Everyday Meaning Research Articles

The Future of Weak Ties

The Future of Weak Ties

The many roles of “explanation” in science education: a case study

In this paper the role of explanations is discussed in relation to possible consequences originating in the polysemy of the word explanation. The present study is a response to conceptual confusions that have arisen in the intersection between theory and practice, and between science education literature and communication in authentic science classroom settings. Science classroom communication is examined in terms of one teacher’s word use during eleven lessons about evolution. The study contributes empirical examples of how disciplinary norms of valid explanations are manifested in science classroom communication. A dialogical analysis shows how the teacher provides three conversational structures: asking for acts of explanation, providing opportunities to talk about what explanations are in this context and providing opportunities to talk about explanations constructed by students. These three structures facilitate the process of learning how to evaluate and justify explanations. Three potential meanings of the word “explanation” are pointed to: an everyday meaning, a pedagogical–professional meaning and a scientific meaning of the word. It is suggested that the co-existence of these three potential meanings has communicative consequences in science education.

Supplemental Material for A Closer Look at the Hedonics of Everyday Meaning and Satisfaction

Supplemental Material for A Closer Look at the Hedonics of Everyday Meaning and Satisfaction

Regulatory Scrutiny of Subsidiarity and Proportionality

As the monitoring of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality is mostly left up to the EU institutions, internal quality control bodies could play an important role in developing tests and standards which represent part of ‘subsidiarity and proportionality in action.’ In this context, the Impact Assessment Board (Board), established within the European Commission in 2006 and recently renamed ‘Regulatory Scrutiny Board’ (to review impact assessments) holds a key position. This paper presents an analysis of opinions from the Board from 2010 and 2011 as an alternative jurisprudential source regarding subsidiarity and proportionality. The analysis tells us something about the ‘everyday meaning’ of these principles, but also about the way the Board functions as an ‘in-house’ regulatory review board.

The Nature and Meaning of Body Concepts in Everyday Language and Theoretical Discourse.

Within phenomenological philosophy four topics, (1) Body, (2) Time, (3) Others and the Social Order and (4) World serve as the major contexts in which human perception, action and reflection take place. At present only three of these domains have been studied from an empirical perspective, leaving Body as the one domain requiring further analysis. Given this state of affairs, the purpose of the present study is to determine the everyday and theoretical meanings of body. To accomplish this task participants coded randomly selected body- related words into groups on the basis of having similar meanings. Once these groupings were established they were then evaluated by statistical clustering and multidimensional scaling procedures. Results indicated that it was possible to define the everyday meaning of the human experience of the human body in terms of the following set of themes: (1) inside/outside, (2) visible/not visible, (3) vitality and activity, (4) instrument and object and (5) appearance and self-expression. Concerns about the representativeness of the words studied led to the development and use of individual word pools from which a set of 50 partially different words was randomly selected for each participant. Results indicated little difference between themes produced in the present study when compared with those of an earlier study. The specific themes derived from the present study were then related to embodiment issues as reflected in the philosophical writings of Merleau-Ponty, the psycholinguistic analyses of Lakoff and Johnson and experimental psychology.

Recent research in science teaching and learning.

Recent research in science teaching and learning.

Photographing Faith in Suburbia

This article reflects on the experience and outcome of a collaboration between a photographer, a geographer and six senior citizens from six different faith communities in West London. In 2012 this group collaborated to produce an exhibition ‘Faith in Suburbia: a shared photographic journey’ which was exhibited at a local history museum, at University College London and at the participating places of worship. Drawing on the photographic approach developed by Liz Hingley for her work ‘Under gods: stories for Soho Road’, the participants sought to capture the everyday life and meaning of each other’s places of worship.

Introducing the mean absolute deviation ‘effect’ size

This paper revisits the use of effect sizes in the analysis of experimental and similar results, and reminds readers of the relative advantages of the mean absolute deviation as a measure of variation, as opposed to the more complex standard deviation. The mean absolute deviation is easier to use and understand, and more tolerant of extreme values. The paper then proposes the use of an easy to comprehend effect size based on the mean difference between treatment groups, divided by the mean absolute deviation of all scores. Using a simulation based on 1656 randomised controlled trials each with 100 cases, and a before and after design, the paper shows that the substantive findings from any such trial would be the same whether raw-score differences, a traditional effect size like Cohen's d, or the mean absolute deviation effect size is used. The same would be true for any comparison, whether for a trial or a simpler cross-sectional design. It seems that there is a clear choice over which effect size to use. The main advantage in using raw scores as an outcome measure is that they are easy to comprehend. However, they might be misleading and so perhaps require more judgement to interpret than traditional ‘effect’ sizes. Among the advantages of using the mean absolute deviation effect size are its relative simplicity, everyday meaning, and the lack of distortion of extreme scores caused by the squaring involved in computing the standard deviation. Given that working with absolute values is no longer the barrier to computation that it apparently was before the advent of digital calculators, there is a clear place for the mean absolute deviation effect size (termed ‘A’).

Negotiating Proximity: Expert Testimony and Collective Memory in the Trials of Environmental Activists in France and the United Kingdom

This article analyzes the role of expert witness testimony in the trials of social movement actors, discussing the trial of the “Kingsnorth Six” in Britain and the trials of activists currently mobilising against airport construction at Notre Dame des Landes in western France. Though the study of expert testimony has so far overwhelmingly concentrated on fact‐finding and admissibility, the cases here reveal the importance of expert testimony not simply in terms of legal argument, but in “moral” or political terms, as it reflects and constitutes movement cognitive praxis. In the so‐called climate change defence presented by the Kingsnorth Six, I argue that expert testimony attained a “negotiation of proximity,” connecting different types of contributory expertise to link the scales and registers of climate science with those of everyday understanding and meaning. Expert testimony in the trials of activists in France, however, whilst ostensibly able to develop similar bridging narratives, has instead been used to construct resistance to the airport siting as already proximate, material, and embedded. To explain this, I argue that attention to the symbolic, as well as instrumental, functions of expert testimony reveals the crucial role that collective memory plays in the construction of both knowledge and grievance in these cases. Collective memory is both a constraint on and catalyst for mobilisation, defining the boundaries of the sayable. Testimony in trials both reflects and reproduces these elements and is a vital explanatory tool for understanding the narrativisation and communication of movement identities and objectives.

Sleeping with the enemy: Audience studies and critical literacy

Audience studies is not the vibrant field it was in its 1980s and early 1990s heyday. Cultural studies today has a more balanced interest in production, audiences and texts. A renewed focus in audience studies on everyday meaning production, identity and relations of power could benefit from recent developments. Theorization of power especially has benefited from recent work on governmentality. In accord with recent work on ‘affect’, there is an opportunity for renewed vitality and urgency. Was audience studies damaged beyond repair by the charge that it is a populist field that celebrates rather than interrogates everyday media culture? Could a concept such as cultural literacy provide a bridge to help re-establish the critical credibility of audience studies or would it burden this field with its implied notions of standards, distinction and cultural exclusion? The article discusses recent work with youth audiences to inquire into the possibilities of ‘critical literacy’. It proposes taking up questions and insights raised by affect theory, to merge appreciation, criticism and understanding of the forces that drive (the possibility of) change, and to embed critical literacy in cultural studies’ ongoing interest in the construction of (cultural) citizenship.

Keywords in the press

This article describes a corpus-assisted study of some socio-political keywords (in a similar sense to Raymond Williams’ ‘cultural keywords’ 1983 [1976]), of newspaper reporting between 1998 and 2007, when Tony Blair’s New Labour government was in power. We approach the discovery of socio-political keywords via the analysis of statistical keywords. Reducing a long list of statistical keywords to a shortlist of socio-politically significant keywords is inevitably complex, and the article explains the process used here. We demonstrate that certain lexemes gain currency in relatively short historical periods and take on political importance in addition to their everyday meaning. Combining corpus linguistics with critical stylistic analysis, we explore the usage of five important socio-political keywords of the New Labour period.

„Mythen einer Nation“ Zu post-/kolonialen Verhandlungen von <i>Indigenitäten</i> in der Zona Metropolitana de Guadalajara/Mexiko

Abstract. "What has been of special interest for me has been the extension of postcolonial concerns to the problems of geography" (Said, 1994:21). The application of postcolonial theories enables us to question myths, apparently established boundaries and therewith related categorizations between indigenous peoples and the dominant Mestizo society within an urban Mexican context. By the use of post-/colonial images and stereotypes of the indigenous other, folkloristic, romanticizing and racist differentiations are upheld and reproduced within younger generations. In contrast to that postcolonial forms of resistance try to challenge these myths or use them as strategic essentialisms in an everyday practical meaning. This specific perspective allows other possibilities for empirical challenges.

Practices as Models: A Methodology with an Illustration Concerning Wampum Diplomacy

The everyday meaning of ‘practice’ is something like concrete ‘doings’ or ‘what is being done’ in a social setting. Its everyday counter-concept is theory. Intuitively, this may lead us to think of practices as what is really going on in the world, as opposed to theories or models. This commonsensical meaning of practices reinforces the separation between theory and empirical reality. We argue that such an understanding has informed much of the ongoing ‘practice turn’ in International Relations. We also argue that this is not necessarily an efficient way of conceptualising ‘practices’, because practices might end up being too general a concept to be analytically useful. To counter this, we argue, one must be explicit about practices at the level of models, that is, in fictional representations of the world. This can help in studying them as endogenous phenomena, and not only as the practical counterpart of some other phenomena, or emanating from unspoken theoretical assumptions of, for example, conscious rule-following behaviour, interests, identities, structures and so on. As an illustration of what a model of practice might look like, we include a case study of Iroquois diplomacy as practice. Using a model, without relying on unstated assumptions exogenous to it, we represent this particular case through assuming that both the agents and their social environments emerge through practices.

Some observations on value and greatness in drama

This paper argues that value in drama partly results from the nature of the resistance in a scene, resistance used in its common, everyday meaning. A playwright’s ability to imagine and present such resistance rests on several factors, including his sublimation of the fantasies that underpin his work. Such sublimation is evident in Chekhov’s continuing reworking in his plays of a fantasy that found its initial embodiment for him in one of the central scenes in Hamlet. The increasingly higher value of the scenes Chekhov wrote as he repeatedly reworked Shakespeare’s scene resulted from his increasing sublimation of the initial fantasy and is reflected in the ever more complex nature of the resistance found in Chekhov’s scenes, resistance that, in turn, created an ever more life‐like, three‐dimensional central character in the scenes.

Skills, Dementia, and Bridging Divides in Neuroscience

The language of neuroscience and the language of everyday meaning exist across a familiar divide. New (or, more often, resurrected) philosophical problems arising in the context of neuroscience (e....

Trust—A monolithic panacea in land use planning?

Although trust research has been extensive and substantial, the constitution and actual merits of trust in land use planning remain nebulous. What do participants of a local land use planning process actually mean when they say they trust the planning committee? How important is participants’ trust in the planning committee in shaping their perceptions of the planning process and their cooperation in it? To explore the everyday meaning of trust in the specific context of local land use planning, semi-structured interviews with the participants of a local planning project in Switzerland were conducted ( n = 9). Based on these results, the constitution and the relevance of trust in the responsible planning committee among a wider circle of participants were assessed ( n = 66). The results show that participants trust the planning committee if they perceive its members as competent, honest, open, fair, reliable, reciprocating, respectful and committed. Interestingly, a considerable part of trust in the planning committee hinges explicitly on whether the committee incorporates the personal interests of the participant. Trust is indeed vital to participants’ belief that a meaningful discussion and cooperation with the members of the planning committee is possible. However, trust is neither a guarantee for people's approval of planning decisions nor for their cooperation. One implication of the findings is that in order to evaluate trust-building practice comprehensively, it is necessary to first understand the specific everyday meaning of trust for ‘real people’ in real planning processes.

There's a Devil on Wayamba Beach

In this article we draw upon religious sermons, poetry and first-person accounts to show how rural Sri Lankans used localized meanings of security and sacrifice to mobilize against a project of national development. Using Victor Turner's concept of social drama and the idea that state officials and citizens relate as audiences of each others' actions, we bring the methodological lens of performance to the study of citizenship, development, and legitimacy. The authors find that people's attempt to transform everyday meaning into legitimate meaning forms a profound kernel in the process of making of state—society relations.

Learning Landform Vocabulary through Different Methods: Object Boxes, Sand and Dough Creations, or Puppet Plays

Learning about landforms is an important part of earth science instruction in the elementary grades that has been identified as needing improvement. Three research-supported experimental approaches were compared in a counterbalanced-design study conducted on three sets of landform words with second, third, and fourth grade students (N = 53). Because many geomorphology terms have multiple meanings that lead to misconceptions and learning difficulty, the vocabulary of the study focused on thirty words that have both an everyday meaning and a landform meaning.All students viewed an electronic slide show of photographs and definitions of landforms accompanied by explanations of landform processes. Then they attended lessons under the different conditions for the same amount of time. In the object box condition, students created a layout of objects, papier-mâché landform models, photographs, definitions, analogy cards, and mnemonic device cards that related the two meanings of each term. In the second condition, students created landforms in sand or dough and labeled them. In the third condition, students created and performed puppet plays that explained the landforms. Results show that the object box condition was favored above the sand condition and the puppet play condition, although long-term retention of information was good in all three.

Is Europe an Exceptional Case?*

A number of factors must be taken into account if we are to understand the place of religion in twenty-first-century Europe. (1) These include the legacies of the past, more particularly the role of the historic churches in shaping European culture; an awareness that these churches still have a place at particular moments in the lives of modern Europeans, even though they are no longer able to discipline the beliefs and behavior of the great majority of the population; an observable change in the churchgoing constituencies of the continent, which operate increasingly on a model of choice, rather than a model of obligation or duty; and the arrival in Europe of groups of people from many different parts of the world, notably the global South, with very different religious aspirations from those seen in the host societies. Each of these factors will be taken in turn in order to answer the question set out in the title: is Europe an exceptional case in terms of its patterns of religious life? The answer leads in turn to more questions. If we conclude that Europe is indeed exceptional, why is this so? Or, conversely, why not? And what can we say about the future? Will Europe continue within the trajectory set by its past or will it become more like the patterns found elsewhere ? Or--it must be asked--will the rest of the world become more like Europe? Cultural Heritage Two points are important in relation to the role of the historic churches in shaping European culture; the Christian tradition is indeed a crucial element in the evolution of Europe, but it is by no means the only one. O'Connell identifies three formative factors or themes in the creation and re-creation of the unity that we call Europe: Judeo-Christian monotheism, Greek rationalism, and Roman organization. (2) These factors shift and evolve over time, but their combinations can be seen in forming and reforming a way of life that we have come to recognize as European. The religious strand within such combinations is self-evident. One example will suffice: the Christian tradition has had an irreversible effect on the shaping of time and space in this part of the world. Both week and year, for instance, follow the Christian cycle, even if the major festivals are beginning to lose their resonance for large sections of the population. Or to put the same point in a different way, we have had heated debates in parts of Europe about whether or not to shop on Sundays. We do not, for the most part, consider Friday an issue in this respect--though this may change. The same is true of space. Wherever you look in Europe, there is a predominance of Christian churches, some of which retain huge symbolic value. This is not to deny that in some parts of Europe (notably the larger cities) the skyline is becoming an indicator of growing religious diversity. Europe is changing, but the legacies of the past remain deeply embedded in both the physical and cultural environment. Vicarious Religion Physical and cultural presence is one thing; a hands-on role in the everyday lives of European people quite another. Commentators of all kinds agree that the latter is no longer a realistic aspiration for the historic churches of Europe. That does not mean, however, that the churches have entirely lost their significance as markers of religious identity. In my own work, I have explored this continuing ambiguity through the concept of vicarious religion. (3) By vicarious, I mean the notion of religion performed by an active minority but on behalf of a much larger number, who (implicitly at least) not only understand, but, quite clearly, approve of what the minority is doing. The first half of the definition is relatively straightforward and reflects the everyday meaning of the term--that is, to do something on behalf of someone else (hence the word vicar). The second half is more controversial and is best explored by means of examples. …

Biculturalism and Cognitive Complexity

To explore the possible cognitive consequences of biculturalism, the authors examine the complexity of cultural representations in monocultural and bicultural individuals. Study 1 found that Chinese American biculturals' free descriptions of both American and Chinese cultures are higher in cognitive complexity than that of Anglo-American monoculturals, but the same effect was not apparent in descriptions of culturally neutral entities (landscapes). With the same procedures, Study 2 found that the cultural representations of biculturals with low levels of Bicultural Identity Integration (BII; or biculturals with conflicted cultural identities) are more cognitively complex than that of biculturals with high BII (biculturals with compatible cultural identities). This article shows that cultural frame switching and BII have meaningful cognitive consequences; furthermore, it suggests that exposure to more than one culture may increase individuals' ability to detect, process, and organize everyday cultural meaning, highlighting the potential benefits of multiculturalism.