Emotional Overtones Research Articles

PECULIARITIES OF TRANSLATION OF PERSONAL PEJORATIVES (ON THE EXAMPLE OF GERMAN AND UKRAINIAN)

The difficulty of translation of pejoratives is primarily determined by cultural taboos, differing systems of values and stereotypical concepts. Researchers emphasize that swearing is the sphere of a language that is characterized by a strong national specificity and a complex combination of different connotations which makes this vocabulary practically untranslatable. The pejorative vocabularies of German and, to a great extent, Ukrainian belong to the sphere of obsene nominations. On the basis of empirical data (lexicographical material of the German-Ukrainian Dictionary of Swear Words (ed. O. Havryliv) and a survey conducted at the Vienna University) the authors consider the peculiarities of translation of different groups of swear words: nonderivative, formal, metaphorical, metonymical. The literal translation of pejorative vocabulary from German into Ukrainian is possible which is reflected in the kinship of the languages on the metaphorical level. In case of the non-literal translation, the conceptual meaning of a unit in both languages may differ, but figurative pejorative meanings tend to coincide which is conducive to the transfer of pejorativity in translation. Dissociating from the conceptual meaning during translation of pejoratives is possible due to the domination of connotative (negative emotional) overtones in this type of vocabulary. While translating formal pejoratives special attention is to be paid to the the intensity of the unit, its morphological and structural semantic peculiarities as well as frequency of occurrence and stylistic coloring. Keywords: translation, pejoratives, libelous words, metaphorical pejoratives, formal pejoratives, personal pejoratives, swearing as a speech act.

Tłumaczenie polskich związków frazeologicznych w bułgarskim przekładzie Faraona Bolesława Prusa

This article presents the ways of translating Polish phrasemes into Bulgarian and their functionality in texts. The material under scrutiny encompasses five hundred examples. In general, the phrasemes from Bolesław Prus’s “Pharaoh” are translated into Bulgarian phrasemes equivalent with respect to the global meaning. This group includes identical phrasemes (the formal structure) and similar ones (where the differences relate to certain de-tails in expression). An equivalent translation is also achieved by means of phrasemes devoid of significant shared features with respect to expression therefore different in the imagery. Typically, these are the synonyms of Polish phrasemes. In the translation of “Pharaoh”, a considerable number of Polish phrasemes are reflected by means of single words or loose word collocations. While the periphrases tend to be close to the meaning of the original phraseme, they change completely or partly the connotations and the expression emotional overtone. However, in many cases it is possible to translate the imagery also by means of descriptions.

The Visionary Brain and a Dream of Santa Oria

The Visionary Brain and a Dream of Santa Oria Mark T. Aquilano Gonzalo de Berceo’s Vida de Santa Oria offers a compact account in cuaderna vía verse of three spiritual journeys into heavenly realms that are part of the hagiographic legend surrounding the cloistered and obscure nun from the Riojan monastic community of San Millán. Saint Oria’s (ca. 1043–ca. 1070) visions are said to have come as the capstone to a life of severe asceticism that drew to an early close. According to Brian Dutton’s plausible chronology based on the sparse evidence available to modern scholarship, Oria’s death likely came before the age of 30 (83). Berceo claims to have based his thirteenth-century Vida on a text written (dictado) by Don Muño (st. 5ab), an eleventh-century predecessor at San Millán. Anthony Lappin, noting that a medieval audience would have demanded this kind of authentication to accept Oria’s radical spiritual experiences as true events, reminds the reader that Don Muño, in turn, [End Page 133] learned of Oria’s first and second visions from her mother Ammuna: Munno was an eye-witness to the saint’s vision, and his testimony confirmed the pedigree of Berceo’s own account. Yet Munno appears in the narration only when he is called for by Oria’s mother (VSO 149a) … Berceo later indicates that Munno’s major source for Oria’s life was Amunna (VSO 170–71.) (“Introduction” 43) Julian Weiss proposes that a central theme of the work is “a metaphoric relationship between Oria’s penitential asceticism and the male cleric’s desire to control language and return to the plentitude of the originary Word” (71) and in his argument the mediation of Berceo in the text is therefore of primary concern. Berceo’s version of Oria’s inner experiences almost certainly represents a blend of fact with fiction shaped by both the explicit and unspoken intentions of the poet. Nevertheless, a scientifically informed exploration of the first vision as if it were a true, psycho-spiritual event taking place in a human body and brain suggests a surprising degree of verisimilitude in the poem’s account of Oria’s remarkable dream. An examination of the opening sequence of Oria’s first vision through the lens of contemporary neurocognitive approaches to dream life reveals the compensatory and subversively liberating nature of the oneiric state in the life of the nun. With the psycho-biological authenticity of the nun’s experience at least partially affirmed in this way, it is possible to analyze the poem’s further development from a theoretical perspective that is both grounded in neuroscience and explores dreams as purposeful narratives deeply reflective of the dreamer’s individual personality and spiritual life. A few key images in the Vida de Santa Oria form metaphorical nuclei laden with emotional overtones that are critical in establishing the text’s overarching framework of meaning. The dynamic concept of “root metaphor” developed by theologian and dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley sheds light on how such nuclei animate the storyline, generating and remitting to a deeper, unifying thread of spiritual significance. The images and the poetic descriptions of processions and of the motif of the heavenly seat connect Oria to both the collective values of her monastic [End Page 134] community and to a vastly larger spiritual reality. By both rooting her more fully within her earthly identity as part of a community that had partially constrained her and by granting her a taste of complete spiritual freedom, the dream offers a form of consolation for a life situation deeply bereft of external power and authority. The rich imagery of Berceo’s Vida de Santa Oria may appear on a first reading to be fully transparent and easily decoded. T. Anthony Perry creates a distinction between Berceo’s allegorical use of symbols in the introduction to his Milagros de Nuestra Señora and the more literal, straightforward sense in which he believes spiritual motifs are presented in the Vida de Santa Oria, attributing the difference to the Berceo’s claims for the historical veracity of Oria’s visions (94). Siminia M. Farcasiu’s exhaustive philological...

Problems and Strategies in English Translation of Quranic Divine Names

The present research was an attempt to see how Quranic Divine Names (DNs) were translated into English by three professional translators namely, Shakir (1985), Qarai (2003), and Nikayin (2006) who provided their translations in prose, phrase-by-phrase, and poetry forms respectively. Firstly, the problems which the translators met for attaining lexical adequacy and semantic equivalence were explored. Secondly, the type and extent of strategies adopted by these three translators for overcoming the problems were described. Finally, the translators` works were compared and implications drawn. The findings of the study showed that the lexical compression of the original DNs and their emotive overtones and effects caused the main body of problems for the translators. Furthermore, it was found out that the most frequent strategies adopted by Shakir and Qarai were ‘near-synonymy’ and ‘expansion’ respectively. Nikayin, however, used these two strategies almost to an equal extent as his most frequent strategies.

The difficult hair loss patient: A particular challenge

Few dermatologic complaints carry as much emotional overtones as hair loss. Adding to the patient's worry may be prior frustrating experiences with physicians, who trivialize hair loss. A detailed patient history, physical examination and few pertinent screening blood tests usually establish a specific diagnosis. Once the diagnosis is certain, treatment appropriate for that diagnosis is likely to control the problem. Treatment options are available, though limited, in terms of indications and efficacy. Success depends both on comprehensions of the underlying pathology and on unpatronizing sympathy from the part of the physician. Ultimately, patients need to be educated about the basics of the hair cycle and why considerable patience is required for effective cosmetic recovery. Communication is an important component of patient care. For a successful encounter at an office visit, one needs to be sure that the patient's key concerns have been addressed. Physicians should recognize that alopecia goes well beyond the simple physical aspects of hair loss. Patients’ psychological reactions to hair loss are less related to physicians’ ratings than to patients’ own perceptions. Some of the patients have difficulties adjusting to hair loss. The best way to alleviate the emotional distress is to eliminate the hair disease that is causing it. Treatment success relies on patient compliance. Rather than being the patient's failure, patient non-compliance results from failure of the physician to ensure confidence and motivation. Finally, patients with hypochondriacal, body dysmorphic, somatoform, or personality disorders remain difficult to manage. The physician should be careful not to be judgmental or scolding because this may rapidly close down communication. The influence of the prescribing physician should be kept in mind, since inspiring confidence versus scepticism and fear clearly impacts the outcome of treatment. Sometimes the patient gains therapeutic benefit just from venting concerns in a safe environment with a caring physician.

Anthropology and anarchy: Romance, horror or science fiction?

This article introduces the special issue by considering some of the relations between anthropology and anarchy, real and potential. Anarchy, I suggest, is a word already burdened with strong (and often divergent) emotional overtones: it is invested with both romance and horror. These overtones point to related ideas about human nature as either social and peaceable or antagonistic and competitive. But are these parables about human nature just science fiction, political claims dressed up in the garb of neutral observations of actually existing humanity? Time and again, the questions raised by anarchy point to anthropology for their resolution, particularly to the ethnographic record and the conclusions that might be drawn from its analysis. Yet the ethnographic record yields no easy resolution to these questions, in part, I argue, because of this prior overburdening which becomes particularly acute when the ethnographic subjects are already politically marginalized. In this introduction, I take a different tack, attempting to approach anarchy as banal and everyday, as one kind of social relation among others, and as thus amenable itself to ethnographic observation not only ‘out there’ and ‘back then’ but here and now.

Pain and dental pain: current perspectives

What is pain? How does stimulation of apparently simple nerve endings cause the agony of toothache? Why does the pain disappear when the patient makes an appointment to see the dentist? Research into the mechanisms of pain, its emotional overtones, and how emotions modify the experience of pain, is producing answers to these questions. Dental pain is a special example but the same rules apply for pain elsewhere in the body.

A Semantic Analysis of the Language of Advertising

Semantics is the study of meaning system of a language and its approaches vary widely. In one view, meaning is the relationship between language and the external world (referential or denotative meaning), between a word and the concept it stands for. In another, it involves the mental state of the speaker, as reflected in a range of personal, emotive overtones (affective or connotative meaning). The uniqueness of the choice of words makes the language of advertising a specialized field of study. This paper presents an analytical study of the language features of English advertisements at a semantic level. In order to conduct a data-driven study, the writer has built a corpus of over 20 English advertisements. Through the detailed survey of all the advertisements, the semantic features of the language of advertising are summarized and possible conclusions are given in the light of effectiveness of advertising. After a brief introduction to semantics and advertising language, the paper is focused on the linguistic realizations in English advertising from the semantic perspective. In the analysis, the use of connotative meaning of words, adjectives, coined words, mis-pelt words, repetition, metaphoric use of words, punning, non-existing words, the use of ambiguous statements are discussed to reveal fuzzy nature that are used by advertisers to achieve their persuasive ends. It goes further to treat the semiotic analysis of the language of advertising. The paper is then concluded with a brief summary. It is hoped that the paper can shed light on the semantic features of language of advertisements and also provide help to copywriters and English learners.

Twelve Choices: A Framework For Interpersonal Process And Strategy

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: x-small;">The Twelve Choices framework integrates theories by William Schutz and W.R. Bion to offer a way to visualize our choices of emotive overtones in relating to others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Every interpersonal behavior can have one or both of a task component and an emotive component.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The emotive overtones in interpersonal behavior can be categorized on four dimensions, with two extremes and a midpoint on each dimension resulting in twelve major labels for emotive overtones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>The four emotive dimensions are Control, Affection, Aggression, and Flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">   </span>Control dimension has “Pre-emptive (or controlling)” behaviors at one extreme, “Interdependence” in the middle, and “Dependence (or submissive / compliant)”at the other extreme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Affection dimension has “Love” at one extreme, “Empathy” in the middle, and “Apathy” at the other extreme. Aggression dimension has “Aggression towards the other” at one extreme, “Confrontation” in the middle, and “Self-flagellation” at the other extreme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Flight dimension has “Escape” at one extreme, “Humor” in the middle, and “Withdrawal” at the other extreme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">  </span>Managers may utilize this framework to understand their own and others’ patterns of emotive responses, and to learn about the impact of individual and interpersonal behaviors on group dynamics, and to visualize their options for interpersonal behavior.</span></p>

Zoomorphism and anthropomorphism: fruitful fallacies?

AbstractZoo- and anthropomorphism may both be scientific heresies but both may serve as a basis for thought (and real) experiments designed to explore our ability to assess quality of life as perceived by another sentient animal. Sentience, a major contributor to evolutionary fitness in a complex environment, implies ‘feelings that matter’. Strength of motivation is a measure of how much they matter. Since humans and most domestic animals share the property of sentience, it follows that some aspects of feeling may be similar, and where we differ, the differences may be of degree rather than absolute. One of the assumed absolutes that I shall challenge is the concept that non-human animals live only in the present. I explore how domestic animals may experience the feelings of hunger, pain, fear and hope. Hunger is indisputably a primitive sensation. Pain and fear are primitive sensations with emotional overtones. The problem is to discover how they may affect quality of life. Acute pain and fear are positive signals for action to avoid harm. These actions and their consequences (‘how well did I cope?’) will be committed to memory and affect how an animal feels when they recur, or it fears they may recur. Hope (and its antithesis, despair) are considered by many philosophers (who do not own dogs) as emotions restricted to humans since only we can imagine the future. However, by application of zoomorphism we may classify hope with hunger as a primitive feeling of dissatisfaction with thestatus quo. Either may lead to action directed towards the goal of feeling better or encourage the belief that things will get better (food will arrive). Both are feelings of expectation for the future modulated in the light of past experience. With all these four emotions quality of life may be expressed in terms of how well the animal feels it can cope, both in the present and in the future. When it feels it cannot cope, then it will suffer.

Repositories and journals: are they in conflict?

PurposeThis paper aims to bring together information on whether any evidence exists of a commercial conflict between the creation of digital archives at research institutions and by key subject centres of excellence, and the business of journal publishing.Design/methodology/approachRelevant publications, including articles published in refereed books and journals, as well as informal commentaries on listservs, blogs and wikis, were analysed to determine whether there is any evidence of a commercial relationship.FindingsMost of the published comments are highly subjective and anecdotal – there is a significant emotional overtone to many of the views expressed. There is precious little hard evidence currently available to support or debunk the idea that a commercial conflict exists between repositories and journal subscriptions. The situation is made more difficult by the many technological, sociological and administrative changes that are taking place in parallel to the establishment of repositories.Practical implicationsSeparating the key drivers and their impact is a major strategic challenge facing all stakeholders in the scholarly communication industry in future.Research limitations/implicationsThis is an important area which requires close monitoring – the possible threat that the established journal publishing system could be eroded away by a new “free” scholarly information system needs attention. One significant study in this area is being undertaken by the PEER group, funded by the European Commission with hard evidence being collected by UCL's CIBER research group. The results from this impartial investigation will be very welcome.Originality/valueThe paper shows that relationship between repositories and journal subscriptions is vague.

Sensory memory consolidation observed: Increased specificity of detail over days

Memories are usually multidimensional, including contents such as sensory details, motivational state and emotional overtones. Memory contents generally change over time, most often reported as a loss in the specificity of detail. To study the temporal changes in the sensory contents of associative memory without motivational and emotional contents, we induced memory for acoustic frequency by pairing a tone with stimulation of the cholinergic nucleus basalis. Adult male rats were first tested for behavioral responses (disruption of ongoing respiration) to tones (1–15 kHz), yielding pre-training behavioral frequency generalization gradients (BFGG). They next received three days of training consisting of a conditioned stimulus (CS) tone (8.00 kHz, 70 dB, 2 s) either Paired ( n = 5) or Unpaired ( n = 5) with weak electrical stimulation (∼48 μA) of the nucleus basalis (100 Hz, 0.2 s, co-terminating with CS offset). Testing for behavioral memory was performed by obtaining post-training BFGGs at two intervals, 24 and 96 h after training. At 24 h post-training, the Paired group exhibited associative behavioral memory manifested by significantly larger responses to tone than the Unpaired group. However, they exhibited no specificity in memory for the frequency of the tonal CS, as indexed by a flat BFGG. In contrast, after 96 h post-training the Paired group did exhibit specificity of memory as revealed by tuned BFGGs with a peak at the CS-band of frequencies. This increased detail of memory developed due to a loss of response to lower and higher frequency side-bands, without any change in the absolute magnitude of response to CS-band frequencies. These findings indicate that the sensory contents of associative memory can be revealed to become more specific, through temporal consolidation in the absence of non-sensory factors such as motivation and emotion.

Two Great Transfers of Word Emotive Overtones In Modern Chinese

Two Great Transfers of Word Emotive Overtones In Modern Chinese

Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain, Modern Europe, and the Legacies of Empire (review)

Reviewed by: Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain, Modern Europe, and the Legacies of Empire David W. Bird Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain, Modern Europe, and the Legacies of Empire Vanderbilt UP, 2006 By Michael Iarocci Michael Iarocci's book Properties of Modernity: Romantic Spain, Modern Europe, and the Legacies of Empire convincingly pushes the notional critical limit of modernity in Spanish literature into the eighteenth century. His study advances the theory that Spanish Romanticism enjoyed a uniquely peripheral standpoint from which to perceive the upheavals of European history, especially the French, Scientific, and Industrial Revolutions (xiii). He contends that northern Europe considered Spain incapable of giving rise to an authentic literary Romanticism, since it was itself Romantic, an object upon which the northern European Romanticizing gaze could work rather than a subject of its own Romantic discourse. Iarocci's work is as much about the critical construction of Romanticism as it is about the three authors he studies (Cadalso, the duke of Rivas, and Larra). His first chapter studies the position of Spain in a European narrative of modernity. Iarocci accuses northern Europe of denying historical agency to Spain, of a belief that Spain may be Romantic, but cannot generate its own Romanticism. In consequence, northern European writers were free to ignore Spain's former political predominance and exclude the country from the locus of the "civilized." As Romanticism became more widespread in northern Europe, some writers conceived of modernity in spatial terms—Spain is located in the Middle Ages, while the home of the modern is elsewhere. Unlike previous judgmental attitudes, however, Romantic northern Europeans celebrated Spain's un-modernity, perceiving the country as "untainted." Like Torrecilla in La imitación colectiva, Iarocci identifies a Spanish belief that the "national spirit" is fundamentally un-modern, even in critical inquiry (28). Iarocci also presents a concise history of the criticism of Spanish Romanticism. The range of critical understanding of when, if, and how Spanish Romanticism developed is astonishing, from del Río's broad belief that a Romantic medieval character is present throughout Spanish literature, to Silver's assertion that Spain did not experience a true Romanticism until the twentieth-century Edad de Plata (30-36). Iarocci's second chapter, on Cadalso's Noches lúgubres (1775), shows that it combines the Renaissance technique of the dialogue with more emotional overtones. Iarocci's account of the text discusses the difficult critical location of Noches lúgubres. While some would place Noches lúgubres in the genealogy of Romanticism, Iarocci prefers to consider it an early example of Romanticism itself. He points out the protagonist's desire to constitute himself as a locus of suffering, and the consequent narrative requirement for the loss of his beloved (68). Iarocci also considers Romantic the criticism that Cadalso's protagonist Tediato makes of the economic worldview subsumed in the term interés. Iarocci reads this criticism as the creation of a powerful societal critique prefiguring Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of instrumental rationality (86-87). The third chapter of Properties of Modernity examines the duke of Rivas's play Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino in terms of an evolving Romantic understanding of what poetry does: he compares the eighteenth-century notion of the technical "art of verse-composition" with the Romantic preference for emotional inspiration (106). In the play, the mestizo protagonist don Álvaro speaks in verse, as does his beloved's family, the Calatravas, showing thereby a capacity for subjective agency equal to theirs; his desire to marry the daughter Leonor is thwarted by her father due to Álvaro's race, however, and by the end of the play the father, Álvaro, and Leonor's two brothers have all died violently as a result. Especially because the ongoing processes of liberalization and decolonization were linked, Iarocci sees that don Álvaro's racial alterity cannot be reduced to or dismissed as merely a "Romantic topos" (124), but must be read as a dramatic linkage of freedom and equality unusual for the 1830s (134). The fourth and final chapter of Properties of Modernity deals with the later days of Mariano José de Larra and a "tetralogy" of the pessimistic, [End Page 239] often...

Hormone therapy after the Women's Health Initiative: a qualitative study

BackgroundPublication of results from the Women's Health Initiative study in July 2002 was a landmark event in biomedical science related to postmenopausal women. The purpose of this study was to describe the impact of new hormone therapy recommendations on patients' attitudes and decision-making in a primary care practice.MethodsA questionnaire including structured and open-ended questions was administered in a family practice office waiting room from August through October 2003. Rationale for taking or not taking hormone therapy was specifically sought. Women 50–70 years old attending for office visits were invited to participate. Data were analyzed qualitatively and with descriptive statistics. Chart review provided medication use rates for the entire practice cohort of which the sample was a subset.ResultsRespondents (n = 127) were predominantly white and well educated, and were taking hormone therapy at a higher rate (38%) than the overall rate (26%) for women of the same age range in this practice. Belief patterns about hormone therapy were, in order of frequency, 'use is risky', 'vindication or prior beliefs', 'benefit to me outweighs risk', and 'unaware of new recommendations'. Twenty-eight out of 78 women continued hormones use after July 2002. Of 50 women who initially stopped hormone therapy after July 2002, 12 resumed use. Women who had stopped hormone therapy were a highly symptomatic group. Responses with emotional overtones such as worry, confusion, anger, and grief were common.ConclusionStrategies for decision support about hormone therapy should explicitly take into account women's preferences about symptom relief and the trade-offs among relevant risks. Some women may need emotional support during transitions in hormone therapy use.

Psychiatric Assessment and Consultation

Psychiatric Assessment and Consultation

Healthy women from suspected hereditary breast and ovarian cancer families: the significant others in their lives.

This paper investigates communication and interactions between healthy women from families with a history of breast/ovarian cancer and five statuses of significant others: (1) women friends; (2) sisters; (3) brothers; (4) male partners; and (5) children in order to better understand the way the family deals with cancer genetics risk information and the extent of social support available to its members. We conducted a research ethics committee reviewed exploratory, qualitative study at a major clinical and research cancer centre in the United Kingdom from January to June 2000. Twenty-one semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted using a purposive sample of women coming to the cancer genetics risk clinic for the first time, supplemented by 5 months of participant observation. On the whole, women friends consistently provided strong social support. Sisters were usually close, but communication about the breast/ovarian cancer in their family in some cases was quite limited and fraught with emotional overtones. Brothers were the most difficult to relate to regarding cancer in the family and seemed almost to exist in a different 'interrelational space'. The women claimed that their male partners were supportive, but with caveats. Mothers worried about how much information and at what age they should inform their children about the specifics of the family history of breast/ovarian cancer and tried to protect them when they were young. The women were very concerned about their daughters and granddaughters, but were far less concerned about the impact on their sons.

Some Personal Reminiscences and What They Meant for Me

Some Personal Reminiscences and What They Meant for Me HARRY A. BLACKMUN* I. Preliminary There are those who have said I should write a book, and there are those—about the same in number—who have said I should not write a book. Those in the negative assert that my “book” already is written in the several hundred opinions (majorities, concurrences, dissents) I have filed over the years, and in my public utterances. There are valid arguments, I suppose, on both sides. I certainly do not wish to write anything that merely seeks to explain further my vote in decided cases, or to comment—supportively or adversely—on colleagues’ votes, or to express little more than after-the-fact criticism. In that context, what might be said belonged in the decisional process itself. But there are other things in Supreme Court experience. Law students are inclined to ask questions. Example: “Tell me, how does one come to be a federal judge?” Justice Tom Clark had a direct response: “One has to be on the corner when the bus comes by.” One federal appellate judge plaintively said to me: “The only reason I am on the federal bench is because I was a close friend of a United States Senator.” (He had served for a time as the Senator’s administrative assistant.) It may perhaps be said that every federaljudge comes by his status in his own way. Of course, there are things one must not do, but I doubt that there is a specific path one must follow to be eligible and seriously regarded as a candidate for federal judicial service. I took my first federal judicial oath on November 4, 1959, more than thirty-six years ago. That was a day with emotional overtones for me. One reason forthis was the respect and, indeed, almost reverence I felt for the federal bench, having had the good fortune to be the recipient of a Court of Appeals’ clerkship in 1932-1933 and having seen firsthand the re­ sponsible work of most federal judges of that time, their devotion to duty, their integrity, and their concern for the positions they occupied. Buta more intimate reason forme was that my clerkship was with a newly elevated federal appellate judge whom I greatly admired, and whom I hadthe privilege to succeed. He, rather than some of us lesser figures, deserved to be 324 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY This photograph shows Harry Blackmun (standing second from the right) with the other associates at the Minnesota law firm of Junell, Driscoll, Fletcher, Dorsey & Barker. on the Supreme Court. But the political situ­ ation at the time, and for several years there­ after, was out ofstep for him. That fact did not lessen my respect for John Benjamin Sanborn, Jr., an able, fair-minded, hard-workingjurist of Minnesota who came to his years of influen­ tial service in the late 1920s and the 1930s. I was extraordinarily fortunate in having met him, in having worked as a clerk for him, and in having profited so much from his strikingly correct mentorship. II. Getting There I suppose I first should say something about how I landed on the federal bench. Much of what I say at this point contains elements of speculation, for atthe time I actually knew little ofwhat was happening. Nevertheless, I believe that most of what I recite did take place. After I left a pleasant private practice with a large and influential Minneapolis law firm that had afforded me many instructive pro­ fessional moments, we moved in late 1950 to Rochester, Minnesota, tojoin the Mayo staff. I had two primary reasons for making regularre­ turn visits to the Twin Cities. The first was the fact that my mother and my sister were there. Mother had become a widow in 1947 and lived in that status for more than three decades. My only living sibling, a sister, resided at White Bear Lake, an eastern suburb of Saint Paul. The second reason was Judge Sanborn, espe­ cially after Mrs. Sanborn’s death, when he was living alone in Saint Paul. I remained in touch with him, and every few weeks I would tele­ phone...

Food deserts – an example of social exclusion?

The ‘food desert’ is a fairly recent phenomenon with emotive and political overtones. It has been described as an area of social deprivation where people do not have easy access to healthy and affordable food. Northern Ireland has undergone a retail revolution with the arrival of the UK mainland multiples, the spatial restructuring of the retailing industry to edge‐of‐town sites and the associated effects on town centre food stores. The research initiative has been considerable in Britain but deficient in Northern Ireland; hence the urgent need for this studyThis study investigated the food accessibility and ultimate potential existence of food deserts in both rural and urban areas of Northern Ireland using microstudies of four provincial towns. The research methodology was both intensive and extensive using perceptual and experiential evidence of principal shoppers from 1094 Northern Ireland households. The study allowed for the validation of results via a varied range of research tools, e.g. case studies, focus groups, interviews, observations and an extensive questionnaire.Results indicated that certain consumer cohorts (particularly the car‐less and lower income consumers) were excluded from equitable shopping provision. Evidence suggested that urban consumers might exist in somewhat self‐imposed food deserts, exacerbated by the fact that consumers on lower incomes shopped locally and more frequently than their higher income counterparts. Low‐income family units also exhibited lower levels of cooking skills, and therefore tended to purchase convenience foods from higher priced local retail outlets. Shopping basket analyses revealed the price disparities that existed within store types and between towns while consumer focus groups qualified the extent of consumer disadvantage experienced by vulnerable consumer groups. While no town or area was assigned the label ‘food desert’ areas of low provision could be identified with worrying signs that food access was ultimately disparate and inequitable. This situation is likely to worsen as the full effects of the retail revolution are realised. Recommendations suggest incremental changes to effect long‐term change and an interdisciplinary approach is foreseen as the optimal way to address the problem. Control of retail developments is seen as essential in town planning together with the control of retail monopolies in such areas.

Global warming versus ozone depletion: failure and success in North America

The success of ozone depletion as a social problem is used to examine and understand the relative failure of global warming. Starting with the (aborted) 'hot crisis' of the Greenhouse summer of 1988, this paper tries to show why, despite dire scientific warning, advantages in claims- making, and the perceived emergence of strange weather, global warming consistently obtained lesser outcomes. Whereas global warming is a complex and uncertain scientific issue, the ozone hole was associated and resonated with easy-to-understand bridging metaphors derived from the popular culture. The latter problem not only gave rise to a hot crisis, but was also caught up in a cultural whirl- wind—a rapidly evolving and progressive sequence of dynamic and often surprising events that surge through a variety of public arenas with a strong conversational and practical presence. Effec- tively, ozone loss provided a sense of concrete risk with both strong emotional overtones and every- day relevance for talk and action. Global warming, in contrast, is not amenable to bridging metaphors and did not lend itself to a cultural whirlwind.