1,720,981 research outputs found
Researching discourses and contexts surrounding seniors: State-of-the art and future perspectives
No full textThe studies included in this edited volume explore discourses surrounding the ageing population, those who assist them, their families and the institutions/organisations that offer services to them. Qualitative and quantitative theoretical inputs from a variety of research domains – (socio)linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, cultural studies, cognitive science, as well as statistics and information technology – are employed to survey an array of themes that pay close attention to the linguistic, social, economic and ethical aspects regarding seniors. Different registers and genres are examined, which are produced by diverse diatopic distributions, diaphasic/diastratic variations and diamesic dimensions of the language.
All this underlines the importance of integrating various strands of analysis and multidisciplinary perspectives to attend to the complexity of a changing discourse and complex issue which are being looked at closely by the international scientific community. The book is suitable for a wide readership, including scholars and neophyte readers with an interest in discourse and cultural studies, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics
‘Family Sayings’: Two Generations of Italian Quack Doctors in 17h-Century London
No full textThe paper analyses the documents still extant concerning two Italian irregular practitioners who worked in London from the mid-seventeenth century. The analysis is carried out by comparing the handbills issued by the two Salvator Winter (father and son) and the ‘materia medica’ pamphlets of Winter Sr. In detail it looks for the permanence and/or development of medical terminology in the course of about fifty years, in order to verify any possible advancement in medical knowledge over this time. It also considers the fame achieved by Salvator Winter Sr. on the basis of mentions of his name and activities in contemporary literature
The integration of critical perspectives in ESP instruction: Social work students’ reflections on ageing identities and representations
No full textThe phenomenon of population ageing has created a greater demand for professionals with specialised knowledge and expertise who are willing to work with older people and better understand the complexity and diversity of later lives. Guided by the principle that a response to the needs and interests of older adults requires innovative pedagogies and research practices, the
current article presents the results of an ESP teaching intervention aimed to positively impact social work students’ beliefs regarding ageing and old age as well as their interest in working with older adults by bringing into focus the socially constructed, situated and ideological nature of language
and discourse. The study participants were involved in a series of task based activities, including critical text analysis as well as observations in local communities and interviews with older women and men in order to scrutinize the dominant ideologies and representations of later years and
to explore the diversity of individual pathways to ageing. Despite some limitations due to the small scale of the study, it can be observed that the adoption of accessible and eclectic critical approaches in the ESP context may be beneficial to challenge students’ assumptions about ageing and support them in developing skills and knowledge in gerontology
The cooperation between applied linguists and professional experts in the analysis of specialized discourse
No full textThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the possibilities of cooperation between applied linguists and professional experts in the analysis of specialized discourse. This type of cooperation has often been underlined in the ESP literature in the last few decades. Many scholars have emphasized the importance of promoting interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaboration, highlighting the usefulness of the integration of methodological diversity, as well as the exploration of possible connections among procedures and knowledge in order to achieve more focused and purposeful action. This interdisciplinary collaboration is deemed essential to better understand how practitioners use language to achieve the objectives of their professions. Indeed, in specialized communication, conditions of production and reception are crucial. The use of linguistic and semiotic resources can help to better understand and clarify professional practices or actions in typical institutional and specialized contexts.
The positions expressed in this paper will be drawn from relevant literature as well as from the writer’s direct experience in specific interdisciplinary research projects. The first case study refers to an interdisciplinary research project on the language and method of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory. This project was first suggested by various economists who had contacted some linguists jointly working on the analysis of economic discourse in order to reach a better interpretation of this text, and thus confront the problem of the various existing readings of the General Theory.
The second case study refers to two interdisciplinary research projects on the discourse and practices of international commercial arbitration. This research was promoted by a joint group of arbitration experts/practitioners and applied linguists jointly working on the problematic aspects of the formulation of arbitration texts in connection with recent changes in arbitration practices and with the process of increasing harmonization at an international level.
The issues identified show that linguistic explanations can be of great help to disciplinary experts – in this case economists and arbitration practitioners – to attain a more correct interpretation of the texts and practices in which they are commonly involved. Participation in interdisciplinary research with applied linguists has enabled practitioners to become more aware of the hidden implications of their practices and to discover how their own performances reflect their professional values and institutional goals in different contexts
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Specialised and professional discourse across media and genres
No full textThis book deals with discursive aspects of specialised communication, looking in particular at the role and scope of language and discourse in professional practice across a variety of fields and modes. Its chapters are diverse in their outlooks, analytical procedures, and object of enquiry, and span across different specialised domains, settings, genres, and media (from face-to-face communication to television, from traditional websites to social networking sites). In broad terms, they are all set in a discourse-analytical framework and share the ultimate purpose of providing new insights into the evolution of discourse practices used by professionals in a variety of specialised genres at a time characterised by rapid scientific and dramatic technological advances accompanied by important societal, sociotechnical and cultural transformations
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
