Matemática como discurso

Initial steps are taken towards an interpretation of the discourse of mathematics, by showing that a mathematical model does not represent, but re-present; that it is not objective, but that it invents its objects; and that it is not descriptive, but performative. Mathematics-based discursive acts become identified, as crucial elements in an interpretation of mathematics as discourse. The discursive acts are: (1) technological imagination, (2) hypothetical reasoning, (3) legitimation or justification, (4) realisation, and (5) dissolution of responsibility. Through such acts, mathematics exercises symbolic power and makes possible new forms of symbolic violence.

Compte rendu: Johann Wolfgang Unger (2013), The Discursive Construction of the Scots Language : Education, Politics and Everyday Life, Amsterdam, John Benjamins, coll. « Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 51 », 178 p. [ISBN : 978-9-027-20642-8]

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Re-interpretation of early speech perception test (standard version) in Urdu language

This paper resulted in the Urdu language version of the Early Speech Perception Test(ESP).

Language and literature in society : a sociological essay on theory and method in the interpretation of linguistic symbols : with a bibliographical guide to the sociology of literature.

Bibliography: p. [141]-214.

A course of lectures on the figurative language of the Holy Scripture : and the interpretation of it from the Scripture itself /

Mode of access: Internet.

A.G.B. ter Meulen, Representing Time in Natural Language: The Dynamic Interpretation of Tense and Aspect, The MIT Press, 1997, ISBN: 978-0262200998 [Book review]

Abstract not available

Multiculturalism, education for sustainable development (ESD) and the shifting discursive landscape of social inclusion

Australia has a long and sometimes turbulent relationship with the migrant Other. This paper examines a component of this relationship via the window of contemporary multicultural policy. The paper begins with an analysis of the political and social conditions that enabled a national and bipartisan policy of multiculturalism to emerge as formalised federal policy during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The paper re-problematises the influences that helped shape Australia's articulation of race and ethnicity and argues that multiculturalism, within a post-September 11 environment, can no longer be framed solely within its traditional framework of social justice. The paper positions education for sustainable development (ESD) as an emerging discursive field that provides educators with an alternative road map for critiquing Australia's fluid relationship with the migrant Other. By linking the tenets of multiculturalism with ESD, this paper suggests pre-service teacher educators are presented with a productive, and at the same time politically palatable, means for regaining pedagogical traction for a semi-dormant agenda of social inclusion.

“I’m Happy with Who I Am” : A Discursive Analysis of the Self-characterisation Practices of Boys in “Behaviour” Schools

In this chapter, I draw on poststructural theories of language to examine the self-characterisation practices of 33 boys attending special schools for students with disruptive behaviour. During a semi-structured interview, each boy was asked to describe his personality and then to choose from a selection of positive/negative word pairs. The objective was to determine whether these young people would characterise themselves in positive or negative ways. Participants were then asked if there was anything they would change about themselves if they could. Responses were analysed and compared against a discourse model developed from media reports and interviews with their principals. Findings suggest that while discourse may well ‘form the objects of which it speaks’ (Foucault, 1972, p. 49) in the eyes of teachers, principals, psychiatrists and paediatricians, it also offers a means through which the constituted subject can re-author itself in a more positive frame.

The Artful Interpretation of Science through Picture Books

Science picture books offer pleasurable and educational reading experiences. These texts open up opportunities for cross-curriculum teaching and learning and a means for developing students’ visual literacy skills, aesthetic appreciation, and higher level thinking skills. Picture books demonstrate how one mode or semiotic system (visual and verbal) mediates the other, often complementing, extending, and filling-in the gaps between words and images. Students’ meaning making is further extended when they can understand the subtleties and effects (and affects) of the visual elements of art and design, and the different styles of writing and language use.

Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood : Cultivating Decency and Emotion in Finnish and French Mother-talk

Discursive Matrixes of Motherhood examines women's discourse on their experiences of new motherhood in Finland and France. It sets out from two culturally prevalent turns of speech observed in different social forums: in conversations amongst mothers with tertiary education and in the print media. The pool of data includes: 30 interviews, 8 autobiographically inspired novels and 80 items from women's magazines. With instruments loaned from the toolbox of rhetorical analysis, the recurrence of certain expressions or clichés is analyzed with regard to the national, cultural, biographical, political and daily contexts and settings in which the speaking subjects are immersed. "Staying at home is such a short and special time", the first expression under scrutiny, caught the sociological eye because of its salience in Finland and because it appeared as contradictory with a core characteristic of the Finnish context:long family leave. The cliché was found to function as a discursive micromechanism which swept mothers' 'complaints' under the proverbial carpet. Proper emotions and decency in mother-talk thereby appear as collective achievements. An opposite phenomenon - that of the scaling up of rewards procured by children - was also discerned in the data. Indeed, the French expression "Profiter de mon enfant" ["making the most of my child"/"enjoying my child"] is interpreted as a crystallization of a hedonist ethos of motherhood in everyday language. Secondly, the recurrence of this utterance is analyzed in the light of a requisite located in child-rearing expert literature: that of pleasure that women should take in mothering. Hence, one of the rules found to structure the discursive matrixes of motherhood is the laudability and audibility of enjoyment and conversely the discretion and discouragement of 'complaints'. The cultivation of decent matches between certain categories of emotions and certain categories of individuals also appears as a characteristic of discursive matrixes. One of the methodological findings relates to the fact that such matches may be constituted as sociological objects through the identification of recurrent discursive crystallizations in a given culture. Ideal matches may crystallize in turns of speech and mismatches can be managed through clichés. Becoming a mother entails an immersion in such a particular economy of speech. Key words: mothers, motherhood, transition to parenthood, family, emotions, morality, bonds, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis, media analysis, France, Finland, comparative sociology

Knowledge through Discussion : An Interpretation of Epistemology in Plato's Meno

According to Meno s paradox we cannot inquire into what we do not know because we do not know what we are inquiring into. There are many ways to interpret the paradox but the central issue about our ability to reach truth is a profound one. In the dialogue Meno, Plato presents the paradox and an outline of a solution which enables us to reach knowledge (epistēmē) through philosophical discussion. During the last century Meno has often been considered transitional between Socratic thinking and Plato s own philosophy, and thus the dialogue has not been adequately interpreted as an integrated whole. Therefore the distinctive epistemology of the dialogue has not gained due notice. In this thesis the dialogue is analysed as an integrated whole and the philosophical interpretation also takes into account its dramatic features. The thesis emphasises the role of language and definitions in acquiring knowledge. Among the results concerning these subjects is a new interpretation of Socrates s defintion of shape (schēma). The theory of anamnēsis all learning is recollection in the Meno is argued to answer the paradox philosophically although Plato s presentation also contains playful and ironic elements. The background of the way Plato presents his case is that he appreciated the fact that no argument can plausibly demonstrate that argumentation is able to reach truth. In the Meno, Plato makes the earliest explicit distinction between knowledge and true belief in the history of Western philosophy. He also gives a definition of knowledge which is the basis of the so called classical definition of knowledge as justified true belief. In the Meno, true beliefs become knowledge when someone ties them down by reasoning about the explanation. The analysis of the epistemology of the dialogue from this perspective gives an interpretation which integrates the central concepts of the epistemology in the dialogue elenchos, anamnēsis and hypothetical inquiry into a unified whole which contains a plausible argument according to which the ignorant can reach knowledge through discussion. The conception that emerges by such an analysis is interesting both from the point of view of current interests and that of the history of philosophy. The method of knowledge acquisition in the Meno can, for example, be seen as a predecessor of modern scientific methods. The Meno is the earliest Greek mathematical text that has survived in its original form. The analysis presented in the thesis of the geometric passages in the dialogue provides new results both concerning Socrates s geometry lesson with the slave and the example presenting the hypothetical method. Concerning the latter, a new interpretation is presented. Keywords: anamnēsis, epistēmē, knowledge, Meno s paradox, Plato

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

"The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" is the entry-level subject in Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is required of all students at MIT who major in Electrical Engineering or in Computer Science, as one fourth of the "common core curriculum," which also includes two subjects on circuits and linear systems and a subject on the design of digital systems. We have been involved in the development of this subject since 1978, and we have taught this material in its present form since the fall of 1980 to approximately 600 students each year. Most of these students have had little or no prior formal training in computation, although most have played with computers a bit and a few have had extensive programming or hardware design experience. Our design of this introductory Computer Science subject reflects two major concerns. First we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations, but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. Secondly, we believe that the essential material to be addressed by a subject at this level, is not the syntax of particular programming language constructs, nor clever algorithms for computing particular functions of efficiently, not even the mathematical analysis of algorithms and the foundations of computing, but rather the techniques used to control the intellectual complexity of large software systems.