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Article
Publication date: 27 April 2012

Jakob Lauring and Jan Selmer

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the field of diversity studies with novel insights on how language diversity and communication frequency influence dissimilarity…

3035

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the field of diversity studies with novel insights on how language diversity and communication frequency influence dissimilarity attitudes.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors examine language diversity and communication frequency as group‐level antecedents for positive dissimilarity attitudes by use of questionnaire responses from 489 members of academic culturally diverse departments.

Findings

The results showed that communication frequency has strong positive relationships with three variables depicting positive dissimilarity attitudes, namely openness to linguistic, visible and informational diversity. Contradicting our predictions, language diversity had positive associations with all variables portraying positive dissimilarity attitudes. The implications of these findings are discussed in detail.

Originality/value

Few prior studies have dealt with the relations between language, communication and dissimilarity attitudes.

Details

Corporate Communications: An International Journal, vol. 17 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1356-3289

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2006

Melissa Terras

This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of a computer system designed to aid historians in the reading of the stylus tablets from the Roman fort of Vindolanda…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of a computer system designed to aid historians in the reading of the stylus tablets from the Roman fort of Vindolanda. It proposes outlining the different stages in developing the system, and giving the preliminary results.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper provides a literature review regarding Vindolanda, stylus tablets, and the process of reading an ancient document. Knowledge elicitation techniques are used to model explicitly expert processes used to read an ancient document. A corpus of character forms and lexicostatistics is gathered. An advanced cognitive imaging system utilising artificial intelligence techniques is implemented to produce plausible interpretations of the document.

Findings

This paper describes the developmental stages undertaken to construct a system that can read in images of an ancient document and produce plausible interpretations of the document, to aid the historians in the lengthy process of reading an ancient text. In carrying out the development, an explicit representation of how experts approach and reason about damaged and deteriorated texts was formulated, and a large corpus of letter forms and linguistic data were captured. Preliminary results from the resulting computer system are presented which demonstrate the usefulness of the technique, although more work is needed to develop this into a stand‐alone computer system.

Research limitations/implications

The study is focused on the Roman stylus tablets from Vindolanda, near Hadrian's Wall, although the technique could be extrapolated to cover other types of ancient documents from any period.

Practical implications

It is demonstrated that using techniques from artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology can result in further explicit understanding of humanities expert processes, which allow computational systems to be constructed. The resulting computational system is a tool for the humanities expert, which carries out a task in a similar manner, allowing for faster reasoning time and quicker hypotheses development.

Originality/value

The paper presents the first known system to intake an image of an ancient text and output a plausible interpretation of the text in a reasonable time frame, assisting the papyrologist in resolving ambiguities in the damaged and abraded text.

Details

Aslib Proceedings, vol. 58 no. 1/2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0001-253X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 July 2021

Joshua Keller and Ping Tian

The way organizational actors use language to think about and communicate their organizational experiences is central to how organizational actors enact organizational paradox…

Abstract

The way organizational actors use language to think about and communicate their organizational experiences is central to how organizational actors enact organizational paradox. However, most inquiries into the role of language in the organizational paradox literature has focused on specific components of language (e.g., discourse), without attention to the complex, multi-level linguistic system that is interconnected to organizational processes. In this chapter, we expand our knowledge of the role of language by integrating paradox research with research from the linguistics discipline. We identify a series of linguistic tensions (i.e., generalizability-specificity, universalism-particularism, and explicitness-implicitness) that are nested within organizational paradoxes. In the process, we reveal how the organizing paradox of control and autonomy is interconnected to other paradoxes (i.e., performing, learning, and belonging) through the instantiation of linguistic paradoxes. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on paradox and language.

Details

Interdisciplinary Dialogues on Organizational Paradox: Investigating Social Structures and Human Expression, Part B
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-187-8

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Review of Marketing Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-7656-1306-6

Article
Publication date: 4 December 2017

Mike Metz

This paper aims to address concerns of English teachers considering opening up their classrooms to multiple varieties of English.

1452

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to address concerns of English teachers considering opening up their classrooms to multiple varieties of English.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing on the author’s experience as a teacher educator and professional developer in different regions of the USA, this narrative paper groups teachers’ concerns into general categories and offers responses to the most common questions.

Findings

Teachers want to know why they should make room in their classrooms for multiple Englishes; what they should teach differently; how they learn about English variation; how to balance Standardized English and other Englishes; and how these apply to English Learners and/or White speakers of Standardized English.

Practical implications

The study describes the author’s approach to teaching about language as a way to promote social justice and equality, the value of increasing students’ linguistic repertoires and why it is necessary to address listeners as well as speakers. As teachers attempt to adopt and adapt new approaches to teaching English language suggested in the research literature, they need to know their challenges and concerns are heard and addressed. Teacher educators working to support these teachers need ways to address teachers’ concerns.

Social implications

This paper emphasizes the importance of teaching mainstream, White, Standard English-speaking students about English language variation. By emphasizing the role of the listener and teaching students to hear language through an expanded language repertoire, English teachers can reduce the prejudice attached to historically stigmatized dialects of English.

Originality/value

This paper provides a needed perspective on how to work with teachers who express legitimate concerns about what it means to decenter Standardized English in English classrooms.

Details

English Teaching: Practice & Critique, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1175-8708

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 February 2024

Juan Camilo Carvajal Builes, Idaly Barreto and Carolina Gutiérrez de Piñeres

This study aims to describe and analyze the differences in the linguistic styles of honest and dishonest stories.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to describe and analyze the differences in the linguistic styles of honest and dishonest stories.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses a descriptive study with a multivariate analysis of linguistic categories according to the story. The research analyzed 37 honest stories and 15 dishonest stories produced during actual legal proceedings through software Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC).

Findings

The authors find that individuals who engage in deception use a different number of words when they narrate facts. The results suggest a need for additional investigation of the linguistic style approach because of its high applicability and detection accuracy. This approach should be complemented by other types of verbal, nonverbal and psychophysiological deception detection techniques.

Research limitations/implications

Among the limitations, the authors consider length of the stories should be considered and scarce scientific literature in Spanish to compare with outcomes in English.

Practical implications

This research highlights the relevance to include linguistic style in real contexts to differentiate honest and dishonest stories due to objectivity and agility to implement.

Social implications

Understanding deception as a social behaviour and its psychological processes associated are elements that contribute to people and justice to comprehend it.

Originality/value

Analyzing real statements and discriminate differences in linguistic style, contribute to understand deeply this important behaviour to propose new methodologies and theories to explain it.

Details

The Journal of Forensic Practice, vol. 26 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2050-8794

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2023

Chiara Alzetta, Felice Dell'Orletta, Alessio Miaschi, Elena Prat and Giulia Venturi

The authors’ goal is to investigate variations in the writing style of book reviews published on different social reading platforms and referring to books of different genres…

Abstract

Purpose

The authors’ goal is to investigate variations in the writing style of book reviews published on different social reading platforms and referring to books of different genres, which enables acquiring insights into communication strategies adopted by readers to share their reading experiences.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors propose a corpus-based study focused on the analysis of A Good Review, a novel corpus of online book reviews written in Italian, posted on Amazon and Goodreads, and covering six literary fiction genres. The authors rely on stylometric analysis to explore the linguistic properties and lexicon of reviews and the authors conducted automatic classification experiments using multiple approaches and feature configurations to predict either the review's platform or the literary genre.

Findings

The analysis of user-generated reviews demonstrates that language is a quite variable dimension across reading platforms, but not as much across book genres. The classification experiments revealed that features modelling the syntactic structure of the sentence are reliable proxies for discerning Amazon and Goodreads reviews, whereas lexical information showed a higher predictive role for automatically discriminating the genre.

Originality/value

The high availability of cultural products makes information services necessary to help users navigate these resources and acquire information from unstructured data. This study contributes to a better understanding of the linguistic characteristics of user-generated book reviews, which can support the development of linguistically-informed recommendation services. Additionally, the authors release a novel corpus of online book reviews meant to support the reproducibility and advancements of the research.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 80 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 May 2018

Camilla Härtull and Jan Saarela

The purpose of this paper is to study two native and equal population groups, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers in Finland, to examine whether there is income variation across…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to study two native and equal population groups, Finnish speakers and Swedish speakers in Finland, to examine whether there is income variation across couples that differ on ethno-linguistic composition, and if such variation can be attributed to differences in education, educational homogamy and other observable characteristics.

Design/methodology/approach

Using detailed register-based household data, the authors estimate OLS models to compare endogamous and exogamous couples with respect to income of the man, the woman, and both partners, respectively.

Findings

Endogamous Swedish-speaking couples are found to have on average 25 per cent higher income than other couples. The advantage is not related to differences in educational homogamy, but primarily to man’s income, and roughly half of the income difference is explained by the higher educational level of Swedish-speaking men in endogamous couples. Although women in endogamous Swedish-speaking couples are higher educated than other women, and there is a higher degree of educational homogamy in these couples, their education has only a modest bearing on the income differential.

Originality/value

In the case of Finland, educational homogamy does not affect income variation across native couples that differ on ethno-linguistic composition. Endogamous mate selection seems to increase economic inequality, uphold gender inequality, and help the native minority group in sustaining its own community.

Details

International Journal of Manpower, vol. 39 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0143-7720

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Communication as Gesture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-515-9

Article
Publication date: 1 March 2006

Fidelia Ibekwe‐SanJuan

To propose a comprehensive and semi‐automatic method for constructing or updating knowledge organization tools such as thesauri.

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Abstract

Purpose

To propose a comprehensive and semi‐automatic method for constructing or updating knowledge organization tools such as thesauri.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper proposes a comprehensive methodology for thesaurus construction and maintenance combining shallow NLP with a clustering algorithm and an information visualization interface. The resulting system TermWatch, extracts terms from a text collection, mines semantic relations between them using complementary linguistic approaches and clusters terms using these semantic relations. The clusters are mapped onto a 2D using an integrated visualization tool.

Findings

The clusters formed exhibit the different relations necessary to populate a thesaurus or ontology: synonymy, generic/specific and relatedness. The clusters represent, for a given term, its closest neighbours in terms of semantic relations.

Practical implications

This could change the way in which information professionals (librarians and documentalists) undertake knowledge organization tasks. TermWatch can be useful either as a starting point for grasping the conceptual organization of knowledge in a huge text collection without having to read the texts, then actually serving as a suggestive tool for populating different hierarchies of a thesaurus or an ontology because its clusters are based on semantic relations.

Originality/value

This lies in several points: combined use of linguistic relations with an adapted clustering algorithm, which is scalable and can handle sparse data. The paper proposes a comprehensive approach to semantic relations acquisition whereas existing studies often use one or two approaches. The domain knowledge maps produced by the system represents an added advantage over existing approaches to automatic thesaurus construction in that clusters are formed using semantic relations between domain terms. Thus while offering a meaningful synthesis of the information contained in the original corpus through clustering, the results can be used for knowledge organization tasks (thesaurus building and ontology population) The system also constitutes a platform for performing several knowledge‐oriented tasks like science and technology watch, textmining, query refinement.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 62 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Keywords

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