The Vernacular Discourse of the "Arab Spring:" An Analysis of the Visual, the Embodied, and the Textual Rhetorics of the Karama Revolution

The Vernacular Discourse of the "Arab Spring" is a project that bridges the divide between the East and the West by offering new readings to Arab subjectivities. Through an analysis of the "Arab Spring" through the lens of vernacular discourse, it challenges the Euro-Americo-centric legacies of Orientalism in Western academia and the new wave of extremism in the Arab world by offering alternative representations of Arab bodies and subjectivities. To offer this new reading of the "Arab Spring," it explores the foundations of critical rhetoric as a theory and a practice and argues for a turn towards a critical vernacular discourse. The turn towards critical vernacular discourse is important as it urges the analyses of different artifacts produced by marginalized groups in order to understand their perspectives that have largely been foreclosed in traditional cultural studies research. Building on embodied/performative critical rhetoric, the vernacular discourses of the Arab revolutionary body examines other forms of knowledge productions that are not merely textual; more specifically, through data gathered in the Lhbib Bourguiba, Tunisia. This analysis of the political revolutionary body unveils the complexity underlining the discussion around issues of identity, agency and representation in the Middle East and North Africa, and calls for a critical study towards these issues in the region beyond the binary approach that has been practiced and applied by academics and media analysts. Hence, by analyzing vernacular discourse, this research locates a method of examining and theorizing the dialectic between agency, citizenry, and subjectivity through the study of how power structure is recreated and challenged through the use of the vernacular in revolutionary movements, as well as how marginalized groups construct their own subjectivities through the use of vernacular discourse. Therefore, highlighting the political prominence of evaluating the Arab Spring as a vernacular discourse is important in creating new ways of understanding communication in postcolonial/neocolonial settings.

PHORA: a system to solve the anaphora in Spanish

In this paper we present a whole Natural Language Processing (NLP) system for Spanish. The core of this system is the parser, which uses the grammatical formalism Lexical-Functional Grammars (LFG). Another important component of this system is the anaphora resolution module. To solve the anaphora, this module contains a method based on linguistic information (lexical, morphological, syntactic and semantic), structural information (anaphoric accessibility space in which the anaphor obtains the antecedent) and statistical information. This method is based on constraints and preferences and solves pronouns and definite descriptions. Moreover, this system fits dialogue and non-dialogue discourse features. The anaphora resolution module uses several resources, such as a lexical database (Spanish WordNet) to provide semantic information and a POS tagger providing the part of speech for each word and its root to make this resolution process easier.

Theory of ferromagnetism in planar heterostructures of (Mn,III)-V semiconductors

A density-functional theory of ferromagnetism in heterostructures of compound semiconductors doped with magnetic impurities is presented. The variable functions in the density-functional theory are the charge and spin densities of the itinerant carriers and the charge and localized spins of the impurities. The theory is applied to study the Curie temperature of planar heterostructures of III-V semiconductors doped with manganese atoms. The mean-field, virtual-crystal and effective-mass approximations are adopted to calculate the electronic structure, including the spin-orbit interaction, and the magnetic susceptibilities, leading to the Curie temperature. By means of these results, we attempt to understand the observed dependence of the Curie temperature of planar δ-doped ferromagnetic structures on variation of their properties. We predict a large increase of the Curie temperature by additional confinement of the holes in a δ-doped layer of Mn by a quantum well.

Saint Mathew Law and Bonini Paradox in Textual Theory of Complex Models

The mathematical models of the complex reality are texts belonging to a certain literature that is written in a semi-formal language, denominated L(MT) by the authors whose laws linguistic mathematics have been previously defined. This text possesses linguistic entropy that is the reflection of the physical entropy of the processes of real world that said text describes. Through the temperature of information defined by Mandelbrot, the authors begin a text-reality thermodynamic theory that drives to the existence of information attractors, or highly structured point, settling down a heterogeneity of the space text, the same one that of ontologic space, completing the well-known law of Saint Mathew, of the General Theory of Systems and formulated by Margalef saying: “To the one that has more he will be given, and to the one that doesn't have he will even be removed it little that it possesses.

Multimodal analysis of a sample of political posters in Ireland during and after the Celtic Tiger

The aim of this research paper is to analyse the key political posters made for the campaigns of Irish political party Fianna Fáil framed in the Celtic Tiger (1997-2008) and post-Celtic Tiger years (2009-2012). I will then focus on the four posters of the candidate in the elections that took place in 1997, 2002, 2007 and 2011 with the intention of observing first how the leader is represented, and later on pinpointing the similarities and possible differences between each. This is important in order to observe the main linguistic and visual strategies used to persuade the audience to vote that party and to highlight the power of the politician. Critical discourse analysis tools will be helpful to identify the main discursive strategies employed to persuade the Irish population to vote in a certain direction. Van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor theory will facilitate the understanding of how participants are represented in the corpus under analysis. Finally, the main tools of Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar (2006) will be applied for the analysis of the images. The study reveals that politicians are represented in a consistently positive way, with status and formal appearance so that people are persuaded to vote for the party they represent because they trust them as political leaders. The study, thus, points out that the poster is a powerful tool used in election campaigns to highlight the power of political parties.

Populismo en América Latina : Desde la teoría hacia el análisis político. Discurso, sujeto e inclusión en el caso argentino

Los procesos actuales han revitalizado el debate en torno al populismo en América Latina; no obstante, el estatus teórico de la categoría está lejos de ser clarificado. En este contexto, el artículo propone una contribución a la teoría política del populismo a partir de la perspectiva abierta por Ernesto Laclau, a la vez que avanza en la definición de campos funcionales al análisis político: el populismo como discurso, como construcción del sujeto político y como inclusión de lo excluido en el orden social. A partir de estos desarrollos, en la segunda parte del artículo se utilizan estos aportes para analizar el proceso político actual en Argentina, a saber, el fenómeno del kirchnerismo

Analytic function theory.

Includes bibliographies.

Fases en la derivación e interpretación semántico pragmática

En trabajos anteriores (Romero, 2008a y b, Alabart Lago, L., P. Díaz y G. Herrera, 2012, Alabart Lago, L. y Herrera, G., 2013) se intentó mostrar que el mecanismo interpretativo que propone la TR podría resultar adecuado como uno de los sistemas externos (también interpretativos) postulados por la GG, más precisamente, el sistema llamado CI. La relación que intentamos establecer tendrá en cuenta lo siguiente como marco teórico: a) En TR se afirma que la interpretación de un enunciado se deriva de las estructuras sintácticas, y esta derivación se realiza "en paralelo" con la derivación de estructuras llevada a cabo por las operaciones del componente sintáctico. b) En las últimas propuestas de la GG, extensiones y revisiones del PM propuesto en Chomsky (1995) no solo se dejan de lado los niveles de representación internos SP y ES sino también se considera prescindible la interfaz FL (Chomsky, 2005). Las estructuras generadas se transfieren a los sistemas externos en cuanto rasgos formales de las Categorías Funcionales son valorados. Mantendremos la noción de que el sistema computacional es relativamente irrestricto y que sus operaciones son condicionadas solo por Atracción y las llamadas "condiciones de legibilidad" impuestas por los sistemas externos, fundamentalmente el Principio de Interpretación Completa (PIC). c) Tendremos en cuenta la propuesta de Leonetti y Escandell Vidal (2004), que sostiene que las CCFF de la GG pueden considerarse equivalentes a las Categoría Procedimentales propuestas por la TR. En este sentido consideraremos válida la afirmación de Chomsky (1998) acerca de que las CCFF centrales (C, T, v y D) tienen propiedades semánticas. d) Otro factor que tendremos en cuenta es la noción de fase en la derivación, considerándola correcta en los términos expuestos en Chomsky (2001 y 2005) y Gallego (2007 y 2009), con ciertas modificaciones. Nuestra hipótesis puede resumirse en lo siguiente: Las operaciones de extracción de inferencias propuestas por TR se aplican durante la derivación sintáctica independientemente de que se haya transferido o no una fase. Es más, esperamos poder demostrar que algunos mecanismos inferenciales imponen ciertas condiciones que afectan a la valoración de los rasgos de las CCFF. Pretendemos también intentar mostrar que además de los núcleos de fase reconocidos, C y v, debe considerarse fase a SD, porque contiene rasgos específicos de cuyo cotejo y valoración se desprende el valor que recibirán otros rasgos en el curso de la derivación. Con estos fundamentos esperamos poder elaborar una descripción de cómo interactúan ambos sistemas en la derivación de una oración y la asignación (casi simultánea) de significado

Populismo en América Latina : Desde la teoría hacia el análisis político. Discurso, sujeto e inclusión en el caso argentino

Los procesos actuales han revitalizado el debate en torno al populismo en América Latina; no obstante, el estatus teórico de la categoría está lejos de ser clarificado. En este contexto, el artículo propone una contribución a la teoría política del populismo a partir de la perspectiva abierta por Ernesto Laclau, a la vez que avanza en la definición de campos funcionales al análisis político: el populismo como discurso, como construcción del sujeto político y como inclusión de lo excluido en el orden social. A partir de estos desarrollos, en la segunda parte del artículo se utilizan estos aportes para analizar el proceso político actual en Argentina, a saber, el fenómeno del kirchnerismo

The Effects of Postural Loading, Sacral Orientation, and Age on Sex Differences in Lumbar Functional Morphology and Health

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Critical discourse studies: Where to from here?

This paper surveys critical discourse studies to the present and claims that, to avoid lapsing into comfortable orthodoxy in its mature phase, CDS needs to reassert its transformative radical teleology. The initial part of the paper reasserts the need for a strong social theory given the materialist and context-bound nature of discourse in daily activity. From this basis, the paper then characterizes the “new times” in which contemporary discourse occurs, and briefly surveys those issues typically analyzed, namely political economy, race and gender, and critical literacy. By considering people's ordinary lives, the paper then suggests that subject and agency, and calculative technologies of management deserve, and new modalities need, more research. Transdisciplinarity is encouraged, particularly with social psychology and critical management studies.

Identifiability and definiteness in Chinese

This article explores how the pragmatic notion of identfiability is encoded in Chinese. It presents a detailed analysis of the distinctive linguistic devices, including lexical, morphological, and position in sentence, which are employed in Chinese to indicate the interpretation of referents in respect of identifiability. Of the major determiners in Chinese, demonstratives are developing uses of a definite article, and yi 'one' + classier has developed uses of an indefinite article, although morphologically and in some cases also functionally they have not yet been fully grammaticalized. What makes Chinese further different from languages like English is the interpretation in this regard of what are called indeterminate lexical encodings, which include bare NPs and cardinality expressions. They by themselves are neutral in respect of the interpretation of identifiability. For indeterminate expressions, there is a strong but seldom absolute correlation between the interpretation of identiability or nonidentfiability and their occurrence in different positions in a sentence. Unlike the cases with several other languages without articles like Czech, Hindi, and Indonesian, the features of definiteness and indefiniteness cannot be obligatorily and uniquely specified for nominal expressions in Chinese. The findings in this article lead to the conclusion that definiteness as a grammatical category defined in the narrow sense has not been fully developed in Chinese.

High-pressure adsorption capacity and structure of CO2 in carbon slit pores: Theory and simulation

We present new simulation results for the packing of single-center and three-center models of carbon dioxide at high pressure in carbon slit pores. The former shows a series of packing transitions that are well described by our density functional theory model developed earlier. In contrast, these transitions are absent for the three-center model. Analysis of the simulation results shows that alternations of flat-lying molecules and rotated molecules can occur as the pore width is increased. The presence or absence of quadrupoles has negligible effect on these high-density structures.

Impact of social group processes and functional diversity on communication in networked organizations

This study examines the role of social group processes in perceptions of effective communication in Australian Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs). Communication professionals in 25 CRCs discussed the barriers and opportunities for communication in their diverse networked organizations. Thematic analysis of the transcripts highlighted the contribution of social group processes to both barriers and opportunities. Communication challenges implicated the social identity of organizational members, many of which were associated with distinct structural aspects of these organizations. Opportunities for communication frequently involved features that implicated social identity, including taking advantage of existing organizational or industry identities, preventing conflicting identities from becoming salient, and promoting a collective CRC identity.

Knowledge, economy, technology and society: The politics of discourse

The WSIS is centrally interested in knowledge and has defined for itself a mission that is broadly humanitarian. Its development ‘talk’ is, rightly, replete with notions of equity, preserving culture, justice, human rights and so on. In incorporating such issues into knowledge society and economy discussions, WSIS has adopted a different posture towards knowledge than is seen in dominant discourses. This study analyses the dominant knowledge discourse using a large corpus of knowledge-related policy documents, discourse theory and an interrelational understanding of knowledge. I show that it is important to understand this dominant knowledge discourse because of its capacity to limit thought and action in relation to its central topic, knowledge. The results of this study demonstrate that the dominant knowledge discourse is technocratic, frequently insensitive to the humane mission at the core of the WSIS, and is based on a partial understanding of what knowledge is and how knowledge systems work. Moreover, I show that knowledge is inherently political, that the dominant knowledge discourse is politically oriented towards the concerns of business and technology, but that an emancipatory politics of knowledge is possible.