1,720,991 research outputs found
Food Across Cultures - Linguistic Insights in Transcultural Tastes
No full textThis edited volume brings together original sociolinguistic and cultural contributions on food as an instrument to explore diasporic identities. Focusing on food practices in cross-cultural contact, the authors reveal how they can be used as a powerful vehicle for positive intercultural exchange either though conservation and the maintenance of cultural continuity, or through hybridization and the means through which migrant communities find compromise, or even consent, within the host community. Each chapter presents a fascinating range of data and new perspectives on cultures and languages in contact: from English (and some of its varieties) to Italian, German, Spanish, and to Japanese and Palauan, as well as an exemplary range of types of contact, in colonial, multicultural, and diasporic situations. The authors use a range of integrated approaches to examine how socio-linguistic food practices can, and do, contribute to identity construction in diverse transnational and diasporic contexts. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of translation, semiotics, cultural studies and sociolinguistics
Design and monitoring of a safe pedestrian crossing facility: via Venezia Giulia, Rome
No full textNearly all the travels have their “on foot” part; walking is therefore part of the everyday life of everyone and
must regarded as the most important mean of transport. Nearly all the “on foot” movements are “interrupted”
by crossings of car streets; crossing points are by far the most dangerous and uncomfortable spots for
pedestrians and are therefore the crucial points of a well designed and functional pedestrian networks. The
design of good pedestrian facilities should be made according to pedestrians’ needs, it should enhance
actual and perceived safety levels.
Pedestrians’ accidents are fortunately relatively rare events, the location of intervention priority only on the
base of statistical data is therefore not a satisfying approach, rather more or less analytical “preventive”
method, suitable to evaluate the functional level of crossing facilities, should be used. Evaluation methods
should be based on simple and easy to be made measures, and should return objective and easy to be read
results. The method used in the via Venezia Giulia case study is focused on the characterization of vehicular
flow and of the “functional quality” of the crossing facility, which is based on quantification of pedestrians
behaviour and pedestrians/car drivers interaction; moreover short interviews with users have been made to
understand reactions to the novelty.
The designed crossing point is located in a peripheral zone of Rome and connect a school to a park; the
crossed street has one lane/direction, a rather wide section and is characterized by high vehicular speeds.
The adopted solution is characterized by the provision of a median refuge, to divide the crossing distance
into two parts so to allow pedestrians to interact with just one vehicular flow at time; the provision of the
island results in a change of alignment for cars that induce drivers to slow down. Observations have been
made before and right after the intervention and shows good results; observations made more than one year
after the construction of the facilities have been used to evaluate long term effects
'Stuff the Turkey!': An Investigation of Food, Language and Performative Identity Construction in Eat Pray Love
No full textRace, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity are commonly considered the cornerstones of our identity, they are the first most visible or perceivable signs of what R.T. Lakoff qualifies as a person’s “major identity” (Lakoff 2006:143). Such signs, however, often remain on the surface, as mere categories or taxonomical groupings; an individual or indeed a nation’s core identity often resides at a deeper, less conspicuous level: “minor identities, like culinary preferences and sophistication contribute significantly to our sense of ourselves: who we are, how competent we are, who our friends are or should be, whom we admire or disdain” (id.,:165). The present study aims to investigate the manner in which food, and culinary prowess, can serve to bring together individuals belonging to different nations and cultures within a Community of Practice (Eckert/Wenger: 2005), a sort of macro-identitary category, which breaks down linguistic, cultural and nationalistic divides and forges emotional bonds that spring from a common appreciation of good food. This paper investigates the original (American) and dubbed (Italian) versions of the film Eat Pray Love, with the main focus on the first part of the film Eat, which takes place in Italy. Though the film is not renowned for its critical acclaim, it is felt that the focus on food as a means of crossing boundaries (including those pertaining to the act of translation itself) and building communities, makes this audio-visual product worthy of study. The idea of ‘crossing’, seen as both physical and linguistic diasporic transferal, is in fact the leitmotif that runs through the entire film. Indeed, it is through the very visceral, shared emotions which stem from sharing good food and drink that the main character Elizabeth Gilbert (Julia Roberts) is accepted within the Italian community. It must be said that the manner in which these shared emotions are portrayed in the American and Italian versions differs considerably, thus close attention will be paid to the many markers of identity discourse such as culture-bound terms, specialized lexis, code-mixing, code-switching and phonetic variation
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
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
- …
