Explicit Claims Research Articles

Hesiod’s Verbal Craft: Studies in Hesiod’s Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception by Athanassios Vergados

Reviewed by: Hesiod’s Verbal Craft: Studies in Hesiod’s Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception by Athanassios Vergados George Boys-Stones VERGADOS, Athanassios. Hesiod’s Verbal Craft: Studies in Hesiod’s Conception of Language and Its Ancient Reception. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. xii + 370 pp. Cloth, $105.00 Starting from Hesiod’s “etymologies,” this work explores Hesiod’s relationship with language in general, and the language of the Greek mythological tradition in particular. In part 1 three chapters present worked examples of “etymology” in Hesiod: two mythological groups with contested histories and genealogies (the Muses, chapter 2; the Cyclopes, chapter 3), and others including Pandora in chapter 4. A significant result is that Hesiod shows himself to be more optimistic about finding stable meaning and objective truth in the study of names in the Theogony than in Works and Days where, as the slippery name “Pandora” shows, meaning can be more up for grabs. A corresponding division between these two works is discovered in the five chapters of part 2. Beginning with Hesiod’s famous “correction” of his Theogony account of Eris (in Works and Days 11–12 he says that there are two Erides, not one), Vergados asks us to see that, for Hesiod, discourse about the divine realm (in the Theogony) can achieve a greater stability than discourse aimed at the “complexities and ambiguities of the human condition in the Iron Age” (in Works and Days). “Eris” divides (in chapter 5 Vergados calls this a Begriffsspaltung), and with its division is no longer “absolute.” Further Hesiodic divisions and revisions are explored in chapter 6 and 7 (where the focus is on Dike). Chapter 8 looks at “kennings and riddles,” that is, the naming of things by riddling allusion, as when the ant is called idris, “the wise one” (Works 778). Chapter 9 looks at a case, the day called “Triseinas,” where Hesiod makes an explicit claim for the “truth” of this name (used, he says, by few; Works 818). In part 3 Vergados moves to consider Hesiod’s ancient reception as an intellectual, showing that he was spoken of in the same breath as mythographers such as Acusilaus and shares many of the characteristics of a historian like Hecataeus. His role as a voice of authority for the etymological inquiries of Plato’s Cratylus occupies chapter 11 (Vergados finds “a certain intellectual affinity” between Hesiod and the dialogue’s [End Page 644] eponym); and in chapter 12 his role in the Homeric scholia as a sort of authority—albeit not an incontestable one—is explored. The details and broad conclusions of this study are illuminating about Hesiod’s art—for example, in unpacking the “micro-narratives” embedded in the focus on names and in unwinding the tacit engagements with Homer. They also lend strong support to the trend for rehabilitating Hesiod as a serious player, even a pioneer, in the Greek intellectual tradition. Whether Vergados delivers on his promise of a Hesiodic “philosophy of language” is another question, though the aspiration clearly guides the work. The very word “etymology,” which Vergados uses for Hesiod’s interest in names, is applied in a way that leads him regularly to compare Hesiod to modern linguistic science (but Hesiod always gets “wrong” what it gets right), and also to attribute to him the view that name-origins ideally have their own philosophical authority, that is, reveal truths about the world. The more straightforward possibility that Hesiod thought that he was merely exploring the views of whoever gave his subjects their names is not considered here—although it might have given the basis for a more organic integration of the chapter on “kennings,” and it might have helped Vergados avoid some obvious missteps. Epōnumos is overtranslated as “true name”; Eris is not “relativized” because there are two “Erides” differing in moral valence (any more than “egg” is a relative term because there are good and bad eggs); Heraclitus is not “attacking” the epic poets when they use a word for “bow” that has the same written form as a word for “life.” Vergados argues that Hesiod’s ultimate aim is to establish his “authority” through what amounts to...

Private authority and public policy interactions in global context: Governance spheres for problem solving

AbstractPrivate organizations play a growing role in governing global issues alongside traditional public actors such as states, international organizations, and subnational governments. What do we know about how private authority and public policy interact? What are the implications of answering this question for understanding support for, and effects of, policy development generally? The purpose of this article is to reflect on these questions by introducing, and reviewing, a special issue that challenges explicit claims, and implicit methodologies, that treat private and public governance realms as distinct and/or static. We do so by advancing a theoretical and conceptual framework with which to explore how the contributions to this special issue enhance an understanding about governance interactions across a range of empirical, sectoral, and regional domains. We specifically introduce the concept of governance spheres to capture the proliferation of issue domains denoted by highly fluid interactions across public and private governance boundaries.

Your Fries are Less Fattening than Mine: How Food Sharing Biases Fattening Judgments Without Biasing Caloric Estimates

Food sharing has become quite popular over the last decade, with companies offering food options specifically designed to be shared. As the popularity has grown, so too has concerns over the potential negative impact on consumer health. Despite companies’ explicit claims to the contrary, critics maintain that food sharing may be encouraging excessive caloric intake. The current article provides the first systematic exploration of why this may be happening. Three main and two supplementary studies suggest that food sharing reduces perceived ownership, which, in turn, leads people to mentally decouple calories from their consequence. Thus, sharing can reduce the perceived fattening potential of a consumption episode without biasing caloric estimates. This phenomenon persists even when explicit caloric information is provided, and it applies to both healthy and unhealthy foods. Importantly, we establish a relevant downstream consequence by illustrating that people tend to subsequently select calorie‐dense foods after underestimating the fattening potential of a shared consumption episode. A roadmap for future research and practical implications are discussed.

Beliefs about Unobservable Scientific and Religious Entities are Transmitted via Subtle Linguistic Cues in Parental Testimony

ABSTRACT We explored the role of parental testimony in children’s developing beliefs about the ontological status of typically unobservable phenomena. US parents and their 5- to 7-year-old children (N = 25 dyads) separately rated their confidence in the existence of scientific and religious unobservable entities (e.g., germs, angels), and were invited to engage in an unmoderated dyadic conversation about the entities. Both parents and children were more confident in the existence of the scientific entities compared to the religious entities. Parental religiosity predicted the strength of their belief in the religious entities, and these beliefs were positively associated with their children’s judgments in the domain of religion. We coded parental testimony produced during the unmoderated conversation for a number of subtle linguistic cues that convey their confidence and prevailing beliefs in an entity’s existence. The results revealed consistent cross-domain differences: parents expressed more uncertainty, were more likely to mention variation in people’s beliefs and make explicit claims about the ontological status of the religious, as compared to the scientific entities. However, with increasing religiosity, parents produced fewer cues to uncertainty, mentioned belief variation less often, and were more likely to make claims of endorsement when talking about the religious unobservables. Importantly, the pattern of coded linguistic cues in parental testimony was significantly associated with children’s ontological judgments. The present findings have implications for understanding the socio-cultural mechanisms by which confidence in the existence of invisible agents and processes develops in childhood.

Space and/or Time

From its inception, much of the discussion around the terms realism and modernism stems from the fact that both are responses to a historically shifting conception of the “real,” naming different procedures for representing it, with implicit and explicit claims as to their adequacy for doing so. This means that modernism can become either another iteration of what was called

On modelling hard combinatorial optimisation problems as linear programs: refutations of the 'unconditional impossibility' claims

There has been a series of developments in the recent literature (by essentially a same 'circle' of authors) with the absolute/unconditioned (implicit or explicit) claim that there exists no abstraction of an NP-complete combinatorial optimisation problem in which the defining combinatorial configurations [such as 'tours' in the case of the travelling salesman problem (TSP) for example] can be modelled by a polynomial-sized system of linear constraints. The purpose of this paper is to provide general as well as specific refutations for these recent claims.

Real-world bone turnover marker use: impact on treatment decisions and fracture

SummaryThe use of bone turnover marker (BTM) testing for patients with osteoporosis in the USA has not been well characterized. This retrospective US-based real-world data study found BTM testing has some association with treatment decision-making and lower fracture risk in patients with presumed osteoporosis, supporting its use in clinical practice.IntroductionThe purpose of this study was to characterize bone turnover marker (BTM) testing patterns and estimate their clinical utility in treatment decision-making and fragility fracture risk in patients with osteoporosis using a retrospective claims database.MethodsData from patients aged ≥ 50 years with newly diagnosed osteoporosis enrolled in the Truven MarketScan® Commercial Claims and Encounters and Medicare Supplemental and Co-ordination of Benefits databases from January 2008 to June 2018 were included. Osteoporosis was ascertained by explicit claims, fragility fracture events associated with osteoporosis, or prescribed anti-resorptive or anabolic therapy. BTM-tested patients were 1:1 propensity score matched to those untested following diagnosis. Generalized estimating equation models were performed to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for testing versus no testing on both treatment decision-making and fragility fracture.ResultsOf the 457,829 patients with osteoporosis, 6075 were identified with ≥ 1 BTM test following diagnosis; of these patients, 1345 had a unique treatment decision made ≤ 30 days from BTM testing. The percentage of patients receiving BTM tests increased significantly each year (average annual % change: + 8.1%; 95% CI: 5.6–9.0; p = 0.01). Patients tested were significantly more likely to have a treatment decision (OR: 1.14; 95% CI: 1.13–1.15), and testing was associated with lower odds of fracture versus those untested (OR: 0.87; 95% CI: 0.85–0.88).ConclusionIn this large, heterogeneous population of patients with presumed osteoporosis, BTM testing was associated with treatment decision-making, likely leading to fragility fracture reduction following use.

Ley divina y surgimiento del monoteísmo en el Deuteronomio

Both the idea of divine law and the development of monotheism are specificand decisive elements in the history of religion attested by the Hebrew Bible.This article presents an analysis of Deuteronomy 4, the only text in the HebrewBible in which the revelation of divine law and an explicit monotheistic claim aresystematically related. Compared to the conceptions of law in the ancient Near Eastand ancient Greece, Deuteronomy 4 is shown to have made an important contributionto the specific identity of emergent Judaism.

Third position repair for resolving troubles in understanding teacher instructions

Teachers’ instruction-giving practices in classrooms are largely recognized as the primary condition for the smooth progression of pedagogical activities. Following the formulation of the instruction by teachers, students are expected to perform preferred actions in the next relevant place in interaction. It is also likely that potential troubles in understanding teacher instructions might arise, which leads to delays of activity completion. Such troubles are made visible in interaction through two ways: (1) students’ explicit claims of non-understanding and (2) teachers’ identification of trouble in understanding without students’ explicit claims. Using multimodal conversation analysis for the examination of video-recorded higher education English as a foreign language classroom interactions (25h), this study mainly deals with the latter in response to gaps in the literature and sets out to describe a method in particular deployed by an L2 teacher for the identification and resolution of understanding troubles in instruction-giving sequences, namely third position repairs. The findings provide insights into L2 classroom discourse.

What Does a Woman Look Like?

Book Review| May 01 2020 What Does a Woman Look Like? The Look of a Woman: Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans- Medicine. Plemons, Eric. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 192 pp. Chris A. Barcelos Chris A. Barcelos Chris A. Barcelos is an assistant professor of gender and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Their work uses ethnography and discourse analysis to study the politics of knowledge in health promotion and focuses on trans health, queer sexuality, and reproductive justice. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google TSQ (2020) 7 (2): 296–298. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-8143509 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter Email Permissions Search Site Citation Chris A. Barcelos; What Does a Woman Look Like?. TSQ 1 May 2020; 7 (2): 296–298. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-8143509 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsTSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly Search Advanced Search How do we know what a woman looks like? Can we know someone is a woman just by looking at her face? For plastic surgeon Dr. Douglas Ousterhout, quoted above, the answer is self-evident: the size and shape of a woman's nose, forehead, chin, and cheekbones communicate her sex. As medical anthropologist Eric Plemons details in his rich ethnography, Dr. Ousterhout was a key figure in the development of the set of bone and soft tissue reconstructive procedures now referred to as facial feminization surgery (FFS). Plemons brings us into consultation and operating rooms in the San Francisco Bay area where FFS enacts a “trans- therapeutics,” his term for the implicit assumptions and explicit claims that support trans- medicine as a beneficial and therapeutic practice. Rather than focusing his ethnographic lens solely on the experiences or motivations of trans women who pursue... Copyright © 2020 by Duke University Press2020 Issue Section: Book Review You do not currently have access to this content.

Dietary supplements’ endorsements. A content analysis of claims and appeals on Spanish radio

The aims of this study are to analyze the presence of endorsers in DS advertising on Spanish radio and the health-related product information of endorsements on full service Spanish radio. To this end, the content analysis of all radio spots broadcast throughout the year 2017 is conducted, deriving a corpus of 165 different radio spots belonging to the product category of dietary supplements, broadcast a total of 10,566 times. According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model, endorsers are a peripheral cue and increase advertising persuasion. The main results show that the most prevalent type of endorser in DS radio spots is the anonymous spokesperson, followed by celebrities, and that endorsers use explicit claims more frequently than implicit claims. Additionally, experts and celebrities use rational appeals more frequently while emotional appeals predominate in endorsements by typical consumers. Thus, rational appeals are prevalent in endorsements voiced by the most credible endorsers: experts and celebrities. That is, the higher the social recognition and credibility of the endorser, the greater the weight of direct, explicit and rational arguments in the message, while less attention is given to emotional appeals.

Building Expertise: Effects of Experience Claims on Responses to Advice

People place more value on advice from others whom they view as expert; however, the ways in which advisors might increase perceptions of their expertise through language choice remains unclear. This article examines a married partner’s ability to influence perceptions of their expertise, and consequent advice outcomes, by making explicit claims about past experience with a problem. Two experimental studies tested the effects of experience claims across work versus family problem contexts and examined dimensions of relational communication as mediators. Findings demonstrated that experience claims have the potential to affect evaluations of the spouse’s expertise and evaluations of advice; however, this effect varied based on problem context. Results suggested that statements about previous experience with work problems may improve advice outcomes, whereas experience claims in the context of family problems lead to less positive perceptions of advice. Perceived advisor empathy mediated the negative association between experience claims and advice outcomes.

Sustainable Purchasing Patterns and Consumer Responsiveness to Sustainability Marketing Messages

Background: Retailers and brand managers may be reticent to introduce products that are marketed as sustainable because prior research identifies a discrepancy between what consumers say they intend to purchase (via survey) and what they actually do at retail (via purchases). This research shows that despite this gap, products that have sustainable claims on their package are outperforming growth of conventional products in respective categories. Methods: We conducted a large-scale study of U.S. consumer purchases using IRI retail barcode data from 2013 to 2018, analyzing 36 consumer packaged goods (CPG) categories, representing 41% of total CPG dollar volume. We conducted detailed analyses of marketing messages from a subset of categories representing both high and low sustainability-marketed share development. Results: We calculated that ~50% of the growth in the in-sample CPG market came from sustainability-marketed products. These products accounted for 17% share of market ($) in 2018, up from 14% in 2013. Our detailed marketing-message analysis in five categories found: The most commonly found sustainability messages were category specific. Organic was the most dominant. Legacy (mainstream) brands that adopted sustainability messages contributed more to share increases of sustainability-marketed products than smaller, non-legacy brands. Higher efficacy products with sustainability claims had lower market share than lower efficacy products. However, in a study of one product category, we found that sustainability-marketed products performed best when accompanied by explicit efficacy claims. In four of the five categories examined, third-party certified sustainability-marketed products significantly outgrew sustainable products that had sustainable messaging, but no third-party certification.

Corporate Stakeholders, Corporate Valuation, and ESG

In an article published in 1987, we explained how corporate stakeholders, including customers, employees, suppliers, and distributors, influence financial policy and corporate behavior and why corporations have an incentive to treat these non-investor stakeholders fairly. At the heart of this explanation is the recognition that there are two fundamentally different classes of claims on a corporation. The first and most familiar are explicit contractual claims. These include employment contracts, bond indentures, product warranties, and the like. The second are implicit claims. Examples include fair treatment of employees, promise of continuing service to customers, and honest dealing with suppliers and distributors. Corporate stakeholders, all of whom have business relationships with the companies whose implicit claims they hold, value these implicit claims and are therefore prepared to pay for them. Corporate value is created by selling these implicit claims for more than it costs to honor them. More recently, a new class of non-investor stakeholders has arisen, related to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues, but with no business relationships with the companies they are making demands on. Although many ESG advocates stress their role in creating shareholder value, they provide no explanation for how this value creation occurs. In this paper, we show that implicit claims provide a critical link that ties non-investor stakeholders and ESG to shareholder value. We show why many of the demands placed on corporations by ESG advocates, in the name of corporate social responsibility, interfere with the sale of implicit claims to corporate stakeholders and may thereby destroy shareholder value.

The Practice of Philosophy within its Limits

The Practice of Philosophy within its Limits Jason Read (bio) CITIZEN SUBJECT: FOUNDATIONS FOR PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY BY ETIENNE BALIBAR TRANSLATED BY STEVEN MILLER New York: Fordham University Press, 2017 In reviewing Etienne Balibar’s Citizen Subject: Foundations for Philosophical Anthropology, it is important to grasp what kind of book, what kind of work, one is dealing with. The immediate answer would be a collection of essays. This superficial apprehension makes sense, especially because Balibar has written predominantly essays since he emerged on the scene with his contribution to Reading Capital. With the exception of the short studies on canonical figures, such as The Philosophy of Marx, Spinoza and Politics and Identity and Difference: John Locke and the Invention of Consciousness, as well as the Welleck Library Lectures, Violence and Civility, Balibar’s publications have mainly appeared as a series of essays collected in such books as Masses, Classes, Ideas; We, The People of Europe?; and Politics of the Other Scene. Treating Citizen Subject as merely a collection of essays misses the methodological point. Not only were the essays not intended as an organized book, but their episodic character belies a fundamental methodological point. As Balibar writes in the Introduction all the essays in this volume consist of readings; they bear upon texts or traverse the interpretation of texts. These texts are always rigorously individualized not only in the sense they are authored but also in that, above all, they are each time unique. I compare these texts to one another but I do not discuss “works” in the sense that literary and university ideology gives this term, nor, even less, the “systems” or “tendencies” [End Page 152] that would be represented in each product. I propose a new reading of the Second Meditation and not of Cartesianism . . . of the Phenomenology of Spirit (or a few moments therein) and not of Hegelianism, of the section from Capital on “commodity fetishism” and not of Marxism and so forth. (2017, 9) Balibar’s attention to the specific moments of reading is framed by a theoretical interest in what it means to “write in the conjuncture,” to write within a specific historical moment, with its constitutive tensions and contradictions. As Balibar argues, “not only do philosophers write within a conjuncture, but conversely, within the conjuncture, they write” (2017, 10). Balibar’s emphasis on the conceptual pair of the conjuncture and writing suggests that the context determines but does not define writing. Text exceeds context. The specificity of the moment is short-circuited by the practice of writing, which inserts the moment in a longer signifying chain, while this chain is in turn broken, or turned into knots by the exigencies of the conjuncture. The two of these converge in aporias, tensions, everything that Althusser formerly identified through symptomatic reading, now slightly reconfigured as a symptom of the tension between thought and its historicity. Balibar does not seek some balance between text and context or situate these texts in some overall historical progression but puts them to their maximum tension, seeking the point of heresy, the moment where the conjuncture interrupts the writing of philosophy and writing of philosophy breaks open the conjuncture. Despite this attention to the moment, to the points of heresy, Balibar’s book is not without its overarching theme, its large problem. It is more than a series of interventions and readings of particular conjunctures. As the subtitle suggests, it is work in philosophical anthropology, on the intersection of citizen and subject as ways of conceptualizing and problematizing what it means to be human. These concepts and problems, philosophical anthropology, citizen and subject not only are concepts that are in some sense implicitly universal, as perhaps all concepts are, but also make an explicit claim for universality. Philosophical anthropology claims to be an understanding of humanity as such. The citizen is in some sense the political corollary of such a universal figure. If one wanted to sum up in a word why “philosophical anthropology” has fallen out of favor as a philosophical problem or why the citizen is no longer seen as the center of politics, the criticism could [End Page 153] be summed up with one word: “universal.” The problem...

Forging Truth from Facts: Trauma, Historicity and Australian Children's Picture Books

Forging Truth from Facts:Trauma, Historicity and Australian Children's Picture Books Martin Kerby (bio) and Margaret Baguley (bio) Though they can find themselves constrained by the imagined "demands of children's literature as sanitary, benign, and didactic" (Tribunella 102), children's picture book authors and illustrators regularly attempt to engage with "unimaginable, unspeakable, and un-representable horror" (Trezise 43). Whether it be in the form of genocide, war, persecution or displacement, they tend not to shy away from the atrocities of history when searching for subject matter. However, the balancing of the sanitary with the unimaginable demands a compromise. Authors and illustrators invariably soften, perhaps even distort the horror in their efforts to be morally instructive. In their creation of a "parable of war" (MacCallum-Stewart 177) they explore the underlying humanist principles of the stories they tell, rather than historical perspectives. This approach transforms historical particularities into "universals of human experience" (Stephens 238). Trauma is sometimes directly confronted, but this is the exception rather than the rule (Kertzer, "Anxiety" 208). Kidd contends that at "least some of the children's literature of atrocity turns away from rather than confronts the difficulties of its subject matter, opting for simplistic narratives of character empowerment adapted from self-help literature" (185). For in any battle between hope and trauma, or at least the ones played out in children's literature, the former usually emerges triumphant. As a result, books such as the three analyzed in this article are often very successful in exploring broader issues of personal morality, but they make for dubious history. The critical and commercial success of works that adopt this approach suggests that the book buying public share this preference for morality tales over historical accuracy. This article will explore how three teams of Australian authors and illustrators position the plight of prisoners of war (POWs) (The Happiness Box: A Wartime Book of Hope, 2018), Indigenous servicemen (Alfred's War, 2018), and refugees (Ziba Came on a Boat, 2007) as a series of individual [End Page 281] traumas grounded in specific historical events. Only the first is ostensibly a work of nonfiction, though the latter two make an explicit claim to be truthful to the experience of a marginalized group. In particular, this article will focus on how the authors and illustrators, all of them skilled practitioners, have used historical events and individual trauma as a didactic opportunity. Specific historical details become a secondary consideration to generating an empathetic response from the reader. The books therefore become a barometer of contemporary attitudes and values. Trauma may find a place in the story but like the actual historical event, it is shaped, manipulated, and distorted to serve a didactic purpose. In the Australian marketplace, the exploration of historical trauma has been aided by a cultural context that characterizes history as a "wound or scar that leaves a trace on a nation's soul" (Twomey, "Anzac Day" par. 17). Yet as historians are only too aware, whether events "find their place finally in a story that is tragic, comic, romantic, or ironic . . . depends upon [their] decision to configure them according to the imperatives of one plot structure or mythos rather than another" (White 83). Children's literature is therefore always ideological, for it makes an important contribution to the formation and maintenance of a "national soul" (Hazard 111). In the case of war in the Australian context, this ideology is inherently conservative and pervasively hopeful: Though war is positioned as a national and personal trauma, it is also revered as a creative force that has shaped our personal and national identity. It is this distinction that allows the authors and illustrators to produce work that is overtly anti-militaristic, indeed almost pacifist in its intent, yet studiously avoids any criticism of the soldiers themselves. War might be futile, but the sacrifice of Australian soldiers is not. (Kerby et al., "Australians" 310) Yet any discussion of the place of trauma in Australian history must confront the widespread acceptance of war as the bedrock of national achievement and identity. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Anzac story was in a "state of terminal decline, anachronistic, patriarchal, militaristic and irrelevant" (Beaumont, "Second...

Research on the identification of messages contained in the implicatures of advertisements of over-the-counter products sold in pharmacies in Poland

Reports by institutions monitoring this market show that of over PLN 7 billion spent annually in Poland on advertising, almost half is spent on advertising OTC medicines, medical devices and dietary supplements (Instytut Monitorowania Mediów, 2019). Considering this, and taking into account legal regulations that significantly limit promotion at the point of sale (Art. 93 of the Pharmaceutical Law Act), advertising seems to be the most important tool for stimulating demand for over-the-counter products as well as one a basic source of of the residents of Poland on ailments, their treatment and prevention. The study examined 71 advertisements, including 47 ads for medicines, 10 for medical devices, 12 for dietary supplements and 1 ad for food for special medical purposes. Among the sample, 27% ads contained manipulation in the marketing message. The current tools of market control institutions enable the analysis of explicit claims but not implied messages in advertising. Our analysis shows that this is not enough to protect patients and other market participants from misleading or false advertising. It is absolutely necessary to enhance the control over the advertising of medicines, dietary supplements and medical devices by analysing the implications contained in the advertisements.

Teacher Metacognitions About Identities: Case Studies of Four Expert Language Teachers in China

Despite a surge of research interest in teacher identity in both TESOL and general education, there is a lack of attention to the role of metacognition in language teachers’ identity (re)construction. Informed by the integrated framework of metacognitions comprising metacognitive knowledge, strategies, and experiences, this article reports on four expert language teachers’ metacognitions about identities and how such metacognitions influenced their identity work in China. The findings demonstrate four major types of metacognitive experiences: (1) ascertaining, prioritizing, and claiming existing identities; (2) imagining, planning, and constructing new identities; (3) crafting a fluid and interconnected identity web; and (4) engaging in distributed identity construction. While engaging in such metacognitive experiences, the participants also drew on various forms of metacognitive knowledge (e.g., their knowledge about strategies, tasks, and themselves) and strategies (e.g., asking metacognitive questions, making explicit identity claims) in their identity (re)construction. The study adds to the current teacher identity literature by highlighting the critical role of metacognitions in guiding language teachers to manage, regulate, and distribute their identities. Practical implications for language teaching and teacher education are provided.

Populist Governments and International Law: A Reply to Heike Krieger

Abstract The article by Heike Krieger, published in this issue, is an important contribution to the debate on populism and the law, not least because of its emphasis on a distinctive populist approach to the law. Krieger’s account lacks however in providing sufficient attention to three dimensions: popular sovereignty, constituent power and a shifting imaginary of the law. The relation of populism with popular sovereignty (and populism as a reaction to unresponsive institutions) is little discussed, and, hence, the explicit democratic claim of populists is downplayed. Constituent power is equally little touched upon, meaning that the populist understanding of the law as an obstacle but equally as a means to institutionalize a different democratic order is overlooked. The most important argument in the paper, which remains however too implicit, is that of a potentially shifting imaginary of the law. Krieger’s argument points in the right direction, but it could be developed further by stressing the essentially and historically contested nature of the progressive international system and its weak spots in terms of legitimacy and accountability.

Microbial safety and probiotic potential of packaged yogurt products in Pakistan

AbstractYogurt is a health food with notable market production and demand. Because of this, we conducted a study on prominent commercial brands of yogurts in Pakistan for microbial content and the probiotic potential of the contained lactic acid bacteria (LAB), in the context of their label claims. All contained viable LAB, but the numbers (cfu g−1) varied considerably. Three of the products made explicit probiotic claims, but LAB from these displayed no probiotic attributes per WHO‐FAO guidelines. The yogurt starter and nonstarter Lactobacillus strains had no gelatinase or hemolytic activity and exhibited significant antibacterial activity against some human pathogens. One brand with a probiotic claim contained an L. acidophilus strain that showed cholesterol assimilation activity in vitro. Some potential human pathogens that were hemolytic and resistance to β‐lactam antibiotics were also detected in the products. The findings demonstrate a need for better quality control and regulation to ensure safety and efficacy of yogurt products.