Awareness Of Ambiguity Research Articles

Teaching Tip Teaching About Ambiguity in Analytics: A Student-Centered Semester-Long Project to Raise Awareness of Ambiguity by Predicting Student Exam Performance

Teaching Tip Teaching About Ambiguity in Analytics: A Student-Centered Semester-Long Project to Raise Awareness of Ambiguity by Predicting Student Exam Performance

One or many? The grammatical number of suffixed nouns as a text-critical problem

One of the most frequent cases of textual variance in the Hebrew Bible concerns the grammatical number of nouns with suffixes (e.g. ידך‎ ‘your hand’ versus ידיך‎ ‘your hands’). First, this article demonstrates the significant textual instability of the letter yod in the plural or dual morphemes of suffixed nouns and traces some reasons for that. Then, it presents exemplary cases of this variance and discusses some interpretive conclusions drawn from conspicuous grammatical numbers in the research literature. For instance, a widespread theory that distinguishes two kinds of hand imposition rites according to the number of hands used by the performing subject proves to be problematic for text-critical and philological reasons. Finally, the article discusses the appropriate text-critical handling of the problem in general, suggests some guidelines, promotes awareness of ambiguity, and pleads for restraint in drawing far-reaching interpretive conclusions from a specific grammatical number of suffixed nouns.

Teaching Awareness of Ambiguity in Data

The widespread and growing use of analytics has highlighted the need for more data savvy students. One recently identified aspect of data literacy is the awareness of ambiguity in data. This paper outlines a method and initial results for raising awareness of data ambiguity in a short, one lesson, active learning format suitable for business or computer science courses. The paper also includes a summary of prior research on ambiguity, data literacy taxonomies, implications, and suggestions for further research.

The thing most important

Abstract The Zhuangzi is a book that opens to a virtual wilderness of interpretive possibilities begging for exploration by scholars and laypersons alike. What follows here is an adventuresome foray by one of the latter. As such, it is essentially an exercise in creative writing. Since it is our interpretive conclusion that this was precisely what Zhuangzi himself was about, we believe he would smile broadly upon this endeavor however far-afield its proclamations might be. This point is central within this essay. However we engage with Zhuangzi, whether as a dilettante or an academic, it is the engagement that matters most. Conclusions are secondary at best. This having been said, conclusions will be found herein. Ambiguity is the signature characteristic of Zhuangzi’s writing. Awareness of ambiguity as a defining characteristic of the human experience invites us to consider the importance of not-knowing, the thing-left-out, the usefulness of the useless, the prioritization of Yin over Yang, and, most importantly, the experience of inherent emptiness. For Zhuangzi, such an awareness invites a radical paradigm shift away from the cognitive to the visceral. It invites an embrace of emptiness that renders one free of all dependence on being a self in need of itself.

Awareness of Linguistic Ambiguity and Translator Training

As a first step toward understanding the relationship between conscious awareness of linguistic knowledge and translation performance, this study investigated whether enhancement of trainee translators’ awareness of linguistic ambiguity helped them increase their awareness of ambiguity in translation and whether the effects were correlated with the participants’ language proficiency. Forty-six first-year undergraduate students from a translation program received a multiple-choice pretest, a 20-minute awareness-raising lecture focusing on linguistic ambiguity immediately after the pretest, and the same multiple-choice posttest a week later. The results indicated that the participants detected more items with linguistic ambiguity in translation after their awareness of linguistic ambiguity had been increased. However, the participants also judged a higher number of unambiguous sentences as ambiguous in the posttest. Additionally, the increases or decreases in participants’ scores in the posttest were not correlated with their English proficiency. The findings could be accounted for by Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis. The implications for the curriculum design of translation programs as well as directions for future studies are discussed.

The Ambiguous Awareness of Approaching Squeeze-out – Czech Case Study in the EU Perspective

The Ambiguous Awareness of Approaching Squeeze-out – Czech Case Study in the EU Perspective

The Gender Awareness of Oscar Wilde: Comparison between His Women Characters and Men Characters

Oscar Wilde has been well-known in two aspects: an aesthete and a homosexual. This paper intended to indulge in his gender awareness by the comparison between his women character depiction and men character depiction from one of his novels, the Picture of Dorian Grey , and three plays of his: An Ideal Husband, Lady Windermere’s Fan and Salome . In the end, we got a conclusion that his personal life attributed to his ambiguous awareness on the women characters.

The vitriolic blood of a Negro: the development of racial identity and Creole elitism in New Spain and Spanish Louisiana, 1763–1803

This paper shows that the introduction of concepts of whiteness, purity of blood and legitimacy of kin under the Spanish caused a transformation within the New Orleans coloured community. As generations of mixed-race men and women emerged from interracial families established during the late French Period, Spanish social and legal practices permeated the New Orleans cultural landscape. Suddenly, new ideas of racial science, mixture and definition appeared in law, gradually affecting social intercourse. The ambiguous awareness of mulâtres and negres under the French gave way to a regimented taxonomy of ‘races’ and ‘hybrids’ developed over more than a century in Latin America and the Caribbean and manifested in the social and racial identities of the New Orleans mixed-race community.

Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context. By J. Albert Harrill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xv + 208 pp. $25.99 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Paul Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context . By J. Albert Harrill . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2012. xv + 208 pp. $25.99 paper.Book Reviews and NotesThat Saint Paul . . . . He's one who makes all trouble. Anyone who wants to understand that trouble would do well to take up this book, and anyone charged with teaching course on troublesome apostle will find it made for this purpose. That author chooses this line from Hemingway for an epigraph tells us that he, too, wants to stir up bit of creative trouble, in classroom and in academic discourse about Paul. The book is an admirably succinct introduction to current state of Pauline scholarship but wants also to offer an important correction. The book, identified as a historical biography with full awareness of ambiguity of both adjective and noun, is divided into two roughly equal parts: the and the legend.Those address in turn two pivotal insights that emerged in twentieth-century scholarship on Paul. First, to understand life one must know social and cultural context within which that life was lived and by which surviving evidence for it was shaped. Second, to discern significance of life one must explore ways its story was retold and appropriated or resisted by succeeding generations of interested parties.In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship, cultural context of nascent was defined by supposed antithesis between Judaism and Hellenism. Only slowly did we come to realize, by turn of this century, that there were many different ways in which Jewish communities adapted to complex culture of Greco-Roman world, appropriating some elements, resisting others, in order to maintain but reshape their own identities. And little sect and emerging trans-ethnic cult that would become Christianity must be understood--not against that background, but--as indigenous in that dynamic culture. Harrill is fully in accord with that shift of consensus, but he wants to correct it in one important respect: Paul was not only Jew and Greek, he was also Roman . That is subject of chapter 3, which is effectively book's center, and will likely provoke most surprise and resistance. New Testament scholars tend to dismiss notion that Paul might be in any way pro-Roman, as they tend to doubt assertion of book of Acts that he was born Roman citizen. The recent influence of post-colonialist theory has strengthened this tendency; Paul is now commonly seen as deliberately anti -Roman. Harrill will have none of this, dismissing it as wishful thinking (91-94).The key term for Harrill's understanding of Paul's romanitas is Latin auctoritas , which he translates clout or influence. …

Response to Slavin: Considering the Evolutionary and Existential Contexts of Dialectical Constructivism

Within his evolutionary framework, Slavin elaborates eloquently on the dialectic of construction of meaning and anticipation of death. Also within that framework he highlights the emergence of the universal dialectic of self-interest and care for others, perhaps finding its most poignant expression in the relation of parents and children. I raise questions about Slavin's attribution of a “sense of loss” to humans who allegedly long for the experience of evolutionarily earlier species, particularly their sense of automatic connectedness and automatic ways of relating to the world free of the burdens of uncertain, self-conscious choice. A longing for earlier states in human development is easier to grasp than a longing for the experience of less advanced species from which humans evolved. Nevertheless, Slavin's views and my own are otherwise deeply compatible, particularly his sense of what emerges as the uniquely human challenge of intersubjective construction of meaning in the context of individual self-interest and in the face of death. Slavin is also emphatic that the pervasiveness of absolute belief systems that preempt awareness of ambiguity, the anxiety of freedom, and the dread of death, does not gainsay their defensive nature. I argue, in accord with Altman, Butler, and others, that denial of death may promote dissipation of communal sensibility and replacement of it in a capitalist world (and perhaps others as well) with destructive splitting and fetishistic, competitive pursuit of money and power.

Narrative Gerontology: A Post-Modern Reading of the Latter Stage of Life: A Conversation with William Randall

Contrary to the conventional view of aging as a story of inevitable decline, William Randall and his colleagues at St. Thomas University in Fredricton, New Brunswick, are busy investigating and promoting an alternative view of aging as the “post-modern stage” of life—when a storied awareness of ambiguity opens possibilities for wisdom, “positive” irony, and soulful connections with others. This interview explores the concepts and practices that contribute to this richly hopeful conception of the generative “inner story” of the older adult.

Reading Rural Consumption Practices for Difference: Bolt-holes, Castles and Life-rafts

Based mostly on evidence from the UK, this paper challenges the rural’s usual association with predominantly conservative politics and practices. It advocates showing awareness of ambiguity in how representations, and specifically in this paper rural representations, and their numerous associated consumption practices are interpreted. A focus is given on the possibility of interpreting these practiced rural representations in the context of responses to the negative features within everyday life identified by writers such as Lefebvre. Drawing specifically on the “postmodern Marxism” of Gibson-Graham (2006), and particularly beginning to deploy what they term “reading for difference rather than dominance”, the paper introduces three “styles” of consuming the rural. These are expressed via the metaphors of bolt-hole, castle and life-raft, and it is argued that they can be read as expressing critique of urban everyday life. In the concluding section, the lessons learned from reading rural consumption practices for difference in this way are brought together to suggest that not only can the rural today be regarded as an active “heterotopia” but that this alternative status could be used to underpin an urban-focused social movement for reclamation of what Lefebvre termed “every-day life”.

Implicit awareness of ambiguity: A role in the development of obsessive–compulsive disorder

The cognitive–behavioral model of obsessive–compulsive disorder proposes that obsessional symptoms are the consequence of the manner in which intrusive cognitions are interpreted [e.g., Salkovskis, P. M. (1998). Cognitive–behavioral approach to understanding obsessional thinking. British Journal of Psychiatry, 173(35S), 53–63]. The present study suggests that this may be attributable to maladaptive implicit cognitive processing, a deficit that results in the explicit awareness of ambiguity in idiographic obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) stimuli. The present study examines decision-making responses of low and high OCD scorers in a non-clinical undergraduate sample. Via a computer console, participants were shown sentence statements for three levels of ambiguity. They were then presented with a propositional statement for which they had to indicate agreement or disagreement for sentences of varying ambiguity. After this, the participants indicated whether they were completely confident or unconfident as regards their previous agree–disagree decisions. Results indicate that the high compared to the low OCD scoring group had less agreement and subsequent less confidence in decisions made for sentences of varying ambiguity. Response latencies partially fitted the predicted hypotheses. Consequently, an addition to Salkovskis, Forester, and Richards’ [1998. Cognitive–behavioral approach to understanding obsessional thinking. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 173(35S), 53–63] model of OCD is suggested: namely that an implicit ambiguity deficit mediates the likelihood of normally occurring intrusions developing into abnormal obsessions. Methodological limitations and future research are considered.

Employee experiences of acquisition processes

This paper addresses multiple employee interpretations during acquisition processes. The overall purpose of the paper is to use an ambiguity approach to further the understanding of how employees interpret the postacquisition process. Unlike much of the present research, which relies on stereotypical experiences gleaned from management, this study examines acquisitions largely from an employee viewpoint. Rather than denying inconsistencies and confusion through more or less simplified stereotypical interpretations, an ambiguity approach is used as a conceptual lens to bring these inconsistencies to the surface and examine them as potential key characteristics for a more subtle understanding of the human side of acquisitions. An ambiguity approach can thus help managers during acquisitions by raising the awareness of the existence of ambiguity and multiple interpretations of the acquisition process. For example, it can help to avoid illusions of familiarity that nearby cultures and acquisitions within the industry may bring about. Such illusions could add to ambiguous interpretations. Awareness of ambiguity can also bring managers to focus on issues that may risk losing key people in the acquired company.

CONSTRUCTING AIDS POLICY IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

A male hemophiliac, who had contracted AIDS through a contaminated blood product, enrolled as a senior student in an Illinois public high school. The disruptive reactions that had emerged in similar situations were averted. The 13 processes that were primarily responsible for the successful integration of the student into the school system are delineated, illustrated, documented, and interpreted. Four methods—inside participant observation, analysis of documents, interviews, and survey questionnaires—were used to investigate the situation. The findings have implications for three areas: (a) the use of multiple methods in researching large social systems, (b) the sociological understanding of “overt ambiguous awareness contexts,” and (c) policies for the management of schoolchildren with AIDS. This study appears to be the first to intensively examine the reaction of an educational community to a student with AIDS while the reaction was actually emerging. Other studies have been retrospective.

Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville by David S. Reynolds (review)

Book Reviews119 self-interest is the determining force in social and political affairs and selfpreservation and disaster inscribe the boundaries of human destiny. In spite ofits considerable virtues, Reeve's study is altogether too predictable to constitute a vigorously new reading of Kleist. In terms of method and argument, it is standard fare in the world of Kleist criticism. To a rather long list of oppositions that have been said to structure and inform Kleist's world, Reeve adds the alternatives of self-preservation and disaster. This is not a major contribution to our understanding. Reeve's study also works against itself. It simplifies and reduces Kleist's world to a recurring character type who dominates the dramatic action. This is ironic in view of the fact that, according to Reeve, Kleist attempted to question and thus to complicate the dominant eighteenth-century view of man. More importantly, Reeve's study stands in contrast to what others have claimed Kleist does so well—namely, question the nature ofpower itself. French critic and novelist Hélène Cixous, for example, maintains that Kleist's plays do not represent political reality as much as they try to change it (The Newly Born Woman, Minneapolis: U ofMinnesota P, 1986, 98-123). Like other critics who argue that Kleist's works are more ambiguous than pessimistic, Cixous suggests that Kleist must be read with the awareness of ambiguity and equivocal meaning. Only in this way can we perceive Kleist's belief in the possibility of human relationships that are not based on power struggles and the vicissitudes of self-interest. Reading Kleist across Reeve across Cixous returns to Kleist the undecidability and ambiguity that continually justifies and rejuvenates our critical reading of his work. This ambiguity evaporates in Reeve's analysis. LYNN WORSHAM University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee DAVID S. REYNOLDS. Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age ofEmerson and Melville. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988. 625 p. Reynolds traces the motifs ofclassics such as Moby-Dick and The ScarletLetter backward to the popular literature of the period, thereby showing the transformations of crude and sensational popular images and themes into the substance of complex and philosophically probing masterpieces. He first explains his approach, then proceeds by focusing on four main types ofpopular writing (religious, sensationalist, feminist, and humorous), and concludes by explaining the relevance of such criticism to current attempts at revaluing the canon. He also classifies the popular literature written between 1800 and 1860 into Conventional, Subversive, and Romantic Adventure modes, and then subdivides Romantic Adventure into "its two predominant forms, Moral Adventure and Dark Adventure" (183). In spite of all his classifying, Reynolds is far from being a dry taxonomist. 120Rocky Mountain Review In the book's first part, for example, he details the "widespread shift in the style of popular religious discourse from the doctrinal to the imaginative" (15), from the rational preaching ofthe Puritan fathers to the emotional and hyperbolic sermons ofFather Taylor, the prototype for Father Mapple in MobyDick . In part 2, "Public Poison: Sensationalism and Sexuality," Reynolds shows that "The major writers were not, as is commonly believed, aliens in a literary culture of prudery or clear moral distinctions. Rather, they were responding to a heterogeneous culture which had strong elements of the criminal, the erotic, and the demonic" (169). In part 3, Reynolds turns to women's writings, and here again he finds greater diversity and influence than had been commonly supposed until recently. In part 4, Reynolds describes "a widespread carnivalization of language," "a sudden linguistic freedom" (444) that led to distinctive forms of popular humor: frontier, radical-democrat, urban, and nautical. More extensive summaries of Reynolds' "partially completed enterprise" can be found in two review essays: Patrick Brancaccio's "Restructuring the Renaissance" (American Quarterly Dec. 1988: 556-62) and Frederick Crews' "Whose American Renaissance?" (New York Review ofBooks 27 Oct. 1988: 68-81). Unlike Brancaccio, who reviews only Reynolds' book, Crews also assesses half a dozen other books about the period. Read in the context of those other books and considered in the light of recent changes in literary theory and criticism, Beneath the American Renaissance strikes Crews as being "ambitious...

An Investigation of the Consequences of One Feature of Teacher-Child Talk for Children's Awareness of Ambiguity in Verbal Messages

The aim was to identify features of 5-and 6-year-old children's everyday lives which contribute to their understanding about the requirements of effective verbal communication. An analysis of naturalistic data comparing talk to children at home and at school indicated several features of adultchild talk occurring frequently at school but rarely at home. One such feature was the asking of question sequences intended to elicit a particular answer. The teacher continued to ask questions until that answer was supplied. In an intervention study we investigated whether this use of extended question sequences promoted children's understanding of ambiguity. The results showed that it did. There was also learning during the training itself. This feature of teacher-child talk may promote understanding of ambiguity because it draws children's attention to a distinction they often fail to make: between the speaker's intended meaning and the verbal message used to convey that meaning to a listener.

An investigation of the effects of prior knowledge on comprehension of discourse by good and poor comprehenders

Abstract This study replicated a study conducted by Anderson, Reynolds, Schallert, and Goetz (1977) with two modifications: 1) Subjects were education majors, and 2) the study compared the performance of good and poor comprehenders. The subjects were thirty freshmen and sophomore students enrolled in two reading improvement classes who had attained stanine scores ranging from 2 to 6 on the Iowa Silent Reading Test (ISRT) comprehension subtest. Participation in the study was voluntary. The purposes of the study were to determine the effects of prior knowledge on whether good comprehenders, in comparison to poor comprehenders, 1) would exhibit superior interpretations of written discourse, and 2) would exhibit a superior level of awareness of ambiguity in the experimental passages and recall significantly more idea units. The findings were consistent with the assumptions of Anderson et al. (1977) that schematic interpretations have a high relationship to prior knowledge of the subjects. A significant difference was found for passage order. Sex of student was found to influence the number of idea units identified for both passages. No significant main effects for background knowledge on passage interpretation were found. No significant difference was found for performance of good and poor comprehenders on the experimental passages.

Comprehending ambiguity in the sentence-verification paradigm: Basic process or problem solving?

A linguistic ambiguity experiment using a sentence-verification procedure was performed to determine whether and how subject awareness of ambiguity affects response latency and error. Results showed a decline first in errors and then in latencies for the one sentence pair type most likely to fool subjects (the “ambiguous-unexpected” type), thus supporting the hypothesis that subjects who are aware of ambiguity attempt to jointly minimize latency and error (Pachella, 1974). The findings suggest that research in this area, instead of revealing “basic” information-processing mechanisms, may instead reflect conscious subject strategies adapted to an idiosyncratic context.

Assessing Awareness of Ambiguity in the Sentence-Verification Paradigm

Following a replication of Cairns's 1973 linguistic ambiguity experiment, a funnel type questionnaire was given to subjects to assess their awareness of ambiguity. Results showed that virtually every subject discovered the presence of ambiguity early in the course of the experiment. Since awareness diminishes subject naivete and stimulates problem-solving behavior, it was argued that the basic language-processing models used to explain earlier research of this sort are probably incorrect.