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The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of word-related factors (i.e. frequency, range, dispersion and cognateness) on first-language English (L1E) readers' (n = 20) and second-language English (L2E) readers' (n = 20) incidental acquisition of vocabulary through the reading of an authentic novel.

Participants read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, a 58,686 token (word) English language novel containing Slovos, that is, words from Nadsat, a futuristic, foreignized teen talk invented by Burgess. Upon finishing the novel, the participants took two unexpected vocabulary tests, one for meaning recognition and the other for meaning recall.

The results of this study indicate that word-related factors significantly correlate with the word meaning recall test scores of both groups. However, the regression models of meaning recall for the two groups showed that dispersion was the most robust predictor, which implies that the participants recalled more word meanings when the novel had a more even distribution of the unknown target words. The meaning recognition test scores showed cognates were a significant predictor for the L1E readers but not for L2E readers.

This study marks the first attempt in the field to investigate the relative contribution of frequency, range and dispersion – a closely bound set of word-related factors – to both L1E and L2E readers' incidental acquisition of vocabulary through reading an authentic novel. Considering the important role of dispersion, the current study suggests that developers of graded readers and children's literature should more evenly distribute unknown target words in their books. Doing so will better facilitate both L1E and L2E readers' acquisition of those words. The study also addresses a fallacy of methodology regarding incidental vocabulary acquisition by examining the effect of the cognateness of the foreignized words embedded in A Clockwork Orange. The L1E readers' sensitivity to cognates implies that cognate-word awareness-raising activities are necessary to learning a foreign language, especially if that language has many cognates in common with English, such as Spanish.

Of course, an interest in meaning goes back much further in time than the period of modern linguistics. Some of the earliest recorded speculation about language concerned meaning: for instance, the ‘nature’ or ‘convention’ dispute among the Greeks—was there, they asked, something which made the word ‘cow’ the natural one to apply to that animal over there, or was it simply a matter of convention? And there has long been an interest in meaning among students of literature, philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and so on—as is only to be expected, since the main function of language is to convey some sort of meaning, whether we define this in a narrow way, or in a broader one, including connotation, emotion, and so on.

This study aims to investigate the effects of word internal morphological form variation on adult first language (L1) (n = 20) incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.

Participants were given a 37,611-token English novel containing pseudo words, placed throughout the text by the novelist. Two unexpected vocabulary assessments were administered at the completion of the reading task.

Results showed statistically significant effects for morphological form variation, with the readers having incidentally acquired more words whose tokens did not vary in form (i.e. no exposure to inflectional or derivational variants). However, a large effect size was present only for low-frequency words (two-four exposures).

Discussion of the results is given regarding the feasibility of enhancing adult L1 college readers’ morphological awareness through extensive reading and attention-drawing tasks.

This paper aims to introduce pseudohomophone phonological priming effects (non-words that sound like real words with a single semantic representation, such as Whyte primes white) on consumers’ product attribute and benefit-based judgments.

Four studies were conducted. Study 1 examines whether pseudohomophone brand names (e.g. Whyte) prime associative meaning (i.e. the perception of light bread; target: white). Study 2 investigates the pseudohomophone priming process. In Study 3, the authors examine the influence of brand knowledge of pseudohomophone priming effects.

The findings indicate that pseudohomophone brand names prime associative meaning, due to retrieval of phonology (sound) of the word during processing. Pseudohomophone priming effects for a semantically (meaningful) incongruent brand name manifest only when consumers do not have knowledge of the brand, with cognitive capacity constraints rendering consumers with strong brand knowledge unable to mitigate the pseudohomophone priming effect.

This research has implications for brand managers considering the creation of a name for a new brand that connotes product attributes and benefits. However, this research is limited, as it only examines pseudohomophone brand names with a single semantic representation.

This research shows that sounds activated by pseudohomophones in brand names can influence product judgments. This research also identifies limitations of the applicability of pseudohomophone brand names by identifying a condition under which priming effects are attenuated.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

Integrated reporting (IR) is increasingly becoming a practice useful not only for accountability but also for managerial purposes because of its potential role as a signifying practice for integrated thinking (IT). In this perspective, this paper aims to explore which of the objects that are represented in integrated reports provide materiality and common understanding to the concept of IT for its effective implementation within organizations.

This paper is based on a vocabulary approach for interpreting the texts of integrated reports as systems of words that are able to provide meaning for a common understanding of the concept of IT. In particular, by focusing on words and their relationships, the authors combine textual analysis and network text analysis to examine the structure of meaning embedded in the texts of integrated reports of five organizations, which serve as empirical cases for analysis during the period 2012-2018.

The concept of IT is dynamic in its meaning since in integrated reports it is represented by referring to different objects, in the case different types of capital (i.e. financial, human, social-relational, process, organizational and commercial), which are related to each other while following different paths over time. The dynamic nature of the meaning of IT affects the semantic orientation of the reports in a mutual relationship between IT (which conveys flows of information within the reports) and integrated reports (through which flows of meaning are made visible).

This paper opens the way to a linguistic approach for analyzing the different concepts related to IT to make them meaningful in creating (at least temporarily) a common understanding, as well as facilitating coordination within organizations and between organizations and their environment.

This article is a contribution to the development of a comprehensive interdisciplinary theory of LIS in the hope of giving a more precise evaluation of its current problems. The article describes an interdisciplinary framework for lis, especially information retrieval (IR), in a way that goes beyond the cognitivist ‘information processing paradigm’. The main problem of this paradigm is that its concept of information and language does not deal in a systematic way with how social and cultural dynamics set the contexts that determine the meaning of those signs and words that are the basic tools for the organisation and retrieving of documents in LIS. The paradigm does not distinguish clearly enough between how the computer manipulates signs and how librarians work with meaning in practice when they design and run document mediating systems. The ‘cognitive viewpoint’ of Ingwersen and Belkin makes clear that information is not objective, but rather only potential, until it is interpreted by an individual mind with its own internal mental world view and purposes. It facilitates further study of the social pragmatic conditions for the interpretation of concepts. This approach is not yet fully developed. The domain analytic paradigm of Hjørland and Albrechtsen is a conceptual realisation of an important aspect of this area. In the present paper we make a further development of a non‐reductionistic and interdisciplinary view of information and human social communication by texts in the light of second‐order cybernetics, where information is seen as ‘a difference which makes a difference’ for a living autopoietic (self‐organised, self‐creating) system. Other key ideas are from the semiotics of Peirce and also Warner. This is the understanding of signs as a triadic relation between an object, a representation and an interpretant. Information is the interpretation of signs by living, feeling, self‐organising, biological, psychological and social systems. Signification is created and con‐trolled in a cybernetic way within social systems and is communicated through what Luhmann calls generalised media, such as science and art. The modern socio‐linguistic concept ‘discourse communities’ and Wittgenstein's ‘language game’ concept give a further pragmatic description of the self‐organising system's dynamic that determines the meaning of words in a social context. As Blair and Liebenau and Backhouse point out in their work it is these semantic fields of signification that are the true pragmatic tools of knowledge organ‐isation and document retrieval. Methodologically they are the first systems to be analysed when designing document mediating systems as they set the context for the meaning of concepts. Several practical and analytical methods from linguistics and the sociology of knowledge can be used in combination with standard methodology to reveal the significant language games behind document mediation.

It is the purpose of this paper to indicate certain difficulties confronting traditional approaches to language comprehension. Examples of these difficulties will be presented based on linguistic, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic observations. We shall submit that efforts to provide a satisfactory account of these observations must entail a reconceptualization of language comprehension within a systems framework. A computer simulation of these observations indicates the feasibility of a simple model specifying a preliminary phase of language comprehension. This phase is defined as involving an interactive interface between the morphological properties of linguistic stimuli and the individual's “knowledge of the world”.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).

The Equal Pay Act 1970 (which came into operation on 29 December 1975) provides for an “equality clause” to be written into all contracts of employment. S.1(2) (a) of the 1970 Act (which has been amended by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975) provides: