Contemporary American Research Articles

College Educated Religious Conservatives’ Support for Capital Punishment

Abstract Higher education is associated with reduced support for capital punishment among white Americans. Conservative religion, however, is associated with moral foundations and schemas that lead to greater support for capital punishment, which we expect moderate the association between education and views of capital punishment. Using nationally representative survey data, we found that the negative association between higher education and support for the death penalty was attenuated for white religious conservatives. This finding did not apply to nonwhite Americans. We conclude with a discussion of how the moral worldview associated with conservative religion may affect the future of capital punishment, by addressing how the association between higher education and views of capital punishment is contingent on other individual and contextual factors, and by situating the results within the contemporary American context that is characterized by political polarization and the decline of religion.

Improving Social Equity Within Public Organizations: Authority Differentials as Reference Points for Fostering Diversity and Inclusion Within U.S. Federal Agencies

Fostering diversity and inclusion (D&I) is a major challenge confronting the contemporary American administrative state. The asymmetric distribution of authority within U.S. federal agencies is critical for understanding employee perceptions of agency D&I efforts. Leveraging data from approximately 2.51 million U.S. federal employees across 105 agencies between 2010 and 2019, the statistical evidence demonstrates that authority differentials, reflected by the relative gender and racial balance of supervisory and non-supervisory personnel within U.S. federal agencies, predict employees’ evaluations of agency efforts at fostering D&I. Although these authority differentials have similar effects on employee D&I evaluations for both men and women, minority employees exhibit more sanguine assessments of agency D&I efforts than compared to non-minority colleagues predicated on such authority differentials. The statistical relationship between authority differentials and employees’ agency D&I evaluations is most pronounced for women minority employees, as well as for those holding supervisory positions.

Tikkun Olam

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the revitalization of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States (U.S.), and rising antisemitism in Eastern Europe during the same period prompted a rapid increase in the U.S. Jewish population. The simultaneity of these historic events naturally proposes an inquiry into the role of Judaism and the growing Jewish community in the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. Jewish teachings about the equality and dignity of humankind positioned the Jewish community to support women’s suffrage. Traditions of tzedek (pursuing justice) and tikkun olam (repairing the world) were central to the practical religion of American Jews and motivated them to pursue active roles in orchestrating this social change. Furthermore, Jewish lived religion and experiences with antisemitism evoked an empathy that inspired many Jewish individuals and communities to combat discrimination and inequality against other marginalized groups, such as by participating in the women’s suffrage movement. Contemporary American Jewry continues to uphold these traditions of activism as pursuing social change is part of performing mitzvot (commandments and good deeds) in Judaism. Thus, religion can inspire social change by empowering individuals to work towards a better world.

Traditional healing as mental health intervention: Contemporary insights from an American Indian healer.

Contemporary American Indian communities experience a disproportionately high rate of specific mental health concerns, including psychiatric disorders as defined by professional psychology. Although integrating mainstream mental health services and Indigenous traditional healing (ITH) has been presented as a promising approach to addressing these inequities, such integration necessitates in-depth exploration and consideration of ITH. To that effect, this article provides a thematic analysis of an interview with an urban American Indian traditional healer who reflected on more than 4 decades of therapeutic experience. Based on this analysis, we identified two major themes. The first theme, Expansive View of ITH, reflects this healer's conceptualization and understanding of the therapeutic process while the second theme, Guiding Principles of ITH, explicates the foundational commitments that shape and guide this healer's application and practice of ITH. These insights reinforce previous observations made by scholars of Indigenous health and well-being that challenge dominant Euro-American perspectives and call for transformative change in psychology research and practice, advocating for professional consideration of a broader range of therapeutic rationales, traditions, and practices than what is common within the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The effects of teacher, peer and self-feedback on error correction with corpus use

The strengths of corpora in language learning have been stated, while not many studies have explored the effects of feedback on error correction in the settings of data-driven learning (DDL), which is an approach where learners use corpora to learn language patterns inductively. Therefore, this study examines the effects of feedback on second language (L2) error correction with corpus use. The author hypothesizes that seeing many example sentences of the target word(s) with corpus use is useful in correcting L2 errors and that different sources of feedback have different effects on error correction. To test the hypotheses, the effects of teacher feedback on 55 participants’ error correction with use of the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) were compared with those of peer feedback along with those of self-feedback. The results show that teacher feedback especially worked well for correcting omission errors and agreement errors. The strength of teacher feedback was identifying correctable errors. The results suggest that efficient corpus use for error correction requires teachers to consider appropriate combinations of feedback and error types (e.g., teacher feedback for omission errors and agreement errors).

If Not For-If It Weren’t/Wasn’t For Counterfactual Constructions: A Multivariate Extension of Collostructional Analysis

Abstract The present paper investigates if not for-if it weren’t/wasn’t for constructions in American English based on the analysis of more than 2,100 constructions extracted from The Corpus of Contemporary American English (coca). In analyzing these constructions, we focus on significant interdependencies between the slots of the protasis (i.e. animacy of the referent of the np) and apodosis (i.e. semantics of the verb lemma) and how these cross-clausal associations interact with other linguistic variables, such as the polarity of the apodosis. We apply a new multivariate extension of collostructional analysis that combines distinctive and (co-varying) collexeme analysis via a hierarchical configural frequency analysis. This allows the analyst to identify associations not just of one slot to a construction or one slot to one other slot in one construction, but to include other features to identify (i) which constructions are preferred by which fillers in, now, one or more slots of one construction and (ii) which constructions are preferred by which (combinations) of one or more fillers.

A Corpus-based Behavioral Profile Study of Synonymous Expressions Meaning “to Start”

Synonymy is an extremely significant component in language learning, and the usage of synonymy is rather flexible and difficult to distinguish. In this research, the author employs a corpus-based behavioral profile approach to study the usage of a set of English synonymous expressions meaning “to start”, namely, start, begin, commence, launch, set out. The author first searches in American Contemporary English Corpus to explore the overall usage frequency and specific genre of each synonymous expression, then randomly selects 500 sentences, and makes manual annotation with 12 ID tag and 46 ID tag levels. Later, hierarchical clustering analysis and correspondence analysis have been employed to examine the semantic differences and usage structures of this set of expressions.The results shows that: ① The overall usage frequency varies greatly—from the highest to the lowest are start, begin, launch, set out, commence. ② They are used in various genres. Start is mainly used in informal styles including blogs, while the other four are mainly used in formal styles, including fictions and magazines. ③ Begin and set out have the greatest semantic similarity; start, begin, and set out form one semantic branch, and commence and launch form another, and there is a huge difference between these two branches. ④ There are great differences between the five expressions and their morphological, syntactic and semantic changes.Quantitative analysis method has been used to reveal the different semantic features and usage of a set of synonymous expressions, which is conducive to both promote the study of synonymous relations, and verify the effectiveness and applicability of the behavioral profile approach in semantic study.

SURFING AN ENGLISH CORPUS WITH OTHER LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

The paper describes some experiences of surfing an English corpus, the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA for short) with other learners of English. The challenges expressed by other learners inform us of the problems other users may have that we may not be aware of. Several examples of word-form searches, lemma searches, or part-of speech (POS) searches in both word/phrase queries and collocate queries are shown and explained. We can also limit our word/lemma searches to certain parts-of-speech, although the part-of-speech tagging is not always accurate. On top of that, there are wild-card symbols that we can use in our queries. The word/phrase query window in COCA enables us to search for just a word-form or a lemma, or a succession of word-forms, lemmas, and parts-of-speech as well as the wildcards, within limits. When we make a collocate query, we look for the co-occurrences of one item (a word, a lemma, a POS or a wildcard) that we put in the collocate window, and the item[s] we put in the word/phrase window. We also specify the distance of the ‘collocate’ and the word/phrase and the direction, to the right or to the left, or both to the right and left. Unless we change the default, it will search for the ‘collocate’ within the space of four words to the left and four words to the right of what we put in the word/phrase window. Searching a corpus together can reveal the misperceptions and difficulties that some learners may have, which if properly handled, can lead us to valuable insight as we learn from each other. We learn from other learners, for instance, that some of them are not aware that even though the frequency result of a collocate query shows just a word or the word-forms of a lemma, it is actually capturing the co-occurrences of that one word or that lemma with the item in the word/phrase window that we can see in the concordance lines. It is therefore advisable to give a reminder to always check the concordance lines. By checking the concordance lines we can judge whether or not the co-occurrences are indeed a case of collocation or just co-occurrences within the specified distance where actually the so-called ‘collocate’ does not relate to the item in the word/phrase window. While scrutinizing the concordance lines we can also check whether certain expressions are used in the meanings we have in mind. Whereas the ability, speed and accuracy in making these judgments, as can be expected, vary among corpus users, it is worth noting that the lemma-word form concept, POS codes, even some POS themselves are still a challenge for some learners. Examining the concordance lines can also reveal how speakers use the same expression in various ways. The paper ends with a discussion of the potential usefulness of the concordance lines as raw material that can be selected and edited to give learners additional exposure to what is obtained from other means of learning, hopefully leading to better language acquisition.

Semantic Components of English Directive Speech Act Verbs (Order, Command, Instruct)

This research focuses on synonymous English speech act verbs that mean “giving order” (directive). The verbs analyzed in this study are those with very close synonymy, namely order, command, and instruct. The aim of this research is to describe in more detail the semantic behavior of the directive English speech act verbs through their semantic component. This semantics study is qualitative descriptive research. The data in this study were collected by using corpus linguistics and observation methods with note-taking techniques. The data source is the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). There are 300 citations for each verb analyzed, which making in total 900 citations analyzed in the study. The study found that the verbs order, command, and instruct has eight semantic features/components that differentiate those three verbs, namely the components of authority, the way of saying, form of order, the duration of orders, level of urgency, actor and undergoer positions, domain of use, compliance level.

Measuring the semantic headedness of English blends with token-based semantic vector space modeling: a corpus-based study

Abstract This article analyzes the semantic headedness of English blends with distributional semantics methods. The semantic head of a blend is the source word that transfers its semantic information to the blend as a whole. For example, a sitcom is a kind of comedy. But is FedEx a kind of express, and is wi-fi a kind of fidelity? We use corpus data and token-based semantic vector space modeling in order to address these questions. Specifically, we investigate whether Plag’s ternary division of endocentric, exocentric, and coordinative compounds based on semantic headedness can also be applied to English blends, and whether the general tendency of semantic right-headedness can be observed for all three subtypes. We analyze a dataset of fifty-five blends and their respective source words, using data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and the English Web Corpus 2021. We measure the degree of semantic similarity between each blend and its two source words. The results show that for most endocentric blends, the hypothesis of semantic right-headedness holds true. At the same time, exocentric blends and coordinative blends are shown to behave differently. We conclude that Plag’s classification offers a useful point of departure for the semantic analysis of blends and that distributional semantics methods can provide new insights into their semantic behavior.

Considering legal English

This article considers the nature of legal English and reviews the literature which is generally relied upon for its linguistic description. While agreeing that legal English can properly be considered a register, it suggests that the seeming consensus in the literature regarding the specific differences between it and other varieties of English rests upon much shakier ground than is generally acknowledged. After identifying the features of legal English which are generally said to define it most strongly as a register, this article presents the results of a small pilot study comparing the presence of those features in a little-studied legal genre to their presence in the written subcorpora of the Corpus of Contemporary American English. This article concludes with several suggestions for refining the current consensus and suggests a path towards a more empirically grounded description of legal English as a register.

From Occupation to Occupy: Antisemitism and the Contemporary American Left by Sina Arnold (review)

From Occupation to Occupy: Antisemitism and the Contemporary American Left by Sina Arnold (review)

Refusing to Mourn: John Murillo's Poetics of Race and Space

Abstract: In this essay, I read Murillo's poetry as embodying a different and challenging form of Afro-latinidad, one centered on imagining the myriad possibilities for articulating Black Mexicanness as a political subjectivity. To do so, I foreground the importance of place to Murillo's poetics, which articulates Black Mexicanness as a political subjectivity not by translating the migrant experience but instead by inhabiting the historical construction of Blackness and Mexicanness specific to the local spaces of Los Angeles and Brooklyn that Murillo has called home. I then offer an extended reading of Murillo's heroic crown of sonnets "A Refusal to Mourn the Deaths, by Gunfire, of Three Men in Brooklyn," the centerpiece of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry . This sonnet sequence, like "Contemporary American Poetry," protests the vulnerability of Black bodies to police violence and laments the impotence of poetry as a response to that violence. Foregrounding the act of mourning—and its refusal—the poem challenges readers to consider what makes a life "grievable," to use Judith Butler's term. To read "A Refusal to Mourn" as enunciated from the position of Afro-latinidad requires Latinx readers in particular to grapple with that challenge on a more profound and, one hopes, transformative level.

A Corpus-Driven Study of Syntactic And Semantic Models of Transitivized English Intransitive Verbs

Transitivized English intransitive verbs, abbreviated as transitivized EIVs in the present study, refer to the English intransitive verbs which are transitively used taking direct objects as normal transitive verbs do. This study aims to systematically explore their syntactic and semantic patterns through a specialized corpus with 585 instances of 211 transitivized EIVs from the EIV corpus and approximately 97,000 words from the instances of 210 transitivized EIVs from the Corpus of Contemporary American English. To code the syntactic and semantic patterns of transitivized EIVs, conventional lexical and phrasal categories as well as the Ideal Motion Event Category were employed. The results of investigation indicate that the transitivized EIVs feature three major syntactic patterns: “EIVs + NP/Pron. + Zero”, “EIVs + NP/Pron. + meaning-supplementing expressions” and “EIVs + one’s way + Prep.-Phr.” while their semantic patterns are governed by law: The basic semantic pattern of the transitivized EIVs is the cause sense, but with its weakening or backgrounding, the other semantic patterns take the stage involving the sense combination of cause and manner, the sense of manner or the sense of abstract motion. This study offers a relatively comprehensive landscape of the linguistic phenomenon of transitivized EIVs and is believed capable of facilitating a better understanding of EIVs, thereby flexible and appropriate use of EIVs in intercultural communication.

The Interweaving of Humanity and Animality-Animal Narrative at Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry

Alan Dugan was a contemporary American poet. His last volume, entitled Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry, was published in 2001 and won Dugan a second National Book Award. This paper is based on Alan Dugan’s narration of animals in his new poems and Dugan’snarration of animals, which conveys his profound thinking and care about human beings and the life form of existence. “Human beings” are often closely related to animals. The animal narration in Dugan’s literary works expresses a hidden human world “behind his back.” Therefore, “animals” is one of the keys to interpreting Dugan’s complex, mysterious, and bizarre narrative world. The expression and writing of animals can be used as a breakthrough point of Dugan’s research so as to dig deeply into his spiritual world and artistic characteristics in order to achieve a new understanding and thinking of his literary creation.

Knowledge structures for knowledge communication: Dominant semantic frames in research articles

Taking Frame Semantics as its theoretical framework, this corpus-based study addresses a lack of research on semantic knowledge in research articles at the genre level, as opposed to the discipline level, by identifying the dominant Semantic Frames in the academic portion of the Corpus of Contemporary American English. Semantic Frames in the corpus were first automatically identified with a pre-trained large language model fine-tuned with data from FrameNet, a large database built on the principles of Frame Semantics. Subsequently, 84 dominant Semantic Frames in research articles were extracted based on the frequency distributions of identified semantic frames, constituting a Research Article-specific Semantic Frame List. Based on their definitions and detailed analyses of typical example sentences, these 84 Research Article-specific Semantic Frames were classified into three groups: Academic Activity Frames, which describe typical activities for creating knowledge, Academic Communication Frames, which relate to typical ways for disseminating knowledge, and Academic Interest Frames, which include typical entities or attributes that interest researchers across disciplines. The Research Article-specific Semantic Frame List sheds light on the semantic knowledge that is characteristic of the research article genre and shared across disciplines, thereby paving the way for compiling a research article-specific framenet. Further research is encouraged to explore the Frame Element distribution patterns of Research Article-specific Semantic Frames and Semantic Frames specific to other academic genres.

A Corpus Study of Acupuncture from the Perspective of Mass Media Based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English

Based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this study examines acupuncture from the perspective of mass media. Acupuncture has been circulating throughout the Chinese Cultural Circle since the Qin and Han Dynasties, and has since spread directly or indirectly to the rest of the world. The United States boasts the world’s second-largest acupuncture market, with its laws, regulations, industry growth, research, and education all positively influencing the development of acupuncture in other nations. This study uses COCA to analyze the form and content of acupuncture’s dissemination in eight different types of media. The findings show that acupuncture appears in COCA a total of 1,788 times, with the highest frequency in magazines, followed by blogs, and the lowest frequency in fiction. These findings reveal the popularity of acupuncture in mass media in the United States and provide empirical data and insights for the future dissemination and development of acupuncture in the United States.

Technology-empowered Blended Learning: A Case Study of Contemporary American Society and Culture Course

Under the background of integration of technology and higher education, this paper probes the question whether technology can advance liberal education, especial the critical thinking capability required by liberal education, in English major. The paper first identifies English major as a part of the humanity and social science disciplines, in which liberal education is essential and indispensable. Since liberal education emphasizes the capability of critical thinking, the paper then asks whether the integration of technology can promote the student’s critical thinking and therefore facilitate liberal education. The paper then applies the eight principles of critical thinking (TERRIFIC Principles) to evaluate the blended teaching of Contemporary American Culture and Society (CACS), a core course of English major at the Faculty of English Language and Culture, GDUFS. After examining the textbook, syllabus, program setting, teaching practice and assessment of CACS, it is found that blended online and offline teaching is better at developing the student’s capability of critical thinking than traditional offline teaching. The paper concludes that technology-empowered learning is conducive to liberal education.

Identity Loss and Reconstruction in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and Day

Mordecai Richler, a contemporary Canadian Jewish writer, reveals the identity confusion faced by Jewish immigrants in their integration into Canadian society through the description of the life experience of the protagonist Duddy Kravitz in his novel The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1959). Meanwhile, in the novel Day (1961), Elie Wiesel, a contemporary American Jewish writer born in Romania, examines how Holocaust survivors lose their identities and attempt to seek identity reconstruction within the context of traumatic memories and guilt through the perspective of the protagonist, Eliezer. This article aims to interpret the manifestations and reasons for identity loss and the possibility of identity reconstruction of the protagonists Duddy Kravitz and Eliezer based on identity theory. Through interpretation, it can be concluded that Duddy is marginalized by mainstream society and blamed for anti-Semitism within the Jewish community, resulting in a significant identity crisis. However, his success in purchasing land offers the possibility for him to escape marginalization and achieve identity reconstruction in mainstream society. Similarly, Eliezer, as a Holocaust survivor, experiences identity loss under the influence of traumatic memories and feelings of guilt, leading to questioning the existence of God and a death wish. Nevertheless, in the later part of the novel, he transitions from an unnamed narrator to “Eliezer”, and the ashes left after his portrait is burned symbolize his completeness, allowing him to regain self-identity.

Understanding Contextual Aspects of the Word ‘Look’ in Corpus of Contemporary American English: Semantics Study

This research investigates the contextual aspects and lexical semantics of the word "look" within the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). By examining how "look" functions across different contexts, this study aims to uncover the multifaceted nature of its meaning and usage. The research is grounded in semantic theory, drawing on the works of Leech, and other prominent linguists to explore how meaning is constructed and conveyed through language. Key focuses include the categorization of "look" across various parts of speech, such as verbs, nouns, and interjections, and the examination of its idiomatic, non-idiomatic, and compositional meanings. The study employs a qualitative research methodology, analyzing linguistic data from COCA to identify patterns and themes in the usage of "look." This research aims to elucidate the complex interplay between context and meaning, offering insights into the cognitive processes involved in language comprehension and production. The findings highlight the significance of semantics in understanding language, particularly how specific words can convey a wide range of meanings depending on their contextual usage. Overall, this research contributes to the field of lexical semantics by providing a comprehensive analysis of the word "look," demonstrating its versatility and the intricate mechanisms by which meaning is negotiated in language. The research has implications for linguistic theory, language education, and the development of more precise language processing systems.