(Dis)agreements in Iranians’ internet relay chats

The present study on politeness is an attempt to examine (dis)agreeing strategies utilized by EFL learners while chatting on the internet. Subjects of the study were forty male and thirty-three female Iranian natives whose internet relay chat (IRC) interactions, composed of 400 excerpts, were collected between December 2007 and September 2008. Data analysis was based on the general taxonomy of politeness strategies suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987) which is the baseline of many politeness studies today. The results indicate that IRC is a mode of communication whose characteristics are typically different from face-to-face and real-life conversational settings. Some common face threatening acts (FTAs) like ‘direct disagreements’ are performed widely in chat channels. Furthermore, gender-oriented differences were found not to be statistically significant on the internet.

The soviet occupation of Germany: hunger, mass violence and the struggle for peace, 1945-1947

This is a major new account of the Soviet occupation of postwar Germany and the beginning of the Cold War. Dr Filip Slaveski shows how in the immediate aftermath of war the Red Army command struggled to contain the violence of soldiers against German civilians and, at the same time, feed and rebuild the country. This task was then assumed by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SVAG) which was established to impose order on this chaos. Its attempt, however, intensified the battle for resources and power among competing occupation organs, especially SVAG and the army, which spilled over from threats and sabotage into fighting and shootouts in the streets. At times, such conflicts threatened to paralyse occupation governance, leaving armed troops, liberated POWs and slave labourers free to roam. SVAG's successes in reducing the violence and reconstructing eastern Germany were a remarkable achievement in the chaotic aftermath of war.

Big clumsy feet stomping all over: shame, caution and fear in performance for peace building

This article examines some of the tensions implicit in performing in peace contexts. Drawing on the community-based performance form playback theatre, the article interrogates the (citizen) artist/performer within the demands of improvised performance. The article investigates the demands on the actor in a practice context that features refugee and asylum-seeker audience members/participants: the way in which performative risk, the risk of intimacy, the risk of getting it wrong and the risk of shaming self and other are considered in light of the challenges associated with the specificity of the ethnicity, cultural context/s, values and protocols of these audiences.

Give back peace that will never end: Hibakusha poets as public intellectuals

Public Lecture as Visiting Scholar in Tokyo: 'Hibakusha as Public Intellectuals: Sadako Kurihara and Sankichi Toge and Genbaku Shisu'.

Who's cheating? Agreements about sexual exclusivity and subsequent concurrent partnering in Australian heterosexual couples

Background Concurrent relationships are a driver of generalised epidemics of sexually transmissible infections (STIs). In Australia, explicit negotiation of agreements about sex outside regular relationships has been recommended in health promotion for gay men but not for heterosexuals.

Service level agreements for the digital library

Digital libraries offer a massive set of digital services to geographically distributed library patrons. The digital services are commonly sourced from third-party service providers for charge. As externally sourced digital services are becoming prevalence, issues regarding their quality assessment are gaining critical importance. Unfortunately, sourcing digital services from external providers has brought with it stringent quality of service (QoS) demand from the library service users. Currently, there is no way for ensuring QoS between the digital service providers and the library management. In this paper, we propose service level agreements (SLAs) to capture the QoS requirements of the digital service users and the commitments, as well as adherence of the digital service providers.

Introduction: IP and the Asia-Pacific ‘spaghetti bowl’ of free trade agreements

The contributions to this book show the strategies and policies of countries in the Asia-Pacific region that have to grapple with international standard setting in what has been called the ‘spaghetti bowl’ of criss-crossing free trade agreements. The chapters show how intellectual property is just one among many political and economic factors that are used in trade off discussions. It leads to an often considerable further raising of IP standards in those countries that agree to higher protection levels, often for reasons that have little to do with the provision of incentives for technological progress. A more nuanced picture of IP protection in Asia shows the different interests of high protection countries, ‘first’ and ‘second tier’ newly industrialized and industrializing countries and the rather peculiar position of Australia and New Zealand. The chapter introduces the contributions to this volume according to these various groups of countries and of international law and the political economy of the region.

Negotiating sustainable peace in separatist context

This volume examines the various aspects of territorial separatism, focusing on how and why separatist movements arise.

Give back peace that will never end: Hibakusha poets as public intellectuals

US censorship of public discussion of the bombings during the Allied Occupation of Japan ensured that the Japanese public knew little about the human consequences of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When hibakusha poets seek a public audience for their poetry, their experiences make them potentially powerful public intellectuals. As Noam Chomsky has observed, the most effective public intellectuals are dissidents who act from the margins. Tōge Sankichi and Kurihara Sadako became activists and their poetry offers a powerful and rousing response to the atomic bombing and lobbies for nuclear disarmament. The simplicity and accessibility of these poems is essential to the public dissemination of their message and Kurihara’s and Tōge’s identification as public intellectuals. This article examines the ways in which hibakusha poets can be recognised as public intellectuals when they seek public audiences for their work. Discussion hinges on a number of considerations centred on public intellectualism, trauma and the uses of language.