Context

An expression of art or craft diminishes with changing philosophy over time, but an architectural expression tends to remain. The built form eventually becomes one of the very few representations of previous civilizations that have stood the test of time. Centuries old buildings have lasted, although they were not specifically designed for timelessness. The act of building is not a temporal one, each one is a representation of its time. The quality of remaining unchanged indefinitely or permanence in architecture can be achieved with the use of enduring construction material and sympathetic regard for the surroundings. Buildings outlive generations and as such need to be resourcefully designed to continue to be effective. A conscious use of the local materials, the local technical skills has allowed these buildings to harmonize with the context. Born of the earth, each of these speaks the language of the people and of the place. On the contrary, in Indian urban centers, a large quantum of the architectural expression today is ignorant of its place and time. There is a diminishing reverence to what the place demands and more attention to what we demand of it. This paper explores the connections between a building's context and time to its longevity. It argues that concentrated efforts made towards rootedness to a place and relevance to its time, will lead to significantly bolstering a building's perseverance. It also enquires into longevity through examples spanning different contexts and times. Significant examples of historic buildings of a place are discussed in comparison with contemporary examples of similar locations. Such a comparison will lead to an understanding of ways of adapting traditional knowledge to current needs and their appropriation to the time. The paper seeks to emphasize the importance of contextuality and close connect to time, in extending the life of a building.

Meaning-making is at the center of all human communicative events. Communication is an exchange of meanings encoded in written or spoken words, non-verbal cues, signs, symbols, and so on. Creating, exchanging, and interpreting meaning is ingrained in human nature since prehistoric times. Language is the most sophisticated medium of communication. It is through language that we set meanings or in other words — refer, define, and signify the things in nature and the ideas in our mind. (Griffiths, 2017)
The term ‘meaning of meaning’ was first coined by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski in 1923. According to him meaning is related to multiple phenomena. It has various facets and these features are related to the external world (extra-linguistic factors) and the linguistic properties (phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics)
The concept of meaning is vast and has many moving parts. Questing for the answer — ‘what is the meaning of meaning’ makes us take a multi-disciplinary approach; from linguistics, philosophy, neurology, to semiotics. In this essay, I will reflect on the meaning of ‘meaning’ from a multidisciplinary approach, discuss the challenges of doing meaning, and the role of context in understanding the meaning of words and sentences.

Resumen El estudio busca rescatar, a través de las redes semánticas naturales, las voces de los alumnos respecto a la crisis sanitaria causada por el SARSCOV-2. Por ello, gira en torno a su visión subjetiva sobre la crisis a partir de tres términos inductores: pandemia, libertad y futuro. La población del estudio corresponde a estudiantes de licenciatura de la UNAM. Los resultados obtenidos arrojan una aproximación al sentir de la población estudiantil frente a un hecho tan complejo. Abstract This paper endeavors to give voice to the perspectives of students with regard to the sanitary crisis caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus by using natural semantic networks as a tool for data collection. The article revolves around the students' subjective vision on the sanitary crisis in the light of three inductive terms: pandemic, freedom, and future. The study population was composed of undergraduate students from UNAM. The results obtained show the widespread feeling of students regarding such complex phenomenon. 1. Introducción Los sistemas educativos se están enfrentando a escenarios inimaginables debido a la pandemia causada por el virus SARS CoV-2, lo que los ha llevado a modificar la estructura tradicional de formación mediante diversas estrategias para encarar y sacar adelante los procesos educativos. Como respuesta a ello, los sistemas educativos y las personas mismas han tenido que desafiar sus límites y replantearse la manera de llevar las prácticas educativas a nuevos escenarios. En la educación superior, como en todos los niveles educativos, el impacto de la pandemia ha sido significativo. La acelerada expansión del virus supuso un cambio para el que nadie estaba preparado: ni las instituciones, ni los profesores, ni el alumnado. Millones de estudiantes en todo el mundo y, según datos de la UNESCO (2020),

Resumen El estudio busca rescatar, a través de las redes semánticas naturales, las voces de los alumnos respecto a la crisis sanitaria causada por el SARSCOV-2. Por ello, gira en torno a su visión subjetiva sobre la crisis a partir de tres términos inductores: pandemia, libertad y futuro. La población del estudio corresponde a estudiantes de licenciatura de la UNAM. Los resultados obtenidos arrojan una aproximación al sentir de la población estudiantil frente a un hecho tan complejo. Abstract This paper endeavors to give voice to the perspectives of students with regard to the sanitary crisis caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus by using natural semantic networks as a tool for data collection. The article revolves around the students' subjective vision on the sanitary crisis in the light of three inductive terms: pandemic, freedom, and future. The study population was composed of undergraduate students from UNAM. The results obtained show the widespread feeling of students regarding s...

Halliday’s description of register as ‘a variety of language, corresponding to a variety of situation’, with situation interpreted ‘by means of a conceptual framework using the terms “field”, “tenor” and “mode”’ (Halliday, 1985/89: 29, 38) is revisited to reflect on the theoretical work the term ‘register’ does within the SFL paradigm. In doing so, we recognize that the concepts of a linguistic theory are ‘ineffable’ (Halliday, 2002 [1988]); i.e. that ‘providing definitions of a theoretical term ... requires that it be posi- tioned vis-à-vis other concepts in the theory’ (Hasan, 2004: 16). It follows that chang- ing the position of ‘register’ in the theory changes the nature of the concept. So while alternative uses of the term ‘register’ – such as in Martin’s genre model (e.g. 1992) and Halliday’s model – may advance a shared programme for language description and explanation as a route to social change, they must be seen as more than terminologi- cal variants. One consequence of ...

Although felt as a vague though often powerful sense of the world’s presence as we engage in a rhetorical situation, ambience is the highly complex and integrated totality of the world’s environmental, behavioral, symbolic, and temporal dimensions and their fields of objects, agents, relations, and forces of which we may or may not become aware and with which we may or may not intentionally engage. Although we may feel it so, ambience is not merely a vague, amorphous background to our conscious acts which gives it meaning; rather, it is itself highly organized and organizing, developing from our interactions with the world in a series of succeeding integrative levels, each with its own structures based upon and providing purpose to the lower, earlier developed structures it supervenes and each providing meaning to the higher, later developed structures that depend upon it.

An Assessment of EFL Learners' Ability to Identify and Interpret Rhetorical
Questions: A Pragmatic Perspective Study



      Khalid Sabie Khamees
Department of English, College of Arts
Al-Iraqiya University, Iraq



Abstract
The concept of rhetorical questions and their role in conveying pragmatic meanings has been of interest to many researchers in the field of language learning as these questions form one of the pillars in language communication. The main purpose of this empirical study is to find out whether learners are able to recognize rhetorical questions as well as their pragmatic functions, i.e., their illocutionary force. A total of 30 junior students majoring in English, participated in this study. The data were collected via a 25-item test followed by post-performance. They listened to 19 dialogues, and were asked to identify and interpret the pragmatic meanings of the rhetorical questions contained. Data analysis showed that while it was relatively easy for the test-takers to recognize rhetorical questions, they encountered some problems when trying to interpret their pragmatic functions. Complexity of speech acts, availability of contextual clues, background knowledge, and natural reasoning seemed to be the main variables that affected the test-takers’ inferencing. Making combinations between various ideas contained in a single dialogue in addition to lack of proper courses geared towards developing this skill, seemed to be responsible for learners satisfactory or unsatisfactory achievement.
    Keywords: comprehension, context, identification, implied meaning, pragmatics, rhetorical questions

言語表現は単独で理解できるものではなく、話し手、聞き手の背景的知識、現場の事物、などの共有的知識に依存し、かつ、非常に多くの推論を経て理解されるものである。言語理解は送り手がコード化し、送信したメッセージを同じコードを利用して受け取り手が解読するという暗号解読行為のようなものではない。言語理解はあらゆる知識を利用して受け取り手が構成するものである。 特に、言語による指示で受け手にとって比較的経験のない行為を行わせるような場合、送り手と受け手の背景知識の差が非常に大きな問題となる。たとえば、料理のレシピの理解は上級者と入門者とでまったく異なる。上級者が送り手として料理の仕方を入門者に教える場合、送り手は喩えなどを使って理解を助けるための共有知識にできるだけ適切にアクセスできるための努力をする必要がある。この発表では特に言語的指示によって行為を行わせる場合、言語理解を容易にするため導入される文脈知識がどのようなものであるかを具体的な例に即して考察する。

— It is no surprise that the notion of situation is key to situation awareness. The development of the discipline can thus benefit from careful analysis of the notion. In this paper, we approach this by proposing an ontology of situations and scenes. The main contribution of this ontology is that it accounts for how situations progress in time changing qualitatively, constituting what we call scenes. The ontology is built by reusing basic elements from the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). It addresses objects, occurrences, and their formal relations to situations and scenes. We use the theory of embodiment proposed by the philosopher Kit Fine to explicate how scenes and situations form wholes constituted of parts.

This article presents a review of the scholarship on the social media and crisis communication in China. Through a content analysis of research articles published in 11 journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) and in the Chinese Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI), 58 directly relevant articles are identified in the period from 2006–2016. The chapter examines the theoretical framework, methodological preferences, types of research, crisis communication practice, as an overview of current ongoing research trends. This research also explores how the unique Chinese characteristics affect the communication practice. Finally, critiques and suggestions for future research are provided from four dimensions, which include emphasizing on the crisis phases, extending theories and models, applying a comparative logic in discussion, and unifying the research standard between articles published in the SSCI and CSSCI journals.

Patients with diabetes use an increasing number of self-management tools in their daily life. However, health institutions rarely use the data generated by these services mainly due to (1) the lack of data reliability, and (2) medical workers spending too much time extracting relevant information from the vast amount of data produced. This work is part of the FullFlow project, which focuses on self-collected health data sharing directly between patients' tools and EHRs. The main objective is to design and implement a prototype for extracting relevant information and documenting information gaps from self-collected health data by patients with type 1 diabetes using a context-aware approach. The module should permit (1) clinicians to assess the reliability of the data and to identify issues to discuss with their patients, and (2) patients to understand the implication their lifestyle has on their disease. The identification of context and the design of the system relied on (1) 2 w...

A number of studies have been carried out on divorce from sociological, psychological and religious standpoints. Studies on divorce from linguistic perspective in Nigeria are hard to come by. Therefore, this paper conceives divorce as a conflict site and examines representations of participants in selected Nigerian newspaper reports on divorce cases. Data for the study were drawn from fifteen divorce reports, five from each of The Punch, The Guardian and The Nigerian Tribune newspapers published electronically between 2016 and 2018. The data were analysed using Halliday's transitivity aspect of the systemic functional linguistics and Fetzer's macro concept of context. Five processes (material, verbal, mental, relational and existential) are used in presenting both negative and positive representational strategies. Following Fetzer's categorisations, three context types (linguistic, social and socio-cultural) helped in projecting twelve representational strategies. While ...

Resumo (pt-br)
Este trabalho identificou formas otimizadas de atender demandas de gestores de negócios. Para isso, utilizou como ponto de partida o conceito de valor da informação, analisando sua natureza, peculiaridades e processo de atribuição. Inicialmente, a revisão teórica indicou a definição do que é o valor da informação, delineando as diferenças entre os diversos conceitos, se concentrando no valor de uso da informação e sua definição subjetiva. O estudo caracteriza-se como pesquisa aplicada, pois abstrai de uma situação real o fenômeno analisado. Tomou como unidade de análise quatro gestores de dois tipos negócio: gastronomia e alojamentos. A coleta dos dados primários foi viabilizada por meio da aplicação de questionários, direcionados aos gestores. Posteriormente, essas informações foram analisadas e serviram como subsídios para as observações realizadas neste trabalho. Com base nas análises dos resultados deste estudo, observou-se uma relação contraditória entre o valor de uso atribuído à informação e o comportamento relacionado dos gestores dos negócios.

Abstract
This study seeks to identify optimized ways to meet the demands of business managers. For this it uses as its starting point the concept of value of information, analyzing its nature, peculiarities and allocation process. Perform a literature review to indicate the definition of what is the value of information, outlining the differences between the various concepts and focusing on value in use of information and its subjective definition. The study is characterized as applied research because it abstracts from a real situation the analyzed phenomenon. It took as the unit of analysis four managers of each type of business: food and accommodation. The primary data collection was conducted through the use of questionnaires, directed towards the managers. Subsequently, these data were analyzed and were designed to support the observations made in this work. Based on the analysis of the results of this study, we observed a contradictory relationship between the value in use attributed to information and the related behavior of the managers of the business.

Berlin plans an International Architecture Exhibition about the topic: "The urban centre as a place to live". The centre of the city was going to be preserved as a suitable place to live, renovated and revived. This was the fourth architecture exhibition in Berlin focused on contemporary problems from the perspective of architecture and urbanism. This research analyses and describes the spatial and temporal context of the International Bauausstellung Berlin. It presents the geographical, political and social background that made this exhibition possible and fundamental in West Berlin. It involves the understanding of the urban scope in which IBA´s activity develops: devoted to contemporary architectural and urban problems defined by History. Berlin has always been and still is an exceptional scene of the international architecture, a modern version of locus amoenus. But today it is necessary to discover this beauty among the traces of its destruction and the interventions carried out by an almost complete generation of architects to create the image of a city that was frantically seeking a promising reconstruction. Berlin offers itself to be the spatial framework for IBA. It is a place with a great number of pragmatic variations for the architectural study and the urban development. It is part of Berlin´s tradition to have considerably influenced the changes of urban planning through International Architecture Exhibitions. The idea behind IBA, its program and the results achieved must be seen as a cultural manifestation incorporated in a city that acted as the centre of theoretical controversy regarding the urban issues and the construction according to man and changes in society.

If your library has access to Springer Link a full version of this book can be downloaded via: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-40703-6 . 

This book focuses on the discursive processes that allow activists to make sense of themselves and of the modes of politics they engage in. It shows how political and metadiscursive awareness develop in tandem with a reconfiguration of one’s sense of self. The author offers an integrated pragmatic and poststructuralist perspective on self and subjectivity. He draws on Essex style discourse theory, early pragmatist philosophy, and linguistic pragmatics, arguing for a notion of discourse as a multi-dimensional practice of articulation. Demonstrating the analytical power of this perspective, he puts his approach to work in an analysis of activist discourse on integration and minority issues in Flanders, Belgium. Subjects articulate a whole range of norms, values, identities and narratives to each other when they engage in political discourse. This book offers a way to analyse the logics that structure political awareness and the associated boundaries for discursive self-interpretation.

'At a time in which notions of both politics and activism are being profoundly reshaped, Zienkowski's incisive analysis goes to the heart of what may drive such changes. Empirically delicate and theoretically astute, this is discourse analysis at its best.' - Jan Blommaert, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

'This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the discursive logics that shape self and society, as well as how to study them. It combines discourse theory and pragmatic perspectives on interaction, generating an innovative interpretive and functional heuristic for doing poststructuralist discourse analysis. As an added bonus, it provides a creative and critical contribution to discussions on the workings of ideological fantasy. Highly recommended!' - Jason Glynos, Reader, University of Essex, UK

'If you ever wondered what the world looks like through the eyes of well-informed and politically active members of disadvantaged minorities, you must read "Articulations of self and politics in activist discourse". As a discourse analysis with a truly multidisciplinary orientation, Jan Zienkowski offers unrivaled insights which, based on research in a Belgian context, have unfortunately gained relevance through recent dramatic events.' - Jef Verschueren, Professor, University of Antwerp, Belgium

The literature on cohesive devices is marked with evident dearth in studies that consider the context-text ties. The current paper attempts to fill this gap, and, therefore, combat an idealised 'villain' in research, which is confining textual analysis to in-text relations. The study propounds the idea of expanding the analysis to include ties between the written text and the surrounding context and culture. The specific purpose is to explore the use and function of the cohesive devices which link the text to the context (exophora) and the ones that relate the text to the culture (homophora). The methodology involved explaining the cohesive devices to a postgraduate TESOL class of eight students (non-native speakers of English) in one of the universities in the UAE. After that, the students were asked to work in pairs and produce four opinion articles about a recent newspaper topic of their choice. They selected the United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) leader's call to ban the burqa in the UK. In addition, two articles from the Independent and the Guardian on the same topic were also discussed. Comparative analysis was conducted on the six articles vis-à-vis the use and functions of cohesive devices. The analysis involved four categories: person deixis, spatial deixis, temporal deixis, and the definite article. The findings showed that exophoric and homopohric cohesive devices were employed abundantly, with exophora occurring in more instances. The study also revealed the relevant functions that have evident implications about assumptive and supportive roles of cohesive devices.

Resumen:
El objetivo de este artículo es presentar la trayectoria en contabilidad social y ambiental de la academia contable anglosajona. Para ello llevamos a cabo un análisis de contenido, basado en una revisión sistemática de la literatura publicada en revistas indexadas en Scopus. En el trabajo se identifican las revistas que se han convertido en espacio natural para este tipo de discusiones, los principales autores, las principales instituciones, las teorías de base y los principales métodos utilizados. Por tratarse de una fuente bibliográfica amplia, el trabajo tiene un carácter exploratorio preliminar y no pretende agotar los temas, sino brindar una perspectiva amplia para que los investigadores puedan focalizar trabajos futuros.

Abstract:
The objective of this article is to present the trajectory in social and environmental accounting of the Anglo-Saxon accounting academy. To this end, we carried out a content analysis based on a systematic review of the literature published in journals indexed in Scopus. The work identifies the journals that have become a natural space for this type of discussion, the main authors, the main institutions, the basic theories and the main methods that are used. Since it is a broad bibliographic source, the work has a preliminary exploratory nature and does not intend to exhaust the issues, but to provide a broad perspective so that researchers can focus future works

Revista Perspectivas de Políticas Públicas Año 4 no. 8 Enero- Julio 2015.
El contexto es un elemento clave en el diseño de políticas públicas; sin embargo, los esfuerzos por estudiarlo o incluso teorizarlo no han sido satis-factorios, en cuanto es percibido como un espa-cio inexplicable y complejo que explica la falta de resultados relevantes. Este artículo aspira a realizar una aportación conceptual y teórica al estudio del contexto, con el objetivo de reconocer su influen-cia en las políticas públicas y particularmente en el diseño de política social a partir de la identi-ficación de sus características, atributos y dimen-siones –socioeconómico, institucional, político y organizacional, así como el contexto conceptual de la política pública. La operacionalización de las dimensiones presentadas en este trabajo abre una futura línea de investigación que permite realizar aportaciones concretas en el estudio del contexto  y su relación con el diseño de políticas públicas

Este artículo es uno de los productos de la investigación que sobre el tema " Secretos y mitos familiares " realizaron las autoras con el auspicio de la Universidad parejas procedentes de la consulta particular de las investigadoras y del trabajo grupal con trece mujeres del barrio Mojica, Distrito de Agua Blanca, Cali. Además, se ilustra el tema con el análisis de obras literarias y películas. Se trata de una investigación cualitativa aplicada, es decir, al mismo tiempo que se recogen datos que permiten alimentar la teoría, se co-construyen y se ejecutan procesos de intervención con la población, orientados a promover la elaboración y el cambio. Resumen El objetivo de este artículo es proporcionar elementos críticos acerca de las concepciones predominantes sobre la violencia y ofrecer pautas para articular la pluralidad teórica sobre el fenómeno de forma compleja. También proporciona lineamientos para los procesos de intervención en casos de violencia, bien sea con individuos, familias o con redes comunitarias o institucionales. La intervención y las relaciones entre contexto, secreto y violencia son los ejes del documento. Abstract e objective of the present article is to provide critical elements about the standard concepts on violence and to offer guidelines to understand different theoretical approaches to this phenomenon in a complex way. It also offers guidelines for intervention processes both in family or individual cases of violence, as well as in community or institutional cases. Intervention and relationship between context, secret and violence are key aspects when dealing with this phenomenon.

This chapter considers the roles, challenges and limits of context in a philological commentary. Taking a short letter of Pliny the Younger as its example, it proceeds in three stages. First, a comparative reading of commentaries from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries establishes some very different approaches that can be taken to contextualising this text. Second, I discuss ‘contexture’, the contextualising of (in this case) a purported fragment within its broader collection. Third, I consider intertextuality as a form of context, offering an experimental reading of Pliny’s letter against Sallust, Seneca, Cicero and Quintilian. Whether we see such intertextual traces in terms of allusion or prefer to talk of the cultural archive, I suggest, the bounds of context are ripe for expansion in the Epistles – and pose unanswerable, but unavoidable, questions for any writer or reader of commentaries.

The paper will focus on intentional and contextual aspects which characterize discursive intervention and, therefore, should not make them vanish when addressing an aspect of discourse such as fallacies. I will try to clarify, by examples, the importance of context to judge any communicative act and I will address, finally, a curious type of fallacy (ironic fallacy) that serve as guidelines for establishing the complexity of certain fallacies, their ambiguity and their uncertainty if we do not respond to the multiple dimensions that characterize the use of arguments. Fallacies are not autonomous textual objects, are the tip of the iceberg of something much more intricate and complex, if we do not consider the intentions and aspirations of those involved in the discursive context and the circumstances surrounding the course of the conversation, identifying fallacies can be extremely confusing and erroneous. Ultimately we could be victims of the ambiguity that can be released from a purely " logical'' analysis of discourse.

Problem Statement:From the beginning of the history of architecture, unconsciously or consciously, the issue of context has affected the architectural design. With the emergence of modern architecture, some theories were discussed about how to encounter the context in design and by criticizing those theories in the postmodern era and the advent of the Contextualism term in the architecture literature became a controversial topic among the thinkers of this field.
Aims:This study has aimed at categorizing and analyzing the approaches to encountering the context in order to use it in design.
Methodology:In this descriptive-analytical study regard, using library references, an overview of the theoriststheorists’ approaches has been first mentioned in order to achieve a comprehensive classification . Then different theories about the critique of these approaches have been then investigated; and finally, these theories have been concluded and their fundamental points have been extracted and presented.
Conclusion:The results indicate that while emphasizing principles including these principles can be summarized in three items of avoiding excess and negligence, simultaneous attention to the historical context and contemporary context, as well as the maintenance of integrity and continuity, the investigated theories support the contextualism.

This publication presents a fieldwork on renewable energies and energy-efficiency in design and buildings in Morocco. It showcases some key best practices that reflect smart solutions and resolutions related to energy-efficiency, and how architects and engineers explored different passive means and systems to conceive and implement bioclimatic architecture. These pinpointed cases of best practices would incite the exploration and use of techniques of energy-efficiency and renewable energies in designing and constructing buildings. However, the innovative side of this study is that it contextualizes the issue of energy in buildings in the specific Moroccan milieu. This is achieved through a scientific methodology that set key variables and criteria that are essential to evaluate or conceive a building according to energy regulations and norms in order to reach a national passive-thermal standard. In addition, this catalogue is a gage to understand both strengths and weaknesses of this area of study. Being designed as a guide, this catalogue can be considered as a technical manual for architects, engineers, students and builders, who are keen to apply techniques of renewable energies or energy-efficiency and abide by the concurrent national energy rules and regulations in their projects.

An event that was reported on September 27, 2010 involved a teacher committing child abuse through the means of corporal punishment—an act considered illegal—and was prosecuted in the process (see appendix). Through the lens of Psychology, this paper will attempt to briefly explain direct violence and its manifestation in the use of corporal punishment. The argument of this paper is that corporal punishment, as exhibited by the teacher, can in itself turn into a cycle of violence, perpetuated by the interaction of social learning and the subject’s environment.

This thesis provides a framework for information retrieval based on a set of models which together illustrate how users of search engines come to express their needs in a particular way. With such insights, we may be able to improve systems’ capabilities of understanding users’ requests and through that eventually the ability to satisfy their needs. Developing the framework necessitates discussion of context, relevance, need development, and the cybernetics of search, all of which are controversial topics. Transaction log data from two enterprise search engines are analysed using a specially developed method which classifies queries according to what aspect of the need they refer to.

The thesis includes a novel approach to the concept of RELEVANCE which is shown to be even more complex than previously thought. The Regulated Flux model of relevance encompasses six relevance dimensions all of which contribute to the relevance of a document or stimulus.