced by the translator

Leonor Ruiz Gurillo and M. Belén Alvarado Ortega, eds. 2013. Irony and Humor: From Pragmatics to Discourse. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 270 pp.

Throughout the history of literary criticism the relationship between humor and irony has been a recurrent topic of interest, rooted as much in classical works tike Aristotle''s Art of rhetoric or Cicero''s De oratore as in the more recent contributions of scholars such as George Meredith 1956 (1877) and Henri Bergson 1956 (1900). Moreover throughout the twentieth century it was analyzed from a variety of literary and pragmatic perspectives. The book edited by Ruiz Gurillo and Alvarado Ortega sits therefore within a rich and longstanding tradition, while supplying substantial work that derives from the most influential areas of current linguistic research. Based on the investigations of irony and humor being made by the GRIALE group, it offers the reader interesting and updated contributions to trends of current research..

Review of Elices Agudo, Juan Francisco (2004). Historical and theoretical approaches to English satire. München: Lincom Studies in English Linguistics

The origins of satire lead us to the origins of Western civilisation, both in its practice and in its earliest theorisation (Horace, Juvenal)1. Its complexity has always attracted the interest of criticism. Having this perspective in mind, the author has sought to provide a systematic analysis of satire that covers both aspects of history and theory. The work under analysis has therefore aimed to cope with those aspects which are essential to understand the peculiarities, functioning and implications of satire

Influence of obesity on the course of inflammatory bowel disease

One of the leading public health issues of the 21st century is that the prevalence of obesity worldwide has grown to epidemic proportions. The more common inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) suggests that obesity plays a role in the pathogenesis of IBD. Epidemiological data on this issue are still quite contradictory. Similarly, studies examining the impact that obesity may have on the natural history of the disease have yielded inconsistent results. Regardless of its impact on the pathogenesis or natural history of IBD, the growing prevalence of obesity in this population leads to the need for a better understanding of the effect it has on IBD management. The aim of this study is to review scientific publications examining the impact of obesity on the course of inflammatory bowel disease

Some Proposals to Cope with Forms of Irony Typically Found in Literary Texts from a Relevance-Theoretical Perspective

The study of irony has always been a field of interest for diverse disciplines. Whereas irony had been traditionally explained as a contrast between what was said and what was meant, more recent, pragmatically-oriented studies have adopted a wider perspective, by considering aspects like the speaker’s attitude, intention or context. Among these approaches, relevance theory has proposed an ostensive-inferential approach to communication, whereby the addressee seeks to infer the speaker’s intention. Such an approach seems to be appropriate for the study of irony, and in fact, irony has been a hotly-debated issue within the relevance-theoretical framework (Sperber and Wilson 1981, 1978), even before the model as such (Sperber and Wilson 1986/95) was explicitly fleshed out. Moreover, the proposals made reach very recent times (for instance, Wilson, 2006). In one of the contributions by Sperber and Wilson (1998), they claimed that irony was not a natural kind, and enhanced the echoic nature of verbal irony. A distinction between ostensive and non-ostensive forms of irony was put forward. Precisely, among the latter, Sperber and Wilson gave as instances forms such as dramatic irony, or irony of fate. Such types of irony may be frequently found in literary texts. As a matter of fact, they abound in the corpus selected for our study, Celestina (Fernando de Rojas, 1499/1502). This Spanish work was soon translated into English (Mabbe, 1631). The present paper sets out to provide a relevance-theoretical account of these forms of irony as manifested in the work. The discussion will be structured as follows: after the introduction of the theoretical background, we shall explain the tenets that can be applied in the forms of irony traced and under study in the corpus, and will provide with examples to illustrate our claims. Finally, the conclusions reached will be presented. The theory established a dichotomy between ostensive and non-ostensive forms of irony (Sperber & Wilson, 1998). Precisely, among the latter, these authors referred to forms such as tragic irony or irony of fate and dramatic irony. These and other related forms of irony abound in the corpus selected for our study: Celestina, an important literary Spanish work of the Late Middle Ages written by Fernando de Rojas (1499). All in all, therefore, the purpose of the present work is to analyse the forms of irony which have regarded as non-ostensive or non-echoic, taking into consideration that they seem to occur in literary works, as Rojas' work suggests. As a central hypothesis, we shall argue that the distinction between echoic and non-echoic irony should be best approached in terms of degree, as a continuum. Moreover, the corpus reveals that these forms of irony are most likely found in communicative acts which entail complex relationships between the different participants, so that not all the characters involved may have access to the context envisaged by the speaker, on the one hand, and on the other hand, characters’ actions may be mediated by the presence of an internal author that is only perceived by the external readership. Therefore, as a consequence of the differences in choice and accessibility, we shall find different levels of communication between addressers and addressees. These levels may contribute to the explanation of the forms of irony referred to above. Key words: Relevance-Theoretical Approach; Echoic Irony; Ostensive Irony; Forms Of Irony Found in Literary Texts; Celestin

Towards a Historical Synthesis of the Concept of Irony.

The present essay aims to analyse the ways in which the concept of irony, characterised by its great versatility, has been approached throughout history, and how the different historical trends may have influenced the way it is understood nowadays, especially in the framework of relevance theory. Then it focuses upon the evolution of the recurrent traits of the relevance approach and relates it to other contemporary proposals. Finally, it refers to the latest trends in the investigation of irony and suggests possible lines of development or further research both within relevance theory and in other approaches

Yus, Francisco (2016). Humour and Relevance. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Relevance theory has been designed as a framework which seeks to account for ostensive-inferential communication (initiated by Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995; and developed by Blakemore 1992; Carston 2002; Wilson & Sperber 2004; Clark 2013, among others). Apart from significant studies on this theory concerning fields such as grammar, misunderstanding, identity and discourse, social media and multimodality, cyberpragmatics, metaphor or irony, over the years Francisco Yus has published extensively on the study of humour within this theory (e.g. Yus 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2017; see also 1998a, 1998b for web pages created and constantly updated by Yus that offer a comprehensive account and the fullest range of all aspects of research undertaken within relevance theory)

The use of whereas and whereas-clauses in Swift's The Drapier's Letters

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was actively involved in the political affairs of the Ireland of his life-time. Even though he belonged to the higher social classes, namely, the Anglo-Irish ruling minority, he sought to make the whole of the Irish population aware of their economic and political conditions, so that his “Countrymen” or “Fellow-Servants” (as he addressed the whole of the Irish) may pursue to improve their situation. In order to become closer to his intended audience, he decided to use several personae or fictional characters. One of these was the drapier, as the identity chosen in most of the series of seven Letters known as The Drapier’s Letters (1724). Although he adopted many colloquial expressions and the register that a shop-keeper would employ, he was fully aware of the legal implications both of the whole issue at large and also of the particular proposals that he was making. This apparent inconsistency was meant to provide the Irish with the tools which he found necessary for them in their struggle to attain better political and economic conditions. It may be hypothesized that one of the aspects illustrating Swift’s use of both colloquial language and the legal register is the connector whereas: on the one hand, as a discourse marker with its everyday meanings; on the other hand, with legal senses. The present paper seeks to explore and systematise these uses