Corpus approaches to language in the media

The main aim of this chapter is to offer an overview of research that has adopted the methodology of Corpus Linguistics to study aspects of language use in the media. The overview begins by introducing the key principles and analytical tools adopted in corpus research. To demonstrate the contribution of corpus approaches to media linguistics, a selection of recent corpus studies is subsequently discussed. The final section summarises the strengths and limitations of corpus approaches and discusses avenues for further research

Health Inequalities Across The European Union Regions: A Beta-Convergence Approach

This work is devoted to the study of the variations of health status (measured by life expectancy) across the EU regions of NUTS II level. We apply existing tools developed in economic growth literature to study a mortality convergence. Using the idea of unconditional convergence model developed for economic growth, we can confirm a decrease or increase of regional health inequalities. The main research hypothesis is as follows: whether regions with lower initial life expectancies have experienced the largest increases in life expectancies. To verify the hypothesis of beta-convergence we use spatial econometric models which additionally allow to take the geographic dependence among the surveyed regions into consideration. Due to the heterogeneity of the surveyed spatial units we also verify the hypothesis of the club beta-convergence

Intersections and differentiations: a corpus-assisted discourse study of gender representations in the British press before, during and after the London Olympics 2012

This study examines the impact of a global sports event on gender representations in media reporting. Whereas previous research on gender, sport and media has been mainly concerned with sports events in the North American or Australian context, this study investigates the British media reporting before, during and after the London Olympics 2012. Our study follows the approach of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) and uses both quantitative and qualitative research procedures. The results reveal more balanced gender representations during the London Olympics in that the ‘regular’ biased associations were supressed in favour of positive references to female achievements. However, little carry-though of the ‘gains’ was noted. Also, this study shows that the positive associations intersected with national sentiments and were used to celebrate the nation-state. At the same time, some subtle resistance was observed to accepting as ‘truly’ British the non-white athletes and those not born in Britain

Mind: meet network. Emergence of features in conceptual metaphor.

As a human product, language reflects the psychological experience of man (Radden and Dirven, 2007). One model of language and human cognition in general is connectionism, by many linguists is regarded as mathematical and, therefore, too reductive. This opinion trend seems to be reversing, however, due to the fact that many cognitive researchers begin to appreciate one attribute of network models: feature emergence. In the course of a network simulation properties emerge that were neither inbuilt nor intended by its creators (Elman, 1998), in other words, the whole becomes more than just the sum of its parts. Insight is not only drawn from the network's output, but also the means that the network utilizes to arrive at the output.\ud It may seem obvious that the events of life should be meaningful for human beings, yet there is no widely accepted theory as to how do we derive that meaning. The most promising hypothesis regarding the question how the world is meaningful to us is that of embodied cognition (cf. Turner 2009), which postulates that the functions of the brain evolved so as to ‘understand’ the body, thus grounding the mind in an experiential foundation. Yet, the relationship between the body and the mind is far from perspicuous, as research insight is still intertwined with metaphors specific for the researcher’s methodology (Eliasmith 2003). It is the aim of this paper to investigate the conceptual metaphor in a manner that will provide some insight with regard to the role that objectification, as defined by Szwedek (2002), plays in human cognition and identify one possible consequence of embodied cognition.\ud If the mechanism for concept formation, or categorization of the world, resembles a network, it is reasonable to assume that evidence for this is to be sought in language. Let us then postulate the existence of a network mechanism for categorization and concept formation present in the human mind and initially developed to cope with the world directly accessible to the early human (i.e. tangible). Such a network would convert external inputs to form an internal, multi modal representation of a perceived object in the brain. The sheer amount of available information and the computational restrictions of the brain would force some sort of data compression, or a computational funnel. It has been shown that a visual perception network of this kind can learn to accurately label patterns (Elman, 1998). What is more, the compression of data facilitated the recognition of prototypes of a given pattern category rather than its peripheral representations, an emergent property that supports the prototype theory of the mental lexicon (cf. Radden and Dirven, 2007).\ud The present project proposes that, in the domain of cognition, the process of objectification, as defined by Szwedek (2002), would be an emergent property of such a system, or that if an abstract notion is computed by a neural network designed to cope with tangible concepts the data compression mechanism would require the notion to be conceptualized as an object to permit further processing. The notion of emergence of meaning from the operation of complex systems is recognised as an important process in a number of studies on metaphor comprehension. Feature emergence is said to occur when a non-salient feature of the target and the vehicle becomes highly salient in the metaphor (Utsumi 2005). Therefore, for example, should objectification emerge as a feature in the metaphor KNOWLEDGE IS A TREASURE, the metaphor would be characterised as having more\ud features of an object than either the target or vehicle alone. This paper focuses on providing a theoretical connectionist network based on the Elman-type network (Elman, 1998) as a model of concept formation where objectification would be an emergent feature. This is followed by a psychological experiment whereby the validity of this assumption is tested through a questionnaire where two groups of participants are asked to evaluate either metaphors or their components. The model proposes an underlying relation between the mechanism for concept formation and the omnipresence of conceptual metaphors, which are interpreted as resulting from the properties of the proposed network system.\ud Thus, an evolutionary neural mechanism is proposed for categorization of the world, that is able to cope with both concrete and abstract notions and the by-product of which are the abstract language-related phenomena, i.e. metaphors. The model presented in this paper aims at providing a unified account of how the various types of phenomena, objects, feelings etc. are categorized in the human mind, drawing on evidence from language.\ud References:\ud Szwedek, Aleksander. 2002. Objectification: From Object Perception To Metaphor Creation. In B. Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk and K. Turewicz (eds). Cognitive Linguistics To-day, 159-175. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.\ud Radden, Günter and Dirven, René. 2007. Cognitive English Grammar. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company\ud Eliasmith, Chris. 2003. Moving beyond metaphors: understanding the mind for what it is. Journal of Philosophy. C(10):493- 520.\ud Elman, J. L. et al. 1998. Rethinking innateness: A connectionist perspective on development. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press\ud Turner, Mark. 2009. Categorization of Time and Space Through Language. (Paper presented at the FOCUS2009 conference "Categorization of the world through language". Serock, 25-28 February 2009).\ud Utsumi, Akira. 2005. The role of feature emergence in metaphor appreciation, Metaphor and Symbol, 20(3), 151-172

How predictable are spontaneous decisions and hidden intentions? Comparing classification results based on previous responses with multivariate pattern analysis of fMRI BOLD signals

In two replication studies we examined response bias and dependencies in voluntary decisions. We trained a linear classifier to predict “spontaneous decisions” and in the second study “hidden intentions” from responses in preceding trials and achieved comparable prediction accuracies as reported for multivariate pattern classification based on voxel activities in frontopolar cortex. We discuss implications of our findings and suggest ways to improve classification analyses of fMRI BOLD signals that may help to reduce effects of response dependencies between trials

On Auslander-Reiten components of algebras without external short paths

We describe the structure of semi-regular Auslander-Reiten components of artin algebras without external short paths in the module category. As an application we give a complete description of self-injective artin algebras whose Auslander-Reiten quiver admits a regular acyclic component without external short paths

Investigating the dual function of gesture in blind and visually impaired children. (Poster)

Co-speech gesture research explores the role of gesture in communication, i.e. whether gestures are intended for the listener/audience (e.g. Mol et al. 2009; Alibali et al., 2001; Holler & Beattie, 2003) or support the process of speech production (Kita & Davies, 2009; Hostetter et al. 2007). To investigate the role of gesture in communication we turn to blind and visually impaired speakers whose opportunities to learn gestures visually are limited (cf. Iverson & Goldin-Meadow 1998; 2001). The present study aims at providing insight into the nature and occurrence of co-speech gestures in spontaneous speech: between blind, severely visually impaired and sighted individuals. Participants were asked to read a short story (either in print or in Braille) and to re-tell it to the interviewer. Care was taken to establish an environment in which the participants would feel safe and would not refrain from gesturing for fear of hurting themselves or others. We predicted that if blind speakers did not gesture as much as their visually impaired peers it would suggest that gesture is to some extent acquired through visual instruction. However, following Iverson et al. (2000) and Iverson and Goldin-Meadow (1998) we hypothesized that despite the absence of visual gestural stimuli during the language-learning process gesture is present in the language of the blind participants - but there would be differences in gesture form, types and functions. The present study aims at exploring and categorizing these differences, with regard to how sensory references are visible in the gestures of participants with various degrees of sight impairment. Regardless of dissimilarities, the presence of gesture in both the blind and impaired individuals points towards a dual function of co-speech gestures, i.e. a device for both the speaker and their interlocutor

A liquidity redistribution effect in intercorporate lending : evidence from private firms in Poland

Purpose: We examine the mechanism of intercorporate lending outside the business group, and a reaction of capital expenditures (CAPEX) and capital engagement in other firms to shocks in the provision of such loans. We diagnose the causes and effects of intercorporate lending outside the business group. Design/Methodology/Approach: We use panel data from annual reports (balance sheets and income statements) of 4,600 private Polish companies that provided loans to other firms in the period 2003-2014. We apply the vector autoregression panel model for microeconomic data and analysis of Granger causality, impulse response functions, and forecast error variation decomposition to explore the mechanism of intercorporate loan provision. Findings: Non-financial firms provide loans outside the business group through redistribution of their cash holdings generated from operating activity (cash flow) and long-term bank loans. The provision of loans by non-financial enterprises decreases CAPEX, as a result of the absence of free cash flows that were already used for loan provision. Shareholder loans substitute for capital engagement in other firms. Practical Implications: The findings could assist policymakers to notice that emergency borrowings from other companies are being used to defer defaults and introduce a new credit risk into the business sector. Originality/Value: The redistribution effect of cash holdings and money borrowed from banks provided to unrelated firms outside the business group is dangerous for the stability of the financial system due to the risk that these “indirect borrowers” will default.peer-reviewe

‘Bad’ mums tell the ‘untellable’: narrative practices and agency in online stories about postnatal depression on Mumsnet

Health research highlights transformative and therapeutic effects of peer-to-peer online communication. Yet, we still know little about the practices and processes that generate such effects. This paper seeks to contribute to this understanding by examining polylogue online stories about postnatal depression (PND) on the popular parenting website Mumsnet. Drawing on the notion of narrative, small stories and positioning, this study shows how a narrative discourse-analytical approach can reveal narrative practices used to project and transform illness identities. At the micro level, the analysis shows that the small stories studied here draw on two big canonical narratives confession and exemplum. Whereas confessions are a ‘way in’ to disclose PND, the ‘didactical’ exempla serve as a knowledge resource and tools of alignment, and validation helping women to narratively repair ‘spoiled’ identity. At the macro-level, the analysis highlights tensions that exist between hegemonic discourses about motherhood and personal PND stories in which women appropriate and re-work these discourses to break silence and exercise agency. This study shows how together with technosocial factors these narrative practices can work to produce transformative effects of trouble telling and sharing online and contributes to a better understanding of digital practices underlying peer-to-peer interactions about stigmatised conditions