Showing papers by "Oklahoma City University published in 2003"

The Most Frequently Used Spoken American English Idioms: A Corpus Analysis and Its Implications.

Abstract: Most teaching and reference materials on English idioms are primarily intuition based. As such, they often include seldom-used idioms and incorrect descriptions of the meaning and use of some idioms, hence limiting their usefulness to ESOL students. This article demonstrates how this problem can be addressed through a corpus-based study of the spoken American English idioms used most frequently by college and other professional ESOL students learning American English. The study involved a close concordance search and analysis of the idioms used in three contemporary spoken American English corpora: Corpus of Spoken, Professional American English (Barlow, 2000); Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (Simpson, Briggs, Ovens, & Swales, 2002), and Spoken American Media English (Liu, 2002). According to the search results, four lists of the most frequently used idioms were compiled, with one based on the overall data and the other three on one of the corpora. The study uncovered interesting English idiom use patterns. The results were compared with information in nine major current idiom dictionaries, which revealed inadequacies of the existing idiom teaching and reference materials in terms of item selection, meaning and use explanation, and the appropriateness of the examples provided. The article discusses pedagogical and research implications, including suggestions for improving the development of idiom teaching and reference materials.

The USWRP Workshop on the Weather Research Needs of the Private Sector

Abstract: Private sector meteorology is a rapidly growing enterprise. It has been estimated that the provision of weather information has, by some estimates, a global market totaling in the billions of dollars. Further, the decisions based on such information could easily total trillions of dollars in the U.S. economy alone. The private sector clearly plays an important, and growing, role at the interface of weather research and the weather information needs of society. To date, little information has been paid to the connections of the meteorological research community and the scientific needs of the private sector. Thus, the time is ripe to stimulate a more active dialogue between what is generally considered the “basic” research community of physical and social scientists and those individuals and businesses that provide weather information to myriad customers across the U.S. economy. In December 2000, the U.S. Weather Research Program (supported by NSF, NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Navy) sponsored a worksh...

All in a Day's Work: Employers' Vicarious Liability for Sexual Harassment

Abstract: Most commentators on the issue of employer liability for sexual harassment have focused on the underlying political issues: how big a problem is sexual harassment and how can we make it go away. In the process, they assume that the usual rules of vicarious liability would not hold an employer liable for sexual harassment because harassment is not within the scope of employment. In this Article, Professor Dalley demonstrates that this erroneous conclusion rests, first, on a misunderstanding of the law of vicarious liability, and second, on a misunderstanding of the nature of sexual harassment. A careful analysis of agency law reveals its basic underlying principle: that a business must bear the costs, as well as retain the benefits, of its operations. That principle underlies vicarious liability doctrine and illuminates the independent contractor exception and the scope of employment requirement. Thus, a tort is within the scope of employment if its occurrence is a foreseeable risk of the business involved. Drawing from the psychological and sociological literature studying sexual harassment, which finds that harassment tends to arise from the interaction of personal predilections with certain workplace environments, Professor Dalley argues that sexual harassment is within the scope of employment where the business involved enhances the risk that sexual harassment will occur. In such cases, agency principles require that the business bear that increased risk.