An outstanding personality in the world of fiction, and a critic as well as a novelist, Henry james was born in New York on 15 April, 1843. He started his education under the supervision of his father, an eclectic philosopher, whose vivid sense of words and psychological insight he inherited. Though his schooling was informal, James read widely and developed a strong critical sense, which was to help him in his literary career. Henry James, charcoal sketch by John Singer Sargent (1911) The James family had frequent sojourns in Europe, and Henry attended schools in London, Paris and Geneva. In 1858 they took a house in Newport, Rhode Island, and there Henry formed two very important friendships: Thomas Sergeant Perry, an avid reader who was to become his closest friend, and John LaFarge, the painter, who encouraged him to read modern French novelists, like Honor’e de Balzac, and to begin writing. In 1861, while trying to put out a fire, Henry James strained his back, and this injury influenced his health throughout the rest of his life. After attending Harvard law school for a short time, he decided to devote himself entirely to writing, and his short stories made him famous when he was only 25. In 1869 James came to Europe; he visited England, where he met George Eliot, and went to France and Italy, the background of so many of his works. During his stay in Europe his cousin Minnie Temple died. She was the only woman for whom he had a strong attachment, and James later portrayed her in two of his major novels, The Portrait of a Lady, and The Wings of the Dove. James spent the years 1870-72 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writing book reviews and stories, and from 1872 to 1874 he was again in Europe; the result of this tour was Roderick Hudson, a novel about an American sculptor, faced with the problem of the choice between working in America or moving to sophisticated but corrupt Europe. 1854 portrait of Henry James Sr. & Henry James Jr.

Portrait of a Lady

THIS DIGEST WAS CREATED BY ERIC, THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT ERIC, CONTACT ACCESS ERIC 1-800-LET-ERIC In virtually all areas of business, it is essential to communicate in ways that clients, employees, and the public can understand. Advertising appeals must be intelligible, product warranties must be comprehensible, and job instructions must be stated clearly enough to be followed. It is in the interest of the merchant, the advertising writer, and the lawyer to make sure that their writing is clear. Fortunately for those who must read and interpret communication in business and the professions, there have been

The Plain English Movement ： 英語表現簡潔化への試み

While the rhetoric surrounding the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act focused on core issues such as cost, quality, and access to care, the dialog rarely acknowledged a key problem-the fact that most Americans do not understand their health insurance. Simply put, consumers do not fully grasp their health insurance coverage because the jargon found in many health insurance contracts is impenetrable to most Americans. This is disconcerting because consumer-oriented information is central to our increasingly consumer-directed health care system. Consumers are expected to make cost-effective choices among the array of health insurance plans that may be available to them, utilize health care services in a cost-effective manner, navigate provider networks, minimize their out-of-pocket expenses, and effectively appeal denials of coverage. Furthermore, unlike other types of insurance agreements, health insurance policies are contracts of recurring use. That is, health insurance policies are routinely and repeatedly invoked by consumers to finance their health care. Yet, such contracts are written at a level that is beyond the reading skills of most Americans. As such, insureds not only have difficultly understanding the details of their coverage, they do not fully comprehend the benefits and rights afforded by the policy. Consequently, the traditional approach of ex post judicial governance of insurance agreements (as adhesion contracts) by interpreting ambiguities in favor of insureds provides inadequate protection for health insurance consumers. If consumers do not understand their coverage rights and benefits, they cannot reasonably be expected to know when those benefits have been wrongly denied. The better, ex ante solution is to make health insurance contracts readable in the first instance by requiring that health insurance contracts meet an eighth grade readability standard as a condition of state approval.

Readability, Contracts of Recurring Use, and the Problem of Ex Post Judicial Governance of Health Insurance Policies

The popularity of literary biographies and the importance publishers place on author publicity materials suggest the concept of an author’s creative intentions is important to readers’ appreciation...

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The role of empirical methods in investigating readers’ constructions of authorial creativity in literary reading

Technology entrepreneurship has enabled the widespread commercial adoption of internet technologies. These internet technologies have reformed consumer commercial experiences towards an online environment. The pervasiveness of the online experience raises the importance of protecting the consumer in the online context. Online services are typically delivered under “Clik-Thru” terms of service developed by the service provider alone; and accepted by the consumer with a single click and little if any consideration. The successful adoption of new internet-based technologies and commercial practices has encouraged more technology entrepreneurship in a positive feedback cycle. Efforts at improved readability are insufficient to engage consumers with these “Clik-Thru” contracts. This paper argues that some efforts at increasing consumer engagement with the “Clik-Thru” terms of service may be a useful and tractable step towards improved consumer experiences. Blockchain smart contracts appear to provide promising capabilities to enable greater consumer engagement with “Clik-Thru” contracts.

“Clik-Thru” Terms of Service: Blockchain smart contracts to improve consumer engagement?

Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 consumer contracts and consumer notices are required to be expressed in plain and intelligible language. This is a difficult concept to capture. Determining whether a contract is expressed in plain and intelligible language involves resource intensive work by regulators and difficult adjudications by courts. This paper explores whether reading scores present a viable alternative. Can a simple computer program tell a consumer, a business, a regulator or the court that a particular contract is not expressed in plain and intelligible language? The paper begins by exploring the concept and role of plain and intelligible language in the Consumer Rights Act, before considering the ways that reading scores have developed and been used in legal contexts. We then report on the findings of an experimental examination of insurance contracts using a basket of reading scores, using our findings to draw conclusions about the utility of reading scores in determining whether a contract is expressed in plain and intelligible language. We find that reading scores can play a role in such determinations, but that further work is needed to provide appropriate tools for business, regulators and courts to use in assessing plain and intelligible language.

/pdf/assessing-plain-and-intelligible-language-in-the-consumer-4hjehwgyak.pdf

Assessing plain and intelligible language in the Consumer Rights Act: a role for reading scores?

Abstract This study examined the processing and acquisition of novel words and their collocates (i.e., words that frequently co-occur with other words) from reading and the effect of frequency of exposure on this process. First and second language speakers of English read a story with 1) eight exposures of adjective-pseudoword collocations, 2) four exposures of the same collocations, or 3) eight exposures of control collocations. Results of recall and recognition tests showed that participants acquired knowledge not only of the form and meaning of the pseudowords but also of their collocates. The analysis of eye movements showed a significant effect of exposure on the processing of novel collocations for both first and second language readers, with reading times decreasing as a function of exposure. Eight exposures to novel adjective-pseudoword collocations were enough to develop processing speed comparable to that of known collocations. However, when analyzing the processing of the individual components of the collocations, results showed that eight exposures to the pseudowords were not enough for second language readers to develop processing speed comparable to known words. The frequency manipulation in the present study (four vs. eight exposures) did not lead to differences in the learning or processing of collocations. Finally, reading times were not a significant predictor of vocabulary gains.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/E29F0A99BDBF82586E2A30C0C5068344/S014271642200011Xa.pdf/div-class-title-the-effect-of-frequency-of-exposure-on-the-processing-and-learning-of-collocations-a-comparison-of-first-and-second-language-readers-eye-movements-div.pdf

The effect of frequency of exposure on the processing and learning of collocations: A comparison of first and second language readers’ eye movements

We use eye tracking to investigate the attention readers pay to different textual features to determine their significance in the appreciation of prose fiction. Previous research examined attention allocation to lexical and punctuation variants, and the impact on reading dynamics for the remainder of the text, demonstrating that readers notice both kinds of variants but assign less value to the latter (Carrol, Conklin, Guy, & Scott, 2016). Here, in two experiments, we examine two conditions that may affect attention allocation: We investigate the influence of reader expertise (Experiment 1) and whether performance is influenced by a task-specific “spot-the-difference” effect (Experiment 2). We found that expertise plays little role in readers’ greater sensitivity to lexical rather than punctuation changes, and that the advantage for lexical changes persisted when the time interval between exposures is increased. These results confirm earlier findings: that small-scale features may not possess the creative significance predicated of them by critics and text-editors.

Fabio Parente

Papers

Assessing plain and intelligible language in the Consumer Rights Act: a role for reading scores?

The role of empirical methods in investigating readers’ constructions of authorial creativity in literary reading

The effect of frequency of exposure on the processing and learning of collocations: A comparison of first and second language readers’ eye movements

Reader expertise and the literary significance of small-scale textual features in prose fiction