scholarly journals COGNITIVE APPROACH TO LEXICAL VARIATION IN OVERSEAS ENGLISHES

10.23856/2903 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-143
Author(s):  
Tetyana Kozlova ◽  
Leszek Bednarczuk

Modern English includes a range of standard and nonstandard varieties that are spoken around the world and differ at all levels of language structure. The purpose of this article is to overview international variation of English lexis, discover similarities intersecting this diversity, find out about productive patterns of lexical change and interpret them from a cognitive perspective. The paper demonstrates the importance of internal and external sources of borrowing, considers the ways of coining new vocabulary, gives attention to efficient strategies employed to name colonial settings and to distinguish newly forming identities from British and other English-speaking communities. Varying experience of adjustment to overseas environments stimulated a high degree of lexical change and heteronymy. Although in different regions English emerged from unique colonial contexts, speakers’ precolonial experience, knowledge and intuitions about the world played a significant role in the processes of categorization and conceptualization, and hence naming. It is argued that it is possible to discern common cognitive ground for such diversity in lexis.

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Göran Gunner

Authors from the Christian Right in the USA situate the September 11 attack on New York and Washington within God's intentions to bring America into the divine schedule for the end of the world. This is true of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, and other leading figures in the ‘Christian Coalition’. This article analyses how Christian fundamentalists assess the roles of the USA, the State of Israel, Islam, Iraq, the European Union and Russia within what they perceive to be the divine plan for the future of the world, especially against the background of ‘9/11’. It argues that the ideas of the Christian Right and of President George W. Bush coalesce to a high degree. Whereas before 9/11 many American mega-church preachers had aspirations to direct political life, after the events of that day the President assumes some of the roles of a mega-religious leader.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Karen Van den Berg

"Wie kommt es, dass sich der Flagship-Store eines Technikkonzerns präsentiert wie eine öffentliche Kunsthalle, während die Dependance des Louvre in Nord-Pas-de-Calais wirkt, als würde man eine iPad-Benutzeroberfläche betreten? Der Beitrag liefert eine Analyse des Louvre Lens und beleuchtet das Projekt in Hinblick auf seine verblüffenden ästhetischen Familienähnlichkeiten in Materialsprache, Struktur und Atmosphäre zu neueren Apple Stores. Dabei wird versucht, die kulturellen und mentalitätsgeschichtlichen Codes zu entziffern und zu plausibilisieren, dass sich hier eine Epistemologie entfaltet, die die Welt als simultan präsentes Symbolsystem begreift. How is it that the flagship store of a technology company presents itself as a public arthall, while the branch of the Louvre in Nord-Pas-de-Calais looks like the user interface of an iPad? The paper provides an analysis of the Louvre Lens and illuminates the project in terms of its stunning aesthetic similarities in material language, structure and atmosphere to recent Apple Stores. Furthermore, it attempts to decipher the cultural and mental-historical codes and argues that an epistemology is developing here which comprehends the world as a simultaneous symbolic system. "


Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

In recantation of his earlier approach, Peter L. Berger now claims: ‘The world today, with some exceptions […], is as furiously religious as it ever was, and in some places more so than ever.’ The most important exception that Berger refers to is Western Europe. The introduction to Part II provides an overview of the religious landscape in Western Europe. The data show that the current religious situation in the countries of Western Europe is in fact subject to considerable variation. It would therefore be erroneous to describe Western Europe as secularized. At the same time, the data reveal that there have been clear secularization tendencies over the last few decades. To grasp the diversity of religious tendencies, Part II deals with three cases: West Germany with moderate downward tendencies, Italy with a considerably high degree of stability, and the Netherlands displaying disproportionately strong secularizing tendencies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Robert T. Cserni ◽  
Lee W. Essig

In this article we begin to map the field of Men and Masculinities Studies by examining 20 years of publications in the journal of Men and Masculinities. We conduct a content analysis of 458 articles and 2115 keywords from 1998 to 2017. Our findings indicate similar numbers of women and men published sole-authored articles. The most prevalent themes among published articles were related to theory, sexualities, and family. Furthermore, non-English speaking regions in the world are under-represented compared to English speaking regions. We hope that our discussion of these, and other findings, will help (re)shape the field and the journal of Men and Masculinities into a more diverse and inclusive academic space.


1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-334
Author(s):  
Gerhard Van Den Heever

AbstractIn a comparative study the issue is raised about the relationship between the construction of the saviour-image in Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Hinduism. The historical links between these traditions are highlighted and then the article proceeds to argue that when compared, the projections of the images of Jesus and Buddha, Jesus and Zoroaster and Jesus and Krishna exhibit a high degree of similarity. In the process questions are asked about the nature of religion and the value of comparative study.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Alan Smith

AbstractThe basidiomycete fungus Lentinula novae-zelandiae is endemic to New Zealand and is a sister taxon to Lentinula edodes, the second most cultivated mushroom in the world. To explore the biology of this organism, a high-quality chromosome level reference genome of L. novae-zelandiae was produced. Macrosyntenic comparisons between the genome assembly of L. novae-zelandiae, L. edodes and a set of three genome assemblies of diverse species from the Agaricomycota reveal a high degree of macrosyntenic restructuring within L. edodes consistent with signal of domestication. These results show L. edodes has undergone significant genomic change during the course of its evolutionary history, likely a result of its cultivation and domestication over the last 1000 years.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Mohammed Bader Alyousef

<p>The study aimed at revealing the motives and the obstacles of using internet as a source of<br />learning by the human colleges at WISE. And to achieve the study’s goals , a questionnaire<br />was developed consisting of 40 items; 20 items addressed motives of using internet as source<br />of learning and other 20 items addressed obstacles of using internet as a source of learning .<br />The sample of the study which consisted of 520 male and female students was selected<br />randomly in the second semester for 2012/2013. After data were collected, they were<br />analyzed using descriptive methods, t-test and ANOVA. Results showed the motives of using<br />internet ranged from high degree to moderate. The degrees of obstacles facing using internet<br />were moderate.<br />The researcher recommended the necessity of activating the students’ use of internet with<br />their teachers’ guidance, facilitating the use of internet by increasing the number of computer<br />labs and supervisors, in addition to provide flexible and easy electronic programs for studying<br />university courses.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRIQUE LEFF

Abstract The current environmental crisis calls for thinking about the state of the world: the thermodynamic-ecological and symbolic-cultural conditions of organic and human life on the planet. In this regard, it stresses the need to realize the unawareness and life’s unsustainability that humanity has created. In this text I discuss and take a stand about some of the concepts and founding and constitutive research lines of political ecology. In this way I pretend to open dialogue by placing in context some of the principles, ideas, and founding viewpoints of political ecology in Latin America and contrasting them with those from the English-speaking school of thought. I intend not only to establish a political socio-geography, but to question the epistemic core of political ecology, and to stimulate a more cosmopolitan critical thinking in order to be able to face the hegemonic powers that lead the world into social and environmental decay


Think ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (34) ◽  
pp. 33-56
Author(s):  
Matthew Carey Jordan

This essay is about liberal and conservative views of marriage. I'll begin by mentioning that I would really, really like to avoid use of the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’, but when push comes to shove, I know of no better labels for the positions that will be discussed in what follows. I would like to avoid these labels for a simple reason: many people strongly self-identify as liberals or as conservatives, and this can undermine our ability to investigate the topic in a sane, rational way. Politics, at least in the contemporary English-speaking world, functions a lot like the world of sports. Many people have a particular team to which their allegiance has been pledged, and the team's successes and failures on the field are shared in the hearts and minds of its loyal followers. In my own case – and here, I ask for your pity – I am a fan of the National Football League's Cleveland Browns. As much as I might wish things were otherwise, I rejoice in the Browns' (rare) triumphs and suffer when they lose (which happens frequently). I do not wait to see what happens in the game before I decide which team to cheer for; if it's an NFL game, and I see orange and brown, I know where my allegiance lies. Furthermore, I identify with my fellow Browns fans in a way that I cannot identify with followers of, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers. Clevelanders are my people. We share something, and what we share unites us in opposition to Steeler Nation. Their victories are our defeats. It is a zero-sum game: for one of us to win, the other must lose.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Hansen

Abstract The World Bank Administrative Tribunal has begun its second quarter-century with a jurisprudential flowering of extraordinary proportions. Mr. Hansen’s study, which builds on his earlier 25-year retrospective, comprehensively surveys the Tribunal’s numerous doctrinal developments during this time. In this article, which is part one of two, Mr. Hansen revisits two of the four subjects explored in his retrospective: (i) the roles of the contract of employment, Bank rules, international treaties and national laws in the composition of the pactum established between a staff member and the Bank; and (ii) the development of binding custom from the practices of the Bank, other institutions and national governments. The third and fourth subjects, which deal with the Tribunal’s use of general legal principles and precedents drawn from international and domestic tribunals, shall be handled in the forthcoming second part of this study. Extensively footnoted, Mr. Hansen’s study is intended for both academics and practitioners specializing in international administrative law and comparative international jurisprudence.


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