A study of epistemic modality in academic and popularised discourse: the case of possibility adverbs perhaps, maybe and possibly

[EN] This paper describes the use of perhaps, maybe and possibly in a cross-disciplinary corpus of academic and popularised scientific writing. It accounts for their higher frequency in popularised discourse by investigating their functions in detail. The analysis, conducted from various perspectives (syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and rhetorical), suggests that two factors are at work: the evidential basis for the epistemic assessment and the mode of discourse the marker is most closely associated with.

Do Academic and Private Entrepreneurs differ? An empirical analysis of the Micro-Foundation of Entrepreneurial Orientation

This Doctoral Thesis focuses on the study of individual behaviours as a result of organizational affiliation. The objective is to assess the Entrepreneurial Orientation of individuals proving the existence of a set of antecedents to that measure returning a structural model of its micro-foundation. Relying on the developed measurement model, I address the issue whether some Entrepreneurs experience different behaviours as a result of their academic affiliation, comparing a sample of ‘Academic Entrepreneurs’ to a control sample of ‘Private Entrepreneurs’ affiliated to a matched sample of Academic Spin-offs and Private Start-ups. Building on the Theory of the Planned Behaviour, proposed by Ajzen (1991), I present a model of causal antecedents of Entrepreneurial Orientation on constructs extensively used and validated, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective, in sociological and psychological studies. I focus my investigation on five major domains: (a) Situationally Specific Motivation, (b) Personal Traits and Characteristics, (c) Individual Skills, (d) Perception of the Business Environment and (e) Entrepreneurial Orientation Related Dimensions. I rely on a sample of 200 Entrepreneurs, affiliated to a matched sample of 72 Academic Spin-offs and Private Start-ups. Firms are matched by Industry, Year of Establishment and Localization and they are all located in the Emilia Romagna region, in northern Italy. I’ve gathered data by face to face interviews and used a Structural Equation Modeling technique (Lisrel 8.80, Joreskog, K., & Sorbom, D. 2006) to perform the empirical analysis. The results show that Entrepreneurial Orientation is a multi-dimensional micro-founded construct which can be better represented by a Second-Order Model. The t-tests on the latent means reveal that the Academic Entrepreneurs differ in terms of: Risk taking, Passion, Procedural and Organizational Skills, Perception of the Government, Context and University Supports. The Structural models also reveal that the main differences between the two groups lay in the predicting power of Technical Skills, Perceived Context Support and Perceived University Support in explaining the Entrepreneurial Orientation Related Dimensions.

Development discourse in Romania: from Socialism to EU Membership

With their accession to the European Union, twelve new countries - Romania among them - (re)entered the international community of international donors. In the history of development aid this can be seen as a unique event: it is for the first time in history that such a large number of countries become international donors, with such short notice and in such a particular context that sees some scholars announcing the ‘death’ of development. But in spite of what might be claimed regarding the ‘end’ of the development era, development discourse seems to be rather vigorous and in good health: it is able to extert an undeniable force of attraction over the twelve countries that, in a matter of years, have already convinced themselves of its validity and adhered to its main tenets. This thesis collects evidence for improving our understanding of this process that sees the co-optation of twelve new countries to the dominant theory and practice of development cooperation. The evidence collected seems to show that one of the tools employed by the promoters of this co-optation process is that of constructing the ‘new’ Member States as ‘new’, inexpert donors that need to learn from the ‘old’ ones. By taking a case-study approach, this thesis gathers data that suggests that conceiving of the ‘twelve’ as ‘new’ donors is both historically inaccurate and value-ladden. On one hand, Romania’s case-study illustrates how in the (socialist) past at least one in the group of the twelve was particularly conversant in the discourse of international development. On the other hand, the process of co-optation, while being presented as a knowledgeproducing process, can also be seen as an ignorance-producing procedure: Romania, along with its fellow new Member States, takes the opportunity of ‘building its capacity’ and ‘raising its awareness’ of development cooperation along the line drawn by the European Union, but at the same time it seems to un-learn and ‘lower’ its awareness of development experience in the (socialist) past. This is one possible reading of this thesis. At a different level, this thesis can also be seen as an attempt to account of almost five decades of international development discourse in one specific country – Romania – in three different socio-political contexts: the socialist years (up to the year 1989), the ‘transition years’ (from 1989 to the pre-accession years) and the membership to the European Union. In this second reading, the thesis seeks to illustrate how – contrary to widespread beliefs – before 1989 Romania’s international development discourse was particularly vivid: in the most varied national and international settings President Ceausescu unfolded an extensive discursive activity on issues pertaining to international development; generous media coverage of affairs concerning the developing countries and their fight for development was the rule rather than the exception; the political leadership wanted the Romanians not only to be familiarized with (or ‘aware of’ to use current terminology) matters of underdevelopment, but also to prove a sense of solidarity with these countries, as well as a sense of pride for the relations of ‘mutual help’ that were being built with them; finally, international development was object of academic attention and the Romanian scholars were able not only to reflect on major developments, but could also formulate critical positions towards the practices of development aid. Very little remains of all this during the transition years, while in the present those who are engaged in matters pertaining to international development do so with a view of building Romania as an EU-compliant donor.

Bitext alignment: building and evaluating a bilingual corpus and translation memory of academic course descriptions

Following the internationalization of contemporary higher education, academic institutions based in non-English speaking countries are increasingly urged to produce contents in English to address international prospective students and personnel, as well as to increase their attractiveness. The demand for English translations in the institutional academic domain is consequently increasing at a rate exceeding the capacity of the translation profession. Resources for assisting non-native authors and translators in the production of appropriate texts in L2 are therefore required in order to help academic institutions and professionals streamline their translation workload. Some of these resources include: (i) parallel corpora to train machine translation systems and multilingual authoring tools; and (ii) translation memories for computer-aided tools. The purpose of this study is to create and evaluate reference resources like the ones mentioned in (i) and (ii) through the automatic sentence alignment of a large set of Italian and English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) institutional academic texts given as equivalent but not necessarily parallel (i.e. translated). In this framework, a set of aligning algorithms and alignment tools is examined in order to identify the most profitable one(s) in terms of accuracy and time- and cost-effectiveness. In order to determine the text pairs to align, a sample is selected according to document length similarity (characters) and subsequently evaluated in terms of extent of noisiness/parallelism, alignment accuracy and content leverageability. The results of these analyses serve as the basis for the creation of an aligned bilingual corpus of academic course descriptions, which is eventually used to create a translation memory in TMX format.

Das deutsche Kriegsgefangenenwesen 1939 - 1945

Zusammenfassung: Die vorliegende Untersuchung zum deutschen Kriegsgefangenenwesen (KGW) im Zweiten Weltkrieg schließt eine wichtige Lücke innerhalb der geschichtswissenschaftlichen Forschungen zum Themenkreis der Kriegsgefangenschaft in deutschem Gewahrsam. Bisherige Studien (bis einschließlich 1997) behandeln vor allem sozial- und kulturgeschichtliche Aspekte der Kriegsgefangenen (Kgf.), der Lagergesellschaft und dem Alltag von Soldaten in Kriegsgefangenschaft. Der Verfasser indes legt mit seiner Magisterarbeit erstmals eine Organisations- und Strukturgeschichte des deutschen Kriegsgefangenenwesens von 1939 bis 1945 vor, welche fundamentale Grundlagen der deutschen militärischen Lagerorganisation und Verwaltung dokumentiert. So wird die Entwicklung von den Vorkriegsplanungen bis zum Kriegsende anhand der zentralen Dienststellen herausgearbeitet und im Kontext des Genfer Kriegsgefangenenabkommens von 1929 und völkerrechtlicher Implikationen gewichtet. Hiermit untrennbar verbundene Einflußnahmen nichtmilitärischer Stellen in die Entscheidungsgewalt der Streitkräfte im Heimatkriegsgebiet und in den Wehrmachtbefehlshaberbereichen werden nicht zuletzt auch anhand mehrerer Organigramme veranschaulicht. Zudem dokumentiert und analysiert die Untersuchung die im Kriegsverlauf stetig verschärften Maßnahmen zur Fluchtprävention und der konzertierten Fahndung nach geflohenen Kriegsgefangenen: Die Machterosion des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (OKW) zugunsten des Reichsführers-SS, des Reichssicherheitshauptamts und nicht zuletzt der Parteikanzlei der NSDAP wird so augenfällig. Trotz eminenter Schriftgutverluste kann der Verfasser vor allem anhand einer nahezu vollständig erhaltenen Schlüsselquelle die Stellenbesetzung und Organisationsstruktur der mit Kriegsgefangenenfragen befassten Stellen im OKW rekonstruieren. Die Auswertung dieser Sammelmitteilungen / Befehlssammlung für das Kriegsgefangenenwesen sowie an anderer Stelle überlieferter Organisationsbefehle ermöglicht wichtige Änderungen am derzeitigen Forschungsstand. Darüber hinaus beschäftigt sich die vorliegende Untersuchung mit dem Arbeitseinsatz Kriegsgefangener in der deutschen Wirtschaft als in der zweiten Kriegshälfte zentralem Element der Kriegsgefangenschaft. Außerdem wird beleuchtet, welche politischen, (rassen)ideologischen oder reziprok konnotierten Faktoren den Stellenwert gefangener Soldaten unterschiedlicher Nationalität innerhalb der Gefangenenhierarchie im deutschen Kriegsgefangenenwesen bestimmten. Inhalt: 1. Einführung; 2. Die Entwicklung des Kriegsvölkerrechts und das Genfer Kriegsgefangenenabkommen von 1929; 3. Einleitende Bemerkungen zum deutschen Kriegsgefangenenwesen: Quellenlage, Grundlagen; 4. Organisationsstruktur und Aufgaben des KGW: Zuständigkeiten für Kgf. in OKW und OKH, Abt. Wehrmachtverluste und Kriegsgefangene, der General z.b.V. für das KGW 1939 bis Ende 1941, Allgemeine und Organisationsabteilung seit Januar 1942, Generalinspekteur und Inspekteur des KGW von Juli 1943 bis Oktober 1944, das Kriegsgefangenenwesen unter Himmler seit Oktober 1944; 5. Die Kriegsgefangenenlager: Lagertypen, Anzahl und Verwendung, die Gesamtzahl Kgf. und Belegstärken ausgewählter Lager; 6. Richtlinien für KGL: Die Sammelmitteilungen / Befehlssammlung für das KGW, Lagerorganisation und Behandlung Kriegsgefangener; 7. Die Post der Kriegsgefangenen: Tätigkeit von Auslandsbriefprüfstelle, Abwehr III Referat Kgf. und Abwehrstellen der Wehrkreise, Vorgaben für Postüberwachung und Stimmungsberichte der Asten, Befehle zur Kgf-Post und Kooperation mit Hilfsorganisationen und Schutzmächten; 8. Fluchtprävention: Bestimmungen und Maßnahmen zur Fluchtvereitelung, der Fluchterlass vom 22.09.1942, der Sonderfahndungsplan der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD vom 28.09.1942, Erlass zur Kriegsfahndung vom 5.12.1942, der Fluchterlaß vom 02.07.1943, der Erlaß zur Mitarbeit NSDAP bei Groß- und Kriegsfahndungen vom 10.07.1943, Schulung zur Fluchtprävention auf Wehrkreisebene 1944, Preisausschreiben "Wie verhindere ich Fluchten?" vom 09.04.1945, Anwerbung von V-Leuten durch die Abwehr; 9. Arbeitseinsatz Kriegsgefangener in der deutschen Wirtschaft und beteiligte Stellen; 10. Der Status Kriegsgefangener unterschiedlicher Nationalitäten im Vergleich; 11. Schluss

Academic and non-academic conference presentations - are they the same genre? Five case studies.

Il presente elaborato si pone l’obiettivo di determinare se il genere del discorso di conferenza non accademica coincida con il genere del discorso di conferenza accademica, nello specifico per quanto riguarda le loro introduzioni. La prima parte della tesi si concentra sulle basi teoriche. In primo luogo è stata sviluppata una panoramica della letteratura esistente riguardo ai discorsi di conferenza accademica, dalla quale si è poi ristretto il campo sugli studi che hanno preso in esame solo la loro introduzione. Alla luce dell’assenza di pubblicazioni sulle conferenze non accademiche, e di conseguenza anche sui loro discorsi, si è cercato di definire il genere del discorso di conferenza non accademica, applicando il concetto di ‘comunità discorsiva’ sia ai discorsi di conferenza accademica sia a quelli di conferenza non accademica. Una volta stabilito che il contesto non accademico differisce da quello accademico, si è passati a definire l’introduzione dei discorsi di conferenza non accademica in quanto genere. Nella seconda parte dell’elaborato è stata svolta l’analisi di cinque case study, ovvero della trascrizione delle introduzioni di cinque discorsi di conferenza non accademica. A queste è stato applicato il modello di mosse retoriche delle introduzioni dei discorsi di conferenza accademica elaborato da Rowley-Jolivet e Carter-Thomas, per determinare se fosse valido anche per le introduzioni dei discorsi di conferenza non accademica. Una volta scoperto che non lo è, e che quindi le introduzioni dei discorsi di conferenza non accademica e quelle dei discorsi di conferenza accademica sono due 'sotto-generi' diversi, è stato proposto un nuovo modello di mosse retoriche. Infine sono stati avanzati dei suggerimenti riguardo all’applicabilità del suddetto modello, non solo in altri studi nel campo dell’analisi di genere, ma anche nel settore dell’interpretazione simultanea, con particolare riferimento alla preparazione dell’interprete e alla strategia di anticipazione.

We Did It Our Way: Motivations, Satisfactions, and Accomplishments of Senior Academic Women

In a survey of senior academic women whose careers began around 1970, over half of the 98 respondents cited the desire to serve or make a difference and sought personal fulfillment in their work. Most saw men’s motivations as dissimilar, typically as more self-interested and competitive. Despite generally high satisfaction, dissatisfaction with time pressure/workload and with support was common. Satisfactions and accomplishments overlapped. Frequently mentioned were teaching, scholarship, and their discipline, especially by faculty, and programmatic accomplishments, especially by administrators. Many respondents mentioned helping women; many mentioned a collaborative, nurturing style as integral to their success and as different from their typical male colleagues. Context is provided by the metaphor of immigration (Martin, 1997, 2000), the concept of ambivalent sexism (Krefting, 2003; Glick & Fiske, 1999), and recent work on women and leadership by Eagly and colleagues (e.g., Eagly, 2005; Eagly & Carli, 2007).

Everything You Have Always Wanted to Know About Academic Advising (Well, Almost...)

Answering the question “what occurs in an academic advising interaction” is not as easy as one might think. Many factors contribute to the academic advising process, and no two advising interactions are the same. This article discusses the different factors involved in an academic advising interaction, emphasizing the need for psychological counselors to become familiar with the specific aspects of the advising processes that occur at their respective institutions.

Standardized endpoint definitions for transcatheter aortic valve implantation clinical trials: a consensus report from the Valve Academic Research Consortium

To propose standardized consensus definitions for important clinical endpoints in transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), investigations in an effort to improve the quality of clinical research and to enable meaningful comparisons between clinical trials. To make these consensus definitions accessible to all stakeholders in TAVI clinical research through a peer reviewed publication, on behalf of the public health.