Showing papers on "Plural published in 2022"

Plurilingual and pluricultural competence

Abstract: Since the late 1990s the notion of a plurilingual and pluricultural competence as elaborated by Coste, Moore and Zarate (1997) has had a strong impact on the didactics of languages. Several plural approaches have been developed which aim at developing competences in several languages and/or cultures (Melo-Pfeifer & Reimann, 2018; Reissner, 2010; Tost Planet, 2010), with intercomprehension didactics being one of them. However, existing frameworks (e.g. the Cadre de référence pour les approches plurielles des langues et des cultures (CARAP)/Framework of reference for pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures (FREPA) (Candelier et al., 2007, 2010), or the Companion volume of the Common European framework of reference for languages (Council of Europe, 2018)) do not adequately describe the specific competences that underly intercomprehensive activities. In our contribution, we will present the framework of reference for intercomprehension (= IC) developed within the European project EVAL-IC (Evaluation des compétences en intercompréhension, Erasmus+). The framework is based on a dynamic and complex competence model, comprising of six levels of competence which can be regrouped into three larger levels (basic, advanced, expert). It provides descriptors for the following intercomprehensive activities: written and oral receptive IC; written and oral interproduction; and written and oral interactive IC as well as a global description of each level. The work carried out might also help to apply or further develop plurilingual and pluricultural approaches in higher education.

OUP accepted manuscript

Abstract: Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is inappropriate as an aid to Covid policy-making because the plural, incommensurable values at stake are not all amenable to monetary measurement. CBA for Covid policy is also undermined by pervasive uncertainty and ignorance, and has some troubling distributional implications. However, non-consequentialist alternatives to CBA tend towards implausibly absolutist prohibitions on risk imposition. Arguments for setting aside consequentialism for special circumstances (the precautionary principle, or a medical rule of rescue) are also problematic when applied to Covid policy. A broad consequentialist approach to policy guidance is defended, one which does not demand commensuration on a common monetary scale. Despite the absence of commensuration, policy guidance is still possible.

Three Decades of Environmental Values: Some Personal Reflections

Abstract: The journal Environmental Values is thirty years old. In this retrospective, as the retiring Editor-in-Chief, I provide a set of personal reflections on the changing landscape of scholarship in the field. This historical overview traces developments from the journal's origins in debates between philosophers, sociologists, and economists in the UK to the conflicts over policy on climate change, biodiversity/non-humans and sustainability. Along the way various negative influences are mentioned, relating to how the values of Nature are considered in policy, including mainstream environmental economics, naïve environmental pragmatism, the strategic role of corporations, neoliberalism and eco-modernism/techno-optimism. At the same time core value debates around intrinsic value in Nature and instrumentalism remain relevant, along with how plural environmental values can be articulated and acted upon. Naturalness, human relations to non-humans, and Nature as other, remain central considerations. The broadening of issues covered by the journal (e.g. covering social psychology, sociology and political science), reflect the need to address both human behaviour and the structure of social and economic systems to confront ongoing social-ecological crises.

The Role of Actors in Social Innovation in Rural Areas

Abstract: Social innovation is gaining momentum in academia, policy and practice, as a process by which local communities generate new social relations and become more capable of addressing social needs and opportunities. However, there is significant ambiguity about the role of the different types of actors involved in social innovation, particularly in rural areas. This article aims to examine which actors make social innovation in rural areas possible, and the roles they play in these processes. Drawing on 33 interviews carried out with key informants of three socially innovative initiatives developed in rural areas of Spain and Scotland, this paper illustrates the scale, role and logic of the actors involved. The findings of the study clarify the central role of local processes and local actors, the impact of facilitators and perceived neutrality. They also show the contribution of social economy organizations as an arena for coordinating plural networks and civil society initiatives. The way the public sector and LEADER participate in social innovation processes in rural areas are also reflected in the results.

Participatory scenarios for restoring European landscapes show a plurality of nature values

Abstract: Large-scale ecological restoration is crucial for effective biodiversity conservation and combating climate change. However, perspectives on the goals and values of restoration are highly diverse, as are the different approaches to restoration e.g. ranging from the restoration of cultural ecosystems to rewilding. We assess how the future of nature is envisioned in participatory scenarios, focusing on which elements of rewilding and nature contributions to people have been considered in scenario narratives across Europe. We used the Nature Futures Framework archetypes as a template to synthesize pluralistic perspectives of nature. We found that different values of nature are often represented as counteracting elements and fail to integrate the plural views of nature. Nature as Culture was the main archetype found in the scenarios, usually associated with positive impacts on the non-material benefits to people. Intrinsic values of nature (i.e., Nature for Nature) were associated with positive impacts on regulating benefits and negative impacts on material benefits, being the only archetype of future associated with positive impacts on all three components of rewilding. Nature for Society was associated with moderate positive impacts on material and regulatory nature contributions to people. Business as usual futures were associated with negative impacts on regulating and non-material benefits to people and on all three components of rewilding. Our results highlight two major gaps in the scenarios that should be addressed in participatory restoration planning and models. Firstly, there is a paucity of spatially explicit approaches, with most studies failing to transform the results of participatory scenario planning into model projections. Secondly, we found scenarios that explored co-benefits between multiple nature perspectives were overall missing from the literature. Novel scenario narratives and approaches that explore synergies among different nature values are needed to design future large-scale restoration where biodiversity recovery and human well-being are intrinsically linked and fostered.

A Multiple-Associations Approach to Teaching Technical Terms in English for Specific Purposes Courses

Abstract: Teaching and learning of technical terms constitute a major problem for ESP instructors and students. To help the students learn, retain, apply and relate technical terms, a multiple-associations instructional approach that focuses on connecting the printed form of the technical term with its pronunciation (the hidden sounds, double and silent letters, and homophones), with its part of speech, singular or plural form, synonym or antonym, English and Arabic meanings, usage, component parts (prefixes, suffixes, roots), previously-encountered terms and others should be followed while presenting the new technical terms in business, computer science and engineering to the students. Categorization, association, and visualization skills and mnemonic approaches should be emphasized. Mind maps can be used to show those connections. Out of class, extensive listening and reading activities are also encouraged. Quizzes should require the students to make the multiple associations described in the article. The multiple-associations instructional approach proved to be effective in enhancing the learning of technical terms by EFL college students. Further recommendations for strategies that can be used in teaching multiple associations are given.

Who and What Do Who and What Range Over Cross-Linguistically?

Abstract: Dayal’s (1996) account of the presuppositions of wh-questions makes faulty predictions for languages which draw number distinctions in the domain of simplex wh-expressions: Dayal predicts that a singular wh-expression should always give rise to a Uniqueness Presupposition; the Anti-Singleton Inference associated with its plural counterpart is expected to be parasitic on the uniqueness presupposition. We provide new data from Spanish and Hungarian, where simplex wh-expressions inflect for number. We claim that singular simplex wh-expressions do not give rise to a Uniqueness Presupposition, but plural simplex wh-expressions nonetheless give rise to an Anti-Singleton Inference. We provide an analysis of these facts that is consistent with Dayal’s account of constituent questions, by assigning simplex wh-expressions a type-flexible denotation.

Rethinking Evidence in the Time of Pandemics

Abstract: The COVID-19 crisis has transformed the highly specialized issue of what constitutes reliable medical evidence into a topic of public concern and debate. This book interrogates the assumption that evidence means the same thing to different constituencies and in different contexts. Rather than treating various practices of knowledge as rational or irrational in purely scientific terms, it explains the controversies surrounding COVID-19 by drawing on a theoretical framework that recognizes different types of rationality, and hence plural conceptualizations of evidence. Debates within and beyond the medical establishment on the efficacy of measures such as mandatory face masks are examined in detail, as are various degrees of hesitancy towards vaccines. The authors demonstrate that it is ultimately through narratives that knowledge about medical and other phenomena is communicated to others, enters the public space, and provokes discussion and disagreements. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Urban-GAN: An artificial intelligence-aided computation system for plural urban design

Abstract: The current urban design computation is mostly centered on the professional designer while ignoring the plural dimension of urban design. In addition, available public participation computational tools focus mainly on information and idea sharing, leaving the public excluded in design generation because of their lack of design expertise. To address such an issue, this study develops Urban-GAN, a plural urban design computation system, to provide new technical support for design empowerment, allowing the public to generate their own designs. The sub-symbolic representation and artificial intelligence techniques of deep convolutional neural networks, case-based reasoning, and generative adversarial networks are used to acquire and embody design knowledge as the density function, and generate design schemes with this knowledge. The system consists of an urban form database and five process models through which the user with little design expertise can select urban form cases, generate designs similar to those cases, and make design decisions. The Urban-GAN is applied to hypothetical design experiments, which show that the user is able to apply the system to successfully generate distinctive designs following the urban form “styles” in Manhattan, Portland, and Shanghai. This study further extends the discussion about the plural urban design computation to general reflections on the goals and values in AI technique application in planning and design.

Embracing heterogeneity: Why plural understandings strengthen interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity

Abstract: Abstract Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity are seen as promising ways to address societies’ grand challenges and so have become important topics in academic and policy discourses, particularly as part of discussions about mission-oriented knowledge production and research funding processes. However, there is an important disconnect between the way these terms are defined and used in the academic literature and the way they are defined and used in the policy literature. Academic writing on interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity offers plural understandings of both terms, whereas policy documents argue for concrete and simplified definitions. In this paper, we analyse the implications of these differences for research and funding. On the basis of an extensive literature review, we argue that the heterogeneity of understandings in interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity constitutes an asset. We advocate for the plurality of understandings to be used constructively in order to strengthen and promote effective research and research funding.

Ambiguity, responsibility and political action in the UK daily COVID-19 briefings

Abstract: This paper investigates how pronouns were used by UK government speakers to allocate responsibility to themselves and others in all 92 daily televised COVID-19 briefings that were held between March and June 2020. We identified the referent for every use of the first-person plural pronoun (1PL) as ‘inclusive’, ‘exclusive’, or 'ambiguous' and analysed the transitivity patterns in which these pronouns act as Participants. We argue that the UK government uses the inherent ambiguity of this pronoun to strategically mitigate their own responsibility for controlling the spread of the virus, while increasing the amount of responsibility to the general public. In doing so, we propose a transparent and replicable systematic method for identifying the referents of pronouns, which may be useful to other discourse analysts faced with the challenging task of pronoun resolution.

Deprovincialization: Its Importance for Plural Societies

Abstract: Deprovincialization is a set of attitudes characterized by two sides: a nuanced and fresh perspective on the in-group culture and an open and accepting attitude toward other groups. After reviewing early research and indirect tests of the construct, we focused our attention on research investigating these two sides of deprovincialization. Studies conducted in various countries demonstrate that deprovincialization as in-group cultural nuance is a strong and reliable correlate of reduced prejudice and improved intergroup relations; moreover, it is distinct from both national identification and cultural relativism. Studies conducted in Italy show that deprovincialization as openness toward other groups is related to positive intergroup contact and intergroup harmony and has longitudinal negative effects on prejudice. Importantly, in both lines of research the beneficial role of deprovincialization goes beyond the effects of constructs such as social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, nationalism, and demographic variables. We conclude by proposing suggestions for future research and highlighting relevant issues to be considered in policy development and implementation.

An investigation of the dependency of subject-verb agreement on inhibitory control processes in sentence production

Abstract: Agreement attraction, i.e., the production or acceptance of a verb that agrees with a noun other than the subject of the sentence, can be viewed as a process in which conflicting cues activate competing representations. The aftermath of such competition, in terms of cognitive processes, remains unclear. Using a novel referential communication task for eliciting agreement errors and both group-level manipulation of control demands and a detailed analysis of individual differences, we provide converging evidence for the role of monitoring and inhibitory control processes in agreement attraction for singular-subject sentences. We further demonstrate the dependence of producing plural verbs on such processes, suggesting the singular form is the prepotent default form. Collectively, these findings provide a clear demonstration for the role of monitoring and control processes in agreement computations, and more generally syntactic operations in sentence production.

Worldview literacy as intercultural citizenship education: A framework for critical, reflexive engagement in plural democracy

Abstract: Within plural democracies, the concept of ‘religious literacy’ is commonly understood as denoting the knowledge, skills and understanding vis- à -vis religious diversity required of the citizen. In schools across Europe such learning is traditionally housed within Religious Education (RE), the aims of which are increasingly framed in terms of citizenship education, yet the two school subjects are often unhelpfully siloed, and both criticised for lack of criticality and an over-focus on knowledge acquisition. This article introduces the concept of ‘worldview literacy’ as a reworking of ‘religious literacy’ that addresses concerns around inclusivity and criticality. Rather than a product of good RE or citizenship education, worldview literacy is envisaged as a transformational process of educational praxis through encounter in plurality, that forges a pathway between the two school subjects and contributes to the broader educational endeavour of engagement in social life.

Party Types in the Age of Personalized Politics

Abstract: Democracies in general and political parties in particular have undergone political personalization in recent decades. The power balance between politicians (one or many) and the team (the party as a collegial entity) has changed, and existing party typologies are no longer suited to the analysis of today’s democratic politics. Although some new personalized party types have been added, what is missing is a systematic attempt to contrast them with the collegial option. This article proposes a new classification of political parties to fill the lacuna. It includes five ideal types of parties: two personalized-decentralized types, referring to collections of separated autonomous activists or to separated autonomous individual politicians (plural); a collegial type, which is about the centrality of the team and is based mainly on collective authorities and collective decision making; and two personalized-centralized types, referring to the centrality of an individual politician in her capacity as the party leader or that of a specific individual who “owns” the party.

Difficulties in Learning English Plural Formation by EFL College Students

Abstract: Freshman students at the College of Languages and Translation received direct instruction in plural formation. Instruction covered regular plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, plural formation of words ending in –f, and –o, nouns that have the same plural and singular form, and words with Latin and foreign plurals. The students did all the exercises in the textbook, then took an immediate test a week after instruction and a delayed test at the end of the semester (3 months later). Responses were scored and a corpus of 3099 errors was collected from both tests. No significant differences were found in the amount and types of errors made by the students in the immediate and delayed tests. Results revealed that freshman students tended to regularize English plural formation and overgeneralize regular English plural morphemes (63.28%), i.e., they deleted the regular plural suffix from nouns ending in an –s or –es (35.37%) or tended to add the regular plural suffix to words that do not have it (27.91%). They also confused singular and plural endings of Latin words (15.07%). They either confused the singular and plural forms of the same Latin word or added a faulty Latin suffix to a Latin word or even a non-Latin word such as criterium, *curriculon, *natia, *salma, *petrolea. In other cases, they thought the singular and plural forms of a word were the same (7%). In addition, findings showed that the most difficult plurals to master were those of words that end with an –s or –es but have no singular form such as measles, news, pajamas, means, linguistics (28.85%); words with Latin plurals (21.85%); non-count nouns such as information, electricity, petroleum, salmon with no plural form (21.4%), and words that have a plural, but they thought they have no plural form such as nation, illness, infection, African (8.55%). Interference among the English plural morphemes themselves and confusing plural formation rules caused most errors. No interference from Arabic pluralization was found. Recommendations for improving students’ English plural formation competence are given.

The Right Privatization

Abstract: The public debate is rife with polarized views of how to deliver essential services such as education, health, and security. While some tout privatization as a way to supplant bad governments, others warn that private firms maximize profits at the expense of socially oriented service attributes. In reality, all forms of service delivery—public, private and hybrid public private-collaborations—have merits and flaws. This book scrutinizes the menu of delivery forms in public services and the conditions that should make them work. It argues that privatization benefits from capable government units committing to well-defined policy objectives, mobilizing critical resources, and incentivizing effective and inclusive delivery. Societies counting on capable governments can also reject single solutions and experiment with plural paths of improvement, where public and private organizations co-exist and learn from each other. This book will appeal to students, academics, managers and policy makers interested in examining the public-private boundary and the many ramifications of this focal issue.

Moving beyond stereotypes: the role of gender in the environmental change and human mobility nexus

Abstract: ABSTRACT Women are often assumed to be most vulnerable to environmental risk and climate change because of often-experienced constraints in mobility. A common-held assumption is that women are fixated in place and experience forced immobility in the context of environmental change, whilst the men can move to other places. In building on feminist and mobilities scholarship, this article critically interrogates this assumption and seeks to move towards a more plural understanding of gender-environment-mobility relations. Through a study of human mobility in coastal Bangladesh, we interrogate what it means for women to stay in places of environmental and climate risk and how staying may hamper or enhance small-scale mobilities. We also examine how labour mobilities by women get increased when moving to urban settlements as a response to environmental changes and lack of work in rural areas. In this manner, we demonstrate how gender-environment-mobility relations do not play out uniformly but are shaped by wider im/mobilities and specific social and environmental contexts.

Transitions in the Post-pandemic COVID-19 Context: Building Youth Policies in the Global South

Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to the field of youth studies, particularly to the tradition of youth studies as transition, from Global South standpoint and integrating a gender perspective into youth policymaking. Our approach endorses the development of plural public interventions, focusing on the debates of youth as a transition with a commitment to the construction of a political economy of transitions, through a feminist lens, and amidst the challenges of current youth policies within the post-pandemic COVID-19 context. Thus, in this article, we aim to promote the pluralization of socially just policies that can enable building new bonds of solidarity between generations, genders, and social groups. Ultimately, we argue for the importance of continuing the design of participatory, plural, and well-situated youth policies, underlining the importance of new intergenerational agreements in the construction of fairer and more democratic societies from a Global South perspective.

The syntax of plurals of collective and mass nouns: Views from Jordanian Arabic

Abstract: Abstract This research paper provides a syntactic account of the observation that plurals of non-count nouns (i.e., collective and mass nouns) in Jordanian Arabic (JA) may express different readings, namely a counting reading and paucity in quantity. We propose that availability of such readings or lack thereof depend crucially on whether or not Division Phrase (DivP) (Borer, 2005) projects in narrow syntax. When DivP projects over nP, a counting reading is available for the plural of singulatives. On the other hand, when DivP does not project, no counting reading is available, and alternatively a small-quantity reading is held. This implies that pluralization in JA is subject to the availability of functional projections that form the relevant DP, hence supplying evidence against the lexical hypothesis of plural formation. As for paucity in quantity, we argue that it is a product of (or a subtype of) the well-known paucal plural (cf. Ojeda 1992; Mathieu 2013).

LSTM Network based Sentiment Analysis for Customer Reviews

Abstract: Continuously increasing data bring new problems and problems usually reveal new research areas. One of the new areas is Sentiment Analysis. This field has some difficulties. The fact that people have complex sentiments is the main cause of the difficulty, but this has not prevented the progress of the studies in this field. Sentiment analysis is generally used to obtain information about persons by collecting their texts or expressions. Sentiment analysis can sometimes bring serious benefits. In this study, with singular tag-plural class approach, a binary classification was performed. An LSTM network and several machine learning models were tested. The dataset collected in Turkish, and Stanford Large Movie Reviews datasets were used in this study. Due to the noise in the dataset, the Zemberek NLP Library for Turkic Languages and Regular Expression techniques were used to normalize and clean texts, later, the data were transformed into vector sequences. The preprocessing process made 2% increase to the model performance on the Turkish Customer Reviews dataset. The model was established using an LSTM network. Our model showed better performance than Machine Learning techniques and achieved an accuracy of 90.59% on the Turkish dataset and an accuracy of 89.02% on the IMDB dataset.

Using Textual Analysis to Detect Initial Coin Offering Frauds

Abstract: Initial coin offering (ICO) has attracted a lot of attention from the public in recent years due to its association with potentially fraudulent activities. In order to offer practical implications to investors and regulators when evaluating ICO projects, this study examines the use of textual analysis in detecting potential ICO fraud cases. By using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we extracted the textual characteristics of 1,402 English whitepapers that may have been indicators of potential fraud based on the prior literature, including first-person plural pronouns, adverbs, and certainty, and formed a risk index for potentially problematic ICOs. Our findings suggest that the use of these words reflects the warning signals raised by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about potentially problematic ICO projects, which can therefore be used by regulators and investors when evaluating ICOs. Implications are discussed.

Thinking and doing with childism in children's literature studies

Abstract: In this article we share our reflections on how childism has enabled us to navigate theoretical assumptions shaping our field and develop new positions and research practices fostering child–adult interdependencies. Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak has relied on childism as a framework for the introduction of participatory research with young readers as a way for advancing child–adult collaboration. Macarena García-González has deployed childism to think about adultism and its analogies to sexism. Although we offer a critique of childism as an essentializing concept, we also show how for both of us it has served as a gateway towards other approaches, and especially post-anthropocentric understandings both of texts, readers and the world and of our critical engagements. Finally, we argue that childism may remain a productive starting point for further openings in children's literature and culture studies and childhood studies if it becomes a plural and messy notion that questions the discourse of hope for a better future as defining children's lives.

Plurality, Engagement, Openness

Abstract: As incoming Editor and Deputy Editor we describe our impression of the current situation that those committed to understanding and upholding environmental values find themselves in. We consider some of the factors that make enviornmental concern difficult to maintain, including conditions that affect us as academics, publishers, global citizens and activists. We describe some of the emerging trends that have appeared in Environmental Values in recent years, in philosophy, ecological economics, critical social science and widening interdisciplinarity in the environmental humanities. We highlight the journal's commitment to engaged, plural and open investigation of environmental values and consider what we might expect and hope for in the coming years.