Institutions, unionization and voice: the relative impact of context and actors on firm level practice

Trade unions provide a voice in the way firms are run, an input into reward systems and increased security of employment. But these vary with national context. Using transnational survey evidence, this article explores the relative impact of setting, and of unions and collective bargaining, on these issues. It is found that, irrespective of context, organizations are significantly more likely to make use of compulsory redundancies in the absence of unions and collective bargaining. However, in other areas, the impact of unions appeared less pronounced than that of the wider context. The article explores the reasons behind this, and the broader policy implications thereof.

Atypical processing of voice sounds in infants at risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder

Adults diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show a reduced sensitivity (degree of selective response) to social stimuli such as human voices. In order to determine whether this reduced sensitivity is a consequence of years of poor social interaction and communication or is present prior to significant experience, we used functional MRI to examine cortical sensitivity to auditory stimuli in infants at high familial risk for later emerging ASD (HR group, N = 15), and compared this to infants with no family history of ASD (LR group, N = 18). The infants (aged between 4 and 7 months) were presented with voice and environmental sounds while asleep in the scanner and their behaviour was also examined in the context of observed parent-infant interaction. Whereas LR infants showed early specialisation for human voice processing in right temporal and medial frontal regions, the HR infants did not. Similarly, LR infants showed stronger sensitivity than HR infants to sad vocalisations in the right fusiform gyrus and left hippocampus. Also, in the HR group only, there was an association between each infant's degree of engagement during social interaction and the degree of voice sensitivity in key cortical regions. These results suggest that at least some infants at high-risk for ASD have atypical neural responses to human voice with and without emotional valence. Further exploration of the relationship between behaviour during social interaction and voice processing may help better understand the mechanisms that lead to different outcomes in at risk populations.

Litigation against fracking bans and moratoriums in the US: exit, voice and loyalty

A number of US states, counties and municipalities have responded to the public health and environmental concerns surrounding fracking by imposing bans or moratoriums on unconventional oil and gas drilling. These restrictions have, in recent years, given rise to litigation challenges by oil and gas companies and by property owners deprived of potential revenues. The current article begins by examining precisely who has litigated. Have large companies dominated or is it mostly smaller independents? Is there a difference in litigation rates between private and public companies? The article then considers how Hirschman’s ideas of exit, voice and loyalty might apply in the context of bans and moratoriums and further explores some of the factors that may have driven litigation in the area.

Voice, appropriation and discourse representation in a student writing task

We investigate the practices by which bilingual university students in Hong Kong appropriate texts in producing utterances, particularly written texts. Following Wertsch and his colleagues we ask: • To what extent do our students appropriate texts in constructing their own discourses? • What linguistic means do they use to do this? • What can these processes tell us about what they now can do with discourse representation; and • What do we need to teach them? This research shows that our students' writing displays considerable intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Responses to this writing in tutorial sessions indicate that they are skilled at orchestrating the multiple voices within their own discourses. The commonly stated concern that our students do not know how to do quotation and citation correctly is somewhat misplaced and researchers need to move the focus away from the mechanisms of citation and attribution to the social practices of textual appropriation.

Teaching pronunciation through voice quality

This paper explores the role of voice quality in the teaching of pronunciation and argues that since voice quality encompasses so many aspects of phonology, it provides a useful point of departure for pronunciation work. A teaching technique is described, in which the concept of voice quality is used in communicative practice to give students the opportunity to identify meaningful aspects of suprasegmental pronunciation, and see how they fit into the overall pattern of connected speech.