Living in several languages: implications for therapy

Bilingualism and multilingualism have mainly been neglected in psychotherapy. This paper is based on qualitative research of subjective experiences of living in more than one language, using a combined grounded theory and discursive approach, which raises significant issues for therapy. These individuals experience themselves very differently in their different languages, and construct their languages differently. Languages acquire meanings in socio-political contexts as well as in local personal ones, and encode different concepts and notions of personhood. Issues of language choice within families and what it is seen to accomplish are discussed. Mothers and fathers view this issue differently. The paper argues for the importance of taking into account the differences languages bring for individuals, particularly in the context of colonialism and racism. Asking about families' experiences of their languages is a fruitful way to explore cultural meanings. Multilingualism is a resource for mental flexibility and creativity, but there are challenges in enabling living with its multiplicities.     

Synonymy in sentential languages: a pragmatic view

In this note two notions of meaning are considered and accordingly two versions of synonymy are defined, weaker and stronger ones. A new semantic device is introduced: a matrix is said to be pragmatic iff its algebra is in fact an algebra of meanings in the stronger sense. The new semantics is proved to be universal enough (Theorem 1), and it turns out to be in some sense a generalization of Wójcicki's referential semantics (Theorem 3).     

Inconsistency in natural languages

An argument for Trivialism, the view that natural languages are logically inconsistent, is provided that does not rely on contentious empirical assumptions about natural language terms such as “and” or “or.” Further, the view is defended against an important objection recently mounted against it by Thomas Hofweber.     

Editorial independence at medical journals owned by professional associations: A survey of editors

The purpose of this study was to assess the degree of editorial independence at a sample of medical journals and the relationship between the journals and their owners. We surveyed the editors of 33 medical journals owned by not-for-profit organizations (“associations”), including 10 journals represented on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (nine of which are general medical journals) and a random sample of 23 specialist journals with high impact factors that are indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information. The main outcome measures were the authority to hire, fire, and oversee the work of the editor; the editor’s tenure and financial compensation; control of the journal’s budget; publication of material about the association; and the editor’s perceptions about editorial independence and pressure over editorial content. Of the 33 editors, 23 (70%) reported having complete editorial freedom, and the remainder reported a high level of freedom (a score of ≥8, where 10 equals complete editorial freedom and 1 equals no editorial freedom). Nevertheless, a substantial minority of editors reported having received at least some pressure in recent years over editorial content from the association’s leadership (42%), senior staff (30%), or rank-and-file members (39%). The association’s board of directors has the authority to hire (48%) or fire (55%) the editor for about half of the journals, and the editor reports to the board for 10 journals (30%). Twenty-three editors (70%) are appointed for a specific term (median term =5 years). Three-fifths of the journals have no control over their profit, and the majority of journals use the association’s legal counsel and/or media relations staff. Stronger safeguards are needed to give editors protection against pressure over editorial content, including written guarantees of editorial freedom and governance structures that support those guarantees. Strong safeguards are also needed because editors may have less freedom than they believe (especially if they have not yet tested their freedom in an area of controversy).     

Pronoun comprehension in aphasia: a comparison of three languages

The research reported here investigated the effect of phonological and syntactic factors on the processing of pronouns by aphasics. The comprehension of these "closed-class" elements was studied in three different languages: French, Dutch, and German. The cross-linguistic design made it possible to vary phonological status (clitic/nonclitic) and phrasal category (noun phrase/prepositional phrase) as well as grammatical relation (direct/indirect object) while keeping class membership (closed class) and meaning constant. A sentence-picture matching task was given to 20 German-speaking, 16 Dutch-speaking, and 14 French-speaking aphasics, half of each language group being classified as agrammatic Broca's and half as paragrammatic Wernicke's aphasics. The results suggest that Broca's aphasics' limitations in retrieving pronouns, and therefore other closed-class elements, are not a function of either phonological status, phrasal category, or grammatical relation. These subjects' observed high level of performance on pronouns in language comprehension appears due to the kind of semantic and syntactic information they encode. Our findings indicate that a more refined distinction than closed class vs. open class is necessary.     

Reclaiming professional identity through postgraduate professional development: careers practitioners reclaiming their professional selves

Careers advisers in the UK have experienced significant change and upheaval within their professional practice. This research explores the role of postgraduate-level professional development in contributing to professional identity. The research utilises a case study approach and adopts multiple tools to provide an in-depth examination of practitioners' perceptions of themselves as professionals within their lived world experience. It presents a group of practitioners struggling to define themselves as professionals due to changing occupational nomenclature resulting from shifting government policy. Postgraduate professional development generated a perceived enhancement in professional identity through exposure to theory, policy and opportunities for reflection, thus contributing to more confident and empowered practitioners. Engagement with study facilitated development of confident, empowered practitioners with a strengthened sense of professional self.     

Sexual languages/cultural bodies: Transforming psychoanalysis

Abstract

This paper explores what transformation is necessary for a psychoanalytic practice that is sensitive to the languages of lesbian, gay and bisexual identities in their cultural and historical specificity. It draws on phenomenological texts, in particular Merleau-Ponty, the writing of the psychoanalyst Franz Fanon and also of the feminist theorist and novelist, Audre Lorde. It argues for a practice that challenges the dominant language of psychoanalysis with its dualisms of inner/outer, conscious/unconscious, mind/body, and universal notions of drives and mechanisms. The clinical example of the work of women in a therapy workshop entitled ‘Am I a Lesbian?’ highlights the critical importance of the specificity of language, whether verbal, visual or gestural, and its relation to embodiment in psychotherapy.     

A verbal illusion in two languages

The study replicates Wason and Reich's (1979) investigation of the sentence No head injury is too trivial to be ignored, which is semantically and pragmatically anomalous (target sentence), in three experiments. Data from Experiment I show that sentences violating semantic and pragmatic restrictions resist correct parsing of syntax, systematically confirming Wason and Reich's results. Experiment II shows that when subjects are alerted to the violation of semantic and pragmatic restrictions displayed by the target sentence, it leads, to some extent, to correct parsing of syntax, but it also demonstrates that misconstrual of the target sentence is still a very robust phenomenon. When semantic anomaly is removed and conflict of pragmatic factor is minimized (corrected version of the target sentence), performance improves substantially (Experiment III), as Wason and Reich's data also suggest.     

Timed picture naming in seven languages

Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-language universals and cross-language disparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target-name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g., Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages.     

Cooking Living Beings:

Bodies play important and diverse roles in Buddhist ethics. Drawing upon an Indian Mahāyāna Buddhist compendium of bodhisattva practice, this paper explores the role bodhisattva bodies play in the ethical development of other living beings. Bodhisattvas adopt certain disciplinary practices in order to produce bodies whose very sight, sound, touch, and even taste transform living beings in physical and moral ways. The compendium uses a common South Asian and Buddhist metaphor to describe a bodhisattva's physical and moral impact on others. Bodhisattvas are said to “cook living beings.” The paper considers how this metaphor suggests ways of nuancing modern Western conceptions of ethical self‐cultivation, particularly as articulated by Michel Foucault in his studies of the technologies of the self.     

Living in Ambiguity: Mission Formation as Living among Counter‐communities

This article has been developed from a short response given to Prof Néstor Míguez's paper, “Mission Formation for Transforming Discipleship” (featured in this issue of IRM) at the Commission for World Mission and Evangelism's Consultation on Mission Formation, held in Matanzas, Cuba, from 10 to 15 September 2016. The article sets out to explore Míguez's concept of living in ambiguity as a call to mission formation to create transformative counter‐communities, which can equip people to live with the struggle of justice promised and justice denied. The paper explores this through a number of lenses. The letter of Jeremiah to the exiles in Jeremiah 29 offers a biblical context for creating communities which are counter to dominant and imperial values. The work of French philosopher Michel Foucault on heterotopias offers a philosophical framework for such communities.     

Becoming literate in different languages: similar problems, different solutions

The teaching of reading in different languages should be informed by an effective evidence base. Although most children will eventually become competent, indeed skilled, readers of their languages, the pre-reading (e.g. phonological awareness) and language skills that they bring to school may differ in systematic ways for different language environments. A thorough understanding of potential differences is required if literacy teaching is to be optimized in different languages. Here we propose a theoretical framework based on a psycholinguistic grain size approach to guide the collection of evidence in different countries. We argue that the development of reading depends on children's phonological awareness in all languages studied to date. However, we propose that because languages vary in the consistency with which phonology is represented in orthography, there are developmental differences in the grain size of lexical representations, and accompanying differences in developmental reading strategies across orthographies.     

On discernibility in symmetric languages: the case of quantum particles

Synthese - In this paper I consider the question of whether absolute discernibility is attainable in symmetric languages. Simon Saunders has proven that all facts expressible in first-order...     

Syntactic structures in languages and biology

Both natural languages and cell biology make use of one-dimensional encryption. Their investigation calls for syntactic deciphering of the text and semantic understanding of the resulting structures. Here we discuss recently published algorithms that allow for such searches: automatic distillation of structure (ADIOS) that is successful in discovering syntactic structures in linguistic texts and its motif extraction (MEX) component that can be used for uncovering motifs in DNA and protein sequences. The underlying principles of these syntactic algorithms and some of their results will be described.