The present essay is an extensive commentary on one of the most striking and, due to the time of its writing (1934), controversial texts by Ivan Sollertinsky, “Fascism and Music”. For decades, this text was known only by its title, and information about it was available solely thanks to the detailed catalogue of Sollertinsky’s publications, compiled by O. Geinina and published in the collection In Memory of Sollertinsky. The republication of this text has now become possible primarily due to the digital archive of the newspaper Izvestia. The text of Sollertinsky’s republished article is interesting in many respects. Above all, it is informative, despite the inevitable marks of its time and the revisions that history has made to the evaluation of certain names and phenomena. In any case, it offers a kind of snapshot of events at a particular moment in time, which can then be complemented by more recent facts and contemporary assessments. The third of the text’s four sections appears to be the most valuable: it discusses the Italian dopolavoro movement. Moreover, the publication of this newspaper piece coincided chronologically with Sollertinsky’s 1934 essay on Arnold Schoenberg, which is undoubtedly one of his most valuable texts. Therefore, it is legitimate to compare these two texts from 1934 not only in terms of their shared focus — namely, their fierce rejection of Nazi tendencies in culture — but also in their differences: in style, argumentative structure, and in the depth and subtlety of their presentation. Finally, in the context of other publications in the official metropolitan press, the text by Sollertinsky presented to today’s reader stands out for its vivid artistry, which is characteristic of his finest writings.

The object of consideration in this article is the peculiarities of functioning of texts in the state language of the Russian Federation in their official-legal variety in legal-linguistic coverage, the subject is the conflict potential of these texts created on the basis of the official style of the modern Russian language. The purpose of the study is to identify and typologize, based on the generalization of data from linguo-expert practice, the most conflict-provoking genres of official communication, the reasons for the communicative failures of developers of legislative and creators of administrative texts, the conflict potential of which, laid down at the development stage, becomes an obstacle to their effective functioning in society, as well as ways to minimize them in real law enforcement practice. The material of the study is more than 20 controversial texts of the official sphere of different levels that have undergone the procedure of linguistic research in non-governmental expert organizations of Altai Krai. The text material was analyzed based on a comprehensive linguistic analysis, including the method of semantic and structural-logical analysis of the statement, techniques for interpreting the meaning and construal of the meanings of the elements of the statement, as well as the method of linguistic analysis that helps to determine the contextual meaning of language units used in the statement, their lexical-semantic, grammatical and syntactic properties and functions. Reference to the regional and national Russian practice of linguistic research of legislative and administrative-managerial texts, as well as reviews of judicial practice on issues arising during the consideration of cases related to the interpretation of a controversial fragment of the text of a legislative act, made it possible to identify genre varieties of documents that have realized conflict potential during their application (85% ‒ texts of administrative genres, 5% ‒ legislative; 10% ‒ "semi-official" texts created by private individuals and lacking official status).), and to determine the reasons that reduce the effectiveness of legislative texts. Among the most pressing is the failure of developers to focus on the addressee, ignoring the ambiguity of possible interpretation of bulky constructions of legislative texts, admissible alternatives for securing the norm of the law in the process of its implementation, which leads to interpreting the document in everyday practice.

Averroes’ kalām treaty, the Kitāb al-kašf ʿan manāhiğ al-adilla is one of the most controversial texts from the Andalusian philosopher. Its writing relied vastly on Aristotelian texts and opuses from the aš‘arite kalām, of which Averroes wanted to deconstruct and refute the doctrines. Most of its references – whether they are Aristotelian or ašʿarite are not explicitly quoted – are consistent with the medieval Islamic customs. Having published between 2005 and 2007 an analysis of the Aristotelian sources of this text, this contribution aims at studying the ašʿarite authors critiqued by Averroes and broadly mentioned as the ‘modern ašʿarites’. The main source discovered through this textual comparison is the Kitāb al-Niẓāmī fī usūl ad-dīn by Abu-Bakr Al-Fūrakī, author of a kalām treaty of which a single copy has been conserved in Istanbul. A transcription and a translation of its most salient excerpts have been included in this contribution, in order to show the relationship between those two kalām treaties.

Due to the rapid proliferation of social media and online reviews, the accurate identification and classification of controversial texts has emerged as a significant challenge in the field of natural language processing. However, traditional text-classification methodologies frequently encounter critical limitations, such as feature sensitivity and inadequate generalization capabilities. This results in a notably suboptimal performance when confronted with diverse controversial content. To address these substantial limitations, this paper proposes a novel controversial text-detection framework based on stacked ensemble learning to enhance the accuracy and robustness of text classification. Firstly, considering the multidimensional complexity of textual features, we integrate comprehensive feature engineering, i.e., encompassing word frequency, statistical metrics, sentiment analysis, and comment tree structure features, as well as advanced feature selection methodologies, particularly lassonet, i.e., a neural network with feature sparsity, to effectively address dimensionality challenges while enhancing model interpretability and computational efficiency. Secondly, we design a two-tier stacked ensemble architecture, which not only combines the strengths of multiple machine learning algorithms, e.g., gradient-boosted decision tree (GBDT), random forest (RF), and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), with deep learning models, e.g., gated recurrent unit (GRU) and long short-term memory (LSTM), but also implements the support vector machine (SVM) for efficient meta-learning. Furthermore, we systematically compare three hyperparameter optimization algorithms, including the sparrow search algorithm (SSA), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and Bayesian optimization (BO). The experimental results demonstrate that the SSA exhibits a superior performance in exploring high-dimensional parameter spaces. Extensive experimentation across diverse topics and domains also confirms that our proposed methodology significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches.

The article discusses the nature of destructive discourse in respect of linguistic expertise. Discourse is defined as a text corpus, fragments of which have semantic convergence and intertextual connection, expressed by special pragmatic and semantic markers. It is concluded that the study of controversial texts as elements of a particular discourse must be carried out within the framework of the pragmasemantic paradigm. To do this, the expert must determine the influence of pragmatic factors on the nature of the conveyedmessage, as well as identify lexical and semantic means that were used to implement communicative tasks. The asset of this approach is in taking into account such specific properties of discourse as intentionality, interactionality and social conditioning. It is established that destructiveness is the most important category that defines the pragmatics of discourse. The article defines the content of the category "destructiveness" in the scope of philosophical concepts, considers the factors of destructive behavior from the point of view of physiology and genetics, defines the mental and socio-cultural foundations of destructiveness. In relation to legal linguistics, the author understands destructiveness as a characteristic of discourse, in which the addressee uses conflictogenic speech technologies that provoke the addressee to illegal actions. Accordingly, destructive discourse is a special type of discursive practice, where the subject of speech generation is a delinquent linguistic persona, and the product is a conflictogenic text corpus, the content of which has signs of illegality. Destructive discourse has a symbiotic nature and is implemented within the framework of religious, ethnic, racial, political and other discourses. When studying controversial texts of various types of discourse, experts primarily identify statements containing offensive nominations and public calls for violent actions against representatives of other races, ethnic groups, faiths, as well as markers of propaganda of exclusivity, superiority or inferiority of citizens on one or another basis.

Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason has been a controversial text within Kant scholarship since its earliest reception. One of the main reasons for the critical reception relates to Kant’s theory of radical evil and the notion of propensity to evil connected therewith. It has become a commonplace in Kant literature to attribute these Kantian doctrines to a sort of late concession to Christian theology, as can be observed in the tenor of the reception by e.g. Goethe, Schiller and Michalson (1990), among others. Against this view, I aim to show in this article that the most striking and controversial claims contained in Kant’s doctrine of evil, namely the assumption of an intelligible deed, the universality of evil in humans as well as the inextirpability of the propensity to evil, can be accounted for by paying attention to the systematic relation between Kant’s notions of Anlage and Hang and the key trait distinguishing them, namely practical objectivity. By doing so, it shall become clear that Kant’s main contentious claims in Religion I can be sufficiently explained by systematic commitments of his own critical moral philosophy, thus rendering the references to Christian theology found in secondary literature superfluous.

Amidst the backdrop of rising censorship legislation, it is important to understand the influence of teachers’ particular contexts on their perceptions of potentially controversial texts and subsequent instructional choices. This study explores five in-service teachers’ acts of positioning observed in year-long antibias antiracist professional book club, which facilitated educators’ access to such texts and opened space for imagining ways to incorporate them into classroom practice. The findings illuminate how teachers positioned their school’s moral framework, their responsibilities towards families, and specific texts as possible for classroom use. Furthermore, this study prompts critical reflection on the role of facilitators in revising contextual storylines while highlighting the persistent challenges of breaking free from entrenched storylines in pursuit of antibias antiracist pedagogy.

One of the most controversial texts in the history of biblical interpretation relating to women's participation in church teaching and leadership is 1 Timothy 2:11-12. This text is seen as completely inconsistent with the total testimony of the NT. The Complementarian group used this text as the basis for prohibiting women from teaching and leading in the church. Meanwhile, the Egalitarian group believes that Paul's statement in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is not a manual for church order that must be applied universally to limit women's ministry in all times and places. This research analyzes the text of 1 Timothy 2:11-12 regarding the debate on women's leadership in the church. The method used is exegesis, with the aim of finding meaning according to the original author's intentions when the text was written. The results of this research found that there are certain women who have exercised authority with dominance that demeans men. For that reason, Paul instructed certain women not to teach and command men.

Abstract A pedagogical essay reflecting on forty years of teaching Huckleberry Finn at both the high school and college level, recounting the author’s first experience teaching the novel, the expansion of the canon and the way that puts the novel in a broader context, and the importance of performing the dialect speech of various characters, modeling for students the way to read the novel for themselves. Even in perilous times for teaching controversial texts, the author suggests ways to teach Mark Twain’s masterpiece sensitively and effectively.

This article delves into the significance of children engaging with banned books, illuminating how such literature fosters a multifaceted learning experience. By navigating through various thematic lenses, this discourse reveals the manifold advantages of allowing young readers to explore these controversial texts. From cultivating independent thought and fostering diversity appreciation to nurturing resilience and championing freedom of expression, the analysis showcases the profound impact of banned books on children's cognitive and emotional development. Through their portrayal of real-life challenges and provision of diverse perspectives, these books serve as windows into the complexities of the human experience. Additionally, the article underscores their role in addressing mental health struggles, fostering empathy, and humanizing marginalized individuals. By exploring these subheadings, this study offers a comprehensive exploration of how embracing banned books equips children with the tools to better understand themselves, their peers, and the world around them.

ABSTRACT This essay examines the ways that controversial texts were read by reader-critics who sought to engage with their reading in new ways in the eighteenth century. It takes as its primary example An Apology for the Life of George Anne Bellamy (1785), the autobiography of a woman actor in mid-eighteenth-century Britain. Bellamy was praised for her sentiment but criticized for her representation of facts, despite the fact that where her descriptions can be corroborated they are generally accurate. In addition to examining published critical reactions, this essay looks in depth at the annotations of two early readers in a surviving copy of the book to document how hostile readers read works like Bellamy's Apology in order to judge, correct, or otherwise speak back to the author in a kind of dialogue. This essay suggests that women writers like Bellamy were particularly susceptible to the hostile reader because of more general distrust of women as reporters of fact, and that hostile readers were particularly interested in controversial texts that prompted engagement.

Twentieth-century novels present sexuality as a source of mystifying pleasure often challenging the conventions of heterosexual relationships by presenting a plot with elderly men captivated by much younger women. Alternatively, we should read those controversial texts as a Neo-Platonic exercise wherein Beauty itself recalls virtue and the more beautiful something is the more it is identifiable with the divine. Consequently, to those who managed to attain, by contemplation, the pure beauty, such contemplation would resemble a revelation of some sort. In the end, much the same way as plants naturally seek out sunlight, man before death reconciles all desires with a longing for God.

The study examines data from surveys and interviews with educators in rural school settings in the Midwest and their use of texts that are deemed controversial with middle and high school students. Qualitative research was conducted with research participants to document how they defined controversial literature, how they used the literature in their school settings, and how they navigated opportunities and challenges for themselves and their students. Extensive quotations from the research participants are used to demonstrate how they define controversial texts, how they use strong pedagogical processes to assist students in learning about specific topics, and important themes about why they continue to teach using controversial literature. In the process of conducting the research, the investigators learned about how voice and choice are used with students for book selection and research topics to assist the teachers in examining topics that can be viewed by those in rural settings as controversial. While acknowledging that some texts could not be used for direct instruction in their setting, each of the research participants believed it was their responsibility to continue using most of the titles of texts cited, assisting students as they researched thought-provoking topics, and discussing the content in order for students to learn the most possible about race, cultures, ethnicities, and other sometimes controversial topics. The educators’ thinking about the research topic and its importance for “growing good humans” is a critical construct stemming from the study.

The article discusses a number of problems related to the interpretation and application of certain types of speech torts. In particular, the author's opinion is given on the interpretation of the concept of "another form that contradicts the norms of morality and ethics", on the differentiation between opinions and statements as parts of publications in Internet blogs. The author expresses the opinion on the necessity of taking into account the context of publication placement when determining the intention of the author of a controversial text, gives examples from personal work experience, and also emphasizes the need of unifying linguistic knowledge to eliminate existing discrepancies in the interpretation of the concepts used. The paper provides examples from the author's personal experience as a forensic linguist.

This study examined the extent to which prior beliefs and reading instructions impacted elements of a reader’s mental representation of multiple texts. College students’ beliefs about childhood vaccinations were assessed before reading two anti-vaccine and two pro-vaccine texts. Participants in the experimental condition read for the purpose of integrating across the texts, while those in the control condition read for comprehension. Participants completed a vocabulary assessment then post-reading essays, which were scored for the quality of argumentation and organization. Results indicated that those who were instructed to integrate, held accurate beliefs about vaccines, and demonstrated higher vocabulary knowledge tended to write more organized essays. Participants with inaccurate beliefs about vaccines produced essays that were more incoherent and polarized, even when asked to integrate texts. Although prompting readers to integrate might generally contribute to a more organized mental representation, a more robust intervention may be needed when misconceptions are present.

The article concentrates on the study of the well-known call-slogan Beet the Jews, save Russia, which was published as a comment to the text in the social network "VKontakte". In the course of a preliminary study, it was found that this statement contains linguistic signs of motivation in the form of a call for active action against a group of people. However, it is not possible to say unequivocally which group of people these actions should be aimed at, since in the analyzed context (text-stimulus + text-reaction) it is possible to have a double understanding of the noun жид ‘Jew, Kike, Yid’: a group of people in relation to their nationality or a group of people, with which the greedy deputy is associated. To answer the question of whether the noun жид could really be used by the author of the disputed text in the meaning of a 'greedy person', data from the Russian national corpus were analyzed in the period from 2002 (herein Law N 114-FZ "On Couneraction of Extimist Fctivities" was enacted) through 2021. Linguistic analysis of the controversial text, analysis of the comments of the author of the controversial text to other stimulus texts, data from the Russian national corpus led to the conclusion that in the analyzed commentary the noun жид is used in the meaning of ‘Jew’. Consequently, the controversial text contains linguistic signs of expressing several types of meaning: humiliation of a group of persons in relation to their nationality; an inherent threat that poses a danger not to the addressee, but to third parties (Jews); inducements in the form of a call for violent actions against a group of persons in relation to their nationality.

A Response to the Responses John T. Pawlikowski (bio) At the outset, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to those who offered their incisive reflections on my article. They have written from the experience of many years of work on the issues raised by the long history of antisemitism in Christianity as well as in civil society. Each respondent brought vital questions and issues to the forefront in this complex discussion of the history and continued presence of antisemitism across the globe. They have added in different ways to an understanding of the wide contextual setting for this profound social disease, which has often reduced Jews to spiritual skeletons. All have constructively expanded our discussion of antisemitism. Let me make one important point at the beginning of this response. My original article was never intended to serve as a comprehensive introduction to the topic of antisemitism. Hence, my colleagues have expanded the parameters of my own article in important ways. My principal goal in writing my essay was to ask whether antisemitism has been successfully removed from Christian self-understanding in the almost 60 years that have passed since the issuance of Nostra Aetate at Vatican II. My personal answer is no, and I appreciate that all of the contributors to this forum, many of them with extensive experience in Christian-Jewish dialogue, [End Page 394] confirm my basic judgment and agree that considerable work still awaits the Christian community if antisemitism is finally to be removed from its basic proclamation. Readers will hopefully see that the cleansing process cannot be completed without a clear repudiation by Christian churches of the biblical texts and the widespread patristic teaching that laid the foundation for the theological gutting of the Jewish religious tradition and the social marginalization of Jews as a people throughout history. While today's patristic and biblical teachings about Jews and Judaism may not be overtly taught and preached as they were for centuries, the influence of this historic denigration on the consciousness of the Christian community will not be fully extricated without a clear repudiation of these texts. As I indicate in my article, the late Raymond Brown began such a process by unequivocally asserting that the passages in the Gospel of John in which Jews are described as under satanic influence can no longer be used in catechesis or liturgical celebration. Several contributors to this forum have rightly acknowledged certain Catholic documents, such as the statement on the Holocaust issued by the Holy See's Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews titled We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah1 and the controversial text released by the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) titled Dominus Iesus,2 caused dismay both within segments of the Catholic community as well as its ecumenical and interreligious partners, including Jews. Both documents created ambiguity regarding the Vatican's supposed new commitment to ecumenical and interreligious dialogue after centuries of promoting the notion of Catholic superiority. With regard to Dominus Iesus, several prominent Catholic leaders, such as Cardinals Walter Kasper and William Keeler, argued that the document did not pertain to the Jews but rather to certain situations in Asia. The logic of the document seems to include all who do not identify with Catholicism as their basic belief system. We Remember clearly refers to the Catholic-Jewish relationship. This document falsely claims that antisemitism was a marginal [End Page 395] Catholic outlook perpetuated by fringe and rogue elements in the Church. It also maintained that during the Shoah antisemitism was largely the work of pagans who attacked all religious belief, whether Christian or Jewish. Such statements are patently false in light of the historical record. There has been a persistent effort by some in the Church to say that antisemitism only took hold in deviant sectors of Catholicism. I recall a visit some years ago to Strasbourg, France, and its famous cathedral. The edifice is known for its face, which contains a depiction of the Christian-Jewish relationship through two women, one being young and vibrant representing Christianity and the other old and bedraggled holding a...

Ian McEwan is the writer of the most controversial texts of the contemporary British fiction. One of the outstanding examples of his literature of shock, McEwan’s The Cement Garden, is a challenging narrative in the sense that it depicts the disturbing experiences of a family, ranging from incest to death. The fact that these experiences are narrated through an adolescent boy’s point of view makes these even more controversial in the sense that the depiction of events through this narrator’s view is focalized. Through this focalization, the horrifying events experienced by children are narrated as if they were just ordinary experiences which creates a somehow disturbing effect on the reader. However this disturbance also leads the reader to think that the actions of these children and their relationship to their parents and each other also refer to an underlying symbolism pertaining to their psychic conditions. This article aims to reveal and interpret the novel focusing on this underlying symbolism through the lens of Lacan’s concepts of ‘lack’ and the Symbolic order and Kristeva’s concept of ‘semiotic chora’.

The importance of the media in relation to the problems caused by risk and uncertainty, which led to potential distortions with a significant impact on public opinion, is outlined. There is a contradiction in the hypothesis that the press in its content is a tool to encourage negative attitudes towards people who may be the probable cause of violence and a propagandist of widespread invective beliefs. The peculiarities of the reflection of the issue of migrants on the pages of English newspapers are analyzed. Examples of negative appeals in the columns of English newspapers are presented. Significant results of the research through the prism of polarized and aggressive materials of the English-language press in the context of different countries are noted. Emphasis is placed on the negative approach to the coverage of immigration and ethnic relations, as well as the reflection of the stereotypical image of a bad doctor. It is indicated that the obtained factual material of the image-stereotype structure consists of a certain set of components of nuclear and peripheral qualifiers. The most common problems in the context of the relationship in the “doctor-patient” system are highlighted. Similarities and differences in stereotypes within the analyzed linguistic cultures are revealed. The content and reasons for using the neutralization strategy to reproduce the invective are characterized. The strategy of stylistic replacement in the conditions of expediency of changing the language expression to a language function of the target culture similar in its functions is singled out. Stylistic amplification (or emphasis) and cases of its appropriate application are considered. It is noted that for the purpose of language aggression neologisms with inherent evaluation and adherent evaluation can be used. It is stipulated that the detection of invective vocabulary is relevant in the linguistic examination of controversial texts in cases of insult.

The importance of the media in relation to the problems caused by risk and uncertainty, which led to potential distortions with a significant impact on public opinion, is outlined. There is a contradiction in the hypothesis that the press in its content is a tool to encourage negative attitudes towards people who may be the probable cause of violence and a propagandist of widespread invective beliefs. The peculiarities of the reflection of the issue of migrants on the pages of English newspapers are analyzed. Examples of negative appeals in the columns of English newspapers are presented. Significant results of the research through the prism of polarized and aggressive materials of the English-language press in the context of different countries are noted. Emphasis is placed on the negative approach to the coverage of immigration and ethnic relations, as well as the reflection of the stereotypical image of a bad doctor. It is indicated that the obtained factual material of the image-stereotype structure consists of a certain set of components of nuclear and peripheral qualifiers. The most common problems in the context of the relationship in the “doctor-patient” system are highlighted. Similarities and differences in stereotypes within the analyzed linguistic cultures are revealed. The content and reasons for using the neutralization strategy to reproduce the invective are characterized. The strategy of stylistic replacement in the conditions of expediency of changing the language expression to a language function of the target culture similar in its functions is singled out. Stylistic amplification (or emphasis) and cases of its appropriate application are considered. It is noted that for the purpose of language aggression neologisms with inherent evaluation and adherent evaluation can be used. It is stipulated that the detection of invective vocabulary is relevant in the linguistic examination of controversial texts in cases of insult.