Comparative Study Of American Research Articles

Language in the courtroom: a comparative study of American and Romanian criminal trials

The goal of this thesis was to analyse the speech event known as witness examination, occurring in the courtroom, in two differing systems of justice, the adversarial (American) and the inquisitorial (Romanian) ones.

Comparative study of American and Korean practitioners’ dissent with perceived unethical management decisions

This study examined how similarly or differently American and Korean public relations practitioners use dissent tactics. The results showed that assertive confrontation was the most frequently adopted tactic among practitioners in both countries. However, Korean practitioners were more likely to work to sabotage implementation of unethical decision, and to leak information to external stakeholders than the US counterparts. This study will shed light on the impact of cultural difference on public relations practitioners’ dissent selection on unethical management decisions.

Are mother–child similarities in value orientations related to mothers' parenting? A comparative study of American and Romanian mothers and their adolescent children

The current study investigated similarities between mothers' and their adolescent children's individualistic and collectivistic values by analysing data from 337 American mother–adolescent dyads and 100 Romanian mother–adolescent dyads. The two countries differ in the degree of socioeconomic and political changes as well as quality of intergenerational relationships, therefore differences in the extent of shared values between mothers and adolescents were expected. Similarities in value orientations between mothers and adolescents may be a result of actual transmission processes, but it may also be due to influences from the general value context in their society, an aspect often called Zeitgeist influence or cultural stereotype. Adolescents' perception of maternal parenting behaviours was hypothesized to moderate the similarities between mothers and adolescents. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that collectivistic values were transmitted more than individualistic values and that stronger value similarities were found within biological dyads compared to randomly assigned dyads or within the peer group. Additionally, maternal acceptance and control moderated the similarities between mothers and adolescents, and associations between perceived maternal parenting and adolescents' values were revealed.

Implications of Honor and Dignity Culture for Negotiations: A Comparative Study of Middle Easterners and Americans

Researchers long have assumed that negotiators give priority to economic outcomes over relational outcomes such as satisfaction with negotiation process and desire for future interactions with the counterpart. However the relational structure of a negotiation may be more or less attended to depending on the importance of relationships within a culture. In this paper, we argue that in negotiations conducted in Middle Eastern culture – which can be considered a culture of honor – relational concerns, processes, and outcomes are more important than in Western cultures. We used a role-playing negotiation exercise with both economic and relational issues at stake to examine the impact of culture and relational context on Middle Eastern and American negotiators’ plans, tactics, insight and economic and subjective outcomes. Results indicate of several relational challenges that Middle Easterners face in negotiations, as compared to Americans, including too much emphasis on face-saving and conflict avoidance when negotiating with familiar others, and too much concern about protection of honor and status leading to misunderstandings, and escalation of emotional conflict when negotiating with unfamiliar others. These relational challenges (concerning face and honor) also had economic consequences by leading Middle Eastern participants to set higher aspirations, be more competitive, exchange information less effectively, and obtain lower joint gains than American dyads. Furthermore we found the economic and social outcomes were not as strongly related for the Middle Eastern negotiators as for the Americans. Unlike the American negotiators, the Middle Eastern negotiators seemed to evaluate their satisfaction with a negotiation only in the light of their subjective experiences such as self-image and quality of relationship built, and their satisfaction was very weakly related to the economic gains of the negotiators.

A comparative study of American and Japanese company brand icons

This study examines brand icons and investigates their similarities and differences across two cultures, American and Japanese. A methodical analysis of both Japanese and American company and brand icons was undertaken using the normative design criteria for effective brand mark design reflected in the marketing literature. Research outcomes show that American and Japanese icons diverge in the proportion of letter mark icons, pictorial elements representative of benefits and conceptual similarity with the company/brand name, with no significant difference in the use of interactive imagery. In addition, American icons tend to be more balanced, more asymmetric, complex in design and more likely to be concrete.

Transamerican Transformations and American Literatures

Continental Divides: Remapping Cultures of by Rachel Adams University of Chicago Press, 2009. 310 pages The turn in American Studies is often traced to early 1990s, when impact of postcolonial studies and global perspectives was being felt even within reputedly isolationist realms of American Studies. Seminal pieces such as Carolyn Porter's What We that We Don't Know and influential essays and collections by Donald Pease, Jose David Saldivar, Doris Sommer, Amy Kaplan, and John Carlos Rowe, among others, articulated growing awareness that did not stand by, or even for, itself, even if most scholars in field (at least in US) seemed to have assumed so. Decentering United States in descriptions of has of course been precisely point of much scholarly and cultural commentary across Western Hemisphere, at least since nineteenth century when US domination became increasingly palpable and inescapable. As Jose Marti famously noted, American octopus was already looming over nuestra America (Our America) by mid 1800s and showed no signs of slowing its drive for economic and political domination of continent. Well aware of these historical and political genealogies, Rachel Adams has taken up baton of comparative American Studies in a lucid and elegant book. Offering a valuable corrective to some of already-solidifying archives and habits of thought that have come to characterize emerging field of study and cultural production focusing on Americas, Adams's book announces its ambitions in a title that turns out to be impressively precise: Continental Divides: Remapping Cultures of North. America. There is nothing accidental about either Adams's emphasis on or active process of remapping, and she mines even seemingly static terms such as cultures and North America for their significance to a project that works from outset to set itself apart from mainstream of Americanist scholarship. As her introduction repeatedly notes, Adams hopes that frame of continent of will underline how nation-states, their borders, and even continent itself are imagined places: i.e., somewhat arbitrary products of a history of contingent and politically charged events and turns. In defamiliarizing continent as a figure in mapping (as opposed to perhaps more standard interrogations of in American Studies), Adams raises interesting conceptual questions that draw on an influential line of hemispheric thought including Edmundo O'Gorman on the invention of America (9) and world systems theory (10) of Anibal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein. In setting up these various threads and sources, introduction to Continental Divides offers a comprehensive overview of transamerican thinking and indicates how history of such thinking informs more specific readings that follow. The nation provides main target of Adams's announced desire to grant new centrality to people and places that have been marginalized by official histories of conquest and nation building, thus bringing a repertoire of texts and subjects into view (7). Similar interrogations of nation-state have been, by many estimations, most transformative angle brought to American studies by transnational approaches. Adams's introduction does an admirable job of explaining how and why her continental frame shifts and critiques reliance on nation as primary rubric of literary and cultural analysis, even as she highlights neglect given to marginalized national entities--Mexico and Canada, especially in relation to one another--in most critical studies of America. The overall organization of Continental Divides thus involves a series of texts and conceptual questions that highlight ambivalent status of national borders in America, where they function as political and affective fictions and/or limits. …

Experts without expertise? Findings of a comparative study of American, British and German-language reviews of musicals by Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber

This essay sums up the findings of a content analysis of 1,824 theatre reviews of musicals by Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber that were published between 1957 and 2002 in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Austria. The study examined the criteria reviewers used and what they were looking for in a musical. The results suggest that instead of reviewing each work on its own terms based on its own aims and merits theatre critics in all countries are clearly influenced by three chief factors when it comes to what aspects of a show are described, interpreted and judged: their own expectations, the journalistic tradition of reviewing in each respective country and the reputation of the artists involved with the production. In addition, in spite of the text-oriented training of most theatre critics, they tend to focus in their articles on the composer and her/his music, although this is not their area of expertise or a field that they are likely to describe with eloquence or precision.

Cultural difference in motivations for using social network sites: A comparative study of American and Korean college students

While the explosive growth of social network sites is a common phenomenon across many countries, the ways people use them and their reasons for doing so may differ depending on their social and cultural milieu, for fundamental values are divergent from culture to culture. This study is an attempt to examine how cultural contexts shape the use of communication technology by examining the motives for and patterns of using social network sites among college students in the US and Korea. The findings of this study suggest that the major motives for using social network sites – seeking friends, social support, entertainment, information, and convenience – are similar between the two countries, though the weights placed on these motives are different. Reflecting the unique social nature of the medium, Korean college students put more weight on obtaining social support from existing social relationships, while American students place relatively greater emphasis on seeking entertainment. Additionally, American college students’ networks in an online social venue are far larger than their Korean counterparts, which may reflect the cultural difference between the two countries regarding developing and managing social relationships.

Public diplomacy games: a comparative study of American and Japanese responses to the interplay of nationalism, ideology and Chinese soft power strategies around the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The Olympic Games are global communication events that offer host-nations the unique opportunity to promote a soft power agenda by allowing them to construct global messages about their cultural identities and work towards public diplomacy goals that may be more difficult to achieve under normal circumstances. At the same time, however, the Olympics accentuate nationalist and patriotic sentiment, especially in host-nations. Nationalist conviction must be conceptually differentiated from support for the national government. Indeed, we suggest that one of the tasks of governments of Olympic host cities is to manage strong nationalist emotions in order that they support the public diplomacy efforts associated with the Olympic Games. In this paper, American and Japanese media responses to the interplay of China's 2008 Olympics public diplomacy efforts and Chinese nationalism are comparatively analyzed for each of three periods: 1) the international torch relay; 2) the 2008 Sichuan earthquake; 3) the Olympic Games. Our findings suggest that in the West, the Chinese nationalism that was prompted by a controversial torch relay overpowered other aspects of the Games and that thus the Olympic Games ultimately gave new power to familiar discourses emphasizing a fear of China. In Japan, on the other hand, the Olympics presented modest, albeit important, new opportunities to test and promote positive portrayals of Sino-Japanese relations

How does culture shape students’ perceptions of scientists? Cross-national comparative study of American and Chinese elementary students

For decades, researchers have been convinced that one stereotypic image of scientists existed among children worldwide (Chambers, 1983; Chiang & Guo, 1996; Fung, 2002; Maoldomhnaigh & Hunt, 1988; Newton & Newton, 1992, 1998; She, 1998; Song, Pak, & Jang, 1992). This study, however, moves beyond that stereotypic image and examines students’ perceptions of scientists. The purpose of this study is to illustrate that students are influenced not only by the personal images they hold of scientists, but also by cultural impressions and the style of the science courses they experience in school. By combining a contemporary perspective and a creative method of analyzing student perceptions, a theoretical understanding of how students interpret scientists and their work was developed. Elementary school children (N=1,350) in the United States and China were enrolled in this study, and drawing exercises were utilized to provide new evidence and a fresh perspective regarding the way students perceive scientists. Based on the findings of this research, more American students included the traditional image of a science laboratory with chemicals in their pictorial depictions of scientists, while Chinese students included robots in their drawings. While students in both countries demonstrated misconceptions about scientists, this study identifies those misconceptions as significantly different, yet inherently related, to students’ individual cultures, contrary to previous studies. This study also demonstrates that a child’s environment can be influenced by their existing culture, and thus learning, or perceiving the role of scientists, can be directly influenced since each classroom is a culture of its own. Finally, this study demonstrates that a child’s sense of who can be a scientist, where scientists work, and what scientists do is influenced by cultural experiences. Today, with fewer students pursuing science careers, these findings are especially noteworthy.

Accenting the French in Comparative American Studies

Although the field of American Studies has expanded beyond the borders of the United States, it continues to marginalize French-speaking cultures in the Americas: Québec, the Francophone islands in the Caribbean, and even Franco-Americans in the U.S. Although this marginalization has been the consequence of historical processes, contemporary francophone theorists in Canada and the Caribbean are now energetic participants in comparative American Studies, remapping their cultures within the Americas and providing a welcome accent to the transcultural process.

Good Neighbor/Bad Neighbor: Boltonian Americanism and Hemispheric Studies

This essay locates the intellectual origins of comparative American studies in Herbert Eugene Bolton's “The Epic of Greater America” (1931). Bolton argued for a hemispheric approach to the study of history and laid the groundwork for a comparative practice with plural perspectives and points of entry. His legacy is not without controversy. In the 1950s the distinguished Mexican historiographer, Edmundo O'Gorman, engaged Bolton in heated debate regarding their different conceptions of the “invention of America,” to use O'Gorman's phrase. Nonetheless, Bolton's work underpins the current practice of Latin American history, U.S./Mexico border studies (particularly as developed by U.S. academics), and, since the 1980s, comparative American studies. The essay concludes by outlining a Boltonian approach to teaching the literature and history of the Americas and calling for a return to a comparative model that foregrounds languages and literary histories.

The Return of the Decolonized: The Legacies of Leopoldo Zea's Philosophy of History for Comparative American Studies

Leopoldo Zea's philosophy of history constitutes a cogent interrogation of the colonial legacy in Mexico and thus also serves to demonstrate the importance of Latin America as a site of theoretical enunciation. This essay addresses Zea's early work on Mexico and his “Discourse on Margination and Barbarism,” putting them in dialogue with Gloria Anzaldúa's more recent theoretical engagement of border culture in order to assess their value as models for what Raewyn Connell calls “Southern theory.” This essay concludes with a discussion of several theorists who present models of comparative American studies compatible with the Southern theory discussed in the previous pages.

The (Neo)Baroque Effect: A Critical Inquiry into the Transformation and Application of a Conceptual Field to Comparative American Studies

This essay was written in 1987 in French by the late Polish theorist and critic Marie-Pierrette Malcuzynski and translated by Wendy B. Faris. Malcuzynski explores the theories of the New World Baroque and Neobaroque developed by the Cuban writers Alejo Carpentier and Severo Sarduy and the Brazilian poet and essayist Haroldo de Campos from the 1960s through the 1980s. Together, they represent a specifically Latin American combination of postmodernism and postcolonialism, a combination that is based in the historical and literary realities of the region. The author moves from a definition of the European Baroque, including a detailed discussion of its various possible etymologies, to the American Baroque and places Carpentier, Sarduy, and de Campos in the company of a number of European theorists to test their American arguments and applications. Mikhail Bakhtin is primary among the European theorists, but Saussure and Kristeva are also central to her evaluation of Sarduy. While Malcuzynski remains critical of certain aspects of these theories, she also implies that their historical rootedness in Latin America and the Caribbean make them more useful analytical tools than, say, Foucault, Lyotard, Bhabha, or Spivak—postmodernist and postcolonial theorists all too eagerly adopted in Latin America after passing through the “gate” of U.S.-American and European academia.

Contribution on the analysis of the environmental disclosure: a comparative study of American and European multinationals

PurposeThis research aims to compare the environmental information that is disclosed in the annual reports of the American and European multinational companies. Eventually, it also aims to try to show the factors which explain the differences.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyzes the annual reports of 72 multinational companies, thanks to the index developed by Wiseman. The paper then uses regression analysis in order to explain the differences.FindingsThe study finds that European multinationals reveal more environmental information than those that are American. Equally, it finds that the nationality of multinational companies seems to have an effect on the level of environmental communication.Research limitations/implicationsThe quantitative data are based on a small sample of multinational companies. However, findings will bring efficient contributions to the other studies dealing with the accounting harmonization.Originality/valueThe study aims at enriching the debates on this question, comparing the environmental information (obligatory and voluntary) showed by the annual reports of the American and European multinational companies.

Global Citizenship and Study Abroad: A Comparative Study of American and Australian Undergraduates

This article presents an essay, where the author examines how two groups of undergraduates, from Australia and the United States, negotiate their national and global identities in the context of studying abroad. Demonstrating the nuances of “global citizenship, ” the author draws on Craig Calhoun’s (2002) scholarship on national identity and Martha Nussbaum’s (2002) philosophical framework of global citizenship. The author further argues for a more complex understanding of the dynamics of nation and globe and for a paradigm of “global citizenship” grounded in critical self-awareness, mutual respect, and reciprocity (Nussbaum, 2002; Gillespie, 2003).

Introduction

Introduction

Location, Context, and Perspective in American Studies

This paper is a case-study analysis of the geography of practice as it functions in American studies. Focusing on the Japanese Association for American Studies fortieth anniversary symposium, 'American Studies in Trans-Pacific Perspective', it shows how the event affords two complementary ways of thinking about the geography of scholarly identity, topics, and practices in American studies, one emphasizing positionality and physical location, the other emphasizing interactions and relational contexts. The paper focuses on the second (and less common) spatialization of Americanist practice, arguing that comparative American studies cannot be adequately understood solely in terms of nationally or regionally defined perspectives. The paper draws attention to the significance of other kinds of scholarly interactions across distance by showing how the apparently specific and located perspective performed at the JAAS symposium depended upon, emerged out of, and is still unfolding within complex, long-term exchanges and networks that stretch far beyond the transpacific.

A New Americanist's supplemental notes to comparativist analyses of the New American Studies

These supplementary notes consider how this issue of Comparative American Studies offers mediations concerning the relationships between national and transnational Americanist practices of the past and into the future, as well as meditations on what affiliates New Americanist scholarship with previous work in the field. Individually and collectively the contributors to this issue, Donald E. Pease argues, demonstrate how the internationalism informing Alan Trachtenberg's American Studies scholarship and the New Americanists' transnational orientation were involved in a relationship of supplementarity rather than mutual opposition.

Poetic Subjects and Grecian Urns: Close Reading and the Tools of Cognitive Science

Previous articleNext article No AccessPoetic Subjects and Grecian Urns: Close Reading and the Tools of Cognitive Science*G. Gabrielle StarrG. Gabrielle StarrNew York University Search for more articles by this author New York UniversityPDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Modern Philology Volume 105, Number 1August 2007 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/587197 Views: 46Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref © 2008 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Arden Hegele Wordsworth's Dropsy: Flux and Figure in The Excursion, Romanticism 24, no.11 (Apr 2018): 36–52.https://doi.org/10.3366/rom.2018.0352Franca Bellarsi ‘Alien Hieroglyphs of Eternity’ and ‘Cold Pastorals’: Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Siesta in Xbalba’ and John Keats’s Great Odes, Comparative American Studies An International Journal 11, no.33 (Nov 2013): 243–264.https://doi.org/10.1179/1477570013Z.00000000044Jane Chance Cognitive alterities: From cultural studies to neuroscience and back again, postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 3, no.33 (Sep 2012): 247–261.https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2012.19Ashby Kinch ‘Mind like wickerwork’: The neuroplastic aesthetics of Chaucer's House of Tidings, postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies 3, no.33 (Sep 2012): 302–314.https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2012.20