Confusion In Debate Research Articles

Dangerous dichotomies and misunderstandings in L2 research

This article draws attention to the obstacles created by imprecise definitions and misleading dichotomies. In this case the focus is on second language and multilingualism research literature. Despite the obvious benefits of reformulating otherwise complex ideas and approaches in simpler terms in order to distill their essential meaning, misunderstandings and misrepresentations can too easily arise. These can then proliferate within and beyond these research fields and hinder productive debates between proponents of different theoretical approaches. A selection of classic examples relating to issues of language cognition are discussed in this article. They include definitions of terms like cognitive, nativist, innatist, interactionist, usage-based, and dynamic. Simple contrasts introduced to improve readability and to introduce a longer discussion can become highly misleading where the context fails to include clarification. Incorrect inferences may otherwise be drawn by less well-informed readers. In other cases, dichotomies can be just wrong. We discuss the choice and phrasing of various terms and distinctions and argue that more care is needed by all involved. Discussions can still be carried out in a combative style if discussants so wish but not to the point of introducing conceptual confusion in debates that should serve to advance understanding in second language acquisition research.

Investment Wars: Contestation and Confusion in Debate About Investment Liberalization

ABSTRACT Questions of investment governance are central to current trade wars. The USA complains of China’s use of restrictions on US investment as a lever to force technology transfer, while China complains of the review of investment in the USA on national security grounds. This article examines the place of these debates about investment liberalization within the trade wars. The focus is on US conduct, as the instigator of the trade wars. I argue that the USA is pursuing diverse and partially inconsistent in relation to investment liberalization. In some contexts, the USA is continuing to pursue the objective of removing impediments to outward investment, which was the principal objective of US investment policy for the decades prior to the Trump administration. In other contexts, the USA is seeking to encourage the repatriation of US outward investment and to regulate inward and outward investment according to ill-defined security rationales. I argue that prevailing materialist accounts of the trade wars struggle to explain these inconsistencies. Instead, I suggest that constructivist political economy provides a more promising explanatory framework. According to this view, inconsistency in policy objectives stems from foundational uncertainty about the nature of the ‘problem’ of investment liberalization.

Tunisia, Contested: Italian Nationalism, French Imperial Rule, and Migration in the Mediterranean Basin.

This article explores the contradictions in Italy’s relationship with the Mediterranean basin, taking Tunisia as a focal point. Tunisia was a paradoxical case at the intersection of Italy’s foreign policy: it was a former Roman imperial colony with a strategic location, but it also possessed a large and vibrant Italian emigrant settlement, like the Italian “colonies” of Buenos Aires, Sao Paolo, New York, and San Francisco. This situation caused much confusion in debates over how Italy should develop its international influence. Faced with a choice of priorities, the Italians of Tunisia called for Italy to concentrate on establishing territorial colonies in the Mediterranean, rather than cultivating Italian emigration worldwide. In 1881, France surprised Italy by seizing control of Tunisia, skewing Italian policy and fomenting a sense of weakness and insecurity. Italy’s “loss” of Tunisia encouraged the belief that Italian imperial motives were more deserving and more sincere, and Nationalists used the wealthy and successful Italian community of Tunisia as a model of what Italians would be able to achieve in neighboring Libya. Fascist representations of Italians in Tunisia, however, finally discredited the Italian expatriates’ claims to rights and representation under French colonial rule. This case study thus illustrates how Mediterranean Europe and North Africa became enmeshed in multiple layers of competition and integration through trends in colonialism, migration, and the formation of transnational communities.

Whose Life is it Anyway?

ABSTRACT This paper addresses a current confusion in debates on the morality of experimentation on human pre-embryos: the confusion that arises from ambiguity in the sense of ‘human being’. We may quite legitimately decide to apply the term ‘human being’to all entities with human DNA but in that case we should not then imply that all human beings are as much objects of moral concern as the fetus or a post-parturate human being. It is argued that whatever classifying terms we use, potential entities need to be distinguished from actual entities and that the very notion of potentiality rests on this distinction. The paper does not offer an argument in favour of experimentation, rather it appeals for clear thought. Moral attitudes to experimentation on pre-embryos are varied and attempts to analyse issues through implicit appeal to emotionally ambiguous terms do not help the moral debate.