Purpose Of Communication Research Articles

A Comprehensive Review of Sign Language Production

Sign languages are made up of phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic levels of structure that satisfy the same social, cognitive and communicative purposes as other natural languages and represent the most used form of communication between hearing and deaf people. Sign Language Production together with Sign Language Recognition constitute the two parts of this process, as Sign Language Production concerns that part of the communication process that goes from spoken language to its translation into Sign Language, while Sign Language Recognition deals with the recognition of Sign Language. In this article, we want to consider some of the most recent and important studies on Sign Language Production and discuss their limitations, advantages, and future developments.

Navigating platformized generative AI: Examining early adopters’ experiences through the lens of data reflectivity

Following the widely noticed launch of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022, an unprecedented number of users have started to experiment with generative AI for communication purposes. Prior studies have shown how users are commodified by platforms, and the unprecedented development of generative AI raises hence once again questions of platform dynamics vs user agency. In this study, we argue that platformized generative AI (GenAI) actively ‘talks back’ to their users, prompting them to act accordingly. Theoretically, we develop the concept of data reflectivity as a critical lens, showing that users exhibit reflective practices. These allow them to reflect upon their own role in relation to platformized GenAI and thus alter their patterns of action. The empirical case study, carried out in Spring 2023, draws on a survey with 60 early adopters and 14 subsequent semi-structured interviews, collected in an NGO operating in Southeast Asia. The thematic analysis shows that users relate to platformized GenAI in three distinct but related ways: (1) as a happy helper to organize and systematize knowledge and information; (2) as a creative tool to generate ideas; and (3) as a conversation partner for personal and life-related matters. In conclusion, we discuss the findings critically in relation to overall platform dynamics and the notion of systems ‘speaking back’ and further suggest that future research should aim to bring the two research fields of datafication and user studies even closer together.

Impact of Honest Signal, Cues, Prey’s Experience Rate and Environmental Toxicity in a Predator–Prey Interaction Model

Biological signaling plays a crucial role in predator–prey interaction systems, serving both intraspecific and interspecific communication purposes. Prey populations utilize signaling internally, employing honest signals among themselves to enhance their defense capabilities. Conversely, they also use signaling for interspecific communication, emitting cues to predators to increase their own chances of survival. Recently, Al-Salman et al. [Appl. Math. Modell. 89, 1405 (2021)] proposed a two-species interaction model incorporating Holling Type II predation along with honest signals and cues. In this paper, we extend and modify their study by incorporating factors such as prey’s experience rate and environmental toxicity in prey populations. We conduct a comprehensive mathematical and numerical analysis of the model. We investigate the positive invariance and dissipativeness of the model, discuss the existence of equilibrium points and analyze the behavior of the system around all equilibrium points. Particularly, we determine conditions for local stability and Hopf bifurcation of the system. Furthermore, we perform a detailed numerical analysis to study periodic solutions through Hopf bifurcations in the proposed system. We plot two-parameter bifurcation diagrams to examine changes in the system with combined effects, identifying critical values for stability switching. There is no chaotic dynamics seen in our investigation. Numerical results indicate that the system tends to stabilize when the experience rate is high, and the rate of error-prone honest signals regulates system stability. Additionally, we analyze how environmental toxicity affects the stability of the system.

The Efficacy of Open Performance Review and Appraisal System on Teachers’ Work Performance in Tanzania. A Case of Selected schools of Vwawa, Iyula and Msangano Secondary Schools in Mbozi District

This study mainly sought to determine the effectiveness of the Open Performance Review and Appraisal System (OPRAS) on Teachers' work performance in the selected secondary schools of Vwawa, Iyula and Msangano in Mbozi district council. The study was also driven by the following main objective, which includes; how the practice of OPRAS has improved the work performance of secondary school teachers in Mbozi district council. A mixed research approach both qualitative and quantitative approach with 93 respondents was employed. Questionnaires and interviews were used to obtain data. Quantitative data was analyzed through descriptive statistics where inferences were presented in the form of frequencies and percentiles. Qualitative information was also analyzed through thematic and content analysis and presented in the form of concepts and narrations. Although Mbozi district has been effectively implementing OPRAS for the past 15 years, active data show that the district has a stable progression performance rate of 30.1 % since 2018 to date. The key variable that was tested was increased teacher commitment. Considerably, this has been established due to constant growth rates of indicators of performance against the performance of teachers from 2018 to 2023. The study recommended that the government should set and engage a realistic budget for training, and empowerment workshops and highly capacitate the Office of the public communications for the purpose of intensifying communication and feedback in public organizations including secondary schools

Unraveling University EFL Teachers’ Feedback Beliefs in Teaching English Argumentative Writing

ABSTRACTTeachers’ beliefs about feedback can affect both the way they provide feedback and its effectiveness in improving students’ writing proficiency. However, research remains scant on belief–practice relationships. This study attempted to fill the gap by investigating such relationships with a sample of 112 Chinese university EFL teachers in teaching argumentative writing. Data were collected through a writing feedback beliefs and practices questionnaire, an argumentative writing teaching beliefs questionnaire, and semi‐structured interviews. The participants were selected using convenience sampling from six universities in Northern China. Quantitative data were analyzed through confirmatory factor analysis, multiple regression, and repeated measures ANOVA to examine the characteristics of these teachers’ writing feedback beliefs and the relationships between the beliefs and relevant practices. Qualitative data from the interviews were analyzed thematically to gain deeper insights into the belief–practice relationships. Results indicated that most teachers believed their feedback was crucial for improving students' argumentative writing, particularly regarding communicative purposes, discourse organization, linguistic expressions, argument construction, and rhetorical techniques. However, a discrepancy was noted between teachers' feedback beliefs and their practices, especially concerning linguistic expressions. These findings highlight the need for targeted support to better align teachers' feedback beliefs with their practices for more effective teaching of EFL writing.

Comparing Australian Message Sticks and Sequentially Marked Objects of the Upper Palaeolithic: Problems and Opportunities.

Engraved portable objects from Upper Palaeolithic and earlier sites are argued to be cognitive tools designed to store information for the purposes of calculation, record-keeping, or communication. This paper reviews the surprisingly long intellectual history of comparisons between these ancient objects and message sticks: marked graphic devices traditionally used for long-distance communication in Indigenous Australia. I argue that, while such comparisons have often been misguided, more cautious applications of ethnographic analogy may yield useful insights. A systematic analysis of historical observations together with more recent fieldwork, indicate that Australian message sticks are primarily tools of social cognition, as opposed to cognition tout court, and rely on orality and other context to become meaningful. Further, the practice of message stick communication may help clarify ongoing problems in the interpretation of Upper Palaeolithic objects including their possible role in aggregation activities, the distinction between decoration and notation, and the interplay between graphic sequences and speech.

Transhuman Communication: Human Augmentation Technologies through Co-Speculation Workshops

The advancement of human-computer integration as a research field promises to introduce transhumanistic ways of communicating through the enhanced abilities of augmented humans. Our work seeks to illuminate this experiential landscape, exploring a diverse set of human augmentation technologies (HATs) for communication purposes. We investigated this topic through four co-speculation workshops focusing on physical, cognitive, sensory and emotional augmentations with 35 participants. Through a reflexive thematic analysis of the workshop data, we outlined eight HAT speculations for transhuman communication, grouped into four overarching augmentation clusters: (1) Bodily Changes in/for Communication, (2) Communication with Transferrable and Collective Beings, (3) Communication through Emotion and Memory, and (4) Communication with Augmented/Altered Perception. By serving as a foundation for discussions on transhumanism and communication in CSCW and beyond, these speculations contribute to a design space highlighting design opportunities and challenges to developing and researching near-future communication technologies.

The supportive nature of Classroom Codeswitching functions in a Mexican EFL higher education language center: Does Codeswitching remain inadequately misunderstood?

Classroom codeswitching continues to be a debatable topic in current education practice as some teachers believe that the alternate codes of two languages in the classroom can conflictive as others view it as positive. Currently, in multilingual societies of the 21st century, codeswitching (CS) is an everyday occurrence where both teachers and learners’ resort to their L1 in order to achieve a specific communicative purpose. From an interactional point of view, this case study deriving from my PhD work, examines how EFL university students are using CS functions for diverse classroom purposes such as equivalence, reiteration, and socializing in a predominantly “only in English” context. Specifically, observation sessions were carried out as these depictions demonstrated what was taking place in the classroom. Field notes are used to triangulate data; therefore, a more in-depth and solid analysis is brought forth as to how these resources are used. Consequently, classroom data was analyzed using an applied CA approach as it yields an explanation of the practices at hand that enable the participants of a conversation to negotiate meaning. Findings support Macaro´s (2014) argument that for CS discourse to be authenticated, it has to be accepted by both parties (teachers and students) in the classroom context. Meaning that CS is utilized for the purpose of learning as well as communication if and only if the participants in the discourse agree that the interaction involving CS is appropriate for the purpose it was intended. This classroom data evidences whether the L1 should be present is a matter, which needs reasoned discussion among policy makers and specifically educators to fully understand the supportive nature of CS in the language classroom. Key words: Code-switching, only in English, code- switching functions, Conversation Analysis Approach, English as a foreign language

Influential academic factors in the integration of ICT in higher education after the COVID-19 pandemic

The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the need to move educational processes to virtual environments and increase the use of digital tools for different teaching uses. This led to a change in the habits of using information and communication technologies (ICT), especially in higher education. This work analyzes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the frequency of use of different ICT tools in a sample of 950 Latin American university professors while focusing on the area of knowledge of the participating professors. To this end, a validated questionnaire has been used, the responses of which have been statistically analyzed. As a result, it has been proven that participants give high ratings to ICT but show insufficient digital competences for its use. The use of ICT tools has increased in all areas after the pandemic but in a diverse way. Differences have been identified in the areas of knowledge regarding the use of ICT for different uses before the pandemic. In this sense, the results suggest that Humanities professors are the ones who least use ICT for didactic purposes. On the other hand, after the pandemic, the use of ICT for communication purposes has been homogenized among the different knowledge areas.

The relative influence of language backgrounds, communicative text types, and disciplines in undergraduate student writing

Abstract Previous studies of undergraduate writing investigated linguistic variation across (i) assignment types, (ii) disciplines, and (iii) language backgrounds. The combined findings of these studies allowed us to formulate eight hypotheses as to how undergraduate writing is likely to vary across these three variables. Three of the hypotheses are as follows: (a) writing in humanities will have more features of ‘academic involvement’, while writing in sciences will have more features of ‘information density’; (b) assignments such as proposals and procedural recounts will have more features of ‘expression of possibility’; and (c) L1 students will use more features of ‘information density’ than L2 students. In the current study, we test these hypotheses, examining whether the language of undergraduate writing varies in accordance with the expectations from previous research. We use the dimensions identified in Goulart (2024) to examine these hypotheses in a corpus of undergraduate student writing. The results provide support for hypotheses related to disciplines and communicative purposes, but not for those related to language backgrounds.

Identity Construction in Fan Community: An Analysis of Online Discourse among (G)I-DLE Fans in Mainland China on Sina Weibo

Fandom has become a social and cultural phenomenon reflecting practical activities in the fan community. The prevalence of social media and online fan communities has facilitated the transnational industries of Korean popular culture (K-pop) in mainland China. Fans are enthusiastic about creating posts dedicated to their idol(s) or music bands to broaden the influence of the celebrities and establish personal connections with them. The unique interaction patterns in the K-pop fan community reflect the process of fans’ identity identification and construction. This article explores how mainland fans employ discursive strategies to construct their identity and legitimize their behaviors on social media. A total of 80 posts in (G)I-DLE Super Topic made by mainland China netizens have been collected from Sina Weibo. The findings illustrate the construction of both individual and collective identities among fans, which are shaped by various contexts and different communicative purposes. Further analysis explores the potential impact of fans' identities within online communities on the K-pop market in mainland China.

Identity Construction in Fan Community: An Analysis of Online Discourse among (G)I-DLE Fans in Mainland China on Sina Weibo

Fandom has become a social and cultural phenomenon reflecting practical activities in the fan community. The prevalence of social media and online fan communities has facilitated the transnational industries of Korean popular culture (K-pop) in mainland China. Fans are enthusiastic about creating posts dedicated to their idol(s) or music bands to broaden the influence of the celebrities and establish personal connections with them. The unique interaction patterns in the K-pop fan community reflect the process of fans’ identity identification and construction. This article explores how mainland fans employ discursive strategies to construct their identity and legitimize their behaviors on social media. A total of 80 posts in (G)I-DLE Super Topic made by mainland China netizens have been collected from Sina Weibo. The findings illustrate the construction of both individual and collective identities among fans, which are shaped by various contexts and different communicative purposes. Further analysis explores the potential impact of fans' identities within online communities on the K-pop market in mainland China.

Data visualisation for decision making under deep uncertainty: current challenges and opportunities

Abstract This perspective article explores the role of data visualisation in decision-making under deep uncertainty (DMDU), a growing discipline tackling complex socio-environmental challenges, such as climate impacts and adaptation, natural resource management, and preparedness for extreme events. We discuss the role of visualisation for both analysis (or exploratory) purposes, as well as communication (or explanatory) purposes, including to stakeholders and the public. We identify a lack of comprehensive guidelines on how visualisations are currently used and their potential in enhancing DMDU processes. Drawing on literature and insights from a recent workshop, we identify key challenges DMDU analysts face when visualising data: managing complexity and dimensionality, effectively communicating uncertainty, and ensuring user engagement and interpretability. We propose a research agenda to address these challenges, by taxonomising and evaluating the effectiveness of different visual forms in decision-making contexts, and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. We argue that, through these efforts, we can improve the communication and usability of DMDU analyses, ultimately aiding in more informed and adaptive decision-making in the face of deep uncertainty.

A Study of Chinese Translation of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language from the Perspective of Grammatical Metaphor

In Systemic Functional Linguistics, grammatical metaphor is categorized into ideational and interpersonal types. Translation, as a process of code-switching, involves choosing between congruent and metaphorical forms, each serving different communicative purposes. Distinguishing these forms clarifies their distinct functions. This paper explores the use and importance of grammatical metaphors in translating The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language based on the author’s independent translation practice. Given this, the study achieves three objectives through quantitative and qualitative analysis: (1) examining the distribution of grammatical metaphors in the translation of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; (2) exploring the reasons behind their emergence; and (3) analyzing the role these metaphors play in the translation. Translation strategies were classified into two types based on the retention of grammatical metaphors: congruent translation, which simplifies the text and reduces metaphors, and metaphorical translation, which sustains a formal, academic, and concise style. The study reveals that the same translation techniques can be applied across various word, sentence, and text types, with different contexts requiring different methods even for identical grammatical and semantic units. Regardless of whether metaphors are retained, it is essential to ensure faithfulness, fluency, and aesthetics of the translation. Translators should avoid rigid application and decide on metaphor preservation based on the specific context and text type to best convey the original meaning.

Conversational leadership in toddler-educator talk and its potential to promote learning

It is well-established that toddlers make sense of things when they talk with their educators. While previous research has explored how educators’ talk shapes young children’s learning, less in known about how toddlers participate in conversations with educators and what learning opportunities their participation affords. In this study, we video-recorded and qualitatively examined naturalistic conversations between 12 two-year-old toddlers and their educators. Attending to both toddlers and educators, we first coded each conversation for its communicative purpose and language features, which allowed us to identify eight types of toddler-educator conversations. We then examined the conversations with a focus on who exercised ‘conversational leadership’, that is who influenced the topic and communication purpose (determined by intent and language features) in each conversation. We found that in three conversation types conversational leadership belonged to toddlers, in another three to educators, and in the remaining two to both. We also examined the potential of each option of conversational leadership distribution to provide toddlers with learning opportunities to either demonstrate their knowledge or create new knowledge. Our findings support a broader understanding of toddlers’ agency in shaping their own learning. The findings can inform and help to validate educators’ efforts to enrich their conversations with toddlers as an effective learning-promoting pedagogy.

Eye closures in spoken Hebrew

Abstract The present study focuses on eye closure (EC) as a communicative facial gesture in Israeli Hebrew media talk and pays particular attention to its coordination with co-expressive verbal, prosodic, and embodied resources. Drawing on the interactional approach to language and embodied action, the study demonstrates that EC can convey four contextual meanings — concentration, hedging, negation, and totality — depending on the context in which it occurs and the verbal material with which it is co-produced. The paper proposes that these contextual meanings are derived from the more general meaning of disengagement conveyed by EC. Moreover, the present paper suggests several potential semiotic connections between the basic physiological use of EC as a reflex of self-protection and evasion and its observed contextual meanings. This provides evidence for the co-optation of the basic functions of facial gestures for communicative purposes via metaphorical-metonymical extensions.

Fault tolerant & priority basis task offloading and scheduling model for IoT logistics

The Internet of Things (IoT) has connected millions of devices to the internet for communication and computation purposes. Due to constraints such as limited battery power, processing capabilities, and storage capacity, IoT devices often rely on remote fog nodes for task execution, a practice known as task offloading. The NP-hard nature of offloading and scheduling IoT tasks onto fog nodes poses significant challenges. Current IoT task offloading often relies on single parameters like device MIPS, RAM, or battery power. Similarly, task allocation on fog nodes frequently prioritizes VM MIPS. To address energy consumption and task failures in IoT systems, robust fault tolerance, efficient task offloading, and effective scheduling are crucial. This paper introduces a novel Fault-Tolerant, Priority-Based Task Offloading and Scheduling Model (FP-TOSM) for IoT logistics. Utilizing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for multi-criteria decision-making, IoT tasks are prioritized. Tasks below a specified threshold are executed locally, while those within a defined range are offloaded to a fog node. Tasks exceeding this range are delegated to the cloud. The Euclidean formula is used to determine the proximity between the IoT logistics vehicle and fog nodes for offloading decisions. Dynamic re-clustering fault tolerance mechanisms are utilized to manage task failures after offloading. Successful offloaded tasks are allocated to suitable VMs in the cloud and fog nodes. The proposed strategy selects the most suitable VM for offloaded tasks using a multi-criteria decision-making process to reduce energy consumption, SLA violations, and execution costs. The model's performance is evaluated through simulations in iFogSim2. Results demonstrate reductions in energy consumption by up to 5.8 % and 10.4 %, decreases in SLA violations by up to 25.2 %, and a 16.28 % improvement in response time compared to an ACO-based model with a response time of 17.8 %. Additionally, the task failure ratio shows a significant reduction of up to 22.1 %. These findings highlight the effectiveness of FP-TOSM in enhancing efficiency and reliability within fog computing environments.

Multifunctional Double Band Mesh Antenna with Solar Cell Integration for Communications Purposes

A dual band flexible antenna based on a circularly polarized modified meshed patch antenna design. This article focuses on some of the most pressing issues in small satellite applications. The antenna optimization and improvement of antenna performance, such as radiation efficiency. As is well known, circular polarization is immune to the Faraday rotation effect in the ionosphere and can thus prevent a 3-dB loss in geo-satellite communication. With the use of the software program Computer Simulation Technology (CST), the proposed circularly polarized modified meshed patch antenna has been created. Therefore, this article also presents a modified design of a circularly polarized meshed patch antenna to reduce the complexity of the antenna and decrease the size as much as it is capable. However, a meshed patch antenna can support a high communication data rate. The antenna architecture will theoretically be consistent with the installation of solar panels. The antenna utilizes a conductive copper as the core material and the substrate using flexible polyimide. The design antenna is very small, having an overall size of 30 * 30 mm when compared to other conventional non-transparent antenna operating at the same frequencies of 2.6, 3.5 GHz. The antenna that is proposed involves two meshed patch elements of same size but in various shapes. Finally, the proposed antenna is integrated into a solar cell by using the amorphous silicon thin film.

New Trust Based Smart Data Forwarding Mechanism in Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network

Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network (VDTN) is the growing field with a considerable possibility to handle future wireless application’s requirements. Using vehicles for the data communication purpose can be contemplated as a substitute for the wired and wireless systems. This paper proposes a trust-based data forwarding mechanism for Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network (VDTN). Data forwarding in VDTN requires every vehicular or stationary node to participate in data forwarding. But some time malicious nodes show non-cooperative behaviour in data forwarding. Therefore, malicious nodes must be identified specifically to accelerate the data forwarding. A threshold based social skeleton membership process along with new trust-based data forwarding mechanism is proposed in this paper. We reveal that the social skeleton members perform better in data forwarding in terms of data delivery ratio, data delay and data overhead. Simulation results demonstrate that the trust-based data forwarding improves the data delivery ratio with trust-based data forwarding approach. After simulation a comparative analysis of two different scenarios is presented with epidemic routing, prophet routing and spray and wait routing.

Code-Switching in Translation: Linguistic Analysis of Multilingual Texts and their Translations

This research explores the occurrence of code-switching in translation, focusing on instances where translators switch between languages within the same textual context, both intentionally and unintentionally. This study investigated the influence of linguistic factors such as language structure, semantic complexity, and intended communicative purpose on code-switching. The analysis employs qualitative methods to identify the strategies and challenges that translators face in managing code-switching. The study reveals that code-switching significantly contributes to semantic and cultural nuances in multilingual texts, emphasizing its critical role in translation accuracy and reader comprehension. The findings offer theoretical understanding and practical guidance for translation practice, enhancing the framework of multilingual translation studies. This research highlights the importance of code-switching in preserving the integrity and richness of multilingual communication in translated works. This study was conducted through the author's personal efforts without any external funding or grants.