The Stacks (Library of Anglo-American Culture & History - FID AAC, Göttingen State and University Library)
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On Regression Modeling in Varieties Research
No full textOne particularly prominent methodological development in linguistics is what has been termed the “quantitative turn”: Not only are more and more studies using statistical tools to explore data and to test hypotheses, the complexity of the statistical methods employed is growing as well. This development is particularly prominent in all kinds of corpus‐linguistic studies: 20 years ago chi‐squared tests, t‐tests, and Pearson's r reigned supreme, but now more and more corpus studies are using multivariate exploratory tools and, for hypothesis testing, multifactorial predictive modeling techniques, in particular regression models (and, increasingly, tree‐based methods). However welcome this development is, it, and especially its pace as well as the fact that few places offer rigorous training in statistical methods, comes with its own risks, chief among them that analytical methods are misapplied, which can lead imprecise, incomplete, or wrong analyses. In this paper, I will revisit a recent regression‐analytic study in the research area of English varieties (on clause‐final also and only in three Asian Englishes) to: highlight in particular three fundamental yet frequent mistakes that it exemplifies; discuss why and how each of these mistakes should be addressed; reanalyze the data (as far as is possible with what is available) and show briefly how that affects the analysis's results and interpretation
Contemporary Australia and Emerging Challenges
No full textThis reflection paper focuses on the role of the English language and social media in the context of the Australian mandatory detention system. After presenting Australia’s controversial border policy, the linguistic reality of detention is briefly explored to show that, on the one hand, refugees gain linguistic agency by acquiring and using English with different actors while, on the other, the ‘linguascape’ of detention remains embedded in broader dynamics of oppression and subjugation. The article further discusses how refugees’ digital counter-discursive practices enacted on social media concurrently aim at dismantling the dehumanizing, exclusionary, and obliterating anti-refugee rhetoric that pervades political and media landscapes in contemporary Australia
The SENSE-Transactional Radio Instruction Experience
No full textThis study examines the SENSE-TRI program’s effectiveness in improving the fundamental literacy skills of grade 3 learners in insurgency-challenged Gombe and Adamawa states of Nigeria during the COVID-19 lockdown. A quasi-experimental design was employed, with 400 participants equally divided between randomly selected schools and pupils from SENSE intervention schools (the treatment group) and a counterfactual group from schools and pupils not participating in the SENSE-TRI program (the comparison group). The learners’ performance in both groups was assessed by the abbreviated Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA), focusing on tasks such as letter-sound identification, syllable sound identification, familiar word reading, invented word reading, and reading comprehension. The TRI program compared learners’ scores in the treatment group with those of learners in the comparison group using Tobit regression models. The results revealed that sociodemographic variables had no significant independent influence on the observed outcomes. However, the scores showed a statistically significant improvement in the literacy abilities of the treatment group on all parameters and tasks compared to the control group. This improvement exceeded the initial SENSE baseline reading proficiency aggregate values, indicating the program’s effectiveness in both challenging and normal circumstances as a possible way out when no schools exist
Histories of Northern and Regional Australia
No full textThe Australian Soldier Settlement Scheme after World War I is generally acknowledged as a policy failure with few applicants ultimately able to transition to life as successful farmers. The existing literature, as well as the influential Pike Report highlights systematic failures by the government. Poor planning, a lack of training, inconsistent decision making, and a slow and inflexible bureaucracy, are often cited. This article considers the small settlement in the Boyne Valley in Central Queensland and argues that, in addition to the scheme being poorly managed a lack of human capital was the most significant factor leading to failure. Drawing on an analysis of 104 Dead Farm Files held in the Queensland State archives, this article argues that failure would have been likely even under a well-managed scheme as too many of the men were damaged mentally and physically from their war experience
Histories of Northern and Regional Australia
No full textNorthern Queensland has a rich history of the visual arts dating from early surveys of the Far North. Historically, however, the story of the arts in Australia evolved in its telling from the southern capitals, leaving gaps in understandings of Queensland’s contribution to the broader narrative. In examining the lived experience of artists, patrons, directors and art groups based in Northern Queensland during the scope of this study, a distinctly contemporary cultural landscape emerges, informing a more nuanced understanding of Australian art history. This paper is drawn from the work of Dr Forbes whose doctoral thesis documented the history of Northern Queensland Visual Arts from 1971 to 1981. In examining subject matter, technique and style, it was found that artists were strongly influenced by contemporary Western – as well as non-Western – techniques, challenging traditional notions of landscape painting. In addition, the need for education, cultural programmes and spaces created challenges resolved while living and working in situ. The resulting works, included in private, regional, state, national and international collections, exist as a legacy, evidencing this critical period in the region’s cultural history
Book Review
No full textOpen Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg (1026
Can Chatbots Effectively Verify Political Information?
No full textThis article presents a comparative analysis of the potential of two large language model (LLM)-based chatbots—ChatGPT and Bing Chat (recently rebranded to Microsoft Copilot)—to detect veracity of political information. We use AI auditing methodology to investigate how chatbots evaluate true, false, and borderline statements on five topics: COVID-19, Russian aggression against Ukraine, the Holocaust, climate change, and LGBTQ + -related debates. We compare how the chatbots respond in high- and low-resource languages by using prompts in English, Russian, and Ukrainian. Furthermore, we explore chatbots’ ability to evaluate statements according to political communication concepts of disinformation, misinformation, and conspiracy theory, using definition-oriented prompts. We also systematically test how such evaluations are influenced by source attribution. The results show high potential of ChatGPT for the baseline veracity evaluation task, with 72% of the cases evaluated in accordance with the baseline on average across languages without pre-training. Bing Chat evaluated 67% of the cases in accordance with the baseline. We observe significant disparities in how chatbots evaluate prompts in high- and low-resource languages and how they adapt their evaluations to political communication concepts with ChatGPT providing more nuanced outputs than Bing Chat. These findings highlight the potential of LLM-based chatbots in tackling different forms of false information in online environments, but also point to the substantial variation in terms of how such potential is realized due to specific factors (e.g. language of the prompt or the topic).Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschunghttp://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002347Weizenbaum-Institut e.V. (1789