Conversation

The aim of this study is to compare the activities of Kabalevsky and Bernstein-two musicians who made a significant contribution to the musical education of the younger generation, reveals the principles, methods, forms of educational work and covers the subject of television programmes. In particular, the pedagogical and musical-enlightenment concept of the outstanding composer, scientist Dmitry Kabalevsky was widely spread in our country. Also, the achievements of American composer, lecturer, teacher Leonard Bernstein in the field of musical enlightenment differ in originality and are rarely used in Russian musical pedagogical practice. In accordance with the aim of the study, the following theoretical methods were used: analysis of the literature, epistolary texts, the repertoire of the concert programmes of the New York Philharmonic orchestra; generalisation of historical data on musical and educational activities of Kabalevsky and Bernstein, comparison of methods and techniques of music education, biographical method.

Sense making through conversation plays a key
role in channelling and furthering participatory business model innovation. The designer as facilitator, with conversation as a core tool, is an emerging area of interest within the design research literature. This paper will discuss preliminary findings of a case study of Second Road, a strategy and innovation consultancy that employed a design thinking approach and conversational methods to redesign a client’s business development model. Through this study conversation based co-creation emerged as the primary method for participatory innovation.

Teaching English language to Czech children suffering from AD(H)D is clearly a challenging task for any teacher, especially when this disorder often manifests itself with some other learning disabilities. There is no single practical guide for teachers to assist them in planning their teaching strategies. This bachelor´s thesis presents a case study in how to work with an 11-year-old pupil suffering from ADHD and the strategies employed in order to deliver an effective learning programme. It undertakes a review of relevant literature in the areas of both Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Specialised Pedagogy. In particular, the thesis takes advantage of the emerging role of Conversation Analysis to examine the discourse that is constituting the teaching interactions in order to explain what is occurring in the development of the pupil and to evaluate their progression or the lack of it.

"Una sceneggiatura sociale: analisi semiotica dell'aperitivo".
Il presente lavoro è incentrato sul fenomeno dell'aperitivo letto come uno dei temi della semiotica del gusto e del cibo. Il momento dell'aperitivo non è dettato prettamente dal bisogno di nutrimento e non possiede la natura di carburante corporeo, rappresenta piuttosto uno spazio altro in cui vivere un'esperienza conviviale e tornare ad esercitare le forme del vivere sociale fondate sull'incontro, sulla conversazione e sulla corporeità.

The use of language may influence the society both in terms of what is said by the people and about the people. Research in language and gender considers how language impacts upon society. The present study examines most influential theories regarding gender discrimination and compares interruptions in three types of pairs: male to male conversation (MM), female to female conversation (FF) and male to female in mixed sex conversation (MF). Three types of conversation samples were taken from Radio, TV and natural conversations. The multimedia annotator ELAN was used to transcribe and analyze the data. The results indicate that males interrupt more than females. The greater number of interruptions on the part of males has been attributed to male dominancy in conversation. This study also reveals that males interrupt more in male to female (in mixed sex) conversation as compared to male to male conversation. It asserts that in order to take hold of conversational floor, the male interlocutors try to take control of conversation by interruptions.

This paper investigates alternative methods of teaching design studies in a school of design that still largely follows a traditional apprenticeship practice-based programme. It looks at sustainable and student-centred design educational methods of teaching and learning that are underpinned by social constructivism, soft systems thinking and second-order cybernetics. In the first two sections I construct an imaginary dialogue to demonstrate some of the difficulties in teaching design, especially theory, followed by a remodelling of this teaching scenario using Stafford Beer’s muddy box regulatory system as a learning device. The sections that follow deal with conversation theory, story telling and projection, the way we construct and construe virtual frames of existence, while the last section deals with how we can imagine ourselves as autopoietic systems that have the capability of communicative interaction.

This paper describes the development of chatbots that can help learners make the most appropriate use of a large body of content. The purpose of a COntent based Learning Assistant, COLA, is to suggest optimal educational paths, along with a persuasive and empathic coaching. COLAs are supported by a novel technology, iCHAT, based on the cognitive engine Watson (by IBM).

The quality of your leadership depends on the quality of your conversations. But in the last decade, the tendency to replace face-to-face conversations with e-mails has become an epidemic which is damaging relations between professionals and creating structural inefficiencies within companies.

If you want to inspire your team and your colleagues and arouse their enthusiasm, The Talking Manager will provide you with the keys and the tools that you need to improve the impact of your conversations.

www.thetalkingmanager.com
Join the conversation at Twitter: #talkingmanager

ÁLVARO GONZÁLEZ ALORDA is a professor of Innovation at ISEM Fashion Business School, an associate professor at Instituto de Empresa and a visiting professor in nine other business schools in Spain and America. He studied at the University of Navarra and at IESE, and completed a period of research at Harvard Business School. He is a specialist in innovation and in the transformation of companies. He has collaborated with more than ninety companies in eighteen countries. In addition to his lecturing, he works as a facilitator for management teams, as an international speaker and as a coach for managers. He is the author of the book Los próximos 30 años (Alienta, 2010).

www.alvarogonzalezalorda.com
facebook.com/​agalorda
Twitter: @agalorda

Oct 27 Istanbul Architecture Heals
Nov 12 New Delhi Plenary Address: Int Conf. Islamic Art & Architecture
Nov 13 Mumbai 7 Wonders of Muslim Civilization: Memorial
Nov 14 Mumbai 7 Wonders of Muslim Civilization: Mosque & Fort
Nov 15 Mumbai 7 Wonders of Muslim Civilization: College
Nov 16 Mumbai 7 Wonders of Muslim Civilization: Bazaar
Nov 17 Mumbai 7 Wonders of Muslim Civilization: Tomb
Nov 18 Mumbai Poetry: Drawing on a Drawing Room (site-specific event)
Nov 18 Nashik Building on Words; Words on Buildings
Nov 28 Goa Building on Words; Words on Buildings
Nov 30 Mumbai Building on Words; Words on Buildings
Dec 3 Mumbai Guftagu : an interactive improv on creativity
Dec 7 Lonavala Guftagu : an interactive improv on creativity
Dec 11 Mumbai Architecture Masterclass I & II
Dec 13 Kuala Lumpur Bookstand & The Book
Dec 17 Sydney Animal Rights: Calligraphy exhibition & Poetry
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Dec 19 Auckland Reading from Memoir
Dec 22 Vancouver Poetry Event postponed
(see Father Taught Me To Teach in Memoir Section)

YOW  IST  AUH  DEL  BOM  GOI  KUL  SYD  AKL  YVR  YOW

Breakups are sometimes inevitable, and it is actually a good thing that you realize that your relationship cannot work out anymore and that you are looking to break up. Some people drag out relationships that are not meant to be and end up in worse situations.

30. Juni – 1. Juli 2022
Universität Trier | hybrid (Campus I, V302 und via Zoom)

Die am Fach Kunstgeschichte angesiedelte interdisziplinäre Veranstaltung hat es zum Ziel, neuzeitliche Tierpräparate und frühe Präparationstechniken in den Blick zu nehmen. Im Zentrum der Diskussionen sollen Verfahrensweisen des Präparierens, die konservierten Tierkörper selbst, aber auch ihr Anteil an neuzeitlicher Wissensgenerierung stehen.

Neben wissenschaftlichen Beiträgen zur Präparation vor 1850 möchte der Workshop explizit den Dialog zwischenTheorie und Praxis öffnen und um Einblicke in das heutige Berufsfeld von Präparator*innen erweitern. Parallel zur Förderung des Austauschs zwischen den Geistes- und Naturwissenschaften, Forschenden und Praktiker*innen wird eine neue Perspektive auf tierliche Präparate, neuzeitliche Konservierungsmethoden sowie -diskurse im Kontext naturkundlicher Sammlungen geworfen und das Präparat zugleich unter handwerklich-künstlerischen Vorzeichen gelesen.

Interessierte Gäste sind herzlich willkommen. Um Anmeldung via Email wird gebeten.

Bitte geben Sie an, ob eine Teilnahme in Präsenz oder via Zoom gewünscht ist.

Architectural discourse has often appropriated the dialogical construct to introduce and promote new ideas that would otherwise be uneasily accepted or polemically rejected. The dialectical dialogue is thus scripted -i.e. designed - from the onset, with a precise outcome in mind, as in a reverse whodunnit in which the reader/spectator always already knows who the culprit is. Part of the pleasure in the unfolding of the dialogue - often presented as a confrontation - is the witnessing of the dexterity (and triumph) of the argumentative mastermind that opposes the erring or architecturally mistaken one. In this narrative performance the architect-writer is scriptwriter, editor, director, main actor, set designer, etc., and the proposed synthesis is already clear from the beginning. The pleasure lies in the argumentation, in the text, in the script and in the construction of the dialogue as "architectural project" - by definition unfinished and to be completed (and altered) only by inhabitation, use, weathering. So perhaps a dialogue in architecture is never resolutive, but it is used to open up and to inhabit contradiction. Only then can the audience/ witness-turned-(potential)-inhabitant enter the conversation. .....

The aim of every computational linguist is to make the computer interact with human beings in a natural way and display intelligence by understanding the complex cognitive structure of language. In this paper, features of human conversation and how these help in understanding the
structure of conversation are discussed. Using samples of language use, the paper demonstrates how we naturally use certain pragmatic and discourse techniques such as indirect speech acts, presuppositions, implicatures and elliptical sentences in our conversations. We may also easily recognize the speaker’s intention, draw inferences, resolve references of the pronouns etc. To do this, we make use of the available contextual knowledge and world knowledge. When computers are expected to talk with human beings, they need to be able to handle such pragmatic and discourse
techniques. This paper attempts to stretch the boundaries of pragmatics and discourse analysis studies related to human-human dialogues to encompass human-computer dialogues. The focus of this paper is to discuss various
pragmatic and discourse issues that need to be handled in the language understanding module of a dialogue system.

John Rawls’ gamification of justice leads him – along with many other monist political philosophers, not least Ronald Dworkin – to fail to take politics seriously enough. I begin with why we consider games frivolous and then show how Rawls’ theory of justice is not merely analogous to a game, as he himself seems to claim, but is in fact a kind of game. As such, it is harmful to political practice in two ways: one as regards the citizens who participate directly in it, and the other as regards those who do no more than follow it. Similar harms, I then argue, come from taking politics too seriously, which is the attitude I ascribe to pluralist political philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin, Stuart Hampshire, and Bernard Williams. To them, the plural, incommensurable nature of values means that they cannot be reconciled and so that politics must be a matter of negotiating dirty, and often tragic, compromises. What we need instead, I conclude, is a third way, one that is neither monist nor pluralist but in-between the two extremes.

This paper provides a worked exemplar of psychotherapy research using the approach of conversation analysis inspired discourse analysis (CA/DA), sometimes known as discursive psychology (Edwards & Potter, 1992; Potter, 2003; Potter & Wetherell, 1987). The aim of the paper is to explore the potential usefulness of discursive analysis for qualitative psychotherapy research within a relational centred ethos. The paper presents an analysis of extracts from a case of psychodynamic-interpersonal psychotherapy based on Hobson’s (1985) conversational model. This model has a particular relational focus in assuming clients’ problems arise from relationship disturbances and that the therapeutic encounter is a vehicle for the manifestation, exploration, and modification of such problems. The model is conversational in that intervention consists of therapists’ use of strategies such as negotiation, metaphor, and development of a ‘common feeling language’...

In general conversation usually happen cooperative principle. In conversation people tend do the violation of cooperative principle. Violation in conversation it is not only found in daily life, but also found in conversation of the movie. Cooperative principle has relation with maxims. In this thesis the writer describe about violation of Grice's Maxims in 300 movie. This study has two purposes: (1) To know what Maxims that violated in conversation of 300 movie. To know what Maxims that most often violated in conversation of 300 movie. In analyzing conversation of 300 movie, the writer applies Grice's Maxims theory. Contexts become the main influence of conversation in 300 movie (Physical Context by Crabtree 1991:233). The data are taken from internet. The writer use description technique to analysis the data. The data is script (conversation) of 300 movie. The data separated into two groups, maxims of quantity and maxims of relevant. In findings the writer makes table and classify into two of context that include to maxims of quantity and maxims of relevant. The analysis and findings shows what conversation in 300 movie that has violation maxims of quantity and violation maxims of relevant. The context that accord with conversation in 300 movie is physical context (where the Speaker and Hearer take place).

In judicial settings, courtroom interaction varies from time to time, depending on the character and personality, ability and proficiency, and style and manner of individual participants. This paper investigates and examines the relevance of the courtroom interactions as reflected in the organization of points and in the sequence of turn taking system, specifically the analysis of interactional activities, techniques used, and functions of transition and conditional at talk in interactions. Based on the limited materials or source, only one Official Transcript with audio-recordings from RTC Branch 12, Lipa City, Batangas was utilized as the corpus of my study. The corpus is about the civil case between the telecommunication service provider, generic name (plaintiff) and the City Government of Lipa, Batangas.

Suele considerarse que los Ensayos de Montaigne contienen el germen del subjetivismo moderno: incapaz de superar su crisis escéptica, Montaigne habría iniciado el giro de la filosofía hacia la interioridad del yo, ensayándose a sí mismo en su escritura, replegándose sobre sí. Sin embargo, conviene no olvidar que los Ensayos carecieron del firme -y falaz- apoyo de la certeza; por ese motivo, Montaigne no nos ofrece un decálogo a seguir por un sujeto solitario en el ejercicio autárquico de su razón. Por el contrario, consciente de que la incertidumbre nunca podrá ser despejada, centra su reflexión en el ejercicio de la conversación, asumiendo la relación y el comercio con el otro como elementos constitutivos de su propia identidad.
En este libro, Jesús Navarro repasa críticamente la lectura que se ha hecho hasta hoy de esa piedra fundacional de la modernidad. Comienza centrándose en el problema de la acción, y describe el dilema del ensayista entre la tentación del retiro y la necesidad de la acción política. Luego dirige su atención hacia el lenguaje y la textualidad como vías para el desarrollo de una subjetividad plena, que sólo es capaz de reconocerse a sí misma a través de las relaciones de intercambio que establece con el otro. Y por último, estudia las implicaciones gnoseológicas y ontológicas de este arte de conversar con el que Montaigne intentó encontrar una salida escéptica a la caverna platónica.

В статье обсуждается проблема преобразования классификации речевых актов, заимствованной из философии, в типологическую категорию. Трудность такого преобразования лежит в широкой вариативности формы выражения иллокутивной силы. Несмотря на то, что с основными речевыми актами традиционно ассоциируют определенные формальные признаки (ср. интонационный контур для вопроса), это не позволяет учесть более тонкой классификации (например, противопоставить комплимент сообщению о факте), а главное — полностью исключает из рассмотрения косвенные речевые акты, в природе которых лежит непрямое соответствие формы смыслу сообщения. Для преодоления этого обстоятельства в качестве маркеров категории предлагается рассматривать языковые единицы за пределами речевого акта, а именно специальный класс идиоматичных ответных реплик (ср.: А как же!, Не скажи!, Еще чего!), называемых дискурсивными формулами. Для исследования этого класса авторы опираются на со- ставленный для русского языка список из более 700 формул. Корпусный анализ их употребления показывает, что использование дискурсивных формул во многом зависит от иллокутивной силы высказывания, на которое они реагируют. Сравнение сочетаемости дискурсивных формул в разных языках дает возможность выделить релевантные прагматические противопоставления среди контекстных высказываний. Представленный в статье опыт такого исследования на небольшом фрагменте стимульных речевых актов для русских и английских формул запрета и отказа показывает, что данный материал имеет потенциал для проверки, уточнения и дополнения общепринятой классификации с лингвистического ракурса.

|ES| El presente artículo propone una aproximación a las maneras en las que el lenguaje atraviesa la práctica artística de Juan Zamora. El punto de partida del texto es la palabra hablada como elemento primario para la toma de contacto y el abarcamiento del entorno, que Zamora emplea en sus proyectos acerca de los procesos de la naturaleza y de la actividad humana, los cuales se traducen en piezas de enorme carga poética.

|EN|
"Juan Zamora: Where Words Carry."
This article analyses the ways in which language traverses the artistic practice of Juan Zamora. The starting point of the text is the spoken word as the primary element for the first approach to and understanding of the environment, which Zamora uses in its projects concerning the processes of nature and human activity, which materialise into hugely poetically charged pieces.

Ricostruisce il processo di formazione del modello italiano della conversazione, dalle sue remote genealogie medievali alla organica sistemazione di Pontano nel De sermone, alla grande stagione rinascimentale di Castiglione, Della Casa e Guazzo.

Early work on the philosophy of language was unconcerned with language as a tool for communication: the pioneers of 'ideal' language philosophy were interested in how insights from logical languages might be applied to the study of 'language' in a very general sense. This chapter traces the development of a less formalized approach to meaning and communication based around linguistic action. It discusses Austin's speech act theory and Grice's theories of conversation and meaning and shows how this work laid the foundations not only for a more action-oriented account of communication but also a more psychological view of pragmatics.

This chapter introduces the central themes across which Nicholas Rengger made his lasting contribution to the political theory of international relations and the problem of world order: his Augustine-inspired idea of an ‘anti-Pelagian imagination’ favouring a sceptical, non-utopian, anti-perfectionist response to the dilemmas of the contemporary liberal order; his Oakeshottian argument for a pluralist ‘conversation of mankind’ that would sustain an ethos of civility in world politics; and his critical engagement with the Just War tradition as an institution of civil world order.

Cet article est le fruit d'un entretien avec le professeur émérite James R. Taylor, fondateur du Département de communication de l'Université de Montréal et figure reconnue dans le domaine canadien des médias, mais surtout auteur d'une théorie originale de la communication organisante, dont il retrace ici l'émergence. Ses concepts et sources d'inspiration -le résultat d'un parcours atypique, iconoclaste et inspirantdistinguent sa pensée des autres courants théoriques et historiques du champ de la communication organisationnelle. Une originalité telle, qu'on lui reconnaît aujourd'hui la paternité de « l'École de Montréal », un influent regroupement informel de chercheurs en communication qui participenten divers lieux et par diverses voiesà approfondir et renouveler les intuitions radicales du professeur Taylor. C'est ce parcours distinctif qui forme la substance de cet entretien avec un chercheur toujours passionné, et considérablement actif et prolifique encore aujourd'hui, qui nous offre même un aperçu exclusif de ses prochaines publications.

Glottal stops can be used for various tasks in speech. This study provides an overview of the different contexts where glottal stops tend to occur in casual Finnish conversation. Glottal stops in four phonetically annotated dialogues are investigated. Preliminary findings are reported on the durations of glottal stops in the different conditions. The possible interactional functions of glottal stops are discussed.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TB1AAChNuhU

Huda Fakhreddine talked about modernist movements or trends in Arabic poetry and their relationship to the Arabic literary tradition.

Huda Fakhreddine’s work focuses on modernist movements or trends in Arabic poetry and their relationship to the Arabic literary tradition. She is interested in the role of the Arabic qaṣīda as a space for negotiating the foreign and the indigenous, the modern and the traditional, and its relationship to other poetic forms such as the free verse poem and the prose poem. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021).

"In this article I wish to argue for a mode of critical and
expansive thinking that our profession can call designerly-
knowing, design thinking, or a design conversation
– if this mode of thought can be understood to be undisciplined, and understood to be critical thought that
owes allegiance to no (one external) directive philosophy
except the one that regulates the fluid conditions
of living and being of everyday existence, as will be
explained below. This is not to be taken as a contradiction,
since the developing argument will be for an
internal (intrinsic) directive that regulates life, but
further, also that this intrinsic directive is a shared concept
as opposed to an individual one, making this ‘directive’
a constantly reassembled one. It is in this sense that
Merholz (2009) would rather rename ‘design thinking’
as ‘social science thinking’, since design needs the clarifying
perspectives and viewpoints brought to its practice
by the disparate disciplinary backgrounds of the
non-designers on the team, while Patnaik (2009) calls
these newly combined skill sets ‘hybrid thinking’. Roger
Martin (in Merholz 2009) acknowledges the need for a
different type of ‘thinking practice’ (inelegant as my
phrase may be), since the mere wish for interdisciplinarity,
and knowingly putting a design team together from
different disciplinary backgrounds will not be enough. I
stated above that I do not wish to argue for the type of
interdisciplinary thinking that integrates the systems
approach into design thinking as if simply adding another
string to the bow would solve an inherent problem,
since ‘the problem’ is not so much design thinking
but one highlighted by the contemporary, external,
world of complex social interactions; the ‘problem’ is
a truly systemic problem, namely one of evolutionary
adaptation."

This thesis examines children’s thinking, learning and metacognition when designing their own computer games. The study aims to understand more about what kind of learning takes place, and how it emerges whilst children are authoring their own computer games. The aim is to get an insight into the cognitive processes students exercise that activates the ‘thinking for learning’, in particular in relation to the role of the teacher and digital game making activities as a learning space.

Whereas mainly case studies and design-based research projects have been used as methodologies to study learning with digital game making, this study gives an ethnographic account by observing children’s problem-solving activities from moment to moment. Field notes were collected by examining the language and the context children use for their ‘self’ explanations and group discussions, the gestures, the culture of their relationship with their teacher, peers and technology in their classroom settings. A metacognitive skills self-report instrument was created and used to investigate the metacognitive skills that children develop whilst working on their games. The data were collected for a period of eight months, through participant observations, in-depth interviews, informal conversations and video recordings of children’s group discussions in a primary school in London. Learning logs and problem-solving sheets were introduced for the ten focus children to record their thinking when solving problems. During this research there were many opportunities to observe the changes in a child’s reasoning over time, which provided an insight into children’s mental activities.

The study found that game design activities have many learning benefits for children. The main themes that are emerged from the study include metacognitive awareness; CT; learning in curriculum subjects; and developing transferrable 21st century skills. Furthermore, the role of 
conversation in triggering thinking processes and self-regulated learning are discussed using data from the study.

Although the study provides insight into different aspects of learning during game design, it also highlights the difficulty in evaluating these different learning benefits. The results contribute to the growing body of knowledge about how to evaluate children’s computational skills by providing a multiple evaluation model and a Metacognitive Skills Instrument (MSI) for measuring metacognitive skills that children develop whilst making their computer games. The challenges and limitations of these methods are discussed to form questions for the future studies.

http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-7091-1382-0
Applied conversation analytic research seeks to understand the ways in which conversational practices are modified in order to fulfill institutional aims. Psychotherapy is one such institution, and in recent years, a research literature has developed in which conversation analysis has been applied to psychotherapy interaction. This chapter provides an overview of the five main features of talk-in-interaction of interest in conversation analysis: turn-taking, sequence organization, repair, word selection, and action formation. An extract from psychotherapy interaction is explored in relation to each of these five features of talk. The analytic lens of conversation analysis and its conceptualization of key phenomena are different in many respects to that of traditional psychotherapy research. Moreover, when directed towards psychotherapy, selection of material has been, in the main, in accordance with conversation analytically informed, as opposed to therapy-informed, observations. The result is that conversation analytic research may seem psychologically shallow to the psychotherapy community: too removed from basic assumptions about human subjectivity and mute on questions of experiential change which are likely of interest to therapists. However, this therapy-neutral orientation may be a significant strength in allowing conversation analysis to complement and enhance process research through revealing what psychotherapy may not notice about itself.

This thesis is a comparison of face-to-face and written digital conversation. I start with the intuition that face-to-face conversation can often appear more engrossing and satisfying than its digital counterpart. I argue that one of the most promising ways of understanding this difference can be seen when we consider the contrasting coordinative structures of these two types of conversation. In face-to-face conversation the task of communication is at all times spread between participants whereas in digital conversation the burden of communication is passed almost entirely from one to the other. One notable result of this is that it gives us good reason to think that communication in digital conversation is in many ways more difficult. I then argue that the difference in coordination in digital conversation has consequences for the nature of the cooperation we find in such interactions. I argue that these consequences of the different structures of face-to-face and digital conversation are what best explains the starting intuition.

This self-study follows my path as a beginning home economics teacher and teacher of everyday life in British Columbia. I will give insight into the context of my practice, as well as how facets of contemplative teaching and transformative learning have become guides for me to conceptualize authentic learning and teaching in the home economics classroom. The study uses stories, otherwise known as critical points, in exploring three events that have served as moments in transforming my practice thus far as a novice teacher. The selection of these particular critical points are meant to make sense of my journey as a reflective teacher and student interested in the transformative aspects of learning and teaching authentically. Each critical point will be deconstructed based on themes of purposing, learning, and questioning. TOWARDS AN AUTHENTIC PRACTICE iii Dedication I dedicate this paper to my wonderful parents, Grace Wong and Ping Fan Tong, who are the most influential educators in my life. To my mother, thank you for showing me the importance of embracing challenges and prioritizing one's purpose in life. To my father, thank you for showing me the importance of hands-on lifeskills and the impact a persistent work ethic can have on others. TOWARDS AN AUTHENTIC PRACTICE iv Acknowledgments

A significant part of everyday verbal communication consists of nonliteral language, including irony (Gibbs 2000). Efficient irony use can serve a wide range of pragmatic goals, while deficits in irony comprehension can have negative social consequences. Whereas a large body of psycholinguistic research has been produced on irony use and understanding by adults, little attention has been paid to the socio-cultural characteristics of this phenomenon so far. Some individual factors that have been identified as correlates of irony use include personality of the speaker, gender, age, or speaking a second language. In this article, we argue that it is necessary to bring the aspects of socio-cultural variables and individual characteristics together in the further study of irony across national cultures. To this end, we present a narrative review of theoretical and quantitative empirical literature from the field of psycholinguistics on both national cultural and individual/psychological factors impacting the use and understanding of verbal irony in communication. Based on the review, we suggest a theoretical model that could guide future quantitative studies on irony use such that both contextual factors (including national cultural dimensions) and individual differences between the speakers are clearly defined and related to one another in terms of their influence.

Brands can now express themselves, literally, through conversations on social media. Based on a series of interviews, this research shows that conversational brands may seem more human and improve their image even without the physical representation of a speaker. However, neither their presence on social media nor their personification is sufficient. To be more human, brands must participate to a quality conversation. Consumers evaluate the conversation according to its context, content and form.

In this article I argue for the pedagogical complementarity of the perennial wisdom of St. Thomas and Mortimer Adler’s dialectical method of the Great Books, where the Great Books highlight the ministerial function of the imagination to the will and intellect in the order of learning. Characterized by communal inquiry, the thought of St. Thomas and the Great Books are shown to be well matched instruments of the special Providence by which we direct one another to our proper end.  A review of key Thomistic dispositions of teaching and learning, the nature of authentic conversation, and various objections and replies to the Great Books method of education and its alliance with the thought of St. Thomas focus the analysis. Several points of contact enrich the task of liberal learning. The Great Books are seen to supply students of St. Thomas with the spontaneous play of associations, rapprochements and comparisons as they strive to apply texts to the practices of virtue and truth seeking, while the perennial wisdom directs the students’ personal exegesis through the rigor of philosophical principles, logic, and distinctions.

This article examines the discourses and Conversations involved in representative articles taken from the US Election 2012 news in the Spanish newspaper El País with a previous description of the same news in The New York Times. The analyses are primarily based on the concepts of Conversation by Gee and a variation of Wodak’s recontextualization with the objective of unveiling an emphasis on several sensitive Conversations for Spanish society in El País.
Keywords: critical discourse analysis, recontextualization, Conversation, media discourse, dual role of the media

Este artículo analiza los discursos y Conversaciones incluidos en artículos representativos tomados de las noticias sobre las Elecciones de Estados Unidos de 2012 en el periódico español El País con una descripción previa de la misma noticia en The New York Times. Los análisis están principalmente basados en los conceptos de Conversación de Gee y una variación del concepto de recontextualización de Wodak con el objetivo de descubrir el énfasis de El País en varias Conversaciones sensibles para la sociedad española.
Palabras clave: análisis crítico del discurso, recontextualización, Conversación, discurso de los medios, doble papel de los medios

Este trabajo aporta datos sobre la necesidad de revisar la definición de las unidades del discurso cuando se aplican al análisis de conversaciones mediante mensajes instantáneos en español. Se ha analizado un corpus de la popular Whatsapp con 176.000 palabras comparando sus características, por un lado, con otras formas novedosas de comunicación relacionadas con internet y, por otro, con las formas tradicionales de oralidad y escritura. Los datos muestran que hay diferencias relevantes tanto en la estructura de la conversación (intervenciones, turnos, etc.) como en la misma definición de esta, convertida en una interacción de límites difusos que tiene lugar de manera simultánea con otras conversaciones y que incorpora un alto grado de multimodalidad. Se concluye que se deben redefinir las unidades tomando como base las características particulares de los mensajes instantáneos y no solo como una adaptación -o deformación-de otros tipos de comunicaciones pre-existentes.