Background: Job satisfaction is largely associated with organizational aspects, including improved working environments, worker’s well-being and more effective performance. There are many definitions regarding job satisfaction in the existing scholarly literature: it can be expressed as a positive emotional state, a positive impact of job-related experiences on individuals, and employees’ perceptions regarding their jobs. Aims: No reliable scales in Arabic language to assess job satisfaction in the sports and physical education field exist.This study aimed to trans-culturally adapt (...) and validate the Pepe’s “Teacher Job Satisfaction Scale” 9 items (TJSS-9), creating the “Teacher of Physical Education Job Satisfaction Inventory” (TPEJSI) in Arabic language. This scale was administered to a Tunisian population of sports and physical education teachers and analyzed according to the Pepe’s theoretical model.. More in detail, this investigation systematically tested its factor structure, in terms of internal consistency/reliability, predictive validity, sensitivity and convergent validity. Methods: A total of 417 Tunisian teachers of sports and physical education participated voluntarily in this study. The sample comprised of 258 males and of 159 females. More in detail, 189 were teachers teaching in primary schools of physical education, 105 teaching in secondary schools, and 123 were university teachers. Both exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor analyses were performed on random-split halves of the sample. Results: The three-dimensional alpha coefficients of the TPEJSI were all greater than 0.80: for satisfaction with colleagues, alpha was 0.865; for satisfaction with parents, alpha was 0.856 and for satisfaction with students alpha was 0.860. The CFA fit indices were satisfactory. Conclusions: Given the good EFA factor loadings, the CFA fit indices, the correlation matrix, the sensitivity analysis, the convergent validity and the excellent internal consistency, it can be concluded that the TPEJSI is a good psychometric tool that can be used to quantitatively assess the job satisfaction level among teachers of sports and physical education in the Arabic-speaking world. (shrink)

Positive Psychology Interventions as an Opportunity in Arab Countries to Promoting Well-being AbstractIn this perspective paper, we emphasize the importance of further research on culturally-sensitive positive psychology interventions in the Arab region. We argue that these interventions are needed in the region because they not only reduce mental health problems but also promote well-being and flourishing. To achieve this, we shed light on the cultural elements of the Arab region and how the concept of well-being differs from that of Western (...) culture. We review the research conducted in Arabia, briefly evaluate the quality of this research and list some adapted measurements. We furthermore propose guidelines and recommendations for future evidence-based positive psychology interventions research to align with the national culture in various sectors and community samples that contribute to the development of well-being in the Arab world.Introduction Extensive research on Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) - defined as activities focus on promoting positive feelings, thoughts, or behaviour (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009) - has shown their effectiveness in well-being and mental illness (e.g., Chakhssi et al., 2018; Hendriks et al., 2020). A recent review of 347 studies showed that PPIs have a significant effect on promoting quality of life and well-being and reducing anxiety and depression (Carr et al., 2020). However, the issue is that most of these studies (82%) remain narrow in focus only on Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic (WEIRD) countries (Hendriks et al., 2019). Therefore, they may not be effective for other countries such as the Arab countries where there are various cultural differences. This highlights the key role that culture can play in enhancing PPIs engagement, acceptability, and eventually, effectiveness (Hendriks & Graafsma, 2019). Recently, the field of PP in the Arab region has begun to grow (Basurrah et al., 2021; Rao et al., 2015). However, studies conducted in these countries are scant and of poor methodological quality. We have found humble quantity and quality of empirical studies. Yet, Arab countries, home to 5% of the world’s population, have a burden of mental health problems above global levels (GBD 2015 Eastern Mediterranean Region Mental Health Collaborators, 2018). Prevalent stigma, war and conflict were some of the contributors (Maalouf et al., 2019). Thus, to properly address this cultural stigma against mental health problems, PPIs could provide an additional role alongside traditional psychology approaches (e.g., Cognitive Behavioural therapy - CBT). Further, in light of the political conditions that some Arab countries are going through and the negative effects that they cause, it has become necessary to use the method of prevention that is the focus of PP and not only of treatment as a strategy for applications and practice. It has been noted that the mental health care system in the Arab region focuses highly on illnesses treatment and neglects the significant role that PP plays in enhancing human potential and well-being. We - here in Arabia –are becoming more influenced by many global issues particularly the COVID-19 pandemic and their impact on mental health and well-being (e. g. prevalence of stress, anxiety, depression among the general population during the pandemic (Salari et al., 2020). In response, Waters et al. (2021) have recently presented how positive psychological factors can play a significant role in buffering mental illness, enhancing mental health throughout the pandemic, and building positive processes and capacities that can help to promote future mental health.Here in this perspective paper, we highlight the cultural aspects of Arab countries. Specifically, we present previous PPIs research conducted in Arabia and briefly evaluate the quality of this research. Importantly, we discuss the need of developing an indigenous and culturally sensitive PP among the Arab region (Lambert et al., 2015).Arab Culture “Arab World,” which comprises 5% of the world’s population, refers to the Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the increasing pace and progress of different businesses in many Arab countries, individual communities are still limited in certain prominent economic places. Arab people rather gather in collective communities. They generally share the same Arabic Islamic culture, speak the same language, and descend from the same Arab families when going back in history no matter what nationality they have nowadays. Yet, very many changes came to communities before borders were drawn between countries and after. For instance, geography, topography, demography, and socio-economic status affect peoples’ nature of jobs and lifestyles. For example, Arabs in the east, west, or the middle have similar tongues; however, almost every Arab country has its accent. Therefore, people need to go back to the formal Arabic language ‘Fus-ha’ or learn more about different Arabic dialects when communicating cross-countries. According to Hofstede’s model (2011) based on the individualism-collectivism dimension, the Arab countries (Eastern society) have been classified as a collectivist culture, where their identity and decisions are influenced by social systems. In contrast, the United States (Western society) has been classified as an individualist culture focusing on individual decisions. Although there are degrees of individualism among Arabs in certain countries, they still share collective common characteristics. Here, we explore the meaning of collectivistic conceptions of the self, emotions, values, and religion in Arab countries and how they differ from those in individual Western cultures. The Self Since the field of PP focuses on the development of self, it is vital to recognize that self-concept varies across cultures. Individualism generally emphasises the self-directed and autonomous individual (Realo et al., 2002). People in individualist countries focus primarily on their personal characteristics (e.g., motives, abilities) to build their self-concept. On the other hand, collectivism refers to several social structures that highly value the groups to which people belong, such as family and tribe (Realo, 2003). People in collectivist countries such as the Arab countries focus primarily on their relationships with others to build their self-concept (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Hence, research from Arab countries should focus on the core elements of collectivism when implementing PPIs to make a significant, meaningful impact. For example, people from a collective culture may experience a greater enhancement in well-being when practising interventions that are more prosocial and group-oriented such as compassion, performing acts of kindness, writing a gratitude letter, and using character strengths in everyday context including social context, compared with self-oriented interventions such as identifying character strengths. Emotions, value, and Religion Research shows that Western culture emphasises the goal of maximizing positive emotions, while Eastern culture emphasises embracing and balancing positive and negative emotions (Leu et al., 2011). To illustrate, culture plays an important role in influencing perceptions of happiness. People in individualist countries value happiness highly. In contrast, people from the collective countries value low arousal positive emotions (Leu et al., 2011) and exhibit a fear of happiness (Joshanloo & Weijers, 2014; Joshanloo, 2013). Hence, the influence of positive emotions plays a limited role in the mental health of Eastern society. Speaking of Value, for an Arab, the family is the centre of honour and the most important social unit. This loyalty has an impact on every part of an Arab’s life. Arabs honour their families and highly value their friendships. Therefore, future research could shed more light on group-oriented interventions (e.g., kindness) that focus more on the relationship with family, friends, and community. When it comes to religion, Arab society has a rich culture in values and believes that place a high emphasis on spirituality. Religion is the most important and distinctive aspect of Arab culture. Arab countries vary in terms of religion, with Islam being the predominant religion in most of them. Well-being (Hedonic and Eudaimonic) It is necessary here to clarify what is meant by hedonic and eudaimonic definitions of well-being. While the term ‘Hedonic’ is based on the pursuit of maximum levels of pleasure (feeling good), the term ‘Eudaimonic’, on the other hand, is based on meaning and the development of virtues (functioning well; Keyes & Annas, 2009). Research indicates that cultures are not equally supportive of hedonic and eudaimonic aspects (Joshanloo & Jarden, 2016). In comparison to collectivism, hedonism appears to be more congruent with individualism (Joshanloo, 2014). Pleasure and positive emotions are considered a way to pursue happiness in Western culture, while this method is not highly favoured in Eastern cultures (Lee et al., 2013); Because they consider suffering and negative emotions as contributing factors to spiritual development. Therefore, the eastern perspective is more in line with a eudaimonistic view which emphasises virtues, meaning, and feeling of belongingness. However, although we believe that both approaches can be found to a certain level in both cultures, the differences suggest that there are different routes to happiness. Positive Psychology in the Arab region Positive psychology - "the scientific study of what makes life most worth living" (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000) - is one of the newest branches of psychology. It focuses on three main pillars: (1) positive subjective experiences (such as happiness and love); (2) positive individual characters (such as gratitude and compassion); and (3) positive institutions (for the application of positive principles within institutions and organizations; Seligman & Csikszentmiha lyi, 2000). Some of the main topics of interest in positive psychology include character strengths, gratitude, hope, happiness, mindfulness, optimism, positive thinking, and resilience. Within the applications of this science, various domains of well-being (such as happiness, engagement, positive emotions, and meaning) can be enhanced by practising positive psychology interventions (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009). Interestingly, these interventions have also produced benefits beyond well-being, such as reduced mental health issues (Chakhssi et al., 2018; Hendriks et al., 2020).Nowadays, PP is increasingly noticed in the Arab world (Lambert & Pasha-Zaidi, 2019; Rao et al., 2015). In recent years, there has been a great effort to explore the PP field across Arab countries. Several initiatives have emerged aimed at promoting well-being and flourishing. For example, the Middle East Journal of Positive Psychology published its first volume in 2015. On the International Day of Happiness in 2017, United Arab Emirates University launched its Emirates Center for Happiness Research. Meanwhile, Effat University in Saudi Arabia started the first Positive Psychology and Well-being Research Lab, the first symposium, and the first PP course. In 2019, Louise Lambert and Nausheen Pasha-Zaidi published the first regional text entitled “Positive Psychology in the Middle East/North Africa.” There are other efforts spent in the region as well; such as the work conducted in Egypt. Ibrahim Younus established the Arab Association for Positive Psychology https://www.psycholearn.com/en/associative.php which provides several courses on PP and also published a book entitled “The Power of Positive Psychology” (Younus, 2017). Despite this development, nothing can compare to the quantity and even quality of research in other countries. In light of our observations, the few PP studies may be attributed to the lack of awareness of the constructive approach and prevention compared to problem-solving. An Arab dentist once said: “people do not come to me until they are badly in pain.” In any case, many studies have taken place in Arab countries in the last decade, more of which are descriptive and less of which experimental. For example, Abdel-Khalek (2010) found positive correlations between quality of life, subjective well-being, and religiosity among students in Kuwait. Abdel-Khalek (2016) developed “the Arabic Scale of Religiosity,” which significantly correlated with PP variables among students in Algeria, Kuwait, and Egypt. Recently, empirical studies on PPIs have arisen in Arab-Islamic countries. More attention has been focused on promoting well-being and alleviating the high burden of mental health problems in the region (GBD 2015 Eastern Mediterranean Region Mental Health Collaborators, 2018). For instance, several studies examined the effectiveness of mindfulness among university students (e.g., Al-Ghalib & Slim, 2018; Awad, 2019; Thomas et al., 2016), parents of children with autism (Rayan & Ahmed, 2016) and addicted adults (Al-Rashidi, 2018). Such an intervention has positive effects. Participants who practised mindfulness reported reduction in stress and depression as well as improvement in well-being and resilience. Moreover, the results of a recent pilot study found positive impacts on enhancing emotional regulations and reducing stress among Arab teachers (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2020). Some studies have also begun to examine various interventions targeting character strengths (Basurrah et al., 2020; Chérif et al., 2020), self-compassion (Elaiwah, 2017), positive thinking (Mohammed et al., 2014; Hadad, 2014), and hope (Zaki, 2016). Interestingly, a new finding considering the fear of happiness among people from collective countries has been examined. Lambert et al. (2019) provided evidence that a 14-week PPIs programme has an impact on reducing the fear and fragility of happiness beliefs among university students in the United Arab Emirates.Since Arab countries place great emphasis on spirituality, several authors have considered the aspect of religion when implementing PPIs. For instance, an empirical study by Al-Seheel and Noor (2016) found that expressing gratitude towards God “Allah” increases the happiness of the Muslim more than the usual gratitude intervention. Additionally, Al-Ghalib and Salim (2018) examined a religiously sensitive mindfulness-training programme with university students and found a positive effect on life satisfaction and a slight reduction in stress, depression, and anxiety. Hence, the role of religion is vital to make the interventions more relevant to Arab culture where people can connect Islamic philosophy with PP theories and practices. These studies reviewed here provide further support for the need for culturally sensitive interventions among the Arab population. More recently, the first systematic review of PPIs in Arab countries was conducted by Basurrah et al. (2021; the protocol has been published in BMJ Open and the final manuscript has been submitted for publication). Reviewing a total of 39 studies, the most commonly studied interventions were mindfulness, positive thinking, and resilience. Only a handful of studies examined gratitude, character strengths, forgiveness, self-compassion, savouring, or finding flow. Further analysis revealed that most studies from Arab countries have several methodological limitations. This included a lack of protocol guidelines, few well-designed randomized controlled trials (RCTs), blinding issues, small sample sizes, lack of active control groups, and lack of research into certain populations (e.g., teachers, employees, and people in distress in refugee camps). Discussion PP was founded on an individualistic framework (Christopher & Hickinbottom, 2008). To ensure that PPIs are culturally meaningful, this paper includes some cultural elements of the Arab region that should be considered to serve the needs of the Arab population. In the Arab world, some people may believe that PP is solely about happiness and being positive. If so, it is important to educate the public about the findings of rigorous studies evaluating PPIs such as gratitude, hope or flow on health, well-being and performance. To explain the value and effectiveness of these evidence-based approaches, examples might include studies linking gratitude with benefits for people with heart disease (Cousin et al., 2021), or how PPIs can promote quality of life in cancer patients (Casellas-Grau et al., 2014). There is some evidence about PPIs being effective in improving well-being in the Arab region, but research in this region is still in its infancy and little information is available regarding PPIs and the experience of Arabs participating in such interventions. Hence, there is still much more to investigate in this regard. Future research should empirically examine the effectiveness of various unstudied interventions such as savouring, gratitude, self-compassion, character strengths or finding flow. A combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches is required to provide an in-depth understanding of Arabs’ experience and impressions of PPIs and how and why they work. This may provide useful information to inform the appropriate design of PPIs to suit Arab culture and needs. Furthermore, while some research on PPIs has been carried out in the region, most of these studies have been of poor quality that suffered from small sample sizes, confounding factors, and a high degree of bias. To overcome these issues, future research should improve research quality, including protocol guidelines and well-designed RCTs. In particular, research should include randomization, allocation, blinding, power analysis to determine adequate sample size, active control groups to reduce bias, and follow-up periods of at least 12 months.Among the most popular resources that future PP practitioners may refer to are the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) and the International Positive Education Network (IPEN). Also, we recommend the Middle East Journal of Positive Psychology and the first regional book (Lambert & Pasha-Zaidi, 2019). To develop and/or adapt a multi-component PPIs, we would recommend referring to Character Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004), the theory of well-being (PERMA Model: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment; Seligman, 2011), and the Five Ways to Well-being: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Give (Aked et al., 2008). Finally, single-component PPIs are based on theories like Broaden-And-Build (Fredrickson, 2004), Hope (Snyder et al., 2002), and Self-Determination (Deci & Ryan, 2012) can be also considered. Two other concepts that would be usefully applied are ‘Savouring’ (Bryant & Veroff, 2007) and Phillip Zimbardo’s Time Perspective (Stolarski et al., 2015). For instance, savouring has a positive temporal orientation to reminiscing the good memories from the past, enjoying the hedonic present moments, and willing proactively to make a better future. Now, what is even maybe more interesting for Muslims is “Transcendent Future” where all intentions, words and actions are devoted to that life after death. In addition, there is a model already prepared for the clinical purpose called Positive Psychotherapy (PPT). Tayyab Rashid and Martin Seligman published a PPT manual for clinicians in 2018. And for cross-cultural applications, including Muslim Arab culture, Rashid and Al-Haj Baddar (2019) have written a paper presenting PPT and its efficacy. PPT overview in detail shows sessions, themes, skills, practice, and cultural considerations where a mixture of PPIs based on PERMA, Strengths, and other PP concepts can be found. Regarding PP measurements, it is highly recommended to generate indigenous tools based on cultural backgrounds reviewed here in the article. An example of this is a tool for measuring Muslim well-being by including domains beyond what is found in Western literature. So far, in the Arab region, several attempts have been made to adapt PP tools. For example, Marei Salama-Younes (2018) validated the Arabic versions of different measures of well-being (e.g., satisfaction with life scale, the subjective vitality scale). Other validated scales as well include the self-compassion scale (Alabdulaziz et al., 2020), and the passion scale (Salama-Younes & Hashim, 2018). Conclusion This paper has discussed the cultural aspects of Arab countries and the need of developing culturally sensitive PPIs. The past decade has seen an increase in mental health problems in the Arab region. Stigma and lack of awareness have been always there. Among the issues are also wars, conflicts, and displacement in many Arab countries such as Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine (Hassan et al., 2016). These indicate an urgent need to prevent mental illness and promote well-being. Indeed, we highlighted the importance of integrating culture with PPIs, following the guidelines for the cultural adaptation of PPIs (Hendriks & Graafsma, 2019) and the ethical guidelines for PP practice (Jarden et al., 2020). Another significant contribution of this paper is to highlight the importance of improving the quality of research conducted in Arab countries. In brief, this paper has several practical implications. It is an open invitation for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners alike to be more exposed to PP; as well as to better conceptualising and adapting interventions and measurement tools to the local culture in different sectors to maximize their effectiveness. And as we consider it as an invitation for us too, here we are starting a PPIs practice guide in Arabic language and for Arab practitioners. The insights gained from this paper may be useful for placing well-being on top of priorities for achieving individual, organizational, and optimal national functioning in different sectors. There is also a need to change the stigma or negative beliefs about seeking health for psychological support, which is an issue for countries in the Middle East (Baess, 2018). (shrink)

الدلالة المشتركة منهج علمي يحتوي على المنهج الصوتي يشمل و حدة اللغة من حيث البناء والمعنى.

Feedback plays a crucial role in the writing processes. However, in the literature on foreign language writing, there is a dearth of studies that compare the effects of teacher feedback and automated feedback on both cognitive and psychological aspects of FL writing. To fill this gap, the current study compared the effects of teacher feedback and automated feedback on both revision quality and writing proficiency development, and perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the feedback in (...) English writing among English learners as an FL in China. It also investigated students’ perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the two types of feedback. The study adopted a mixed-methods design. The quantitative method collected the data through a pre-test and a post-test, which measured the participants’ English writing proficiency development; a writing task, which received either teacher feedback or automated feedback; and a close-ended questionnaire, which examined students’ perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the feedback. The qualitative method collected the data through an open-ended questionnaire, which examined the participants’ perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of teacher feedback or automated feedback depending on the type of feedback they received. Chinese university EFLs in two English classes taught by the same English teacher participated in the study: one class received teacher feedback while the other received automated feedback using Pigaiwang. While the students in the two classes did not differ significantly on the pre-test of students’ writing proficiency, students who received teacher feedback scored significantly higher on revision than those who received automated feedback. Students in the teacher feedback class also had significantly higher ratings on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the feedback than those in the automated feedback class. However, students in the automated feedback class obtained significantly higher scores on the post-test of the writing proficiency. The qualitative results identified three themes of strengths and two themes of weaknesses for the teacher feedback and the automated feedback, respectively. The results suggest that while teacher feedback has a more positive effect on the psychological aspect of FL writing, automated feedback may be more effective in developing FL writing proficiency in the long run. (shrink)

The creation of paraconsistent logics have expanded the boundaries of formal logic by introducing coherent systems that tolerate contradictions without triviality. Thanks to their novel approach and rigorous formalization they have already found many applications in computer science, linguistics and mathematics. As a natural next step, some philosophers have also tried to answer the question if human everyday reasoning could be accurately modelled with paraconsistent logics. The purpose of this article is to argue against the notion that human reasoning is (...) paraconsistent. Numerous findings in the area of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience go against the hypothesis that humans tolerate contradictions in their inferences. Humans experience severe stress and confusion when confronted with contradictions. Experiments on the ways in which humans process contradictions point out that the first thing humans do is remove or modify one of the contradictory statements. From an evolutionary perspective, contradiction is useless and even more dangerous than lack of information because it takes up resources to process. Furthermore, it appears that when logicians, anthropologists or psychologists provide examples of contradictions in human culture and behaviour, their examples very rarely take the form of: \\). Instead, they are often conditional statements, probabilistic judgments, metaphors or seemingly incompatible beliefs. At different points in time humans are definitely able to hold contradictory beliefs, but within one reasoning leading to a particular behaviour, contradiction is never tolerated. (shrink)

A variety of commentators have explored the similarities between pragmatism and Thomas Reid’s Philosophy of Common Sense. Peirce himself claims his version of pragmatism either (loosely) is, or entails, a Critical Common-sensism, a blend of what is best in Kant and Reid. In this paper I argue for a neglected aspect of the relation between Peirce and Reid, and of each to common sense: linguistics. First, I summarize Peirce’s account of what distinguishes his common-sensism from Reid’s. Second, I argue for (...) the importance of appeals to linguistic universals by Reid as both a source for identifying common sense beliefs, and a basis for justifying them. While Peirce is occasionally tempted by such appeals, overall he is critical of appeals to language, especially as most Western philosophers have been familiar with a small set of (Indo-)European languages; say, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, and Latin. This leads to the third section, which concerns Peirce’s familiarity with major nineteenth century linguists, and his contention that the ‘peculiarity’ of Western European languages has impeded the development of logic and philosophy. In particular, I look at unpublished manuscripts where Peirce summarizes his own study of non-European languages, ranging from Arabic, to Ngarrindjeri, to Xhosa. Peirce was only an amateur linguist, and also aware of the challenges of doing cross-cultural linguistics through comparative grammar; e.g., the temptation to force unfamiliar languages onto the “Procrustean Bed of Aryan grammar” (CP 2.211). Nonetheless, this study left him suspicious of any claims of linguistic universals, and supported his anti-psychologism. That is, not only should logic and philosophy not be based upon psychology (at least as a special science), they should also be independent of linguistics. However, Peirce also advances something like the so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that language determines, or at least conditions, thought. The question now becomes what is the nature of a philosophy of common sense, even a critical one, without a common language, or possibly no commonalities across languages? (shrink)

Translation science is going through a preliminary stage of self-definition. Jakobson’s essay “On linguistic aspects of translation”, whose title is re-echoed in the title of this article, despite the linguistic approach suggested, opened, in 1959, the study of translation to disciplines other than linguistics, semiotics to start with. Many developments in the semiotics of translation — particularly Torop’s theory of total translation — take their cue from the celebrated category “intersemiotic translation or transmutation” outlined in that 1959 article. I (...) intend to outline here the contributions that the science of translation — following a semiotic perspective opened by Peirce and continued by Torop — can gather from another discipline: psychology. The “totalistic” approach to translation provided by Torop can be more deeply enforced by applying to it the consequences deriving from the psychological insight offered by the concept of “interpretant” as mental sign; the perceptual interpretation of the prototext; reading and writing as intersemiotic translation processes; unlimited semiosis as interminable analysis; primary and secondary process in dreams and in other kinds of translation; metaphor and disambiguation as mental processes; the defenses activated when translation criticism (review) and self-criticism (revision) are made. (shrink)

According to the majority of linguists, case markers at the end of a declinable word, which could be of vowel, letter or elision type, are indicators of meaning. In other words according to the general acceptance, the iʿrāb signs at the end of words help one to understand the function of a given word in a sentence. Knowing the functions of the words of a sentence in turn enables the sentence to be understood correctly. Although there are those who say (...) that iʿrāb signs at the end of the words do not have anything to do with the function of words in a sentence, and that they only function to facilitate the transition between words, this view was not accepted by the majority. For this reason, thisarticle examines the iʿrāb-meaning within the scope of the prevailing attitude of naḥw scholars and Quranic exegetes. The majority of linguists accept that iʿrāb is an indicator of meaning. For this reason, explanations of iʿrāb, which are frequently used in Quranic commentaries, are aimed at understanding the sentences in the verses more accurately. The fact that Abū al-Aswad al-Duʾalīput vowel marks on certain words of the Quran was to facilitate the correct reading of the Quran and prevent a wrong vowel mark from causing any misunderstanding. Therefore, the close relationship between iʿrāb and meaning is clearly emphasized in naḥw books. Although it is stated as a general rule that iʿrāb is key in desciphering the meaning, there are cases where this general rule does not hold. This happens when there is a discrepancy between an iʿrāb sign at the end of a givenword and its meaning. Such situations are considered by naḥw scholars as qurb al-jiwār. According to this exception, a word does not take the iʿrāb indicator appropriate to its position in sentence and instead takes the same iʿrāb indicator of the previous word so as to be in harmony with it. The purpose of this is to prevent any disruption to the phonetic flow of the sentence rather than to function as an indicator of meaning. In fact, this phonetic harmony is not only limited to the iʿrāb at the end of words. In order to ensure harmony within a word, changes can be made in morphology of the word in question. This stems from the importance Arabs attach to the harmony of both intra-word and inter-word vowels, despite its contradiction to the rules of morphology and syntax. As a matter of fact, this kind of reading provides a sense of cohesion in terms of both ease of pronunciation and correspondence. In this article, I claim that the iʿrāb signs is not always a sign that reveals the meanings in the verses of the Qurʾān. In the light of this view, some of the verses of the Qurʾān comprise case endings that are contrary to the meaning for the sake of phonetic harmony, just as is the case in the current usage in Arabic language. This situation shows that besides the literary arts related tomeaning, those which are related to phonetic arts also constitute important literary aspects of the Qurʾān. The approaches of the Qurʾānic commentators towards the verses in which this feature, which is expressed as qurb al-jiwār in Naḥw, is found differ from each other. On the basis of these different approaches, the relevant narrations, syntax school, etc. that the commentators have generally considered matters are included. In fact, given that they lead to no confusion, irregularities contrary to the established grammar rules are tolerated. For this reason, qurb al-jiwār is used in the absence of ambiguity even though it is contrary to iʿrāb al-naḥwī. Unlike the Basran Grammarians, who regard qurb al-jiwār as a mere use, the Kufan Grammarians made the issue a regular grammar rule and used it as the basis for the jussiveness of apodosis of conditional clauses. Although qurb al-jiwār is accepted as a usage both in the Arabic language and the Quran by the majority of grammarians, there are differences of opinion in terms of the place of its use. While there is no clarity on this subject among the early grammarians, according to the general of late naḥw scholars, the issue of qurb al-jiwār is reserved for noun-adjective, corroborating-corroborated and connective explanation. However, it is controversial whether or not the qurb al-jiwār can be used in connectives. While in the early periods when controversies arose for the first time, qurb al-jiwār was generally unacceptable, in later periods it started to became more widely accepted. Extrapolating a theoretical framework for the issue based on primary classical sources on Naḥw constitutes a core methodology used in this work. According to the theoretical framework thus put forward, the discussions about the verses that are the subject of the iʿrāb of vicinity in the primary tafsīr sources from the first period to the present have been examined from an analysis-semantic perspective. (shrink)

Dialogue is one of the fundamental pillars of social life and an essential means of communication. It enables individuals to express their needs, desires, feelings, positions, problems, and methods for managing various aspects of their lives. Furthermore, dialogue fosters the development of ideas and experiences, facilitating expression, creativity, and participation in a civilized society. Through dialogue, communication and interaction with others occur. This study aims to explore effective methods for teaching the Arabic language through dialogue and its (...) application to non-native speakers at the primary level at Mara University of Technology. Specifically, it will investigate whether dialogue aids students in acquiring vocabulary. Vocabulary is a crucial component of language, alongside sounds and structures. Teaching vocabulary is an essential part of foreign language programs, including Arabic. However, despite its significance, the learning and teaching of Arabic vocabulary to non-native learners face several challenges, contributing to their weaknesses in this area. Notes are statistically significant differences between two groups: those "using dialogue" and those "not using it" in learning Arabic vocabulary. (shrink)

Inspired by the idea that emotion(s) and motion(s) constitute profoundly intertwined dimensions of physical and cultural embodiment reflected in language, this volume comprises nineteen contributions presenting exploratory and applicative accounts of (e)motion(s) situated across a range of topical research areas.

This paper intends to examine the development of conflictual interactions, how they might be resolved, and the socio-cultural norms involved, by adopting an analytical framework in an online gaming context. The current paper was inspired by Kádár and Haugh’s framework as it enables me to investigate both the macro and micro aspects of (im)politeness. The study’s aim is to further examine how impoliteness, language aggression and conflict are realised in two online gaming platforms, namely Fortnite and PUBG Mobile. (...) Thus, I will explore discursively how these phenomena are subjective in a Tunisian Arabic setting and discuss how participants reach their subjective perception of conflict in ways that do not always correspond to the supposed intentions of the ostensible offender. The results indicate that conflict is subjective as it is evaluated in different ways by different gamers and could be a result of a conflictual intention. The findings also reveal that conflict may also be created/ escalated as a result of a non-conflictual intention. Thus, this paper contributes to understanding of conflict, how impoliteness can lead to conflict and the various aspects of impoliteness/the perception of impoliteness. (shrink)

It could be argued that mythology dramatizes aspects of our relationship with potent forces of which we have little understanding and over which we have little control. Moreover, many of these forces are less concrete than the forces of nature and arise from an apprehension of our existential predicaments, our interpersonal vulnerability and the intensity of our own psychological pain. This paper argues that in many contemporary discourses this territory is referred to more neutrally as ‘the unconscious'. Within (...) this framework, the Freudian interpretation of the unconscious is explored, as is the use of mythology to disguise deep, fear inducing aspects of the unconscious by expressing them in ways that are less threatening. In particular, the myth of Oedipus and its Freudian interpretation is examined together with the divergent opinions of Freud, Adler and Jung regarding the unconscious. The paper continues to examine the difficulty that modern ‘science' has had in reconciling contemporary and past views on the unconscious, viewing the unconscious as more of an information processing system. The paper proceeds to discuss different ways of how meaning is encoded into language and how it can affect people on an unconscious level. Jung's concept of the collective unconscious is briefly examined, particularly the notion that the collective unconscious is "a separate reality with its own autonomous existence". The use of psychedelic substances by various psychological professionals is briefly commented on, as well as their use in shamanism.Also discussed is how the unconscious serves as a mythic entity in contemporary psychology, with the ability to invoke feelings of fascination at the implication of "something powerful, mysterious and beyond our control". Within this context, Bynum's work on "the African unconscious" is examined through the lens of paleoanthropological data, healing rituals and Jung's experiences in Africa, and how these contribute to a uniquely African viewpoint on the subject of the unconscious. The paper concludes that although the unconscious has been conceptualised differently by many different scholars across time, it continues to point "to profound existential truths about the nature of human life". (shrink)

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) reportedly struggle with the comprehension of aspect. However, since aspect and tense are closely entangled in the languages spoken by the children with DLD in previous studies, it is unclear whether the difficulty stems from aspect, tense, or both. Mandarin Chinese, a language without morphological manifestations of tense, is ideal to investigate whether the comprehension of aspect is specifically affected in children with DLD, yet to date work on this is scarce and (...) presents methodological limitations. In this study, we examined whether preschool Mandarin-speaking children with DLD have difficulty in comprehending perfective aspect (represented with the aspect marker -le) compared to imperfective aspect (represented with the aspect markerszai-and -zhe), whether performance can be explained in terms of the pre- vs. post-verbal realization of the aspect markers, and the potential role played by lexical aspect in the comprehension of grammatical aspect. Fourteen preschool children with DLD (mean age: 61.11 months old) and 14 TD children (mean age: 63.4 months old) matched for age and nonverbal intelligence participated in a sentence-picture matching task. Global results showed that, similar to their TD peers, children with DLD performed better on imperfective aspect than perfective aspect. Concerning specific aspect markers, while children with DLD indeed performed similarly to TD children on imperfective-zhe, they obtained significantly lower accuracy than TD children on perfective-leand imperfectivezai-. However, considering verb types combined with these aspect markers, results revealed that children with DLD scored significantly higher on the prototypical combination(s) (e.g.,zai- + Activity verbs) than on the non-prototypical combination(s) (e.g.,zai- + Accomplishment verbs). The performance pattern suggests that the comprehension of aspect markers by children with DLD is particularly affected by lexical aspect. As this also affects younger TD children, children with DLD are arguably at an earlier stage of aspectual development than their age and nonverbal intelligence matched TD peers. Therefore, the aspectual development of children with DLD appears to be delayed rather than deviant. Given this, language programs addressing difficulties in DLD may need to incorporate training on the use of aspect markers, especially targeting their combination with non-prototypical verbs. (shrink)

The purpose of this review study is to explore the existing research focusing on the impact of foreign language learning among healthy seniors on their cognitive functions from the positive psychology perspective. The methods are based on a literature review of available sources found on the research topic in two acknowledged databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The search period was not limited by any time period since there are not many studies on this topic. Altogether seven original studies (...) were detected. The findings of this review study thus reveal that foreign language learning (FLL) has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities irrespective of age. In addition, the FLL courses seem to offer new opportunities for healthy seniors in the area of socializing and integration into society, which consequently may positively affect their overall well-being. Furthermore, the research shows that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed. Cognitive aspects of older age are to be further investigated, including the importance of learning a foreign language, as basically all research conducted proves at least some maintenance or even improvement of cognitive functions of older people when starting intensive language training. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Classical Islamic Philosophy: A Thematic Introduction by Luis Xavier López-FarjeatThérèse-Anne DruartLuis Xavier López-Farjeat. Classical Islamic Philosophy: A Thematic Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. 368. Paperback, $34.36.Interest in classical Islamic philosophy has grown and recently given rise to several presentations of the field: The Routledge Companion to Islamic Philosophy, edited by Richard C. Taylor and Luis Xavier López-Farjeat (New York: Routledge, 2016); Islamische Philosophie im Mittelalter. Ein Handbuch, (...) edited by Heidrun Eichner, Matthias Perkams, and Christian Schäfer (Darmstadt: WBG, 2017); and The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy, edited by Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). One may, therefore, wonder whether López-Farjeat should have provided another one. My answer is a resounding "yes." The Oxford Handbook presents specific texts, The Routledge [End Page 320] Companion gives brief overviews of specific themes, and Islamische Philosophie provides a sketch of the development of Arabic-Islamic philosophy as well as an introduction to some of the major philosophers' most significant themes or works. By contrast, López-Farjeat offers a detailed picture of lively philosophical debates between philosophers, theologians, and other intellectuals, showing how philosophy pervaded thinking in the Islamic lands and was itself enriched by serious thinking in theology and other fields.After presenting the Islamic context and the translation movement from Greek into Arabic, López-Farjeat focuses on six main themes: (1) Theologians and Philosophers on Islamic Revelation; (2) The Classification of the Sciences, Logic, and Language; (3) Philosophy and the Natural Science; (4) Metaphysics in the Islamic Philosophical Context; (5) Psychology and Theories of Cognition; and (6) Ethics and Political Philosophy. In each case, he focuses on various much-debated philosophical issues, reconstructing their evolution. He begins by highlighting the Greek background, then moves to show chronologically how and why those debates evolved. When needed, he indicates in which other section of the book the context for a particular philosopher's or theologian's specific position on a debated issue can be found. Finally, after each chapter, he gives an excellent list of further readings (mostly in English) for the reader who wishes to delve more deeply into the topic.López-Farjeat's approach highlights the liveliness and the nuances of the debates between intellectuals of various religious persuasions in a way rarely done before. Such a detailed attention to specific contexts also means that his book does not allow for a quick, easy read. It provides all the information that even someone unfamiliar with Islamic studies or ancient philosophy may need to appreciate the richness and depth of Islamic-Arabic thinking, but this amount of information requires close and slow reading. López-Farjeat's frequent references to scholarly disagreement about specific issues could make this book at times challenging for nonspecialists. This means, however, that even seasoned scholars might find something to learn from López-Farjeat's treatments of the aspects of Islamic thought they might be less familiar with. And while beginners will need some time to absorb the vast amount of information López-Farjeat provides, they will be grateful for the clear way he has organized it.Too often and for too long have historians of Islamic philosophy focused on thinkers who saw themselves as mainly Aristotelians and neglected what philosophers learned from other disciplines, in particular from theology, be it Islamic or Christian. This book shows how Christians in the Islamic world had already integrated some Greek philosophy into their thinking from an early time, when they first entered into dialogue with Islamic theologians. In turn, Islamic theologians integrated philosophical elements in their works. López-Farjeat's knowledge of Islamic theology and Eastern Christian theology allows him to show that this process of integration was not a one-way street. The Islamic milieu and its theological developments raised new questions and issues that philosophers under Greek influences had to take into account. One does not philosophize in a vacuum: new questions raised in a different cultural and linguistic environment led to a refinement and enrichment in the understanding of philosophical issues.As an example, let us consider chapter... (shrink)

In this study, information about inductive and deductive methods and the differences between these methods was given. Afterwards, grammar teaching in Turkey was evaluated in terms of method. Then, the grammar teaching methods of the Arabic grammar books called al-Naḥwu'l-Wâḍıḥ and al-Qawâʻid al-ʻArabiyya al-Muyassara, which were prepared by following the inductive method, were examined under the headings of preface, handling of the subjects and exercises. In the continuation of the study a qualitative research was conducted using the semi-structured interview (...) technique with 16 randomly selected students, 8 of whom who have been studying Arabic for a long time and 8 of whom have started their Arabic education at university in order to learn the approaches of the students to the grammar teaching methods who took the course which the work called al-Qavâʻid al-ʻArabiyya al-Muyassara was used as a source book in the 2020-2021 academic year, in the first year of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at Selcuk University in addition to a lesson which the grammar book prepared with the deductive method. While it was seen that the majority of the students in both groups participated in the interview preferred the deductive method, it was understood that the students had different approaches with their method preferences in terms of explaining the grammar issue in detail and giving more space to terms. In the study, it was concluded that it would be more beneficial to follow a mixed method in which the the positive aspects are considered, since it was seen that there were aspects that both educators and students found positive and negative in both methods. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;A detailed exegetical account of Wittgenstein's remarks on aspect-perception with respect to pictures and language shows that their key conclusions can be applied to the field of psychological concepts as well. Comparison with Davidson's philosophy of language and action reveals that the confusions against which Wittgenstein is fighting are central to contemporary analytic philosophy; comparison with Heidegger's system of thought reveals striking structural analogies with Wittgenstein's (...) positive conclusions. However, Heidegger also attempts to generalise those conclusions far beyond even the field of psychological concepts, and uses them to ground an extensive metaphysical system; it is found that the relevant conclusions can indeed be generalised, but only if they are regarded as grammatical points and stripped of their pretensions to metaphysical insight. A concluding chapter shows that Wittgenstein's application of the concept of aspect-perception to issues in aesthetics confirms the nature and scope of the earlier exegetical interpretations offered in the thesis; it also shows that Heidegger's writings on similar issues can be best be understood and criticised if viewed once again as a distortion of grammatical points into metaphysical revelations. (shrink)

Combining theory from cognitive semantics and pragmatics, this book offers both a new model and a new usage-based method for the understanding of intersubjectivity, and how social cognition is expressed linguistically at different levels of complexity. Bringing together ideas from linguistics and theory of mind, Tantucci demonstrates the way in which speakers constantly monitor and project their interlocutor's reactions to what is being said, and sets out three distinct categories of social cognition in first language acquisition and language (...) change. He also shows how this model can be applied in different settings and includes a range of examples from languages across the globe, to demonstrate the cross-linguistic universality of the model. Additionally the book offers insights into the gradient dimension of intersubjectivity in language evolution and across the autistic spectrum. Original and innovative, it will be invaluable for researchers in cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, historical linguistics, applied linguistics and cognitive psychology. (shrink)

I confront arbitrariness of the sign to a criterion assessing the quality of language, logical system, psychometrics and art.

Most of our interactions with others occur within the framework of recurring social situations, and the language choices we make are intimately tied to situational features. Although the interdependence between language and social situations has been well recognized at least since G. H. Mead developed his symbolic interactionist theory, psychologists have been reluctant to devote much interest to this domain until recently. Yet it is arguable that a detailed understanding of the subtle links between situational features and (...) class='Hi'>language use must lie at the heart of any genuinely social psychology. This volume contains original contributions from psychologists, linguists and philosophers from the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel, and Australia who share an interest in the social-psychological aspects of language. Their work represents one of the first concentrated attempts to chart the possibilities of this exciting field. It is perhaps in order to say a few words about the origins of this book. The need for a volume integrating research on language and social situations first emerged during the 2nd International Conference of Language and Social Psychology at Bristol University in 1983, at which I was convening a symposium with a similar title at the request of the organizers, Peter Robinson and Howard Giles. When they first approached me with this idea in 1982, I gladly accepted, since my own research on cognitive representations of social episodes seemed eminently relevant to a symposium on language and social situations. (shrink)

"The Body in Language: Comparative studies of Linguistic Embodiment provides new insights into the theory of linguistic embodiment in its universal and cultural aspects. The contributions of the volume offer theoretical reflections on grammaticalization, lexical semantics, philosophy, multimodal communication and - by discussing metaphorization and metonymy in figurative language - on cognitive linguistics in general. Case studies contribute first-hand data on embodiment from more than 15 languages and present findings on the body in language in diverse (...) cultures from various continents. Embodiment fundamentally underlies human conceptualization and the present discussions reveal a wide range of target domains in conceptual transfers with the body as the source domain."--PUblisher. (shrink)

In chapter one I firstly critique some contemporary family-resemblance approaches to the category woman, and claim that they do not take sufficient account of dis-semblance, that is, resemblances that people have in common with members of the contrast category man. Second, I analyze how the concept of woman is semantically contestable: resemblance/dissemblance structures give rise to vagueness and to borderline cases. Borderline cases can either be included in the category or excluded from it. The factors which incline parties in a (...) dispute about membership to include or exclude depend on metaphysical, ethical, or political background assumptions. In chapter two, I begin by considering the harms suffered by transgender persons through “misgendering”, the deployment of gender terms which inflict psychological harms upon transgender persons, place them in situations of injustice, or diminish their self-respect. Such deployments are morally contestable: they can be challenged on ethical grounds. Several characterisations of the term ‘woman’ proposed in the feminist literature are critiqued from this perspective. In chapter three, I elaborate a broadly liberal approach to gender pluralism. The approach involves: i) the public toleration of gender practices and beliefs which contest prevalent gender norms; and ii) state-gender neutrality. Public toleration allows gender non-conforming practices and beliefs within public space. State gender-neutrality consists mainly in the removal from law and government policy of provisions which assume compliance with prevalent conceptions of gender. (shrink)

The Psychology of Creative Writing takes a scholarly, psychological look at multiple aspects of creative writing, including the creative writer as a person, the text itself, the creative process, the writer's development, the link between creative writing and mental illness, the personality traits of comedy and screen writers, and how to teach creative writing. This book will appeal to psychologists interested in creativity, writers who want to understand more about the magic behind their talents, and educated laypeople who (...) enjoy reading, writing, or both. From scholars to bloggers to artists, The Psychology of Creative Writing has something for everyone. (shrink)

Ex interiore ipso exeas. Preface. This book reconstructs the history of a still open dialectics between several ethoi, that is, shared codes of unwritten rules, moral traditions, or self-aware attempts at reforming such codes, and ethical theories discussing the nature and justification of such codes and doctrines. Its main claim is that this history neither amounts to a triumphal march of reason dispelling the mist of myth and bigotry nor to some other one-way process heading to some pre-established goal, but (...) instead to a chain of controversies where the partners’ will to win unintentionally yields a wealth of insights on human existence that has still something to teach us. -/- 1. The Hellenic moral tradition. -/- Two different traditions of morality in vi-v century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. -/- 2. Plato and the Good. -/- Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates rejoinder to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 3. Aristotle and practical philosophy. -/- Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistency in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater families, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics, is illustrated. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexes, or ‘dispositions’. Prudence, or better, practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with boùleusis or deliberation is discussed, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 4. Cynics and Stoics: ethics as therapy. -/- The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place that was given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of the science of well-being aiming, more than pleasure understood as in the popular view, the reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Roman and Imperial Moralists. -/- The chapter is dedicated to the reconstruction of a particular kind of literature, whose specific features have long been under-stressed, namely the Roman and Imperial moral literature. Cicero is treated at some length, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is given pride of place, stressing the novelty of his approach to ethics as cognitive therapy, in this case just following an already existing new wave of interest after nineteenth-century oblivion justified by alleged lack of authentic ‘philosophical’ character. -/- 6. The Hebrew moral tradition. -/- A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torah (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Levitic is stressed as the turning point when the stress on mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, starts being combined with legal tradition yielding the change in the sensibility of the Second Temple time. -/- 7. Second Temple Judaism. -/- This chapter describes the Long March leading from the post-exile Zadokite restoration to the first-century aevi vulgaris. The first topic reconstructed is the Zadokite theology of the double retribution. The second is the alternative Enochic tradition consistently rejecting the central role of the Temple, the Priesthood and worship as atonement for sins and offering as an alternative God’s unlimited mercy and preaching mercy, not sacrifice as the way of behaving requested by God. Wisdom literature, the third subject discusses, is a kind of third way, on the one hand increasingly critical towards the double retribution and ruling theology’s optimism facing the world as it is and on the other mocking at the Enochic current as a band of dreamers and visionaries. The third way consists in disenchantment facing the word as it is combined with a refusal of vain and childish hope of prizes for the righteous, suggesting instead the leading idea of right deeds for righteousness’s sake. Rabbi Hillel, Rabbi Yeshua and Philo of Alexandria are described as the three leading figures at the culminating point of such process of emergence of a new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This starting point consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, whose meaning is, arguably, more consistent than a long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine made us believe. And Christian morality, vis-à-vis allegedly legalist ‘Ancient Testament’ teachings, is less of a novelty than most early Christian writers announced. -/- 8. Talmudic moral doctrines and proto-Christian paraenesis. -/- The first three sections examine the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirke Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deot, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexes and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was "the tool by which the world was built"; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous, but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The last two sections examine first the various Christian currents and then Gnostic para-Christian or non-Christian currents as well as Manicheism. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure, purest Judaism. The last section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manicheism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. -/- 9. Christianity as “philosophy”. -/- The chapter reconstructs the stormy story of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and several rhetorical topics from the Stoic and Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua himself had been influenced by cynical preachers, is a proof of the necessity to translate the original Christian message in a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 10. Ethics in the Arabic-Islamic Philosophy. -/- The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on the retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince, had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries, a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with the disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 11. Ethics in the Jewish philosophy. -/- The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place for the first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed too a few traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Tora and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirke Avot could be translated. -/- 12. The practical philosophy revival in Latin Europe. -/- A reconstruction is carried out of a fresh start of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium rescuing a Platonic and Augustinian legacy, with Anselm and Peter Abelard. In this phase remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions, gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of a full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. -/- 13. Scholastic practical philosophy: Thomas Aquinas. -/- Aquinas’s ethics is theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to the repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave pure nature incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too ambitious, and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Prima Secundae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas was able to solve the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from the knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethics, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of the death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not the Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is no way an ethical ‘absolutism’, as both the traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularists tend to believe, but rather an ethic of prudential judgment on the individual case. Exceptions to this approach – or better the result of logical fallacies – are provided by the thesis of the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of so-called intrinsically evil acts, a thesis that would simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences that Thomas did not live long enough to draw. -/- 14. Scholastic practical philosophy: John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. A reconstruction is carried out of the ethical doctrines by both most authoritative Franciscan doctors. Their continuity with Aquinas is vindicated against prejudice carried by centuries of polemics within the Catholic Church and tendentious disparaging of both as forerunners of execrable Reformation. Besides aspects of continuity, also the important novelties are illustrated, first John’s abandonment of Aquinas’s and Augustine’s eudemonism, asserting righteousness for righteousness’s sake, and then William’s explicit defence of the philosopher’s virtues, that is, natural morality, and his solution to the dilemma of God’s omnipotence and the universal validity of natural law extending to God himself. -/- 15. Aristotelianism interpreted by the Magistri Artium. -/- A reconstruction of the until recently forgotten ethical doctrines by the Parisian Magistri Artium, falsely depicted as ‘Averroists’ and either deprecated as heretics or mistaken for predecessors of modern secularism. In fact, they illustrate a view of ‘natural’ virtue as may be understood by human reason without the assistance by Revelation. -/- Etiamsi daremus Deum non esse. Intermediate considerations. Three considerations may be suggested by the story told in the book. The first one is that intellectual histories have been mounted in the past with the same state of mind as one may mount a war chariot. Such constructions are not very helpful as tools for understanding the past. Wars waged in the past have left the field obstructed by ruins not easy to remove even by those historians who have animated by an impartial academic motivation. They have been influenced too by consequences of past emphasis on some authors and damnatio capitis suffered by others, by stratifications left on sources by secondary literature and translations, by allotment of originally close sources to different literary genres, by the monopolization of religious texts by churches with full cooperation by secular scholars who still fear contamination. The second one is that aware or unaware ethnocentrism has carried various calamities to our comprehension of the past. Their last vestiges have surfaced again in the semi-scholarly discussion on the idea of Europe occasioned by the debate on a project of a European Constitution. Mention of Europe’s Christian roots has been the clumsiest move. Proclamations of such roots were so obvious in what they affirmed as they were totally off-path concerning what they omitted, namely that he modern European moral tradition included legacies from Middle-Eastern wisdom, Hellenic philosophy, Roman Imperial legal literature, and, besides, a Jewish legacy in turn incorporating other more ancient Middle-Eastern legacies and which has been partly conveyed by Christianity. And the Islamic-Arabic philosophy too, in so far it made the Nicomachean Ethics available to Latin Christian scholars, is one more of Europe’s roots. The third is that religious traditionalists and secularist fundamentalists have gone hand in hand for a couple of centuries in either extolling or deprecating the allegedly Modern idea of Ethics without God, first formulated by Hugo Grotius with the claim that natural law would still be valid ‘etiamsi daremus – quod sine summo scelere dari potest – Deum non esse’. The facts are, firstly, that this is not an irreligious claim and Grotius was just a pious and meek Christian and, secondly, that it is not a ‘modern’ claim but rather one more formulation of the claim that there is a natural morality, independent of divine revelation, a claim shared by Moshe ben Maimon, Aquinas and William of Ockham. -/- . (shrink)

Language plays a central role in human life. However, the term 'language' as defined in the language sciences of the 20th century and the traditions these have drawn on, have arguably, limited our thinking about what language is and does. The two inter-linked volumes of Thibault's study articulate crucially important aspects of an emerging new perspective shift on language - the Distributed Language view - that is now receiving more and more attention internationally. (...) Rejecting the classical view that the fundamental architecture of language can be localized as a number of inter-related levels of formal linguistic organization that function as the coded inputs and outputs to each other, the distributed language view argues that languaging behaviour is a bio-cultural organisation of process that is embodied, multimodal, and integrated across multiple space-time scales. Thibault argues that we need to think of human languaging as the distinctively human mode of our becoming and being selves in the extended human ecology and the kinds of experiencing that this makes possible. Paradoxically, this also means thinking about language in non-linguistic ways that break the grip of the conventional meta-languages for thinking about human languaging. Thibault's book grounds languaging in process theory: languaging and the forms of experience it actualizes is always an event, not a thing that we 'use'. In taking a distinctively interdisciplinary approach, the book relates dialogical theories of human sense-making to the distributed view of human cognition, to recent thinking about distributed language, to ecological psychology, and to languaging as inter-individual affective dynamics grounded in the subjective lives of selves. In taking this approach, the book considers the coordination of selves in social encounters, the emergent forms of self-reflexivity that characterise these encounters, and the implications for how we think of and live our human sociality, not as something that is mediated by over-arching codes and systems, but as emerging from the endogenous subjectivities of selves when they seek to coordinate with other selves and with the situations, artefacts, social institutions, and technologies that populate the extended human ecology. The two volumes aim to bring our understanding of human languaging closer to human embodiment, experience, and feeling while also showing how languaging enables humans to transcend local circumstances and thus to dialogue with cultural tradition. Volume 1 focuses on the shorter timescales of bodily dynamics in languaging activity. Volume II integrates the shorter timescales of body dynamics to the longer cultural-historical timescales of the linguistic and cultural norms and patterns to which bodily dynamics are integrated. (shrink)

This book is about aesthetic processes and play from the perspectives of psychologists, philosophers, and semiologists. They explore the underlying processes from many viewpoints, including the prehistoric roots of language and art; the historical evolution of artistic, literary, and musical styles; the structure of artworks from both gestalt and semiotic perspectives; the biological and psychological processes underlying production and appreciation; the appeal of sentimental art; emotional responses to art and other aesthetic forms; personality in relation to artistic style; (...) the testing and measurement of art-related skills; the relations between social life and literary understanding; literature in relation to media; as well as neurobiological, developmental and individual growth perspectives on play activity. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to shed light on the peculiarities of language functioning in the structure of a person's religious consciousness. The article is an attempt to actualize and rethink some of the scientific methods of contemporary religious discipline in the light of new research in psychology and linguistics. Much has been done along the way. The most notable specialized work of recent years on this topic can be considered "Language and religion" by N.B. Mechkovskaya, which (...) was released in 1998. There are enough works relevant to our topic that should be addressed; in the field of psychology these are the works of Luria, Rubinstein, Leontiev, Vygotsky, Fromm, etc., ethnology and linguistics - Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Potebna, and others. (shrink)

Although Sibawayh dealt with it in a scattered manner under different headings there have been different views on na't (adjective), which is gene-rally included in the tawabi group in Arabic syntax, and there have been debates around these views. Na't, which is categorized as a proper adjective and qualifies the meaning of man'ut (mawsuf), has different characteristics from the sentence elements that indicate the subject. Nahiv scholars have mostly divided na't into two parts: real and causal na't, and they (...) have formulated certain rules for these two parts in accordance with the structure of the Arabic language. Since na't and man'ut are accepted as nouns, the i'rab of na't is subject to men'ut. However, some examples in the Qur'an and some expressions used by the Arabs caused objections to the i'rab of na't being the same as men'ut. It is observed that these objected examples are the cases where men'ut is known and the exceptional cases of madih, zam and jarri jivar. It is also obligatory for the na't to conform to the man'ut in terms of ma'rifiyyah, nekiriyyah, custom and gender. While Sibawayh (d. 180/796) considered it qabh (ugly) for non-propositional words to be na't, scholars such as Ibn Hisham (d. 218/833), Ibn al-Ḥajib (d. 646/1249), and Abd ar-Rahman Jami (d. 898/1492) accepted that na't could be either propositional or non-propositional and cited many examples of na't in the case of non-propositional words. Scholars such as Ibn Jinni (d. 392/1002) and Ibn al-Hajib gave an explanation of the causative na't without naming it, scholars such as Ebu’l-Bekā al-Ukbari (d. 616/1219) analyzed the subject under the title of causative adjective or causative na't, and Halid b. Abdullah al-Azhari discussed it under the title of al-wasf al-majazi. The subject of our study is to examine the handling of na't, which is one of the sentence elements in the Arabic language, in the works written on the field, its parts, the dimension that affects the meaning and the controversial aspects. The aim of the research is to examine the rules that Sibawayh deals with in his al-Kitâb on na'ta and the objections of later Arab linguists to these rules, and to contribute to the field by revealing different views on the subject. (shrink)

This article examines the nature of rationality. The domain of rationality is customarily divided into the theoretical and the practical. Whereas theoretical or epistemic rationality is concerned with what it is rational to believe, and sometimes with rational degrees of belief, practical rationality is concerned with what it is rational to do, or intend or desire to do. This article raises some of the main issues relevant to philosophical discussion of the nature of rationality. Discussions of the nature of practical (...) rationality and reason concern norms of choice, and it seems that if such norms are not arbitrary, arguments over what those norms are must ultimately be a theoretical matter. Furthermore, this article explores rationality's role in and relation to other domains of inquiry: psychology, gender, personhood, language, science, economics, law, and evolution. (shrink)

Words are not just labels for conceptual categories. Words construct conceptual categories, frame situations and influence behavior. Where do they get their meaning? This book describes how words acquire their meaning. The author argues that mechanisms based on associations, pattern detection, and feature matching processes explain how words acquire their meaning from experience and from language alike. Such mechanisms are summarized by the distributional hypothesis, a computational theory of meaning originally applied to word occurrences only, and hereby extended to (...) extra-linguistic contexts. By arguing in favor of the cognitive foundations of the distributional hypothesis, which suggests that words that appear in similar contexts have similar meaning, this book offers a theoretical account for word meaning construction and extension in first and second language that bridges empirical findings from cognitive and computer sciences. Plain language and illustrations accompany the text, making this book accessible to a multidisciplinary academic audience. (shrink)

When Georg von der Gabelentz’s book Die Sprachwissenschaft was published, the historical-comparative paradigm was the dominant perspective in empirical linguistic enquiry, and the then current theory of language was fijirmly rooted in language psychology. While itself based in this tradition, Gabelentz’s Sprachwissenschaft nevertheless strikes another chord, which sets it apart from contemporary sources. This chapter argues that the book is particularly noteworthy for its wide-ranging bottom-up approach to linguistic phenomena and its propensity to conceive of language both (...) as object and instrument of enquiry in a sense akin to the ‘reflexive’ stance that later would become a hallmark of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. The ‘phenomenological mindset’ can in particular be retraced in the way a diffferent philosophy of the language sciences and theory of meaning take shape in Die Sprachwissenschaft. (shrink)

The book consists of 6 chapters. Chapter One explains the reason why SLA researchers should study the language learning environment in space: population movements associated with internal and external migration and social mobility such as the circuits of commodity production and distribution create much space, in which language learning environment become diverse and uneven. With the spatial perspective, we can fully understand the interactions between language learners and the world or environments.In Chapter Two, by introducing the brief (...) history of Critical Spatial Theory, the author wants to tell us one of the key ideas in the theory: the social production of space, which views space as the product of the social relations of its era. Based on it, the author adds that the production of languages is an integral aspect of the production of space on a global scale. It can help us to understand how social mobility shapes language learning environments. From this perspective, the local environments in which languages are learned are outcomes of the production of space under the influence of mobility. It reiterates the key view that the global mobilities of physical objects (people, goods and information) produce space.In Chapter Three, the author introduces the mainstream views held by modern linguistics: languages are conceptualized as objects in the space. They hold that the spatiality of language is given by providing correct writing systems and standardized rules for various languages. Influenced by mainstream conception of language from modern linguistics, SLA tends to regard languages as self-contained objects in space. However, this view neglects the relation between language and the learning environments. The author holds that the distribution and circulation of languages and their varieties in geographical space produce the spatiality of language, which clears the ground for an environment or object-as-space view of language in Chapter Four.In Chapter Four, the author develops an alternative "objects-as-space" view and introduces three concepts to illustrate spatiality of language: flat ontology, assemblage and mobilities. The concept of flat ontology helps explain what language is and how it comes into being in the world; From assemblage perspective, the author develops the idea that everything is an object, so are human beings and languages. Language (the non-physical object) interacts with various physical objects, forming the language-bearing assemblage. This assemblage is the form of spatiality of language. The mobilities theory explains how language-bearing assemblages develop or change on a global scale because of social mobility, emphasizing the importance of learning environment in SLA. All in all, the author outlines how language makes its way into physical space in the form of assemblages, or assemblages of assemblages.Chapter Five centers on language learning environment. First, the author explains the relation between language learners and their learning environment from an ecological view: the learner is a part of the language learning environment, and second language learning is a spatial interaction between the learners and the semiotic resources provided by environment. Then, the author discusses language environment from two different perspectives. From an 'individual' perspective, environments are assembled by individuals from the spatial resources available; from an 'areal' view, environments are shaped both by local circumstances and global circulations of language-bearing assemblages. Meanwhile, the author also discusses other language environments like the multilingual city and online resources. What the author hopes to develop in this chapter is an environment perspective that grounds the contexts of language learning in space, which helps the readers think about language learning from a spatial perspective.Chapter Six contains three parts. In the first part, it outlines the work of a number of researchers from sociolinguistics and the contribution they made to the spatial theory. In the second part, the author wants to tell us how the idea of language learning environment emerges from his own research. The last part discusses the four main researching routes (areal studies, studies of individuals learning in settings, studies of the construction of individual learning environment and design-based studies) that might influence SLA research on language learning environments and some research methods. The book is in alignment with several recent "turns" occurring in the field of SLA, such as "social turn" (Block, 2003) and "multilingual turn" (May, 2014), both of which bring to the fore the social aspects involved in language learning. While the first "turn" accentuates the role of social context in shaping and influencing learner cognition, the latter highlights how the physical multilingual world remold language learning experiences, and how the mental multilingual world helps raise learners' language awareness, and facilitates their successful construction of an identity of legitimate multi-language users. The book under review joins up the two "turns" in acknowledging that language learners are persons-in-context with organic interaction with social learning environment (Ushioda, 2021). This view has research and pedagogical implications. From the point of doing research, spatial perspectives, advocated in the book, afford huge research potentials for both language teachers and (instructed) SLA researchers to conduct situated investigations, exploring the complex and dynamic nexus between language learners and their surrounding environment (not restricted to people) that play a part in their learning experience, and thus gaining insightful understanding of how individuals and learning contexts are coupled with each other, how they evolve together, and how they constitute an ecosystem that generates affordances, facilitating or constraining language learning. Pedagogically speaking, the spatial perspectives encourage language teachers to hold an ecological view of language teaching and learning, directing their attention to the individuality of each language learner and their complex, dynamic and multifaceted relationality with other learners and the physical realities, rather than solely focusing on the abstract systems (e.g., the development of cognitive aspect). This holistic view allows language teachers to take measures to address concrete questions emerging in and out of the classrooms, and stimulates them to design and experiment with pedagogical interventions that help to create a favorable environment for language learning. This view also invites language teachers to take learner agency into account (Xu & Long, 2020) and to design pedagogical activities that enable learners to take agentive actions to adapt their environments as they actively create and seek their own language learning opportunities, making the world their own (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In turn, teachers' agency-enabling activities will ultimately help learners to autonomously access a range of resources in this new affordance-rich era to improve their language skills, and thus become more independent in their pathway to life-long learning.Beside the above benefits, the book is also theoretically and methodologically friendly. In illustrating the role of space in SLA, the author invokes a plethora of theories from such disciplines as sociology, sociolinguistics, psychology, etc. This orientation helps readers to build a transdisciplinary framework to capture the multi-layered nature of SLA, and to acquire a nuanced understanding of how language learning is influenced by multiple scales of environmental factors. Methodologically, the author proposes several specific methods that are especially apt to investigate language learning environment. These methods, together with the theoretical foundation laid by the book, will definitely help researchers and language teaching practitioners to further delve into the complex interplay between context and language learners.Admittedly, the book is not without weaknesses. It spends most of its words on illustrating the importance of physical environment in SLA. Another essential component, the virtual environment is insufficiently referenced and discussed. This lacking is undoubtedly a regret the book leaves with us, especially in these years of pandemic, where language learning in virtual spaces is becoming a norm.All in all, the book is an invaluable contribution to the field of SLA, and is worthy of recommending to language teaching practitioners, researchers, and postgraduates in applied linguistics. (shrink)

In my article, “Why Psychology Hasn’t Kept Its Promises” , I argued that psychology hasn’t become the science its practitioners had hoped because psychologists continue to focus on mentalistic constructs and they adhere to a methodology that emphasizes statistical inference over experimental analysis. I concluded that in order to better keep their promise of a psychological science, psychologists should return to studying the relationship between observed behavior and its context with the type of experimental analysis that characterizes the other (...) experimental sciences. In his reply, Lana suggests that there may be aspects of human social and verbal behavior that are so complex that we may not be able to carry out a solid experimental analysis, thus limiting what we can discover about our own nature. Lana concludes that the methodologies needed to understand these more complex social relationships are hermeneutic and historical rather than experimental in nature. I concur with Lana both that an experimental analysis of much of human behavior may not be possible and that psychologists must, therefore, rely on complementary descriptive, interpretive, and historical analyses. I argue, however, that the interpretive language and the historical hindsight must be based on a foundation of basic principles derived from the systematic experimental analysis of behavior. (shrink)

The playback experiment -- the playing back of recorded animal sounds to the animals in order to observe their responses -- has twice become central to celebrated researches on non-human primates. First, in the years around 1890, Richard Garner, an amateur scientist and evolutionary enthusiast, used the new wax cylinder phonograph to record and reproduce monkey utterances with the aim of translating them. Second, in the years around 1980, the ethologists Peter Marler, Robert Seyfarth, and Dorothy Cheney used tape recorders (...) in a broadly similar way to test whether the different predator calls of one monkey species, vervet monkeys, warn about different kinds of predator. This paper explores the circumstances leading to the ca. 1890 invention and the ca. 1980 reinvention of the primate playback experiment. In both instances, I show, the experiment served as a riposte to those arguing, on scientific grounds, that an unbridgeable gap divides human language from animal communication. I also consider how far progress in technology explains the timing of invention and reinvention. I conclude with some reflections on sifting contingent from inevitable aspects of the history of the primate playback experiment, and of scientific achievements more generally. (shrink)

The musical method of collective improvisation expresses a conception of the game whose democratic-emancipatory basic attitude suggests comparisons with the concept of the ideal speech situation formulated by Jürgen Habermas. This presumption is explained in more detail within the framework of an introductory approach to collective improvisation as a process of relationship characterized by interactivity and synchronicity. After a discussion of improvisational action in music with regard to theoretical, historical and psychological aspects, the various developmental stages of free (...) or collective improvisation that emerged from free jazz in the 1960s will be presented. Subsequently, the collective improvisation will be discussed with reference to the concept of the ideal speech situation and located in an intercultural context. The sublimation of idiomatic, culturally shaped forms of expression demanded by musicians like Derek Bailey will be explained by the individual development of a characteristic sound language on the instrument as equalizing for the asymmetrically shaped dialogue forms of this situation. (shrink)

This is a book about Aristotle's philosophy of language, interpreted in a framework that provides a comprehensive interpretation of Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology and science. The aim of the book is to explicate the description of meaning contained in De Interpretatione and to show the relevance of that theory of meaning to much of the rest of Aristotle's philosophy. In the process Deborah Modrak reveals how that theory of meaning has been much maligned. This is a major (...) reassessment of an underestimated aspect of Aristotle that will be of particular interest to classical philosophers, classicists and historians of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

SECTION I In 1972, Donald Davison and Gilbert Hannan wrote in the introduction to the volume Semantics of Natural Language: "The success of linguistics in treating natural languages as formal ~yntactic systems has aroused the interest of a number of linguists in a parallel or related development of semantics. For the most part quite independently, many philosophers and logicians have recently been applying formal semantic methods to structures increasingly like natural languages. While differences in training, method and vocabulary tend (...) to veil the fact, philosophers and linguists are converging, it seems, on a common set of interrelated problems. " Davidson and Harman called for an interdisciplinary dialogue of linguists, philosophers and logicians on the semantics of natural language, and during the last ten years such an enterprise has proved extremely fruitful. Thanks to the cooperative effort in these several fields, the last decade has brought about striking progress in our understanding of the semantics of natural language. This work on semantics has typically paid little attention to psychological aspects of meaning. Thus, psychologists or computer scientists working on artificial intelligence were not invited to join the forces in the influential introduction of Semantics of Natural Language. No doubt it was felt that while psychological aspects of language are important in their own right, they are not relevant to our immediate semantic concerns. In the last few years, several linguists and logicians have come to question the fundamental anti-psychological assumptions underlying their theorizing. (shrink)

This letter explores the intricate historical and contemporary links between large language models (LLMs) and cognitive science through the lens of information theory, statistical language models, and socioanthropological linguistic theories. The emergence of LLMs highlights the enduring significance of information‐based and statistical learning theories in understanding human communication. These theories, initially proposed in the mid‐20th century, offered a visionary framework for integrating computational science, social sciences, and humanities, which nonetheless was not fully fulfilled at that time. The subsequent (...) development of sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, especially since the 1970s, provided critical perspectives and empirical methods that both challenged and enriched this framework. This letter proposes that two pivotal concepts derived from this development, metapragmatic function and indexicality, offer a fruitful theoretical perspective for integrating the semantic, textual, and pragmatic, contextual dimensions of communication, an amalgamation that contemporary LLMs have yet to fully achieve. The author believes that contemporary cognitive science is at a crucial crossroads, where fostering interdisciplinary dialogues among computational linguistics, social linguistics and linguistic anthropology, and cognitive and social psychology is in particular imperative. Such collaboration is vital to bridge the computational, cognitive, and sociocultural aspects of human communication and human−AI interaction, especially in the era of large language and multimodal models and human‐centric Artificial Intelligence (AI). (shrink)

Spoken language is an innate ability of the human being and represents the most widespread mode of social communication. The ability to share concepts, intentions and feelings, and also to respond to what others are feeling/saying is crucial during social interactions. A growing body of evidence suggests that language evolved from manual gestures, gradually incorporating motor acts with vocal elements. In this evolutionary context, the human mirror mechanism (MM) would permit the passage from “doing something” to “communicating it (...) to someone else.” In this perspective, the MM would mediate semantic processes being involved in both the execution and in the understanding of messages expressed by words or gestures. Thus, the recognition of action related words would activate somatosensory regions, reflecting the semantic grounding of these symbols in action information. Here, the role of the sensorimotor cortex and in general of the human MM on both language perception and understanding is addressed, focusing on recent studies on the integration between symbolic gestures and speech. We conclude documenting some evidence about MM in coding also the emotional aspects conveyed by manual, facial and body signals during communication, and how they act in concert with language to modulate other’s message comprehension and behavior, in line with an “embodied” and integrated view of social interaction. (shrink)