Authentic Usage Research Articles

Why is KOL (Key Opinion Leader) Advertising on Social Media more Effective at Attracting Consumers than Official Brand Accounts?-Exploring Lancmes Promotion on Chinese Platform RED

In the context of the flourishing digital market, effectively utilizing social media for advertising has become one of the primary concerns for brands. This article aims to investigate the reasons why advertising campaigns by KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) on Chinese social media platforms garner more attention from consumers compared to official brand accounts. This research employs a case study and interview methodology. The first set of data presents the advertising content and responses of both Lancme's official account and KOL accounts on the Chinese social media platform, Xiaohongshu (RED). The second set of data showcases the interview results from five recruited participants on RED. Each participant was asked to assess their attitudes towards different forms of product promotion. The results indicate that KOLs' posts on RED offer a more relatable and curiosity-inducing perspective by sharing product experiences in everyday life scenarios. This approach resonates with users and brings the promotion closer to consumers. In contrast, the content strategy of official brand accounts tends to focus more on product features, which increases the perceived distance from consumers. Furthermore, interaction data and user feedback from KOL accounts reveal that users are more inclined to trust and reference the authentic usage experiences of fellow consumers rather than official product descriptions. These findings elucidate the practical impact of official brand accounts versus KOL accounts in social media advertising, highlighting the unique value of KOL advertising. Our research is poised to inspire brands to reconsider their social media advertising strategies, potentially bringing forth greater appeal and competitive advantage for the brands.

Linguocognitive and sociocultural aspects of bilingualism

The concepts and data accumulated to date on bilingualism are summarized and generalized in the article. Bilingualism is the presence of two or more languages in a person’s actual life and operating them whenever necessary, regardless of the level of proficiency and medium of language acquisition (natural or artificial). In the cognitive- psycholinguistic perspective, the study of a foreign/second language is primarily about the goals of language training: with a distinct lag from a first language (top-down training) to gain conceptual knowledge of one’s own and foreign cultures and read cognitively complex works in two languages VS together with a first language from early childhood (bottom-up training) to gain the skills of authentic usage of both languages and be fluent in everyday communication. In in the socio-cultural perspective, in multinational states bilingualism is an objective necessity, provided that it is endoglossic. This is an alternative to the full or partial assimilation of linguistic minorities to the language and culture of the majority. The ideal is not linguocultural assimilation, but mutual integration, the formation of a single nation. As for an external foreign language learnt for international communication, it should be mastered less zealously and generally perceived as a mere substitute for an “international auxiliary language” - a simple code, universal and flexible, to convey a person’s individual and national meanings. Acculturation in the spirit of a foreign culture is excluded, it is optimal to focus on the heritage of the internal, national and indigenous, cultures and literatures and learn them in both national/ethnic languages and a foreign language.

Designing Interactive Academia-Industry Framework in Digital Language Classroom

: Language pedagogy has recently shifted its focus to digital pedagogy, hence classroom tasks being modified has become an essential practice around the world. One challenging element of teaching in a digital classroom is keeping students interested and ensuring that they have genuine learning experiences. It was also discovered that digital language classrooms give students minimal exposure to real-world settings, especially in English for Professional Interaction digital classrooms as it lacks the tools that connect academics and industry players. This study’s main objective is to conceptualise a framework that uses an educational research and development model that includes industry players as part of the classroom tasks and lesson plans for students’ engagement in the digital language classroom. The study's research design is a 10-stage research and development methodology that includes both quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The study was conducted over the course of four semesters from June 2020 until January 2022 in English for Professional Interaction classrooms. Professional speakers from various industries were invited for online class discussions and feedback was collected after each session. This interactive academia-industry framework in the digital language classroom serves as a methodological design that has the potential to affect students through authentic usage of content for realistic learning experiences.

Edge Computing Based Electricity-Theft Detection of Low-Voltage Users

Electricity theft of low voltage (LV) users could result not only in the escalation of power loss but also in dangerous electric shock. Since LV users are served by distribution transformers, electricity theft of an LV user will cause line loss escalation of the associated distribution serving zone (DTSZ). Therefore, it seems promising to identify anomaly users of electricity theft with a Granger causality test to find out the user causing an escalation of line loss in DTSZ with time series of users’ usage and line loss. However, meters of LV users in severe environments occasionally suffer from communication failure to upload metering data to the head end of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), which could distort the daily electricity usage of the associate user. Consequently, it could cause false alarms unavoidably once we detect electricity theft with these distorted data. Since the distribution transformer unit (DTU) collects metering data of LV users within associate DTSZ without distortion, an edge computing–based electricity theft detection approach is proposed in this article. The correlation between line loss of a DTSZ and electricity usage of anomaly users of electricity theft is first analyzed. Thereafter, the Granger causality test is used to identify anomaly users with authentic usage data with edge computing in DTU. Finally, the abnormal data and the data repaired by different missing data filling algorithms are used on the main station to detect electricity theft. Numerical simulation suggests that although missing data completion could recover information in missing data partially, it could result in notable false positive alarms in electricity theft, while the proposed method based on edge computing can completely eliminate the data distortion caused by communication failure.

Detecting Invalid Associations between Fare Machines and Metro Stations Using Smart Card Data

Data quality is essential for its authentic usage in analysis and applications. The large volume of automated collection data inevidently suffers from data quality issues including data missing and invalidity. This paper deals with an invalid data problem in the automated fare collection (AFC) database caused by the erroneous association between the fare machines and metro stations, e.g., a fare machine located at Station A is wrongly associated with Station B in the AFC database. It could lead to inappropriate fare charges in a distance-based fare system and cause analysis bias for planning/operation practice. We propose a tensor decomposition and isolation forest-based approach to detect and correct the invalid associated fare machines in the system. The tensor decomposition extracts features of passenger flows and travel times passing through fare machines. The isolation forest coupled with a neural network (NN) takes these features as inputs to detect the wrongly associated fare machines and infer the correct association stations. Case studies using data from a metro system show that the proposed detection approach achieves over 90% accuracy in detecting the invalid associations for up to 35% invalid associations. The inferred association has a 90% accuracy even when the invalid association ratio reaches 40%. The proposed data-driven invalid data detection method is useful for large-scale data management in terms of data quality check and fix.

The representation of spoken Hebrew in Eretz-Israeli fiction films from the 1930s

This article examines whether the dialogue in the first two full-length Hebrew narrative films reflects spoken Hebrew of the time. The first part examines phenomena that, according to written testimonies in grammar books and prescriptivist writings, were typical of spoken Hebrew during the British Mandate period. It shows that these phenomena were not represented in the films from the 1930s, whereas in later films there is a significant rise in their frequency. The second part examines phenomena that are not typical of spoken speech today but are represented in the dialogue of the films from the 1930s. In later films they become very rare or vanish altogether. An analysis of the findings shows that the film-makers did not regard it as the function of cinematic dialogue to authentically reflect spoken speech, but rather adopted the normative approach to Hebrew, which strongly preferred high-register Hebrew over authentic usage.

Surgeons, surgeries, and operating rooms in television medical series

The longest-running American prime-time television medical series, Grey’s Anatomy represents a society in which gender is not a potential career barrier in surgery. Focusing on an iconic scene of the series, this article brings media studies together with the history- and philosophy of surgery to provide a qualitative analysis of this portrayal on three levels: surgical procedure, protagonist, and place. Following previous studies on medical drama series, the theoretical framework of the article is cultivation theory. Some elements of the genre – like the realistic hospital setting and the authentic usage of medical jargon – might strengthen the likelihood of content cultivation. Finally, I discuss the potential positive and negative effects of the way how this popular series depict female surgical careers.

Конструкция с препозитивной относительной клаузой

The paper examines two types of non-canonical restrictive relative sentences in con- temporary colloquial Russian: preposed relative clauses with the pronoun kotoryj ʻwhichʼ and relative clauses with internal head. The first type fulfils a clear discursive function since the relative clause serves here to mark a neutral or contrastive theme. This explains the exclusive use of the nominative case of the pronoun. The main clause often con- tains an anaphoric support of the relative clause by means of a personal or demonstra- tive pronoun; such a support is however not mandatory. The construction with internal head mainly functions in pre- or interposed relative clauses. Two examples with postpo- sition and repetition of the antecedent had non-restrictive reference; their acceptability is however questionable since they may be due to an accidental uncontrolled deviation from the norm. On the other hand, it should be pointed out that in historical official or bureaucratic sources this subtype was quite widespread (the following quotation might illustrate the case: “And which peasant brews bear illegally, this peasant shall pay a fine”) and may even today be used as an intended playful archaism: this device is notably used in L. Petrushevskaya’s work. The last section of the paper discusses the use of preposed relative clauses in the speech of the narrator and the main characters in M. Zoshchenko’s tales. Here, this device is not meant to imitate the authentic usage as faithfully as pos- sible, but merely as an artistic stylization of oral speech. This may be seen from the lack of other non-canonical patterns of relative clauses known from authentic speech and above all from the frequent repetitions of certain relative clauses intended as a leitmo- tiv for the characterization of the given character. All examples are taken from the basic and oral subcorpora of the Russian national corpus, the collection of texts Zhivaya rech’ ural’skogo goroda and the available descriptions of Russian colloquial speech. The em- pirical findings are complemented by typological notes. Keywords: Relative clause, preposed clause, theme, Russian colloquial speech, inter- nal head, antecedent, anaphora, M. Zoshchenko, artistic device.

Difficulties in Teaching English Modal Auxiliaries to Turkish Students: A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach

Recently, attention in modern linguistic theory has been shifted to facilitating a broader understanding of the world, in which language is a tool to establish a bridge between the interlocutor and the recipient. To do so, the development of linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competences enriched with socio-cultural inputs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or Second Language (L2) teaching and learning contexts have a significant impact on language learners both to develop their perception as native speakers of English and to facilitate the progress of cognitive skills and capabilities. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a case study to show some of the difficulties in teaching English modal auxiliaries to Turkish students in EFL/L2 contexts which arise not only from structural characteristics, but also from insufficiently developed linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competencies. It is also asserted that only teaching the lexical properties of modal auxiliaries in isolation from their socio-pragmatic and semiotic contexts alone cannot help learners to become successful communicators in the target language as it ends in communication failures, hesitation, a slower L2 progress, fear and misunderstandings. Therefore, role-play activities, cloze tests, research assignments, writing tasks and songs can also be integrated into the teaching-learning process to assist learners to become more aware of their actual authentic usages in a wide range of contexts through different activities. On the whole, this would also free language learners to refer to their First Language (L1) input and shape a broader understanding of the Foreign Language (FL) framed with its actual authentic usage.

A Role of Corpus between Prescriptive Grammar and Descriptive Grammar: With Focus on Usage Patterns of English Coordinators

본 논문은 영어등위접속사를 접속부사처럼 문두(sentence-initial position)에 사용하는 문제를 중심으로 규범문법과 기술문법의 사이에서 대립되는 양상에 대해 논해보고자 한다. 이를 정량적 기법과 정성적 기법을 모두 활용하여 실제로 어떻게 등위접속사를 사용하는지에 대한 용법 유형을 분석할 수 있는 코퍼스-기반의 연구로 진행하였다. 먼저, ‘and, but, or, so’의 네 가지 영어등위접속사에 대해 언어학자들이 규정하는 규범문법을 살펴보고, 중급레벨의 한국 대학생 학습자들이 작성한 영어 에세이로 구축한 학습자 코퍼스와 원어민의 코퍼스에서 나타난 영어 등위접속사의 사용 양상을 비교분석하였다. 이러한 코퍼스-기반 연구를 통해 규범문법과 기술문법의 사이에서 원어민과 비원어민 간의 차이뿐만 아니라, 코퍼스를 통해 나타난 실제 등위접속사의 사용 양상이 규범문법과 얼마나 차이를 보이는지 규명해보고자 하였다. AntConc 툴을 사용하여 분석한 결과, 절(clause)보다는 단어나 구를 연결하는데 사용되는 빈도수가 훨씬 높은 or와 and은 접속부사처럼 문두에 나타나는 빈도수가 거의 없거나 상당히 낮은 반면, 절을 연결하는 빈도수가 상당히 높은 so와 but은 접속부사처럼 문두에 사용된 빈도수가 상대적으로 높았다. 즉, 코퍼스 기반의 기술적 분석 결과를 통해 절-단위 연결성이 강한 등위접속사일수록 규정문법을 따르지 않는 경우가 학습자 코퍼스에서는 물론이고, 원어민 코퍼스에서도 적지 않게 있음을 파악할 수 있다. 이러한 결과는 학문적 영어쓰기를 가르칠 때 따라야 하는 학교문법, 즉 규범문법에 벗어나는 양상에도 일정한 패턴이 있음을 보여주고 있으며, 이를 실제 교수􋹲학습에서 어떻게 받아들여야 할지에 대한 중요한 논지를 던진다. 앞으로 방대한 언어 사용의 실태를 실제적으로 자세히 보여 주는 코퍼스-기반 연구가 직관을 통해 문법성을 명시적으로 판단하는 정적인 언어자료만을 탐구하는 이론 언어학에서 놓치고 있는 점들에 대해 자연스러운 언어변용 및 다양성을 담아내는 기술문법이 어떤 보완책을 던져 줄 수 있는가에 대해 좀 더 많은 연구가 되어야 할 것이다.The current study explores a role of corpus between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar by investigating usage patterns of English coordinators in Korean EFL learner and native English written corpus. First, focusing on syntactic and textual functions of and, or, but and so as focal examples, the prescriptive grammar on English coordinators is reviewed in academic prose. Then both quantitative and qualitative analyses by AntConc are employed. Findings from the quantitative analysis of the academic prose showed that ‘and’ is most frequently used in mostly word/phrase levels rather than in clause levels. By contrast, so is rather frequently used in clause-levels. Interestingly, or and and used most frequently in word/phrase levels rarely appear in a sentence-initial position. On the other hand, so and but, which appear more often in a clause level, have a tendency to occur in a sentence-initial position more frequently than the others. The textual functions are also dependent upon the two classifications of coordinators; local and cohesive links. The results of descriptive analysis using corpus show that clause-level coordinators such as so and but seem not to follow the prescriptive rules on English coordinators, not only in learner corpus but also in native speaker corpus. Like this, corpus-based studies which show authentic usage patterns with tremendous linguistic data cast challengeable questions toward the prescriptive grammar world which has dealt with just static linguistic data based on grammaticality judged by native speakers’ intuition.

Difficulties in Teaching English Modal Auxiliaries to Turkish Students: A Cognitive Pragmatic Approach

Recently, attention in modern linguistic theory has been shifted to facilitating a broader understanding of the world, in which language is a tool to establish a bridge between the interlocutor and the recipient. To do so, the development of linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competences enriched with socio-cultural inputs in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or Second Language (L2) teaching and learning contexts have a significant impact on language learners both to develop their perception as native speakers of English and to facilitate the progress of cognitive skills and capabilities. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a case study to show some of the difficulties in teaching English modal auxiliaries to Turkish students in EFL/L2 contexts which arise not only from structural characteristics, but also from insufficiently developed linguistic, communicative and socio-pragmatic competencies. It is also asserted that only teaching the lexical properties of modal auxiliaries in isolation from their socio-pragmatic and semiotic contexts alone cannot help learners to become successful communicators in the target language as it ends in communication failures, hesitation, a slower L2 progress, fear and misunderstandings. Therefore, role-play activities, cloze tests, research assignments, writing tasks and songs can also be integrated into the teaching-learning process to assist learners to become more aware of their actual authentic usages in a wide range of contexts through different activities. On the whole, this would also free language learners to refer to their First Language (L1) input and shape a broader understanding of the Foreign Language (FL) framed with its actual authentic usage.

Metonymies don’t bomb people, people bomb people

AbstractIn the cognitive linguistic literature, sentences like Nixon bombed Hanoi have long been explained in terms of metonymy, either ‘referential’ (i.e. the NP Nixon metonymically refers to the bomber pilots controlled by President Nixon), or ‘predicative’ (i.e. the verb bomb metonymically refer to the ordering of the bombing). More recently, it has been suggested that such sentences may be better analyzed as slightly untypical literal instances of the transitive construction. In this paper, a corpus-based analysis of the verb bomb is presented, which shows that the usage of this verb is very different and much more heterogeneous than the constructed examples cited in the literature suggest. It is argued that this heterogeneity cannot be coherently analyzed in terms of referential or predicative metonymy. Instead, a non-metonymic account is sketched out based on a general characterization of causative transitives and verb frames from which logical subjects are selected based on salience. This account provides a unified analysis of the phenomenon that even allows us to recognize additionally the existence of referential metonymies in certain cases. The paper contributes to a growing body of research literature that takes the idea of a ‘usage- based’ cognitive linguistics seriously by attempting to test and develop analyses empirically on the basis of authentic usage data.

“‘Ruottiksi’, translated Paul Muotka patiently. ‘Kiitos.’” Mikael Niemi, Meänkieli and Readers Inside and Outside Tornedalen

The present study in the research field of literary multilingualism and literary codeswitching is based on Mikael Niemi's novel Mannen som dog som en lax (2006) [The man who died like a salmon]. The novel is set mainly in Tornedalen, a widely bilingual area in Sweden where many people speak both Swedish and Meänkieli, a national minority language in Sweden since 2000. All instances of codeswitching in the material studied were identified and an analysis, based on Eriksson and Haapamäki's model designed to analyse literary multilingualism and literary codeswitching, was performed. The model consists of three main components: (1) the communicative context of the analysed work; (2) the form of codeswitching in the analysed work; and (3) the possible literary functions of codeswitching in the analysed work. The sender, Mikael Niemi, does not consider himself bilingual and most intended receivers are not bilingual either, even though linguistic conditions are central to the theme of the novel. Swedish is the base language of the novel, while elements of Meänkieli/Finnish, varieties of Swedish, and other languages represent a small fraction of the entire text. Implicit literary codeswitching predominates in the material in the form of metalinguistic comments and contextualization cues. By far the most common type of explicit literary codeswitching is between Swedish and Meänkieli/Finnish. The novel contains examples of literary codeswitching used in attempts to reproduce authentic usage and depict an authentic linguistic setting. In other examples, Tornedalen, Tornedalians and Meänkieli/Finnish are depicted as exotic phenomena compared with the majority society. Likewise, there are examples of how certain passages in the novel may include or exclude readers, depending on their understanding of Meänkieli/Finnish. Certain elements of Meänkieli can be interpreted as expressions of linguistic emancipation and the liberation of identity that empowers speakers of Meänkieli and the community of these speakers.

Minicircle Performance Depending on S/MAR–Nuclear Matrix Interactions

The ideal vector for cell and tissue modification does not depend on integration but rather behaves as an independent functional unit that replicates as an episome. Based on a scaffold/matrix attachment region (S/MAR), we have introduced, in 2006, an ∼ 4-kb replicating nonviral minicircle able to exploit the cellular replication machinery in a way reminiscent of ARS vectors. Consisting of only one active transcription unit and the S/MAR, it resists silencing as it is free of prokaryotic vector parts and drug selection markers. The rate of final establishment in the nuclear architecture is moderate but comparable to Epstein–Barr virus-based episomes (< 5%). Here, we demonstrate that this parameter can be improved if the host cell chromatin is opened by histone hyperacetylation prior to transfection. It remains unaffected, however, by cell cycle position. Still, this class of episomes revealed intrinsic instability and integration after 5 months of continuous culture. In vivo evolution enabled the effective reduction of S/MAR size from 2 kb to 733 bp (resulting in a minicircle of ∼ 3 kb) with largely improved stability and cloning capacity. Investigation of individual clones served to prove persistent and homogenous expression, which is ascribed to stable association with nuclear attachment sites. Optimum expression levels were shown to depend on the authentic usage of a polyadenylation site 3′ from the S/MAR as anticipated by the stress-induced duplex destabilization algorithm, which finds increasing use to predict the functional parameters of these systems.

Converging evidence: Bringing together experimental and corpus data on the association of verbs and constructions

Abstract Much recent work in Cognitive Linguistics and neighbouring disciplines has adopted a so-called usage-based perspective in which generalizations are based on the analysis of authentic usage data provided by computerized corpora. However, the analysis of such data does not always utilize methodological findings from other disciplines to avoid analytical pitfalls and, at the same time, generate robust results. A case in point is the strategy of using corpus frequencies. In this paper, we take up a recently much debated issue from construction grammar concerning the association between verbs and argument-structure constructions, and investigate a construction, the English as-predicative, in order to test the predictive power of different kinds of frequency data against that of a recent, more refined corpus-based approach, the so-called collexeme analysis. To that end, the results of the application of these corpus-based approaches to an analysis of the as predicative are compared with the results of a sentence-completion experiment. Concerning the topic under consideration, collexeme analysis is not only shown to be superior on a variety of theoretical and methodological grounds, it also significantly outperforms frequency as a predictor of subjects’ production preferences. We conclude by pointing out some implications for usage-based approaches.