An empirical investigation into carpooling behaviour for sustainability

Carpooling is a sustainable, economical, and environmental friendly solution that can significantly reduce air pollution and traffic congestion in urban areas. In spite of its numerous benefits, commuters are still skeptic about adopting it as a routine choice for transportation. This study attempts to map commuters’ attitude towards carpooling services. The study has focused on a few motivational constructs that can have an influence on commuters’ behavior. The study has looked at the role of cognitive complexity and empowerment perceptions of commuters to check if these constructs significantly intervene in the behavioral outcomes. The methodology used is a scenario-based 2 × 2 survey design where the sample is an individual who has experience with carpooling. The survey has used two levels (high, low) each of cognitive complexity and psychological empowerment to give rise to four scenarios. The final sample consisted of 400 carpoolers selected from an IT park having more than 5000 employees. MANOVA analysis showed that cognitive complexity and psychological empowerment had significant influence on the motivational constructs used in the study. Value beliefs, safety and platform quality perceptions were found to have a direct impact on attitude formation and intention to engage in carpooling behavior. The findings offer many implications for managers in the sense that that they can focus on creating suitable communication that creates favorable perceptions towards carpooling to bring about better adoption intentions.     

输入方式对学语前聋生语篇理解的影响：文本和测题类型的调节效应

为了考察信息输入方式、文本类型和测题类型对聋生语篇理解的影响,研究通过录像呈现,以口语、手语、书面语三种输入方式向学语前极重度七、八、九年级聋生呈现叙述性和描述性两种文本类型的语篇信息,并要求其完成理解测试。结果显示：输入方式对聋生语篇理解的效率存在影响,书面语成绩最高且速度最快,依次为手语、口语,文本类型和测题类型对该影响有调节作用。结果表明输入方式是聋生语篇理解的主要影响因素,文本和测题类型是调节因素。     

Accounting for Poverty: From Attribution to Discourse

In this article it is argued that the attributional literature concerning explanations of poverty is inadequate due to its theoretical presuppositions. It is proposed that a discursive approach is better able to withstand criticism and contribute to a more adequate understanding of poverty accounts. Some examples are given of how a discursive approach might work in practice.     

Semantic Shifts in Argumentative Processes: A Step Beyond the ‘Fallacy of Equivocation’

In naturally occuring argumentation, words which play a crucial role in the argument often acquire different meanings on subsequent occasions of use. Traditionally, such semantic shifts have been dealt with by the fallacy of equivocation. In my paper, I would like to show that there is considerably more to semantic shifts during arguments than their potentially being fallacious. Based on an analysis of a debate on environmental policy, I will argue that shifts in meaning are produced by a principle I call local semantic elaboration. I will go on to show that semantic shifts in the meaning of a word, the position advocated by a party, and the questions that the parties raise during an argumentative process are neatly tailored to one another, but can be incommensurable to the opponent's views. Semantic shifts thus may have a dissociative impact on a critical discussion. By linking the structure of argumentation to its pragmatics, however, it may be revealed that there are two practices that account for a higher order of coherence of the debate. The first practice is a general preference for disagreeing with the opponent, the second practice is the interpretation of local speech acts in terms of an overall ideological stance that is attributed to the speaker. Because of these practices, parties do not criticize divergent semantic conceptions as disruptive, but they treat them as characteristic and sometimes even metonymic reflections of the parties' positions.     

Care of the Self and Patient Participation in Genetic Discourse: A Foucauldian Reading of the Surgeon General's “My Family Health Portrait” Program

Critics of genetic discourse are concerned that deterministic and discriminatory views of genetics are increasingly becoming adopted. These views argue that current genetic discourse becomes a source of power whereby powerful institutions harm people with so-called “bad” genes. This essay argues that current analyses of the power of genetics discourse are grounded in an improper reading that disempowers patients. Deploying Michel Foucault's concept “care of the self,” this essay claims that genetics discourse is better understood as a way that patients take on power through rhetoric rather than a force that has power over patients. Through a close reading of the “My Family Health Portrait” program, this paper argues that patients experience a process of “subjection” wherein they become agents of and objects of genetics discourse both. This alternative mode of analyzing the power of genetics discourse has implications for our collective understanding of the operations of the care of the self and the uses of genetic information that we propose.     

Pragmatic versus form-based accounts of referential contrast: evidence for effects of informativity expectations

Characterizing the relationship between form-based linguistic knowledge and representation of context has long been of importance in the study of on-line language processing. Recent experimental research has shown evidence of very rapid effects of referential context in resolving local indeterminacies on-line. However, there has been no consensus regarding the nature of these context effects. The current paper summarizes recent work covering a range of phenomena for which referential contrast has been shown to influence on-line processing, including prenominal and postnominal modification, focus operators, and intonational focus. The results of the body of work suggest that referential context effects are not limited to situations in which the linguistic form of the utterance directly specifies the point of contact with context. Rather, context effects of a pragmatic, Gricean nature appear to be possible, suggesting the relationship between linguistic form and context in rapid on-line processing can be of a very indirect nature.     

Living with Contradictions: The Taken-for-Granted in Israeli Political Discourse

Two apparently contradictory ideas are closely linked in Israeli political discourse: Israel is powerful and independent and Israel is vulnerable and dependent. This study used content analysis and focus groups, as well as existing survey data analyzed by others, to explore how this paradox has been reflected in newspapers and conversations during six different time periods from 1948 to 1996. The goal was not to explain the paradox but to examine its consequences for Israeli perceptions of U.S. policy in the Middle East—and, in the process, to explore Israeli self-images. The nature of U.S. strategic interests was originally treated as problematic and in need of political discussion, but in the past 25 years these interests have become taken for granted. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Cold War, a critical discourse moment in which a reexamination of U.S. interests in the Middle East would seem inevitable, the U.S. role remains taken for granted and largely unexamined. The strong/vulnerable paradox explains this absence of discussion: Examining U.S. interests too closely upsets the delicate balance that keeps the sense of vulnerability in check.     

The just world hypothesis as an argumentative resource in debates about unemployment benefits

The concept of the “just world” is established as a key explanation for how people make sense of inequality so that those deemed to score high in belief in a just world are more likely to hold prejudicial beliefs and to blame people in poverty for their situations. However, this is an inadequate explanation for such complicated and controversial issues. To better understand talk about the just world and the controversial issue of the distribution of unemployment benefits (an issue of inequality), a discursive psychological approach to the just world is used. Therefore, a discourse analysis focusses on 2 feature length British televised discussions about benefit claimants called “The Big Benefit Row: Live” (Channel 5 3/2/2014) and “Benefits Britain: the Debate” (Channel 4 17/2/2014). The analysis demonstrates that people draw on both just and unjust world arguments simultaneously and also topicalise what counts as just so as to support their positions on unemployment benefits, rather than in the consistent way that just world theory would predict. It is therefore argued that the just world should be recast as a cultural value that facilitates arguments about benefits, rather than an internally held belief.     

篇章阅读中先行信息通达的若干影响因素

采用实时窗口阅读技术,探讨在篇章阅读理解中,当读者在建构先行信息已能考虑其合适与不合适这一条件下,先行信息与当前信息的关系及距离如何影响对先行信息的通达。实验一采用以句子为单位的自控阅读,通过再认探测技术,结果发现,被试在加工含回指词的目标句时,回指词的不合适先行词也会得以通达。实验二以词汇为单位呈现阅读材料,通过命名探测技术,结果发现,与当前回指词关系合适的先行词会得到更快的通达,而先行词与当前回指词距离的远近不会影响先行词的激活水平。     

左右半球在语篇理解中的协同作用

通过2例一侧颞叶损伤患者研究了一侧颞叶损伤及两侧半球的协同作用对语篇理解的影响,并探讨了发生此种影响的可能机制。结果表明一侧颞叶的损伤将导致患者语篇水平的理解障碍及语言推理能力的下降;提示语篇理解需双侧半球的协同作用,而推理能力下降可能是引发语篇理解障碍的原因之一。