Analytical Tendencies Research Articles

Heterogeneous knowledge: Trends in German discourse analysis against an international background

This contribution maps the complex field of discourse analysis in Germany by situating its major currents and putting them in historical perspective. In a first step, it presents the major intellectual sources, such as (post-)structuralism, pragmatism/interactionism as well as hermeneutics, which have served as a backdrop for the establishment of discourse analysis as an interdisciplinary field since the 1980s. In a second step, it takes a closer look at the intellectual conjunctures in the social sciences such as Critical Theory and systems theory before turning to the discourse analytical tendencies that have emerged since the 1980s in the light of Foucault's reception in Germany. Finally, it discusses the features of heterogeneous knowledge discourses. As against top-down studies of political discourse in France and bottom-up investigations of everyday discourse in the US, many discourse analysts in Germany focus on knowledge production as a multi-leveled process involving texts and contexts. Therefore, discourse is seen as a heterogeneous object constructed in the interplay of language, praxis and knowledge.

The Medium is not the Message: Reconciling Reputation and Free Expression in Cases of Internet Defamation

In this paper the author critiques the approach to defamation over the Internet taken to date by the Canadian common law courts. In the emerging jurisprudence, the courts have relied upon untenably broad generalizations about Internet technology, repeatedly equating it with traditional broadcast media and expressing grave concerns about the corresponding threat to reputation posed by online defamation. This has led the courts to hold that when defamatory words are transmitted using the Internet, this will vitiate the availability of any qualified privilege that would otherwise have immunized the defendant from liability under traditional defamation principles, and substantially increase any resulting award of damages. The author argues that this approach results in a failure to strike the appropriate balance between free expression and the protection of reputation. The jurisprudence can also be seen as a product of a long-standing and unfortunate analytical tendency in defamation law—primarily apparent through the libel/slander distinction—whereby common law courts attach extremely divergent legal consequences to impugned statements based on indefensibly broad generalizations about the degree of danger to personal reputation posed by the medium in which the statement was communicated. Drawing inspiration from a comparison to defamation under the civil law of Quebec, the author proposes a new approach that eschews reliance upon unhelpful analogies and generalizations about particular media including the Internet, and involves the examination of impugned statements on a case-by-case basis, paying careful attention to the context in which these were actually made.

The shift from OV to VO and an analytic tendency of languages

Abstract Some linguists discovered the importance of the shift from OV to VO order to the development of the Indo-European languages. A question arises whether the shift OV > VO has only affected the development of some categories or, maybe, also the analytic tendency of the Indo-European languages. A comparison of some features permitting the differentiation of languages on a synthetic – analytic scale in Latin (with an OV order) and in Polish (with a VO order) would contribute towards the solution of this problem: Latin is only a little more synthetic than Polish. The complex problem why Polish is only a little more analytic still awaits explanation.

Cultural Differences in Cognition: Rosetta Phase I

Cultural differences in cognition are important during multinational commercial, military, and humanitarian operations. The Rosetta Project addresses definition and measurement of key cognitive dimensions. Six potential diagnostic measures related to Analytic-Holistic reasoning were assessed: the Exclusion Task, the Attribution Complexity Scale, the Syllogism Task, Categorization, the Framed Line Test, and the Facial Expression Task. 379 participants' ages ranged from 17 to 24 years (M = 19.8, SD = 1.4). 64.6% were women; Eastern Asian groups (Japan, Korea, and Taiwan) were assumed to have Holistic reasoning tendencies, and those from a Western group (USA) were assumed to have Analytic tendencies. Participants were recruited from subject pools in psychology using the procedures of each university. Results on the Exclusion and Categorization Tasks confirmed hypothesized differences in Analytic-Holistic reasoning. The Attribution Complex-ity Scale and the Facial Expression Task identified important differences among the four groups. Outcomes on the final two tasks were confounded by unrelated group differences, making comparisons difficult. Building on this exploratory study, Rosetta Phase II will include additional groups and cognitive tasks. Measures of complex cognition are also incorporated to link findings to the naturalistic contexts.

Statistical mixture design development of digestion methods for Oyster tissue using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry for the determination of metallic ions

The quantitative determination of chemical elements in organic or biological samples is an important analytical problem. Normally the elements to be determined in the organic matrix must be transformed into a simple inorganic form. A digestion method by heating on a block digestor has been developed for the determination of Al, As, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, V and Zn in Oyster tissue by ICP OES. A simplex centroid statistical mixture design has been used to study the effects of changing HNO 3, HCl and H 2O 2 reagent proportions on the digestion of these samples. Response surface and principal component analyses show that the species Ca, Cd, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn and Zn have very similar analytical tendencies under this experiment. By means of mixture modeling maximum recoveries for these ions were predicted using 19%, 18% and 63% of the HCl, HNO 3 and H 2O 2 pseudocomponent mixtures, respectively. This corresponds to 21.4%, 30.8% and 47.8% of the HCl, HNO 3 and H 2O 2 commercial solutions. Furthermore the As, Co and V ions present large recoveries for these mixtures as well. The Al and Ba ion recoveries are seen to be independent of the mixture proportions. The analysis of Oyster tissue reference material (SRM 1566b – NIST) under optimized conditions at the selected wavelengths resulted in ion recoveries between 90% and 100%.

Philology and Poetry: The Case Against Descartes

Vico’s historical humanism provides a needed intellectual alternative to more analytic tendencies in modernity. Poesis embodies the fullest alternative to that analytic tradition that manifests itself most dangerously in the coalescence of authoritarian politics, Cartesian ambition, and abstract ahistoricism that we know as torture.

Current dialectological research in Serbian linguistics and language contact issues

Examined in this paper is the attitude of current Serbian dialectology towards phenomena that are the subject matter of contact linguistics. The aim of the study is to show which types of contact situations and their outcomes are investigated by dialectologists and which are, by applying certain methodological procedures, excluded or at least minimised. The survey of the scholarly production in the field reveals that the attention has been given to the dialectal lexical and structural borrowings from the neigh bouring languages, as well as the interdialectal interference, the contact-induced Balkan innovations and analytic tendency in dialects (which are of particular significance for the study of the Balkan Sprachbund), the mutual influences of standard language and dialects, the sociolinguistic factors determining the dialectal variations that result from language contact, urban dialects and even bilingualism. It should be noted that not all issues have been equally addressed: some of them are well established in the field, while the others only give hints of possible future trends within the discipline. The observed changes in the focus as well as in methodology of its investigations make dialectology more open to the issues contact linguistics is interested in.

Application and exploration of fast gas chromatography-surface acoustic wave sensor to the analysis of thymus species

Fast gas chromatography combined with surface acoustic wave sensor (GC/SAW) has been applied for the detection of volatile aroma compounds emanated from thymus medicinal plants such as T. quinquecostotus (Jeju and Mt. Gaya in South Korea), T. quinquecostotus var. japonica (Ulreung island in South Korea), T. mongolicus (Northeastern Asia), and T. serpyllum (Europe). The GC/SAW involving the fragrance pattern analysis provides a novel analytical method with a very fast separation and characterization of aromas caused by the delicate difference of chemical composition according to botanical and geographical origin. On the comparison of experiments, the characteristic components and analytical tendency for air-dried thymus species detected by GC/SAW appear to be quite similar to those obtained by headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME)-GC–MS, but the abundance ratios between these two methods are different. In addition to that, the discrimination of various thymus species by using VaporPrint image based on GC/SAW provides a quite reliable result. On the basis of principal component analysis (PCA) results, the ability for classification among species of completely different chemotypes by HS-SPME-GC–MS is good enough, but the classification of same chemotypes species which are from different geographical origin in same country, original species and its variety, an air-drying term for 13 days and 16 months appear much lower than GC/SAW. Interestingly, the present experiment reveals that the air-drying term influences the aroma composition: the concentration of the pharmacologically active species, monoterpene phenol (thymol), reaches its highest concentrations after it was dried for 5 days or 13 days, which is much higher than in fresh or over-dried for a long times.

Dualisms, Dichotomies and Dead Ends: Limitations of Analytic Thinking about Sport

In this essay I attempt to show the limitations of analytic thinking and the kinds of dead ends into which such analyses may lead us in the philosophy of sport. As an alternative, I argue for a philosophy of complementation and compatibility in the face of what appear to be exclusive alternatives. This is a position that is sceptical of bifurcations and other simplified portrayals of reality but does not dismiss them entirely. A philosophy of complementation traffics in the realm of ambiguities, paradoxes, differences by degree, tendencies, mixtures, polarities, tensions, complexes, transitions and all other forms of messiness. I note that this position has been generated, in part, by work conducted in the empirical sciences and that complementation provides a paradigm that is useful across the academic disciplines. To show the ways in which analytic thinking leads to dead ends, I analyse the epistemological debate over ‘broad internalism’ engaged in by Russell (1999, 2004), Dixon (2003), Simon (2000, 2004) and Morgan (2004). Evidence for the claim that they reached a mostly unhelpful stalemate is based on the fact that they did not provide any third option and moreover that the analytic tools and ground rules they employ prevent its discovery. I suggest that all four authors are comfortable with the analytic tendency to bifurcate reality and require choices among exclusionary alternatives. I also claim that they treat reason as if it were generated by a ‘mind from nowhere’. Philosophical anthropology, I suggest, provides much-needed somatic grounding that would reign in excessively optimistic views of reason (Dixon, Simon and Russell) or excessively plastic interpretations of mind (Morgan). It can also provide evidence that could help us understand why hominids (even modern ones) are so attracted to dichotomies and why we have so much trouble in reconciling apparent incompatibilities.

In the State's Embrace? Civil Acts in an Imperial Order

One of principal characteristics of modern state has been its aspiration to acquire extensive and detailed information about population it oversees. As James C. Scott remarks, whereas its premodern counterpart was content with levels of intelligence sufficient for only most basic practices of governance, the modern state increasingly aspired to 'take in charge' physical and human resources of nation and make them more productive. John Torpey has likewise noted, order to extract resources and to implement policies, states must be in a position to locate and lay claim to people and goods. (1) It is only in past two centuries or so--and in many cases much more recently--that states have developed administrative capacity to make confident claims on their subjects and citizens. Until then, there were often great discrepancies between interventions to which states aspired and instruments available for their realization. The recognition of such discrepancies enjoins us to focus attention on processes by which states construct relationships between themselves and their subjects. Torpey has rightly noted that prevailing analytical tendency to describe states' growing capacity to or reach into societies fails to account for precise mechanisms by which such relationships are forged and sustained. As an alternative, he suggests that we regard states as seeking not simply to penetrate but also to societies, 'surrounding' and 'taking hold' of their members--individually and collectively--as those states grow larger and more administratively adept. Torpey's emphasis is on grasp of state rather than on its reach, on techniques of governance concerned with unique and unambiguous identification of individuals that rendered other, more prominent and visible projects--such as conscription and taxation--possible and enforceable. (2) The present article analyzes a crucial aspect of Russian state's infrastructural embrace of its population: establishment and operation of a system for maintaining civil acts registering births, marriages, and deaths of empire's population. I focus in particular on that were maintained by religious servitors of empire's various confessions and that constituted closest approximation to an order of universal registration. (3) These registers served as foundation for civil status and exercise of rights, as well as for state's claims on its subjects in a growing range of contexts. I argue that even as state aspired to its population more firmly through extension of metrical books to an ever-widening circle of confessional groups, administrative weakness compelled autocracy to effectuate this indirectly, through mediating religious personnel and institutions. Particularly as state's need for reliable and comprehensive documentation on identity of its subjects grew, deficiencies of resulting order became ever more consequential. My emphasis in present study is thus on gradual character of state's infrastructural growth, crucial mediating role of confessional institutions, and complexities that thereby conditioned development of a comprehensive, if differentiated, civil order in Russia. At center of my inquiry is a fundamental tension between universality and particularity in documentary regime constructed in Russia over course of imperial period. On one hand, metrical books represented standard method for ascertaining identity and civil status of empire's entire population, without reference to social distinction or abode. As imperial law itself indicated, these registers were one set of deeds that were common to all statuses (obshchie dlia vsekh sostoianii). (4) In this respect, metrical books represented a universalistic practice of governance. …

Rewriting the African diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic

This essay argues that despite the growing popularity of diaspora studies, our understanding of the African diaspora remains limited by both the conceptual difficulties of defining what we mean by the diaspora in general, and the African diaspora in particular, and the analytical tendency to privilege the Atlantic, or rather the Anglophone, indeed the American branch of the African diaspora. It begins by trying to explore the various conceptions of the African diaspora, foregrounded by a critique of Paul Gilroy's influential text, The Black Atlantic. This is followed by discussions of what the author considers to be the four dominant dimensions of the global African diasporas, namely, the intra-Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, and Atlantic diasporas. Finally, the essay examines the emergence of the new global African diasporas.

ARISTOTELIANISM AS A COMMENTARY TRADITION

Aristotelian studies in the second half of the twentieth century underwent a decisive change: after two thousand years of travelling together, the fortuna of the Master and that of his Greek commentators began to follow separate paths. This was certainly progress – indeed, necessary progress, as we can now see when taking stock of the twentieth century’s arguments about the very meaning of interpretation, with particular regard to the interpretation of written texts as a primary philosophical activity. The crisis (if we may term it as such) started in the study of Aristotle himself – his Greek commentators did not yet constitute an independent field of research. Various intellectual currents were involved. Prominent among these were nineteenth-century advances in philological and historical research, and the analytic tendencies that progressively influenced Aristotelian studies in the twentieth century. A decisive part was played by the editorial enterprises sponsored in the nineteenth by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. Within a relatively short period of time two fundamentally important works appeared: the standard critical edition of Aristotle’s complete works directed by I. Bekker (1831-1870),1 promoted by F. Schleiermacher;2 and that of the

International Law’s Literature of Terror

It is the theory of this paper that while the natural analytic tendency is to seek the legal character of terror in the impugned act, it can actually be found only by examining the narrative of the law. As a legal concept, terrorism strikes not at the political power of states or at the safety of individual citizens, but at the law's own stability as law.

Ethnography After Globalism: Migration And Emplacement In Malawi

Sites and places present analytical problems to ethnographers who acknowledge the reality of global flows but doubt their I iberatory potential. In this article, I suggest that ethnographers move beyond the rhetoric and organizing assumptions of globalism not simply by discarding the local–global distinction but also by interrogating the analytical tendency to disconnect culture from place. Such a tendency appears to contribute to the resilience of constructivism in ethnographic analysis. A perspective of emplacement builds on insights into global flows while providing a focus on embodied and situated presence. I develop this perspective with the aid of ethnography on conflicts between migrants and original inhabitants in an impoverished area of Malawi's capital. The occult powers of a secret society partly account for migrants' emplacement, challenging migrants' globalist imagination that draws on the liberal rhetoric of economic and political reform and on spiritual protection afforded by world religions. The perspective of emplacement reaches beyond globalism by showing how all phenomena in global circulations are at once both particular and capable of spreading widely as elements of the globalist imagination, [ethnography, globalism, migration, emplacement, embodiment, the occult, African urbanism]

Form and Identity in Language Poetry and Asian American Poetry

n a 1978 essay, Rae Armantrout took up a question posed by Charles Bernstein: Why don't do language-oriented writing? Armantrout's initial response is that women need to describe the conditions of their lives. This entails representation. Often they feel too much anger to participate in the analytical tendencies of modernist or 'post-modernist' art (544). Ron Silliman expands this argument in his 1988 essay Poetry and the Politics of the Subject:

La proposition élidée en russe

Ellipsis of the Preposition in Contemporary Russian In noun phrases either coordinated by juxtaposition or by means of coordinating conjunctions, the preposition introducing each Noun Phrase is always present before the first, whereas it can be dropped before the second. Our study shows that the semantic value of the ellipsis depends on the type of coordination used: by collocation or through coordinating conjunction, so that we have to consider four different patterns; moreover, with coordination through coordinating conjunction the non-ellipsis of the preposition is stylistically marked. From another standpoint the ellipsis of the préposition in coordinated NP’s allows us better to define for contemporary Russian compound semantical units, comparable to composita of the «dvandva» type (see xleb-soľ). It play s the role of a semantic-syntactic marker, in the same way as univerbation, composition, or agreement of the prepositive attributive with the first noun in a string of two or more coordinated nouns. Finally, in can be considered that the development of ellipsis of the preposition in coordinated NP’s reminds us in some way of its being dropped before the determined term inside NP’s where the preposition was formerly used twice (see s samoj s xozjajkoj) or in some colloquial word-combinations. All these facts do not agree with the so-called «analytic tendency» of contemporary Russian.