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18265 papers
This study explores the pragmatic implications of lexical choices in divorce-related dialogues in Pakistani TV dramas, analyzing their adherence to Grice’s Cooperative Principles. Dialogues from five popular TV dramas aired between 2020 and 2024 were examined using a qualitative research. The analysis focused on violations of conversational maxims, particularly those of quality and manner, to uncover the implicatures that reinforce patriarchal ideologies. The findings reveal that these dramas often depict divorce as a tool for control and humiliation, with lexical choices perpetuating negative stereotypes of women as subservient and disposable. Dialogues frequently flout maxims to create implied meanings that normalise male dominance and diminish female agency, positioning women as passive recipients of societal control. This language underscores hierarchical family structures, with men exerting authority and women bearing the blame for marital discord. By highlighting the media's significant role in shaping societal attitudes, this study underscores the urgent need for responsible portrayals of sensitive topics like divorce. It advocates for balanced narratives that challenge regressive gender roles and promote gender equality. This research contributes to the discourse on language, media, and gender, emphasizing the power of lexical choices in shaping cultural norms and public perceptions.
While several dimensional sentiment resources with valence-arousal annotations exist, they are not appropriate for domain-specific sentiment applications, especially psychological counseling texts which usually contain more high-negative and high-arousal words and phrases. This study (1) builds a Chinese valence-arousal resource in the psychological counseling domain called CVAT-PC, the first text corpus including 2,400 multi-sentence texts for psychological counseling with valence-arousal ratings manually annotated based on the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) rating scale, and (2) evaluates the proposed resource using different transformer-based models, including ELECTRA, XLNet, BERT, MacBERT and RoBERTa. We plan to release the entire CVAT-PC corpus with fully annotated valence-arousal ratings to facilitate future development in related research areas.
The article considers one of the most complex criminal law norms on officeholder crimes – diversion of public funds (Article 285.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The author uses the interdisciplinary methodology of norm analysis and explores the main categories fixed in the disposition – expenditure, public funds, recipient of public funds. There are four stages in the study – the study of the lexical meaning of the category, the definition of its meaning in budget legislation (regulatory), in administrative (the first level of protective legislation), and at the final stage determines the meaning of the term in regards to criminal law sense. The disposition of Article 285.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation has a blank character and in order to establish its content, it is necessary to refer to the norms of primary legislation. The research conducted by the author allows us to conclude about the intersectoral belonging of the norms of diversion of public funds, including in terms of the categorical apparatus. Thus, by studying the three system–forming categories of the corpus delicti provided for in Article 285.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - expenditure of public funds, and the recipient of public funds revealed the inconsistency of the criminal law norm under consideration with the principles of legality, justice, equality. To solve this problem, the author proposes to amend art. 285.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation by including in it indications of the possibility of committing a crime by an officeholder recipient of funds from the budget, as well as to clarify the concept of "expenditure" and "public funds" in the Ruling of the Plenary Session of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
Determinologisation is one of the actively growing tendencies in the modern Russian language development. However, the complex process of adapting a specialised lexeme to the general linguistic environment, its definition and criteria remain a controversial issue in modern linguistics, which determines the relevance of this study. The article aims to consider one way of transforming a term into a commonly used word. Based on the material of mass media texts of the 1990–2020s, the study traces the discursive migration path of the QR code term. The transformation of this term essential for modern society was complicated by the new loan word assimilation and consisted in a gradual transition from a term to a colloquial word. The research relied on distributional, source study, and corpus analysis in conjunction with comparative and statistical methods (using the "Integrum" database and the scientific electronic library elibrary.ru) when analysing the lexical material from the semantic, statistical, and functional perspectives to make reliable generalisations and obtain new conclusions. The article examines the process of adaptation to the Russian language environment the foreign language abbreviation, namely the first component of the word QR code, underwent. This adaptation is embodied in the functionally unrestricted variants k ’ yuar-kod/kuar-kod/kyuar-kod and in the colloquial variants kverkod/kver-kod/kiarkodkuar/k ’ yuar/k ’ yu-kod/kyuar/kyur-kod. Neutral variants are also analysed from the stand point of the principles of Russian orthography and norms. As one determinologisation stage, the study considers the process of semantic development of the neutral variants QR-kod/k ’ yuar-kod/kuar-kod/kyuar-kod, their derivational activity, and involvement in language game. The article also reveals extralinguistic factors that impacted on various stages of the QR code adaptation by the language environment. These include the approval of the QR code by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as a standard for mobile phones (2011) and the COVID-19 pandemic (2020).
At the current stage of the development of Ukrainian proper vocabulary, in particular in the post-Soviet period, the subsystem of modern Ukrainian urban names has undergone deeper and more systematic changes. According to linguists, this situation was caused by a distinct development trend such as de-ideologization. After all, the massive nature of the changes observed in Ukrainian urbanonymy, in particular in the western and central parts of Ukraine, is explained by the democratic procedure of replacing the proper names of streets, squares, parks, squares, microdistricts, etc., which, according to current Ukrainian legislation, is implemented on the basis of a resolution of the local council, and not the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, as provided by the procedure for changing the proper names of settlements. However, the democratic nature of the procedure for changing Ukrainian urban names, in our opinion, became the main reason for the insufficient or superficial linguistic examination of both urban neologisms and already traditional onims, which enables the functioning of many proper names of urban objects, the structure of which contradicts the norms of the Ukrainian language. Spelling errors are a characteristic type of violation of the norms of the Ukrainian literary language in the subsystem of Ukrainian urban names of the post-totalitarian era. Most often, when writing modern Ukrainian urban names, the rules of capitalization are violated. Urbanonymy is a specific onymic subsystem, which reacts extremely actively to social changes and is especially dependent on the political regime, which is connected with the memorial function of the names of inner-city objects. In this connection, the analysis of the concept of historical memory in urbanonymy becomes especially relevant. the negative influence of the environment affects the ecolinguistic state of various levels and even classes of the Ukrainian onymic vocabulary of the post-totalitarian era differently. Ukrainian anthroponymy, in particular people’s proper names and patronymic names, as well as oikonyms, urbanonyms, ergonyms, are adversely affected at the lexical level. Key words: concept, ecolinguistics, onim.
This study investigates the predicate-argument structure in Korean language processing.Despite the importance of distinguishing mandatory arguments and optional modifiers in sentences, research in this area has been limited.We introduce a dataset with token-level annotations which labels mandatory and optional elements as complements and adjuncts, respectively.Particularly, we reclassify certain Korean phrases, previously misidentified as adverbial phrases, as complements, addressing misuses of the term adjunct in existing Korean treebanks.Utilizing a Korean dependency treebank, we develop an automatic labeling technique for complements and adjuncts.Experiments using the proposed dataset yield satisfying results, demonstrating that the dataset is trainable and reliable.
This chapter seeks to illuminate hidden practices in simultaneous interpreting of xenophobic speeches in the European Parliament. While xenophobic rhetoric has become increasingly normalized in politics, the issue remains largely unaddressed in conference interpreter training and practice where norms such as the conduit model are still being adhered to. This is why, the chapter argues, xenophobic rhetoric poses specific challenges to conference interpreters, who use different sets of strategies that influence target texts. Taking a corpus of 22 xenophobic plenary speeches in German and their simultaneous interpretations into English, French, and Hungarian as case studies, this chapter explores hidden strategies employed by simultaneous interpreters in the face of xenophobic rhetoric. The speeches were given by right-wing extremist MEPs between 2014 and 2018. The integrative method used for the corpus analysis combines Jäger’s Critical Discourse Analysis and Hoey’s concept of lexical priming. Specifically, framing strategies pertinent to xenophobic discourse are triangulated with linguistic features elucidated from source-target text and target-target-text comparisons, most prominently vocabulary choices and collocations. The study shows that the interpreters use a variety of strategies that result in the xenophobic force of the utterance being toned down in some instances and strengthened in others. Two opposing trends emerge: the Hungarian booth’s tendency towards emphasizing the message and the French booth’s tendency towards mitigating it.
This work considers implementation of a diachronic predictor of valence, arousal and dominance ratings of English words. The estimation of affective ratings is based on data on word co-occurrence statistics in the large diachronic Google Books Ngram corpus. Affective ratings from the NRC VAD dictionary are used as target values for training. When tested on synchronic data, the obtained Pearson‘s correlation coefficients between human affective ratings and their machine ratings are 0.843, 0.779 and 0.792 for valence, aroused and dominance, respectively. We also provide a detailed analysis of the accuracy of the predictor on diachronic data. The main result of the work is creation of a diachronic affective dictionary of English words. Several examples are considered that illustrate jumps in the time series of affective ratings when a word gains a new meaning. This indicates that changes in affective ratings can serve as markers of lexical-semantic changes.
Background: Distinctive aspects of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) due to internal carotid artery occlusion (ICAO) include severe presenting deficits, extensive infarct volumes, frequent poor functional outcome, and mortality. Decision-making for thrombectomy, hemicraniectomy, and palliative care depends crucially upon infarct extent but the most widely used current image rating scale, ASPECTS, assesses only 10 regions confined to the MCA field. Methods: We developed the hemispheric-ASPECTS (H-ASPECTS) rating scale that assesses the entire extent of the ICA-supplied brain. The 16-point H-ASPECTS score adds to original MC-ASPECTS (10 regions), assessments of 3 ACA regions, 2 supratentorial PCA regions (thalamus, occipital - potentially fetal ICA-supplied), and 1 anterior choroidal artery region (Figure). We rated initial and 24h CT/MR in consecutive AIS-ICAO patients. Results: Among the AIS-ICAO patients (n=17), age was 68.5 (±15.8), 52.9% female, NIHSS median 20 (IQR 14-22). Occlusion locations were: carotid T 47%; cervical 47%; isolated intracranial ICA 6%. Treatment included EVT ± IV lysis in 59% and hemicraniectomy in 6%. Time from last known well to 1st imaging was 9.6h and 2nd imaging 35h. On 1st imaging H-ASPECTS scores were median 12 (IQR 11-14); on 2nd imaging 10 (IQR 6.5-12.5). Involvement of regions outside MCA, detected by the H-ASPECTS, occurred in 47% of patients, including ACA in 35%, PCA in 12%, and AChA in 6%. Second image H-ASPECTS correlated strongly with discharge mRS, r=0.66 (p=0.007). Conclusions: H-ASPECTS expands the scope of AIS imaging scores, captured abnormalities outside the MCA field in 47% of patients with ICAO, and correlated well with discharge disability level outcome. The additional information H-ASPECTS provides may enhance decision-making in ICAO patients with large ischemic cores, including for endovascular thrombectomy and hemicraniectomy.
Purpose Music performance facilitates prosociality across many cultures and contexts. Interestingly, the relationship between prosociality and sensorimotor synchronization (SMS) has so far primarily been demonstrated in the context of in-phase synchrony with only a few mixed results for anti-phase coordination. In anti-phase coordination, participants move at the same rate, at opposite phases, which also requires high levels of coordination and attention. This case is particularly relevant for music and prosociality, as music regularly involves naturalistic anti-phase coordination. We thus tested whether anti-phase synchronization is as effective as in-phase synchronization at eliciting prosocial behavior. Methods Dyads ( N = 50 dyads) were randomly assigned to complete four trials of a drumming sensorimotor synchronization-continuation task (SCT) either alone, synchronously or in anti-phase. Before and after the drumming task, dyads completed a behavioral economics game involving trust. Additionally, a questionnaire about trust, cooperation, affect, and similarity was given after the drumming task. Results Cooperation rates in the stag-hunt game were near ceiling (~87%) across all conditions pre-SCT, with negligible change after the drumming task. Questionnaire items were analyzed using Bayesian probit mixed effects models to account for dyadic sampling and ordinal data, and to provide evidence in favor of the null hypothesis. Models provided moderate to extremely strong evidence that the anti-phase and in-phase coordination conditions rated their affect, trust, similarity, and cooperation more strongly than dyads in the alone condition (all BF 10 > 3). When only comparing the anti-phase and in-phase conditions, moderate evidence in favor of the null (i.e., that phase does not affect ratings) was found for all questions (all BF 10 < 0.3). Descriptions of the posterior, as well as leave-one-out cross validation (LOO) results, were in general accordance with the Bayes Factor results. Conclusion Evidence indicates anti-phase drumming coordination is as effective as in-phase in increasing perceived trust, cooperation, affect, and similarity. Future analyses will examine how other characteristics of the drumming coordination, such as the lag-1 autocorrelation and variability of the inter-tap interval time-series, relate to prosocial behavior and ratings of trust and cooperation.
The article is dedicated to the problem of the development of foreign language lexical competency of future marine specialists by means of interactive teaching methods.Today, mastering a foreign language is considered an integral component of training future specialists in the maritime field, and for the productive performance of foreign speech acts, the main factor of training remains the knowledge of the terminological maritime vocabulary of the English language, because without knowledge of lexical units, no specialist will be able to express his own opinion and understand the opinion of others.The research attention is focused on the analysis of the phenomenon "foreign language lexical competency".It is interpreted as the cadets' ability to formulate correctly their statements in English, to operate correctly English-language terminological vocabulary relevant to the professional context, to understand marine commands within the limits of professional communication; to be aware of lexical norms of using professional vocabulary in shipping discourse.The peculiarities of using interactive teaching methods in the process of training future specialists in the maritime industry are considered.Interactive methods are actively introduced into the process of forming English lexical competency and are based on the lively interaction of all participants in the educational process and feedback between them and the teacher.Cadets not only learn English vocabulary, but also train to think critically, work in a team, solve professional problems, make decisions independently, and participate in collective Журнал «Перспективи та інновації науки» (Серія «Педагогіка», Серія «Психологія», Серія «Медицина») № 2(36) 2024 545 discussions.The main interactive methods that can be offered for introduction into the process of teaching foreign language vocabulary to cadets are the following: explanation of lexical units in a foreign language, formation of word families, grouping by categories, associative memorization, semantic combining, filling in lexical gaps, expanding or shortening statements, adequate replacement of words, composing mini-dialogues / monologues, listening to radio messages and responding to them.
The Holy Quran, as a representation of profound grandeur and magnificence, is not only remarkable and miraculous in its content and essence, but also in its linguistic mechanisms and structural elements. The spaces between verses illustrate some of the most effective and captivating methods that, apart from the musical structure and rhythmic melody, establish harmony and coherence in communicating the message and substance of the verses. The organization of the final letters of verses (Al-Rawi letters) in forming connections and harmonies with the internal aspects of a verse sometimes adopts a disruptive and dissimilar structural shape. Examining and analyzing the variations in the final letters of verses becomes crucial from a sound perception standpoint. This research methodology emphasizes the aesthetic and semantic beauty that aims to affirm the textual beauty based on the endings of verses. Initially, the lexical and terminological meaning of the term "gap" and the explanation of the types of converging harmonies in pronunciation are discussed in Arabic. Subsequently, the primary focus is on the dissimilar and alternative aspects at the end of verses, with the presentation of examples and evidence of various types, indications, and semantic functions of sounds. The findings suggest that the realm of dissimilarity of converging end letters in the gaps has been accompanied by similar indications in a manner where they have presented the same indication by breaking down into details but have emerged in a dissimilar expressive style. In essence, changes in the surface structure, viewed from the perspective of converging end letters, are evident in similar indications, but the addressing style shifts from direct to absent or different assertion. Consequently, the gap in the Quran not only enhances the musicality of the verses but instigates changes that deviate some combinations, indications, and expressive styles from the norm. Hence, through varied linguistic structures, the connection, coherence, and systematic nature of the lines of Quranic chapters are interlinked.
статья посвящена проблеме языковой экспликации концепта Запрет в аварском языковом сознании. Исследуемое понятие рассматривается в лексико-семантическом и лингвокультурологическом аспектах. Проанализированы понятийная, ценностная составляющие указанного концепта, рассмотрены: парадигматика лексико-семантического поля Запрет; компонентный анализ значения ядерных лексем-вербализаторов данного понятия; разноуровневые средства репрезентации указанного понятия (лексические и грамматические); табу и запрет в религиозном дискурсе исследуемой лингвокультуры. В основе различных структур представления знаний о запрете как норме лежит концептуальная схема, где схема – абстракция, которая позволяет приписывать определенные объекты или события к общим категориям, способным наполняться конкретным содержанием. Концептуальная схема Запрета, понимаемого как норма поведения, поддерживаемая социумом или традицией, предполагает последовательность элементов, которая устанавливает определенное отношение между определенным субъектом, находящимся в определенных обстоятельствах, и определенным поведением. Принцип однозначности в текстах запретительного дискурса достигается за счет того, что предписание строится на определении используемых в них терминологических единиц. Тексты запретительного характера имеют в своей основе концептуальную схему нормы, отношения между элементами которой строятся в виде определения и предписания. the article is devoted to the problem of linguistic explication of the concept of Prohibition in the Avar language consciousness. The concept under study is considered in lexico-semantic and linguocultural aspects. The conceptual and value components of this concept are analyzed, the following are considered: the paradigmatics of the lexico-semantic field of Prohibition; component analysis of the meaning of nuclear lexemes-verbalizers of this concept; multilevel means of representation of this concept (lexical and grammatical); taboos and prohibition in the religious discourse of the studied linguistic culture. The basis of various structures of knowledge representation about prohibition as a norm is a conceptual scheme, where the scheme is an abstraction that allows you to attribute certain objects or events to general categories that can be filled with specific content. The conceptual scheme of Prohibition, understood as a norm of behavior supported by society or tradition, assumes a sequence of elements that establishes a certain relationship between a certain subject in certain circumstances and a certain behavior. The principle of unambiguity in the texts of prohibitive discourse is achieved due to the fact that the prescription is based on the definition of the terminological units used in them. Prohibitive texts are based on a conceptual scheme of the norm, the relations between the elements of which are built in the form of definitions and prescriptions.
Background Accurate assessment of self-perceived stress is crucial because perceived stress has been linked to post-stroke depression in persons with aphasia and may be related to linguistic performance. Measuring self-reported perceived stress can be difficult in persons with aphasia (PWA) due to linguistic impairments; therefore, using proxy ratings could be an alternative. The accuracy of proxy ratings of perceived stress may be influenced by the proxy’s familiarity with the person with aphasia and/or the condition of aphasia. Additionally, accuracy may be affected by genuine or mistaken signs of perceived stress in PWA due to linguistic behavioural markers common in both stress and aphasia. An observation of stress in a PWA may also trigger a stress response in the proxy. This physiological stress response, known as stress contagion, may be mediated by trait empathy and impact proxy ratings of perceived stress in PWA.Aims The current study investigates the accuracy of proxy ratings of perceived stress made by proxy reporters unfamiliar with PWA and unfamiliar with aphasia by exploring the agreement between PWA self- and unfamiliar proxy-reported stress ratings, the effect of aphasia severity on proxy ratings, stress contagion, and the contribution of trait empathy to proxy ratings.Methods & Procedures Fifty-five proxy reporters unfamiliar with aphasia self-reported their trait empathy and perceived stress, then watched two video cases of unfamiliar PWA and rated the stress of the PWA and their own stress level.Outcomes & Results No correlation was found between self-report and unfamiliar proxy report of PWA perceived stress. Aphasia severity did not affect proxy ratings. The proxy reporter’s self-reported stress matched the PWA’s stress level. Trait empathy did not predict proxy ratings.Conclusions The lack of association between PWA self-report and the ratings of proxy reporters unfamiliar with PWA and aphasia indicates that unfamiliar proxy ratings are not ideal for representing objective measures of perceived stress. While aphasia severity does not affect ratings by proxy reporters unfamiliar with PWA and aphasia, unfamiliar proxy reporters may overestimate perceived stress levels in PWA. The correlation between proxy reporter self-report and PWA self-report suggests that some aspect of stress contagion is present.
Here we propose a new design strategy for mixed and virtual reality designers, which we call ‘attentional transplants‘. The strategy is to direct a user's visual attention in a way which mirrors the attention of a previous user, in order to produce similar affective or cognitive responses in the second user. Attentional transplants may be useful across a wide range of design situations in which one's manner of attending reliably drives affective and cognitive outcomes. In order to test whether transplanting one participant's pattern of attention into another can produce similar downstream responses in the second participant, we ran two online experiments. In Experiment la, 50 observers viewed images of landscapes by using their cursor to move a small circular viewing window around each image for three seconds. After viewing an image, they rated how much they liked it. For each image, we identified two ‘attentional donors' - the Liked-it-Most observer who rated the image highest (standardized relative to their other image ratings) across observers, as well as the Liked-it-Least observer who rated the image lowest across observers. In Experiment 1b, we recruited 100 new observers to serve as ‘attentional recipients’. These observers viewed each image, but now passively, through a moving window which reproduced the viewing pattern of either the Experiment 1 observer who Liked it Most, or the observer who Liked it Least. Recipients gave substantially higher ratings to an image when they received the viewing pattern of the observer who Liked it Most, compared to when they received the viewing pattern of the observer who Liked it Least. Based on this success, we speculate about several additional ways in which attentional transplants could be used in virtual and mixed reality systems, in order to achieve desired cognitive and affective outcomes.
1 IntroductionFacial expressions play a critical role in intra-individual emotional functions (Finzi & Rosenthal, 2016) as well as inter-individual social functions (Keltner & Kring, 1998). Facial expressions have been proposed to be more important in late adulthood, given the increased value placed on intimate social relationships (Carstensen, 2006, 2021; Carstensen et al., 1999). In studies examining changes in emotional functioning over the course of adulthood¸ older adults’ facial expressions in response to emotional stimuli have mainly been examined through comparison with those of young adults (e.g., Levenson et al., 1991).Consistent with the notion of emotional functions of facial expressions, several studies in young adults have reported that the production of facial expressions showed coherence with the subjective experience of emotional feeling (e.g., Mauss et al., 2005; Evers et al., 2014; Sato et al., 2020, 2021; Sato & Kochiyama, 2022). For example, a study measured dynamic ratings of subjective emotional valence (i.e., hedonic tone ranting from positive to negative; Barrett, 2006) and facial electromyography (EMG) activity of the corrugator supercilii (i.e., brow lowering muscle) and zygomatic major (i.e., lip corner-pulling muscle) while participants watched emotional films (Sato et al., 2020). The results showed that the EMG activity of the corrugator supercilii and zygomatic major muscles was negatively and positively associated with the dynamic valence ratings, respectively. These findings are theoretically important because they empirically support the long-lasting idea that subjective emotional experience depends on the perception of bodily responses (James, 1884; Friedman, 2010; Lang, 1994). Furthermore, this issue could be practically important, because a previous study showed that the coherence between subjective emotional experience and bodily responses to emotional stimuli is associated with psychological well-being (Brown et al., 2020).However, the coherence between emotional experience and facial expressions has not been fully examined in older adults. This issue could be interesting because several studies have suggested that older, compared with young, adults have improved emotional well-being (Carstensen, 2006, 2021; Charles, 2010; Carstensen et al., 1999; Charles & Piazza, 2023). One may expect that older adults would have stronger subjective–facial emotional coherence than young adults. This paper reviews the research conducted to date on this topic and describes our speculative hypotheses (cf. Currie, 2023).2 Coherence between facial expressions and subjective emotional experience in older adultsSeveral previous studies have examined either the production of facial expressions or subjective emotional experience in older adults and reported mixed findings (Supplementary Table 1). Specifically, a substantial number of studies showed no age-related differences in facial expression production (Emery & Hess, 2011; Kunz et al., 2008; Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014; Malatesta et al., 1987; Nangle et al., 2018; Saito et al., 2022; Seider et al., 2011; Tsai et al., 2000; van Reekum et al., 2011), although some studies reported less intense (Kunzmann et al., 2017; Labuschagne et al., 2020; Levenson et al., 1991; Magai et al., 2006; Pedder et al., 2016; Rohr et al., 2017; Saito et al., 2023) or more intense (Magai et al., 2006; Malatesta-Magai et al., 1992; Phillips et al., 2008; Zempelin et al., 2021) facial expressions in older than young adults. Fölster et al. (2014) reviewed the literature and concluded that there are no age-related differences in spontaneous facial expressions. Likewise, studies have reported different results with respect to subjective emotional experience, including comparable (Emery & Hess, 2011; Kunz et al., 2008; Malatesta et al., 1987; Nangle et al., 2018; van Reekum et al., 2011), weaker (Kunzmann. et al., 2017; Labuschagne et al., 2020; Levenson et al., 1991; Malatesta-Magai et al., 1992; Saito et al., 2022, 2023; Tsai et al., 2000), or stronger (Labuschagne et al., 2020; Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014; Magai et al., 2006; Pedder et al., 2016; Phillips et al., 2008; Rohr et al., 2017; Saito et al., 2023; Seider et al., 2011; Zempelin et al., 2021) subjective emotional responses in older adults relative to young adults. In short, the data do not consistently suggest alteration in either facial expressions or subjective emotional experience in older adults. Furthermore, the studies were not specifically concerned with coherence between these emotional responses.Few studies have compared the coherence of facial expressions with subjective emotional experience between older adults and their young counterparts (Lohani et al., 2017; Saito et al., 2022, 2023) according to our computer-based search of abstract and citation databases of the literature. In Lohani et al. (2018), the researchers presented film clips to induce sad feelings as emotion-eliciting stimuli and measured the dynamic ratings of arousal (i.e., the feeling of activation; Barrett, 2006) and facial EMG of the corrugator supercilii in older and young participants. The results showed no significant age differences in the correlations between the subjective ratings and facial EMG. However, the null finding may be at least partially explained by the ratings measured in the study. Previous studies testing young adults and reported subjective–facial emotional coherence reported the links between the ratings of valence, but not arousal, and facial expressions (Bradley & Lang, 2000).In Saito et al. (2023), five film clips that were categorically labeled as anger, sadness, neutral, contentment, and amusement, were used, and the coherence between dynamic valence ratings and facial EMG of the corrugator supercilia and zygomatic major muscles was assessed by adopting the procedures used in a previous study that demonstrated emotional coherence in young adults (Sato et al., 2020). The researchers compared correlation coefficients between older and young adults and found that the negative correlation between valence ratings and corrugator EMG activity was weaker in older adults (Figure 1a). More specifically, lower valence ratings (i.e., greater unpleasantness) were associated with greater corrugator EMG activity, and the association between brow activity (i.e., frowning, which reflects unpleasant feelings) and unpleasant emotions was weaker in older adults than in young adults, indicating less emotional coherence between subjective experience and brow activity in the former group.Saito et al. (2022) used food to elicit emotions similarly showed age-related differences in the coherence between facial expressions and subjective experience. In that study, various subjective ratings and facial EMG activity of the corrugator supercilia, zygomatic major, masseter (i.e., chewing muscle), and suprahyoid (i.e., swallowing muscle) were assessed in older adults while they consumed the flavored gel-type foods. Compared with young adults, the coherence of valence and wanting ratings with masseter EMG activity was lower in older adults (Figure 1b).Taken together, among three studies that tested this topic, the two recent ones (Saito et al., 2022, 2023) suggested that the degree of coherence between subjective experience, specifically its qualitative aspects, and the production of facial expressions in response to emotional stimuli (film clips and food) differs according to age, i.e., is weaker in older adults. As described above, weaker subjective–facial emotional coherence in older adults appears not to be explained by their impairments in subjective emotional experiences or the production of facial expressions.3 DiscussionGiven that the mind–body coherence and well-being are related (Brown et al., 2020; Mauss et al., 2011), and that older adults tend to report higher levels of well-being than people in other stages of life (Carstensen et al., 1999; Carstensen, 2006; 2021), why is it that the coherence between subjective experience and facial expressions is weak in older adults?We hypothesize that the coherence between the subjective experience and facial expressions may weaken with age as an emotional coping. It has been reported that older adults are better able to cope with emotions (Burr et al., 2020; Charles & Carstensen, 2008; Eldesouky & English, 2018; Scheibe & Blanchard-Fields, 2009; Neubauer et al., 2018; Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014; Sims et al., 2015; Shiota & Levenson, 2009; however, see Isaacowitz, 2022) and use more emotional coping than young adults (Puente-Martínez et al., 2020). For instance, older adults were more successful than younger adults in terms of both deploying attentional resources (Sheibe et al., 2015; Mikkelsen et al., 2021) and positive reappraisal (Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014; Shiota & Levenson, 2009). It has also been demonstrated that, rather than implementing response-focused coping, older adults are likely to use antecedent emotional coping (i.e., situation selection) in their daily lives, which is assumed to contribute to their ability to cope with emotions (Sims et al., 2015). Interestingly, several studies have reported that a repressive emotional coping style (Weinberger et al., 1979), which can induce low mind–body coherence (Schwerdtfeger & Kohlmann, 2004) and is traditionally regarded as maladaptive coping (Schwartz, 1990), sometimes serves adaptive functions, such as promoting resilience following extremely aversive events (e.g., Coifman et al., 2007; for a review, see Bonanno, 2005). Likewise, it may be possible that low subjective–facial emotional coherence in older adults has adaptive benefits on their emotional well-being.However, there are several limitations in our speculation. First, few studies have investigated the coherence between facial expressions and subjective emotions in older adults, and those that did used limited methodologies compared with studies that were not specifically concerned with coherence. Thus, future research is warranted to confirm the robustness of the findings. Second, even assuming that older adults have weak subjective–facial emotional coherence, different factors may account for their high levels of well-being. The empirical evidence is needed to test the relationship between the subjective–facial emotional coherence and well-being in older adults. In conclusion, studies examining the degree of coherence between subjective experience and facial expressions have demonstrated that older adults showed less coherence of subjective experience with corrugator and masseter EMG activity in response to emotional stimuli (films and food). We speculated that the weak coherence between subjective experience and facial expressions may serve as an emotional coping that is seemingly functionally adaptive for people in late adulthood.
Abstract Gideon Toury, a leading theorist in linguistics and translation, contested the source-oriented approach to translation and introduced a target-oriented model that includes three categories of norms: initial, preliminary, and operational. This methodology was a crucial advancement in the standardization of translation. This study intends to apply this model by employing a descriptive-analytical approach and consulting library resources to evaluate and analyze the Persian translation of Naguib Mahfouz's novel "Zuqaq al-Midaq," translated by Mohammad Reza Marashi-Pour. This study's findings indicate that, regarding the initial norm, the translator emphasizes the linguistic standards of the target language, guaranteeing that the translated text operates efficiently and is well received within the cultural and linguistic framework of the target audience. The translator follows operational standards, adhering to structural norms like the insertion or exclusion of words, sentences, and footnotes, while also integrating linguistic norms, such as equivalence and stylistic elements. The translator has effectively produced a fluent and clear interpretation of the content.IntroductionHistorically, diverse civilizations and cultures have utilized writing and storytelling to articulate their situations and experiences. Stories, owing to their narrative characteristics and imaginative features, significantly contribute to the communication of written truths, realities, and cultural aspects. In this context, the art of translation is crucial for conveying fundamental facts and cultural features to other cultures. Translation facilitates the dissemination of a nation's culture. Nevertheless, due to the distinct cultural foundations inherent in each language, translation encounters specific problems. As a result, translation theorists have suggested multiple theories to address these issues. Among these theorists are Even-Zohar and Gideon Toury, who, adhering to the principles of formalism and the target-oriented approach, posited that translation cannot completely correspond to the original text, nor can equivalences be accurately determined. Such an outcome is due to the distinct textual, literary, and linguistic frameworks inherent to each language, rendering perfect translation unattainable in the target language. Their thesis posits that languages are distinct, with each writing style differing both structurally and culturally, hence complicating the attainment of universal acceptability (Gentzler, 2014: 163). Gideon Toury proposed a model based on translation norms. He said that a translator must follow standards that make the translation acceptable, lively, and alive in the target language. This promotes cultural growth and the development of language and literature (Toury, 2014: 85). Consequently, it can be asserted that a primary method for enhancing concept transmission and ensuring the fluency of a translated text is to focus on the structure and linguistic conventions of the target text, which should take precedence over the source text for the translator.Naguib Mahfouz is an Egyptian author who has portrayed the reality of Egyptian society across several epochs in his writings. His works have been translated into other languages, including Persian. Mohammad Reza Marashi Pour is an Iranian translator known for translating the works of authors including Naguib Mahfouz. He has translated significant works such as Palace of Desire, Sugar Street, The Beggar, and "Zuqaq al-Midaq" into Persian, therefore successfully presenting Mahfouz's literature to Persian-speaking audiences. Assessing the Persian translation of the novel "Zuqaq al-Midaq" with Toury's normative paradigm can significantly contribute to evaluating the quality of this translation. It is essential to formulate a thorough inquiry in this context:How is the Persian translation of the novel "Zuqaq al-Midaq" assessed according to Tory's normative model concerning initial, preliminary, and operational norms?Literature ReviewNumerous research studies have examined the applicability of Toury's normative paradigm to Arabic and Persian literary texts, a selection of which is succinctly summarized below: Afzali and Madani's article "The Application of Gideon Toury's Norms Theory in Evaluating the Quality of the Arabic Translation of Forough Farrokhzad's Poems" was published in the Journal of Comparative Studies of Persian and Arabic Literature in 2020. It looked at the Arabic translation of Farrokhzad's poems using Toury's notion of norms.Fazel Abbaszadeh (2021), in an article entitled "Critique of Shourabi's Poetic Translation of the First and Third Ghazals of Hafez Based on Gideon Toury's Model," published in the Journal of Criticism, Analysis, and Aesthetics, examined the translation of Hafez's first and third ghazals through the lens of Toury's target-oriented model."Examining Toury's Initial Norms in Audiovisual Translation (Case Study: Specific Cultural Elements in the Animation 'Prince of Rome')" was Mahdieh Alizadeh Ghouzzani's master's thesis from 2022. It looked at the audiovisual translation of the animation Prince of Rome using Toury's normative framework.Recently, numerous research studies have been undertaken on the novel Midaq Alley, including the following: Hassan Abdollahi and Omid Izanloo (2012), in their essay "Sociological Analysis of Naguib Mahfouz's Novel Midaq Alley," published in the Journal of Arabic Literary Criticism, examined the characters, socio-cultural framework, and realistic methodology of the narrative.Yahya Ma'ruf and Moslem Khazli (2016), in their article "Psychological Analysis of Naguib Mahfouz's Novel 'Zuqaq al-Midaq,'" published in the Journal of Contemporary Arabic Literary Criticism, analyzed the characters through a psychological lens, exploring the personality types within the novel and the motivations behind Mahfouz's character development.Jahanbakht and Parmas (2020), in their article "The Function of Non-Verbal Actions in Naguib Mahfouz's Novel 'Zuqaq al-Midaq,'" published in the Journal of the Iranian Association of Arabic Language and Literature, examined non-verbal behaviors and their roles in character development within the narrative.According to these studies, "Zuqaq al-Midaq" has mostly been looked at through the lens of narrative, with no research being done on the Persian translation or how it relates to Gideon Toury's normative paradigm. Consequently, analyzing the Persian translation of this novel according to the previously specified framework constitutes a significant contribution to the discipline.Research MethodologyWe employed a descriptive-analytical strategy to achieve the primary goal of this study. This task entailed the selection of Toury's normative paradigm and the examination of pertinent literature regarding this model. The subject of analysis is the Persian translation of the novel "Zuqaq al-Midaq." We examined both the Arabic and Persian versions of the work, extracting and evaluating instances using Gideon Toury's normative paradigm.ConclusionIn translating literary texts, especially novels, the translator must not only convey content and concepts but also consider cultural nuances and literary subtleties, ensuring fidelity to the original while presenting the literary language optimally. This is the essential understanding obtained from Gideon Toury's normative model. The assessment of the Persian translation of "Zuqaq al-Midaq" indicated, according to this model, that the translator employed a target-oriented strategy, prioritizing the Persian-speaking audience as the principal beneficiaries. The examination of the examples revealed that, in alignment with the original standard, the translator delivered a translation that is satisfactory in the target language. According to the first standard of translation policy, the Persian translation of "Zuqaq al-Midaq" was executed due to the cultural affinity between Iran and the Arab world, along with the imperative to familiarize Persian speakers with significant works from the Arab region. The translator, while conforming to structural and grammatical norms, integrated aspects such as the addition and exclusion of words and phrases, sentence restructuring, footnotes, transference, equivalence identification, and stylistic features into the translation. In conclusion, the translator effectively identified suitable replacements for terms and, while ensuring maximum fidelity, accurately communicated the material to the audience.
Статья посвящена проблемам выявления эмоционально-чувственной составляющей семантики слов изучаемого языка в языковом сознании обучающихся билингвов – китайских студентов, изучающих русский язык в Китае. Предлагается психолингвистический подход к семантике слова как к достоянию индивида, языковому сознанию (ментальному лексикону) билингва как динамической, не разделенной на разные языки функциональной системе. Актуальность статьи заключается в разработке проблемы выявления способов формирования семантики в сознании индивидов и шире – внутреннего содержания языка и его знаков. В работе используется анализ результатов психолингвистического эксперимента, проведенного автором по методу семантического дифференциала, стимулами для которого выступают существительные, прилагательные, глаголы и наречия, актуальные для ядра языкового сознания русских. Автор приходит к выводам о формировании семантики знаков чужого языка в сознании обучающихся билингвов как образов, отличающихся эмоциональностью. Разные показатели интенсивности, зафиксированные по разным шкалам оценки слов, зависят не от части речи, а от семантики слов, частотности их употребления в учебных текстах, а также от культурных и фоновых знаний. The article deals with the problem of identifying the emotional and sensory components of a foreign language words semantics in the linguistic consciousness of educational bilinguals (bilingual mental lexicon) - Chinese students studying Russian in China. A psycholinguistic approach is proposed to the semantics of the word as the property of the individual, the linguistic consciousness of a bilingual as a dynamic functional system not divided into different languages. The relevance of the article lies in the development of the problem of identifying ways of forming semantics in the minds of individuals and, more broadly, the internal content of language and its signs. The work is based on the results of a psycholinguistic experiment conducted using the semantic differential method, the stimuli for which are nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs that are relevant to the core of the linguistic consciousness (the core of the mental lexicon) of Russians. The author comes to conclusions about the formation of the semantics of signs of a foreign language in the minds of educational bilinguals as images characterized by emotionality. Different intensity indicators recorded on different word rating scales depend not on the part of speech, but on the semantics of words, the frequency of their use in educational texts, cultural and background knowledge.
This article analyzes lexicosemantic processes in contemporary Ukrainian scientific texts against the backdrop of general Slavic trends in literary norms. It traces the activation of rarely used vocabulary, the reactivation of obsolete terms, determinologization, the broadening of the meaning of specialized terms, and the functioning of foreign language lexical units. The article highlights word-formation tendencies in scientific style, taking into account the internal laws and potential capabilities of the Ukrainian language. In terms of stylistic norms, the study has identified excessive expressivity in texts due to the use of linguistic elements that are atypical for scientific discourse, such as colloquialisms, neologisms, and slang.
When different people view a scene, they attend to different things, and these differences in attention influence how much they like the scene. Patterns of attention may be highly individually specific. However, the effects of different patterns of attention on preferences may not be. Here we demonstrate this, using a new method of ‘attentional transplants’. We show that, if an observer likes an image, it is possible to transplant their viewing pattern into another observer—and that this causes the recipient to like the image better, compared with transplanting the viewing pattern of a donor who disliked the image. In Experiment 1, 50 observers viewed images of landscapes by using their cursor to move a small circular viewing window around each image for three seconds. After viewing each image, they rated how much they liked it. For each image, we identified two ‘attentional donors'—the Liked-it-Best observer who rated the image highest (relative to their other image ratings) across observers, as well as the Liked-it-Least observer who rated the image lowest across observers. Next, we recruited 100 new observers to serve as ‘attentional recipients’. These observers viewed each image, but now passively, through a moving window which reproduced the viewing pattern of either the previous observer who Liked it Best, or the observer who Liked it Least. Recipients gave substantially higher ratings to an image when they received the viewing pattern of the observer who Liked it Best, compared to when they received the viewing pattern of the observer who Liked it Least. In subsequent experiments, we replicated this effect, and found that Liked-it-Best attention patterns are more predictable. We conclude that individual differences in preferences for scenes are partly explained by differences in how we attend—but that attention drives preferences in similar ways across observers.
Diffusion models (DMs) have achieved significant success in generating imaginative images given textual descriptions. However, they are likely to fall short when it comes to real-life scenarios with intricate details. The low-quality, unrealistic human faces in text-to-image generation are one of the most prominent issues, hindering the wide application of DMs in practice. Targeting addressing such an issue, we first assess the face quality of generations from popular pre-trained DMs with the aid of human annotators and then evaluate the alignment between existing metrics with human judgments. Observing that existing metrics can be unsatisfactory for quantifying face quality, we develop a novel metric named FaceScore (FS) by fine-tuning the widely used ImageReward on a dataset of (win, loss) face pairs cheaply crafted by an inpainting pipeline of DMs. Extensive studies reveal FS enjoys a superior alignment with humans. On the other hand, FS opens up the door for enhancing DMs for better face generation. With FS offering image ratings, we can easily perform preference learning algorithms to refine DMs like SDXL. Comprehensive experiments verify the efficacy of our approach for improving face quality. The code is released at https://github.com/OPPO-Mente-Lab/FaceScore.
The article studies peculiarities of organization of teaching of theoretical linguistic disciplines in the context of informatization of education. It emphasizes the importance of using internet technologies in the system of higher education, reveals main theoretical groundings of their implementation into the educational process and training teachers of English as a foreign language. The author analyses didactic parameters of using web-resources in the process of teaching linguistic theoretical academic subjects, taking as an example Theoretical grammar of the English language. The article gives an overview and brief analysis of some on-line linguistic databases, resources, free language theory courses which are widely available. The author demonstrates various possibilities of using specialized on-line resources for teaching the theory of the English language and organizing research work of undergraduate and graduate students. Reform of higher education in Ukraine is caused the needs of today society due to the building of information society and integration in the global intellectual space dimension. Modification of the requirements of educational process in higher education, its quality and semantic parties should ensure the quality of training to world standards. That is one of the main vectors and targets of the improvement of higher education in Ukraine should create a system of quality assurance and professional development aimed at forming professional independence and acquire new knowledge and skills in the conditions of intensive informational society. In this context particularly urgent search for new and upgrade existing forms of educational process appears. Thus, approaches to teaching theoretical subjects in a foreign language must be updated in view of the need for a informative professional competence. The systematic use of the Internet for relevant practical, research, creative tasks will improve professional skills improvement, skills will form the search, selection and analysis of scientific material. Further research prospects seen in a detailed study of the experience of using online technology in teaching linguistic disciplines at leading universities abroad.
the article analyzes the translation of popular science literature from the perspective of stylistic uniqueness. Options for preserving the national-specific characteristics of a Finnish-language popular science text on the history of navigation in its Russian-language version are presented. Objective: to identify methods and techniques that ensure the preservation of the characteristic features of the popular science sub-style in translation from the Finnish to the Russian language, namely imitation of live dialogue with a reader, preservation of cultural and landscape realities, and stylistic features of an original text (repetition, introductory constructions, modal and evaluative words). Research materials: the translated text of the Finnish-language popular science book on navigation by D. Johnson and J. Nurminen “The History of Seafaring: Navigating the World’s Oceans”. Results and novelty of the research: in the Russian-language text, the Finnish national color is maintained through the use of toponyms, anthroponyms, and ergonyms. The translator flexibly employed two strategies – domestication in transformation of the syntactic structures of the original, its morphological forms, stylistic features, and foreignization in conveying linguistic and cultural realities and accompanying them with explication. The measured rhythm of Finnish sentences in the Russian language is conveyed through lexical repetition with syntactic expansion, various types of introductory constructions. A feature of the book’s style is the imitation of dialogue with a reader. In most cases, the stylistic norms of the Russian language allow the reproduction of the live contact between the authors and a reader, which is conveyed in the translation text through appropriate modal means. To convey emotional and evaluative content, grammatical and lexical means of expressing modality in the Russian language are used. The “dictum content” in the translated text is expanded, which is due to the intended purpose of popular science literature to present scientific information in an accessible form and popularize knowledge among a wide range of readers. The scientific novelty of the work consists in the fact that it is devoted to a little-explored theme related to the transfer of lexical and stylistic features of popular scientific literature on the history of navigation into the Russian language. For the first time, the work implements an integrated approach to the study of the stylistics of the Finnish-language text and examines the possibilities of translation into the Russian epithets expressing an assessment or judgment about the object of the authors of the book, amplifying particles, in preserving the modality of the original text by using adverbs with the meaning of confidence, possibility and assumption. In the translation into the Russian, the dictum content of the Finnish text undergoes some transformation. Morphological changes are caused by the requirement of stylistic norms of the Russian language.
The article examines the use of a linguistic corpus for the analysis of the lexical conjugation of relative adjectives with nouns within the framework of the development of a linguistic and informational toolkit for a multi-parameter description of the lexical semantics of relative adjectives of the Ukrainian language in an electronic explanatory dictionary. The aim of the study: to demonstrate the possibility and expediency of using the corpus of Ukrainian texts in modern semantic research, in particular for the analysis of the lexical compatibility of relative adjectives with nouns. An analysis of the lexical compatibility of relative adjectives with nouns was carried out on the material of the Ukrainian National Linguistic Corpus. Based on the results of the analysis, the types of semantic classes of nouns syntactically related to relative adjectives were identified as a tool for introducing the sign of semantic valence to describe the lexical meaning of relative adjectives, the interpretation of which was given according to the strong non-explicit interpretation formulas «Adjective to...» and «In relation to...» in the electronic version of the explanatory dictionary of the Ukrainian language in 20 volumes. On the basis of the compatibility of relative adjectives with nouns, the types of semantic classes are distinguished, the broadest of which are: «man», «animal», «plant», «building/facility/institution/structure», «substances and materials», «result of creative/scientific activity», «time», «space», «action», «transport», «furniture», «equipment/ equipment/appliance/device», «clothing/shoes», «miscellaneous material items», «fabric», «dishes», «decoration», «natural phenomena», «food/drinks», «term». The results of the analysis are included in the linguistic database «Semantics of relative adjectives», developed to solve the problem of explicit presentation of information in electronic explanatory dictionaries, which will contribute to the further implementation of computer technologies in research on lexical semantics, focused on the creation of natural language processing systems.
This study explores somatotype-based differences in body image awareness among 18–23-year-old Mesomorphs, Ectomorphs, and Endomorphs from Mysore University-affiliated colleges in Karnataka, India. Stratified sampling chose 150 male college students to test body image awareness using the Body Self-Image Questionnaire (Short Form). The three somatotype groups had significantly different body image awareness scores. Endomorphs had the most body image awareness, followed by Ectomorphs and Mesomorphs. After descriptive data, Mesomorphs had the lowest mean body image ratings (85.52) and Endomorphs the highest (98.98). A one-way ANOVA showed significant differences across groups (F = 111.31, p < 0.001). Tukey's HSD test post-hoc analysis showed significant pairwise differences, with Endomorphs scoring higher than Ectomorphs and Mesomorphs and Mesomorphs scoring lower than Ectomorphs. These findings imply that societal and cultural body type beliefs affect body image awareness as well as physical appearance. The findings emphasize the need of somatotype-specific body image therapies for young adults' body satisfaction and mental health.
Starting Sign Language Research from Scratch Rachel I. Mayberry (bio) Perhaps the best way to illustrate the environment of sign language research when I began my graduate studies at McGill University is to note the physical labor involved. There were no internet or digital archives, and I spent a lot of time in the library searching for books and journals after first figuring out which floor and shelf the item's Dewey Decimal number pointed to. Journals could not be checked out, so notes had to be taken by hand, or exact change was required for xeroxing, if you could locate a machine. Statistical data analysis by computer was possible, but only by mainframe because desktops hadn't been invented yet. Videotaping of sign language was possible using huge reel-to-reel and then cassette recorders on large carts with heavy TVs and only somewhat less-bulky cameras and recording equipment. My first sign language experiment was for a course titled Language and Thought with Professor John Macnamara (1977). I compared concreteness ratings for English words with iconicity ratings for their ASL translations, which I gathered from sign-naïve undergraduate students. To create the experiment, I spliced reel-to-reel black-and-white videotape by hand with a razor blade and then used special tape to rearrange the segments for the experiment. I analyzed the data with paper, pencil, and a calculator. Manuscript preparation was tedious too, requiring typing everything out on paper, including tables, and making figures by hand with graph paper and either drawing them or using press-on symbols and letters. I have wondered how many [End Page 263] potential researchers might have gotten lost along this trail of work. But my father always said that I was stubborn, so I slogged through. More important than the labor, however, were the teachers and scholars who helped me along the way. Before attending McGill University, I had attended Washington University, where I came across the dictionary of signs with black-and-white photographs that Stokoe, Casterline, and Croneberg (1976/1965) had compiled using a coding system they had devised to represent sign structure. This was the only research I located in the library to help me explain sign language to the then-director of the Central Institute for the Deaf (CID), Richard Silverman (of Davis and Silverman 1978), who had asked me to teach him sign language once a week and made me promise not to tell a soul because sign language was forbidden. The institute included an oral school for deaf children, a speech and hearing clinic, graduate programs in deaf education, audiology, speech pathology, and research programs and faculty who primarily studied the sensory, perceptual, and motor mechanisms underlying speech and hearing. I have little memory of our meetings, except that he encouraged me to pursue sign language research by saying, "If we were to use sign language tomorrow, what should we expect from our students, from our teachers? You could study that." The idea was as intriguing as it was daunting. As a child, I hated questions about sign language and my parents' deafness from hearing adults, because I didn't know how to answer them. I worked as a dormitory assistant at CID while doing my master's degree. The experience reminded me daily of how imperative sign language was. Meals in the dining room were family style, and I was responsible for a table of eight students ranging in age from five to sixteen, all of whom were deaf and none of whom knew any sign language, and it was forbidden to sign to them. Some of the students could speak intelligibly and understood speech, but many others could not. There was a lot of gesturing and exaggerated oral gesticulation, and the students were good at helping one another understand what was being said among themselves and the staff. Saturday mornings, I was responsible for doing arts and crafts projects with the older students, some of whom spoke intelligibly and some who could not. Sunday afternoons, I was responsible for the "baby boys," the youngest [End Page 264] boys in the dorm, ages four to five. Another graduate student and I...
The article traces the peculiarities of verb stress in "The First Reader for Public Schools" authored by A. Krushelnytskyi, O. Popovych, and B. Lepkyi (1918), which was one of the official textbooks for Ukrainian-speaking schools during the time of Austria-Hungary. The proposed publication introduces the textbook by the mentioned authors into the scientific linguistic circulation in the accentological aspect. The article identifies historically formed accentuation models, analyses the degree of their compliance with the norms of the time recorded in Western Ukrainian dictionaries and grammars of the late 19th - early 20th century, determines the possibility of their application in the modern literary language. Research Objective: To define the conformity degree of accentuation in "The First Reader for Public Schools" (1918) by A. Krushelnytskyi, O. Popovych, and B. Lepkyi to the linguistic norms that were in effect in the Ukrainian-language education system of Austria-Hungary on the one hand, and to the requirements of the main Ukrainian Orthographies and grammars of the 20th – 21st centuries on the other. Source Base: "The First Reader for Public Schools" by A. Krushelnytskyi, O. Popovych, B. Lepkyi (1918); "Malorus’ka-German Dictionary" by Ye. Zhelekhivsky and S. Nedilsky (1886); "Grammar of the Rus’ka Language" by S. Smal’-Stotskyi and F. Gartner (1893). The research utilized the following methods: descriptive, comparative, statistical, comprehensive material selection, partially historical reconstruction. Article Structure: Introduction, Literature Review, Presentation of the Main Material, Conclusions. The section "Presentation of the Main Material" includes the following subsections: "Features of Verbs Stress of the First Conjugation", "Features of Verbs Stress of the Second Conjugation", "Features of Irregular Verbs Stress". In the "The First Reader", a total of 900 verb word forms were identified. Of these, 866 usages (96 percent) conform to modern accentuation norms. In the section "Presentation of the Main Material", 34 verb stresses were analyzed, which do not correspond to the norms of modern Ukrainian literary language. It was found that 32 word forms conform to the norms that were in force in Halychyna and Bukovyna at the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. The indicated linguistic and cultural environment could have influenced the stress of certain verbal forms. In the "Conclusions" section, it is noted that the research results attest to the stability of basic verb stress in the Ukrainian literary language across time and space. Practically all accentuations in the "The First Reader for Public Schools" (1918), which differ from contemporary norms, corresponded to the standards of the Ukrainian literary language at that time. Therefore, the "The First Reader" exhibited a high degree of accentuation normativity. The accentuation norms in the "The First Reader" corresponded to the living literary language of Halychyna and Bukovyna at the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century.
Abstract The present study analyzes the transformation of the vowel system and especially the process of vowel mergers based on the Latin inscriptions of the Danubian provinces. With the help of the Computerized Historical Linguistic Database of the Latin Inscriptions of the Imperial Age ( http://lldb.elte.hu/ ), it tries to draw and then compare the phonological profiles of the selected provinces and to describe the dialectal position of the Danubian provinces regarding vocalism in the first four centuries AD. The analysis, which also covers comparisons with certain provinces of Italy and Dalmatia, is carried out considering four aspects: the ratio of vocalic versus consonantal changes, the ratio of vowel mergers compared to vocalic changes, the ratio of e-i and o-u mergers compared to each other, and the ratio of vowel mergers by stressed and unstressed syllable. As a result of the present study, it was revealed that Danubian provinces cannot be treated as a unit or as clearly separate from the other areas studied according to either aspect of the study. The Dacian development, which can only be observed in the 2 nd –3 rd century, can easily be placed among the Danubian provinces, so it is not necessary to connect it with the developmental trends in southern Italy. The present study, which continued József Herman's research, managed to explore the hitherto little-known linguistic and dialectological features of Latin in the Danubian provinces.
This paper addresses the challenges of managing and processing unstructured or semi-structured text, particularly in the context of increasing data volumes that traditional linguistic databases and algorithms struggle to handle in real-time scenarios. While humans can easily navigate linguistic complexities, computational systems face significant difficulties due to algorithmic limitations and the shortcomings of Large Language Models (LLMs). These challenges often result in issues such as a lack of standardized formats, malformed expressions, semantic and lexical ambiguities, hallucinations, and failures to produce outputs aligned with the intricate meaning layers present in human language. As for the automatic analysis of linguistic data, is well known that Natural Language Processing (NLP) uses two different approaches, coming from diverse cultural and experiential backgrounds. The first approach is based on probabilistic computational statistics (PCS), which underpins most Machine Learning (ML), LLMs, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques. The second approach is based, for each specific language, on the formalization of morpho-syntactic features and constraints used by humans in ordinary communication activities. At first glance, the second approach appears more effective in addressing linguistic phenomena such as polysemy and the formation of meaningful distributional sequences or, more precisely, acceptable and grammatical morpho-syntactic contexts. In this paper, we initiate a scientific discussion on the differences between these two approaches, aiming to shed light on their respective advantages and limitations.
The translation of the work of Lu Ji «Wen Fu» (陆机 «文賦»), written during the Western Jin dynasty (西晋), is important for modern Ukrainian Chinese studies, as it helps to reveal key aspects of the development of Chinese literature and language, and also indicates on the importance of the cultural context in the formation of stylistic norms. Translations of such works contribute to a deeper understanding of the literary heritage and philological processes that took place in China. The relevance of «Wen Fu» is due to several aspects. The text of the work demonstrates the continuity in the Chinese philological tradition and the relationship between the works that influenced it in the field of stylistics, thus reflecting the processes of development of stylistic phenomena. The work illustrates the influence of metaphysical ideas and traditional worldview on stylistic codification, which makes it relevant for studying the interaction of cultural and philosophical aspects with literary creativity. Acquaintance with the text of the work contributes to the formation of an idea about the traditional forms of the text and the language norm, which is important for understanding the Chinese literary heritage. Since the views on literature, before and after the reign of the Western Jin dynasty, were significantly different, the analysis of the text «Wen Fu» will contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of the literary process in China and philology as a separate branch of it. The translation of «Wen Fu» is thus an important link in the study of the literary processes of Ancient China. The appearance of «Wen Fu» was marked by the selection of stylistics and literary criticism in a separate direction of the Chinese philological tradition; the formation of the characteristics of functional styles was carried out under the conditions of significant influence of metaphysical ideas about the actual process of creativity and creation of the text expressed by the author; Lu Ji also noted the importance of observing stylistic traditions and preserving the formal stylistic characteristics of a literary text. The detailed analysis of methods and concepts of stylistic codification proposed in «Wen Fu» can become an important tool for further research into the phenomena of Chinese stylistic codification and its influence on the formation of linguistic norms and language culture in China.
The present study delves into code-switching among young Algerian English as a foreign language Facebook users, aiming to elucidate its functions and motives and thereby contributing to the sociolinguistic discourse on online communities. To achieve this, 917 posts and comments from 42 second-year English-major students aged 19-22 at Batna 2 University were analyzed for code-switching instances. These participants were selected through convenience sampling. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 randomly selected members of the sample to gain further insights. The findings illuminate code-switching as a strategic tool rather than a random choice, serving various linguistic and social functions such as using habitual expressions, filling lexical gaps, economizing words, clarifying, emphasizing, showing affection, addressing specific audiences, and avoiding taboos. Motivations behind code-switching were diverse, including low English language proficiency, linguistic limitations, facilitation of communication, novelty-seeking, emotional expression, and politeness. Overall, the research underscores code-switching as a purposeful linguistic strategy that transcends norms to fulfill communicative intentions and enhance stylistic expression. These findings emphasize the importance of understanding code-switching motivations in online communities, offering valuable insights into language dynamics in digital environments.
Syntactic parsing is essential in natural-language processing, with constituent structure being one widely used description of syntax. Traditional views of constituency demand that constituents consist of adjacent words, but this poses challenges in analysing syntax with non-local dependencies, common in languages like German. Therefore, in a number of treebanks like NeGra and TIGER for German and DPTB for English, long-range dependencies are represented by crossing edges. Various grammar formalisms have been used to describe discontinuous trees - often with high time complexities for parsing. Transition-based parsing aims at reducing this factor by eliminating the need for an explicit grammar. Instead, neural networks are trained to produce trees given raw text input using supervised learning on large annotated corpora. An elegant proposal for a stack-free transition-based parser developed by Coavoux and Cohen (2019) successfully allows for the derivation of any discontinuous constituent tree over a sentence in worst-case quadratic time. The purpose of this work is to explore the introduction of supertag information into transition-based discontinuous constituent parsing. In lexicalised grammar formalisms like CCG (Steedman, 1989) informative categories are assigned to the words in a sentence and act as the building blocks for composing the sentence's syntax. These supertags indicate a word's structural role and syntactic relationship with surrounding items. The study examines incorporating supertag information by using a dedicated supertagger as additional input for a neural parser (pipeline) and by jointly training a neural model for both parsing and supertagging (multi-task). In addition to CCG, several other frameworks (LTAG-spinal, LCFRS) and sequence labelling tasks (chunking, dependency parsing) will be compared in terms of their suitability as auxiliary tasks for parsing.
BACKGROUND The consistency of pancreatic apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values and intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) parameter values across different magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) devices significantly impacts the patient’s diagnosis and treatment. AIM To explore consistency in image quality, ADC values, and IVIM parameter values among different MRI devices in pancreatic examinations. METHODS This retrospective study was approved by the local ethics committee, and informed consent was obtained from all participants. In total, 22 healthy volunteers (10 males and 12 females) aged 24-61 years (mean, 28.9 ± 2.3 years) underwent pancreatic diffusion-weighted imaging using 3.0T MRI equipment from three vendors. Two independent observers subjectively scored image quality and measured the pancreas’s overall ADC values and signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Subsequently, regions of interest (ROIs) were delineated for the IVIM parameters (true diffusion coefficient, pseudo-diffusion coefficient, and perfusion fraction) using post-processing software. These ROIs were on the head, body, and tail of the pancrease. The subjective image ratings were assessed using the kappa consistency test. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and mixed linear models were used to evaluate each device’s quantitative parameter values. Finally, a pairwise analysis of IVIM parameter values across each device was performed using Bland-Altman plots. RESULTS The Kappa value for the subjective ratings of the different observers was 0.776 (P < 0.05). The ICC values for inter-observer and intra-observer agreements for the quantitative parameters were 0.803 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.684-0.880] and 0.883 (95%CI: 0.760-0.945), respectively (P < 0.05). The ICCs for the SNR between different devices was comparable (P > 0.05), and the ICCs for the ADC values from different devices were 0.870, 0.707, and 0.808, respectively (P < 0.05). Notably, only a few statistically significant inter-device agreements were observed for different IVIM parameters, and among those, the ICC values were generally low. The mixed linear model results indicated differences (P < 0.05) in the f -value for the pancreas head, D -value for the pancreas body, and D -value for the pancreas tail obtained using different MRI machines. The Bland-Altman plots showed significant variability at some data points. CONCLUSION ADC values are consistent among different devices, but the IVIM parameters’ repeatability is moderate. Therefore, the variability in the IVIM parameter values may be associated with using different MRI machines. Thus, caution should be exercised when using IVIM parameter values to assess the pancreas.
Language acts as a primary vehicle for transmitting cultural norms, values, and expectations, as well as thought paradigms, from one generation to another. This is despite language choices in Ekegusii proverbs being loaded with culturally stereotypical language choices about gender. This study investigated how power discourses are employed in Ekegusii proverbs. The study applied Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by Fairclough (1989, 1993 and 2001) and Van Dijk (2001). This research adopted a descriptive qualitative research design. The target population was eighty (80) ekegusii proverbs. Purposive sampling procedures were used to select eighty power-related proverbs. The study adopted the three-dimensional discourse framework as a method of data analysis. The findings of the study revealed that power relations are embedded in Ekegusii proverbs. The lexicalization and level of meaning of proverbs showed that these proverbs obtain their sexist and obscene connotations, which are construed as being laden with an impertinent reference that derogates womanhood. The study further revealed that linguistic features such as metaphors, negative syntactic structures, and vocabulary are used to enact power between genders. The study recommends that gendered proverbs be consciously improved to portray gender neutrality, equality and contemporariness.
Over the past decades the term compliance has become increasingly widely used globally, making its way into national languages. The same is true for Russian academic discourse were compliance (or its Russian analogue “комплаенс”) has become common in a number of areas ranging from business and law to healthcare. This trend as well as cultural practices of revitalizing the social role of religion, which can also be viewed as a form of compliance, substantiate the relevance of this study. The word compliance with the meaning of agreement, accordance and self-restriction has been known in the English language since the 13th century. During the Reformation it notably referred to agreement with people of other beliefs. The purpose of this study is to trace the use of the term and describe its functioning today by analyzing forms corresponding to compliance, especially those with religious connotations. The following goals are set: 1) to describe the linguistic and etymological peculiarities of compliance in various cultural contexts and to specify the grounds for its understanding as a broader concept; 2) to trace the transformation of the concept from religious to secular and to compare personal and group identity markers; 3) to identify the specifics of the cultural practice of compliance as voluntary consent of group and personal religiosity on the example of creative writing; 4) based on texts by A. P. Chekhov to establish the features of the modern cultural optics of compliance in relation to the cultural phenomena of the past; 5) to highlight the key features of reading the works of A. P. Chekhov from the perspective of compliance. The research materials include data from dictionaries and encyclopedias, the linguistic database National Corpus of the Russian Language and selected works by A. P. Chekhov. The work, based on anthropological, axiological, and hermeneutic approaches, uses the methods of discourse analysis and narrative analysis, as well as the biographical method. The return to the broader meaning of the concept of compliance is associated with the peculiarities of the current cultural situation, requiring special attention to the coordination of both secular and religious aspects at group and personal levels. Firstly, in Russian this is fixed by referring to the English term compliance, which goes back to the Latin word complere. Secondly, the conceptual apparatus for describing and understanding religion has been historically developed as a series of forms representing normative aspects of the religious (confessional) identity of the elites of a particular historical period in a particular geographic region. Folk and authored interpretations have been relegated to the realm of marginal superstitions and heresies for thousands of years. Thirdly, the so-called Age of Magazines and Writers opened up new possibilities and ways of representing the deepest experiences of an individual author in literary work that connects the individual with the universal, the intimate with the public, and the instantaneous with the eternal, sometimes giving rise to works that receive worldwide recognition (A. P. Chekhov). However, reflection on this process has become possible relatively recently; Finally, by using the example of the works of A. P. Chekhov, to review compliance of literature and religion in a writer’s work, it has allowed us to highlight the specifics of his artistic realism, based on the techniques of mirror image, and inscribing the conventional magic of personal writing in the time of the religious understanding of culture. As a result, the conclusion is substantiated that the globally recognized work of A. P. Chekhov can be interpreted as an example of the presentation of religion as living religiosity, i.e. the universal social and personal phenomenon of constructing successful practices of supervising the unknown (N. Luhmann), forming historically special institutional and vernacular forms of their unique personal experience.
This article presents a set of standardised corpora of poetry comprising over 330,000 poems in ten languages (Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Slovenian, and Spanish). Each corpus has been deduplicated, enriched with Universal Dependencies, provided with additional metadata, and converted into a unified json structure.
The rigid framework for interpreting any “code of rules” significantly limits the theoretical aspects of doing research on them and requires a special explanation in relation to orthography as a section of linguistics, especially when there are several national variants of the literary language. The relevance of the study is substantiated by the urgent need for a theoretical description of the corpus of the most significant concepts of spelling used in teaching Russian in Belarus and creating a strategic plan for introducing innovations in spelling; the need to record changes in definitions determined by the transition to convergent learning; the influence of a complex of linguistic and extralinguistic factors, and the development of optional arguments for the codification of the Belarusian national version of the Russian language. The aim of the study is to determine the parameters and specifics of the theory of orthography in educational literature for teaching Russian in the Republic of Belarus. The material of the study contained the definitions and language illustrations of the main concepts of the theory of orthography (spelling, spelling rule, orthogram, spelling principle, spelling error, spelling norm, etc.) in textbooks and manuals on the Russian language for higher education institutions of the Republic of Belarus published from 2000 to 2024. The methods of parameterization and comparison, logical-linguistic and lexical-semantic analysis were used. The authors revealed that both specialized educational publications devoted only to spelling and comprehensive publications where spelling is part of the educational material lack the theoretical and meta-linguistic apparatus of either a significant part or the entire necessary base of the theory of orthography. There are different approaches to the positioning of orthographic terminology that coexist in various educational publications. This is mainly an orientation towards outdated traditions, the absence of modern concepts (such as “orthographic activity”, “orthographic picture of the language”, etc.). The theory of orthography in educational literature on the Russian language for higher educational institutions of the Republic of Belarus is based, as a rule, on the modern rules of Russian spelling, but is characterized, on the one hand, by innovative specificity, and on the other hand, by their conservative positioning in writing practice. This indicates different approaches to the formation of the orthographic linguistic personality, orthographic linguistic and metalinguistic consciousness of Belarusians studying the Russian language. The main principles of modern theory of spelling development should take into account orthographic innovations and national and cultural specificity in teaching the Russian language in higher educational institutions of the Republic of Belarus.
Relevance. The need to investigate the specifics of Chinese translator training within the framework of the global programme �One Belt, One Road� is primarily conditioned by the constant changes in various aspects, particularly in structural, semantic, and artistic aspects. Purpose. The purpose of this study was to investigate the global initiative �One Belt, One Road� in the context of training professional human resources to perform Chinese language translations. Methodology. This study analysed materials available on the websites of several higher education institutions. The analysis focused on specific parameters such as the distinct features of training students in Chinese studies, the education of translators working with Chinese, and the principles, methods, and techniques used in teaching the Chinese language. Results. Analyses of translator training have identified key skills for students: parallel language and culture study, adherence to translation norms like business etiquette, and mastery of technical translation tools. In Kyrgyz universities, methods include verbal (lectures, discussions), visual (audio and video materials), and practical (creative works, exhibitions, quizzes, conferences). For Chinese translators under the �One Belt, One Road� initiative, training spans multiple linguistic levels: phonetic (phrases, accents), grammatical (categories, meanings), lexical (vocabulary related to the initiative and various fields), syntactic (word order, links), and stylistic (business etiquette, unique vocabulary). Conclusions. The study found that the �One Belt, One Road� initiative's language policy focuses on planning Chinese language status, foreign languages, language structure, educational language use, and language services. The key challenges are the shortage of skilled professionals, intergovernmental cooperation, infrastructure standards, financial integration, and cultural exchange. In the future, this study can be used to develop technical improvements in Kyrgyz-Chinese translation, to improve the training of Chinese specialists within the framework of the global initiative �One Belt, One Road�. Keywords: lingua franca; linguistic levels; linguistic policy; linguistic parameters; terminological units
Translating press releases from the United Nations (UN) poses significant challenges due to the vast linguistic and cultural diversity of its audience.The UN operates as an international organization where various languages and cultural contexts intersect, using a unique style and specific vocabulary to convey its core values and goals.However, ensuring that the intended message is accurately interpreted across different cultural and linguistic backgrounds is not straightforward.One primary difficulty stems from the lexical and grammatical features of the original English press releases.These often include nuances, idiomatic expressions, and cultural references that lack direct equivalents in other languages, especially Ukrainian.Thus, careful adaptation during translation is essential to preserve the original meaning while maintaining the intended impact.This article discusses the challenges involved in translating UN press releases from English to Ukrainian, emphasizing key aspects such as terminological accuracy, which is vital for preserving content integrity and ensuring that specific terms resonate appropriately within their context.We highlight the importance of cultural adaptation, which requires modifying references and expressions to suit the cultural norms of the Ukrainian audience.Additionally, we stress the necessity of keeping grammatical structures that align with the original communication objectives.Through our examination of these linguistic and cultural challenges, we explore how specific language choices affect target audience perception.To support translators, we provide practical recommendations based on our findings, focusing on effective translation strategies.Overall, this research contributes to theoretical discussions in translation studies and offers valuable insights into global communication.By addressing these complexities, we aim to foster an appreciation for the nuances involved in translating press materials in a way that resonates universally while respecting local contexts.
This paper on lexiculture as a hidden referent in lexical teaching in Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) highlights the importance of lexical teaching in language acquisition, underlining its relationship with culture. Here we study how cultural understanding enriches vocabulary learning and communication in SFL. It is highlighted that the lexicon reflects cultural realities, values and beliefs, which requires recognizing these connections for an effective use of terminology. It also examines how culture influences the lexicon and vice versa, from culture-specific terms to idiomatic expressions rooted in the culture. Methodologically, the relationship between culture and lexicon is manifested in the expression of values, cultural identity, translation, cultural evolution, idiomatic expressions and social norms. Cultural terminology is essential to express significant aspects of a culture, such as food, festivities, kinship, idiomatic expressions of places, religion, traditional dress and nature. Therefore, the importance of adapting the lexicon to the cultural context under study without losing one's own identity is emphasized. For the treatment of lexiculture in the classroom, cultural immersion and exchange are proposed as tools for understanding and using the cultural lexicon effectively. This analysis also outlines some strategies for the teaching-learning of lexis and culture in order to understand this intrinsic relationship and enrich linguistic competence. It also points out a series of lines of research on the academic horizon to broaden the study of the relationship between culture and lexicon, considering it to be profound and essential in the study of SFL and, above all, highlighting how the lexicon is shaped by the culture in which it is immersed.
Abstract Background Responses to individualized music in people living with dementia can be indicated by both verbal and non‐verbal cues. Evidence suggests that elevated pupil dilation responses to familiar vs. unfamiliar music are preserved in people living with typical Alzheimer’s disease (tAD), and to an extent in people with its atypical ‘visual’ variant (Posterior Cortical Atrophy; PCA) (Brotherhood et al., 2023). In the present work, we investigate whether this finding is also observable in individuals with the atypical ‘language‐led’ variant of Alzheimer’s disease, logopenic variant Primary Progressive Aphasia (lvPPA). Method Individuals with lvPPA or tAD (and cognitively normal adults) are currently being recruited via the Specialist Cognitive Disorders clinic at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London, UK. We are simultaneously recording in‐the‐moment multiple physiological responses (e.g. pupillometry, electrodermal activity) while each participant listens to 30 different musical clips (classical (5 pieces), 1960s (10 pieces), 1970s (10 pieces), and five reversed pieces). Each clip has an a priori familiarity rating (known/unknown), participant‐rated pleasantness and familiarity, and participant‐rated ability to evoke a memory (yes/no). We will collect complementary basic clinical, audiometry and music experience data. Alongside pupillometry, multistrand physiological data via Empatica E4 devices will enable exploration of potential differential cardiovascular (heart rate/heart rate variability) and/or electrodermal activity (EDA) responses to familiar and unfamiliar music using within‐group linear regression models with robust standard errors. Result Physiological responses from a priori‐predicted and subjective ratings of music familiarity will be reported for each participant group, controlling for demographic factors including participant age and disease severity. Prospective results will provide further insight into what is currently known about pupillometry responses to familiar/unfamiliar music in atypical AD (PCA) and tAD (e.g. Estimated mean % increase in known vs unknown songs [95%CI]: Controls 1.8% [1.2, 2.5]; tAD 2.6% [0.6, 4.6]; PCA 2.0% [1.0, 4.0]). Conclusion The results of this work will provide insight into the extent to which differential responses to music at the physiological level is retained within lvPPA. This may both support the notion of individualized music provision, and potentially provide a mechanism for these individuals to communicate their subjective experience of music using a non‐verbal mechanism.
While browsing my Facebook feed on an early summer day in May 2017, a post with the trigger warning “inconsistent use of pronouns” grabbed my attention. The post, shared within a private Facebook group for (foreign) LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies living in Japan, featured an article recently published in The New York Times. Titled “Japanese Transgender Politician is Showing ‘I Exist Here’,” the article focuses on Hosoda Tomoya, a Japanese trans man who recently won a seat in the local city council in a suburb just outside of Tokyo (Rich, 2017). Hosoda made history as the first trans man in the world to be voted to public office, and the near-full-page article delved into Hosoda's life history, his journey into politics, and the challenges that he faced as a trans person living in Japan. What the author and the subsequent commenters of the Facebook post found “baffling” about the article was the use of the pronoun “she” when referring to Hosoda's childhood years as a girl named Mika, whereas throughout the remainder of the article, “he” was used to refer to Hosoda. This inconsistency was deemed by some as “poor etiquette,” particularly from a reputable outlet like The New York Times. What the readers were not aware of, however, was that Hosoda himself had approved the use of the pronoun “she” in that specific section of the report. The reason he provided was that it is an undeniable fact that he had “publicly lived as a woman before chiryo” (transition, literally medical treatment) and therefore did not see anything wrong with using the feminine third-person pronoun (private communication). If Hosoda himself did not find the pronouns “inconsistent” or offensive, should the general readers take issue with them? In the middle of 2020, I received an email from a graduate student based in the United States who had recently read one of my articles. The student took issue with my use of the term “FTM,” pointing out that by using it to refer to my research informants, I am perpetuating the “linguistic violence” associated with the term. In that article, I drew on my fieldwork in what I term the Japanese FTM community in Tokyo to show how seemingly mundane social events, such as drinking parties that are organized by and for trans men, can function as a site for my informants to negotiate inclusion and belonging as trans without undermining their male public selves. Within this community, “FTM” (the English acronym for female-to-male transgender) is the preferred term of self-reference, both in written form and in speech (transliterated as efu-tii-emu in Japanese). Although I was aware of the debates surrounding this term in English-speaking contexts, where it is considered outdated and criticized for emphasizing a notion of change that contradicts the experiences of many trans individuals who have always identified as such, I chose to use it to refer to my informants because they have consistently used it to describe themselves and others within the community. The term “FTM,” originally borrowed from English, is used in the Japanese context to describe individuals whose karada no sei (literally the sex/gender of the body) is female but whose kokoro no sei (literally the sex/gender of their heart) is male. Alongside its counterpart “MTF” (male-to-female transgender, transliterated as emu-tii-efu), these terms have gained prominence in both government publications and writings by transgender individuals as appropriate labels to reference toransujendā (the Japanese transliteration of the English term transgender). Toransujendā, as a new category of personhood, emerged in Japan in the late 1990s following the introduction of the medical condition seidōitsuseishōgai (Gender Identity Disorder, henceforth GID) along with the official recognition of seibetsutekigō shujutsu (gender affirming surgery, literally sex reassignment surgery) as the appropriate “treatment” for GID. Despite the recent global trend toward demedicalization, transgender in Japan remain predominantly understood in medical terms, and the “wrong body” narrative continues to be invoked by many trans individuals seeking access to hormones, surgery, and legal gender recognition. In that article, I should have explicitly acknowledged the potential harm that the term, along with notions of medicalization associated with the term, may inflict on certain trans individuals. I should have also pointed out that I recognize that not all trans men in Japan identify with and use the term “FTM.” Perhaps I could have used the Japanese transliteration efu-tii-emu instead. Nevertheless, based on my analysis of Japanese trans autobiographies (such as Sugiyama, 2006) and from my fieldwork, I observed that the medical discourse has played a significant role in providing a new and legitimate way for understanding gender non-normativity in Japan—an aspect traditionally associated with the realm of sex and entertainment (McLelland, 2005). The emergence of terms like “FTM” has empowered many Japanese trans individuals, enabling them to move from an unspeakable, “unacceptable and abominable existence” (Sugiyama, 2006, pp. 65–66) to one that is comprehensible and sanctioned by the authority of medicine. The enactment of a law in 2004—the Exceptional Treatment Law for People with Gender Identity Disorder (Seidōitsuseishōgaisha no seibetsu no toriatsukai no tokurei ni kansuru hōan)—that allows trans individuals who have received a GID diagnosis and who have undergone gender reassignment to legally change their gender further legitimizes their existence.i Most, if not all, of my informants—who come from diverse backgrounds and are at various stages of transition—identify with and embrace the label “FTM.” Many even prominently feature it on their social media profiles. Although some individuals may not identify exclusively with the term “FTM,” given the term's cultural significance within the Japanese context, would it not also be an act of violence if I were to adopt a different term for this community, thereby erasing its history and denying my informants of the subjectivity and empowerment that “FTM” affords them? Both episodes reminded me of an incident at the 2009 Netherlands Transgender Film Festival recounted in Leung (2016). During the screening of the documentary Transvestites Also Cry (2007), which follows the lives of two Ecuadorian migrant sex workers in Paris, several audience members walked out of the theater in protest. They were apparently upset by the filmmaker's use of the pronoun “he” to refer to the protagonist in the film, who identifies as female. They were also offended by the term “transvestite,” which the filmmaker used as the translation for the Spanish term travesti, a term that the subjects in the film used to refer to themselves and others in their community. As Leung (2016) rightly observed, the filmmaker could have avoided controversy by titling the film more “correctly,” albeit somewhat awkwardly, as Transgender People Also Cry. However, even with a more accurate title, the subjects’ use of pronouns was never consistent, and they also employed terms like “homosexual” and “tercer sexo” (third sex) alongside “travesti” to describe themselves and their friends. Other visual cues in the film further underscored the “noncoherence between categories, identities, and experiences” (ibid., p. 435). What we can glean from these examples is that although “correct” terminologies hold significance, they cannot fully capture the complexity of all trans lives and experiences. What may be considered acceptable or preferred terminology in one context may lack relevance or appropriateness in another. Yet, the dominance of Anglo-centric perspectives in public and academic discourses surrounding queer and trans issues has led to the widespread assumptions about the universal applicability of English terminologies and identity categories. As a result, local ways of understanding and articulating diverse gender identities and embodiment—which emerged out of historical, social, cultural, and political contexts that may differ significantly from those of the Anglo-West—may become overshadowed or replaced entirely by the ostensibly more “correct” terminology and the associated notions of trans identity that they convey (Leung, 2016). I certainly do not doubt the importance of using trans-affirming language. As Zimman (2017) observed, language is one significant site through which trans identities are negotiated, validated, and undermined. The advocacy for transgender language reform, a cornerstone of trans activism, has catalyzed a critical reevaluation of linguistic practices in many Anglo-Western societies in recent years. From the adoption of gender-neutral pronouns (such as singular they/them/theirs) to the development of new gender identity terms (such as the word “non-binary”), the push for trans-affirming and gender inclusive language has challenged the normalization of transphobia and cissexism in everyday language use, prompting better recognition and affirmation of trans people's self-identities (ibid). However, as Cameron (2012 [1995]) reminded us, “language is a highly variable and radically context-dependent phenomenon which may have effects on perception, but only in conjunction with other factors” (p. 142). Although language can perpetuate certain beliefs and assumptions, it alone does not create them. Terminologies and perspectives are inter-related, yet perspectives are not universal. Therefore, it is crucial to consider language within its broader sociocultural context. Returning to Hosoda's case, many English-speaking readers today might similarly find the use of a female third-person pronoun for someone identifying as male inappropriate. Although Japanese language is generally perceived to be gendered—an ideology often reinforced in school textbooks, media, and daily conversations—pronouns, in normative usage, do not solely index gender identity. As Morita (2003) highlighted, “Japanese personal pronouns always index a specific social relationship […] Japanese speakers must choose certain address and reference terms to locate themselves as well as their interlocutors in the entire speech community to which both of them belong, giving an acknowledged role in society to each other” (p. 371). As such, Japanese speakers may use different pronouns depending on the social context, taking into consideration factors like gender, age, and status in relation to their interlocutors, all while adhering to lexical items appropriate for their gender. Gender, within the ideology of gendered language, is treated as a singular, unified concept where various aspects of gender, such as gender identity, assigned gender, legal gender, and gender presentation, are conflated into one. As a result, for many Japanese-speaking trans individuals navigating these gendered language norms, the choice of pronouns may not always be straightforward, leading to situations where they switch between “masculine” and “feminine pronouns” depending on the context. In the community that I studied, many trans men use the vulgar first-person “masculine pronoun” ore when speaking to their peers or younger members in the community. Those from working class backgrounds also tend to favor ore over boku (a first-person “masculine pronoun” used by men in informal settings), which is more commonly used among middle-class trans men or when addressing older or senior members in the community. The choice of masculine pronouns by these trans men not only indexes male gender identity or male social gender but also conveys additional nuances. For instance, the use of ore indexes attributes such as coolness and assertiveness (see also Miyazaki, 2023), whereas boku carries connotations of youthfulness, approachability, and polite informality. However, in professional settings outside of the community and on social media platforms, some of these trans men, who use ore and boku within the community but who have not come out or undergone transition, opt for “feminine pronouns” like watashi (a first-person pronoun usually used by women, but also used by men in formal settings) and kanojo (she). This choice, akin to Hosoda's situation, aligns with gendered speech conventions in Japan, where individuals typically (or are expected to) choose “feminine pronouns” if their assigned/social/legal gender is female. If criticism is warranted here, it should not be directed at Hosoda or The New York Times for their use of female pronouns on someone who identifies as male, but rather at the gendered language ideology that perpetuates concepts of “men's speech” and “women's speech” in Japan. Trans language activism (TLA) has indeed spread far and wide, reshaping ways of thinking and speaking about trans beyond the Anglophone sphere. In line with developments in the West, some trans activists in Japan today are also advocating for the use of “toransu man” (trans man) and “toransu ūman” (trans woman) as the more accurate and modern equivalents of “FTM” and “MTF.” However, as Zimman pointed out in the discussion article, the advocacy around trans-affirming language has largely been influenced by the perspectives of trans individuals and allies who hold privilege along other axes of identity. These individuals often tend to be white, highly educated, employed in elite academic institutions, able-bodied, and native English speakers. Using terminologies and linguistic practices deemed “correct” by a small group of trans activists and language reformers in a blanket manner, without consideration of the underlying power dynamics, can be problematic in several ways. Not only does it hinder TLA's goal of achieving sociolinguistic justice, but it can also perpetuate other forms of marginalization, such as the devaluation of Black language, as highlighted by Zimman. Furthermore, it can (re)produce a “hierarchy of experiences and subjectivities” (Leung, 2016), which privileges Euro-American understandings of gender non-normativity as modern and progressive while dismissing other (local) ways of imagining and expressing gender non-normativity as traditional and outdated (Leung, 2016; Grewal & Kaplan, 2001). To effectively achieve sociolinguistic justice, we need to provincialize Western perspectives on trans and its associated vocabularies (Chiang et al., 2018). Trans activists, individuals, and allies must move beyond Eurocentric thinking and recognize that the “correct” terminologies and categories originating from the Western trans movement may not universally apply to trans and gender non-conforming individuals in other cultures. Real progress toward sociolinguistic justice begins when we move beyond simply policing language use or correcting instances of what some may perceive as misgendering without considering the broader context.