Full Dialogue Research Articles

«На границах привычной коммуникации»: семиотико-феноменологический аспект читательской рефлексии М. Степановой

The article proposes a semiotic-phenomenological understanding of the problem of meaning production and misunderstanding of a poetic text as one of the possible reactions of the reader. The material was the metaliterary reflection of Maria Stepanova: a comparison of the reader with a seismograph-sensecatcher, the process of interpretation with actions on the boundaries of ordinary communication, misunderstanding with the absence of a reading organ. The author is considered simultaneously as a coding sender and a decoding interpreter of being, capturing meanings. The uniqueness of what is encoded and the experience of the poet’s knowledge of the world, the transcendental nature of what is conveyed through a sign, the need to reconstruct the language of speaking and understanding without losing the equivalence of meanings make it difficult to perceive a poetic text. M. Stepanova creates the image of an ideal reader, ready for the traumatic experience of understanding a new language and capturing new meanings in a situation where there is no “organ” for a full dialogue.

Migrancy and utopia: the global network in Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange and Hamid’s Exit West

ABSTRACT This paper attends to the utopian imagination circulating in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange (1997). These texts exemplify the formal innovation assigned to migrancy fiction more generally, a genre characterised by its embrace of mobility in content as well as in form. Alongside migrancy novels, utopian fiction both maps and distorts the networks and infrastructures that generate wealth inequality on a global scale. But while previous studies have touched on the utopian implications to migration fiction, this paper elaborates on the affordances of placing these fields into full dialogue. To develop this last point, this paper draws from Mary Louise Pratt’s influential concept of the contact zone in order to acknowledge the different scales of utopian thinking within (and between) Tropic of Orange, which demarcates a specific utopian community, and Exit West, which imagines a global commons. Approaching these texts through the lens of the contact zone helps bring into focus how mundane technologies create inequality today but might be repurposed to radically remake society in the future.

Interpretatio Ivdaica in the Achaemenid Period

Abstract The Yahwistic community at Elephantine, whose document record covers almost the entire fifth century BCE, conserves the most direct, vibrant and authentic witness of Achaemenid-era Yahwism. This article focuses on the process of interpretatio iudaica through interactions with neighboring and reigning cults: Egyptian, Levantine and Achaemenid-Zoroastrian (AZ), comparing it to other Yahwistic settlements of its time. It shows that these communities behaved as normative citizens of the polytheistic/henotheistic world surrounding them. In what is an expected process of interpretatio of their day and age, they were in full dialogue with the philosophical/theological views and innovations of the cultures surrounding them. They translated their deity/ies with “host deities” when they came into contact with other cultures. Significantly, living in an Achaemenid imperial context, Ahuramazdā was translated with Yhw, and following Artaxerxes II’s reform, a new Yahwistic triad translated both the new AZ triad as well as the local Egyptian triad.

The history of knowledge and the history of education

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to introduce the themed section of History of Education Review on “The History of Knowledge and the History of Education”, comprising four empirical articles that together seek to bring the history of education into fuller dialogue with the approaches and methods of the nascent field of the history of knowledge.Design/methodology/approachThis introductory article provides a broad overview of the history of knowledge for the benefit of historians of education, introduces the four themed section articles that follow, and draws out some of their overarching themes and concepts.FindingsThe history of knowledge concept of “arenas of knowledge” emerges as generative across the themed section. Authors also engage with problems of the legitimacy of knowledges, and with pedagogy as practice. In addition, focusing on colonial and postcolonial contexts raises reflexive questions about history of knowledge approaches that have so far largely been developed in European and North American scholarship.Originality/valueThe history of education has not previously been strongly represented among the fields that have gone into the formation of the history of knowledge as a synthetic, interdisciplinary approach to historical studies. Nor have historians of education much engaged with its distinguishing concepts and methodologies. The themed section also extends the history of knowledge itself through its strong focus on colonial and postcolonial histories.

Communicative Distraction?: Russia’s and the European Union’s Rival Perception Managements

This article examines the nature and implications of the current information/propaganda battle between Russia and the EU by placing it in the context of conceptions of argument and dialogue in international politics. Both sides are engaged in ‘perception management’ by which they try to defend their actions and influence positively the opinions of foreign publics. This seems far removed from ‘communicative action’, the Habermasian notion of engagement in argument and dialogue between equals. The article argues that the current crisis in Russia-EU relations is partly the result of the perception on the Russian side that there never was such communicative action – because Russia was not treated as an equal partner in dialogue, and its views/interests were ignored in a number of cases. On this account, Russia therefore became more assertive, culminating in the Ukraine crisis and Russia’s outright aggression which it tried to defend using perception management, echoed by the EU’s counter-disinformation campaign. We are therefore closer to ‘communicative distraction’ – attempts to control image and opinion – rather than the debate and dialogue inherent in communicative action. Nevertheless, the article argues that even within these rival perception managements, there is engagement in argument over norms and the application of norms in specific cases. In the present crisis of Russia-EU relations, we cannot expect more; but the fact that there is some form of argument might still provide a potential basis for fuller dialogue in the future. Russia, EU, Perception Management, Information Warfare, Communicative Action

Scalable diagnostic screening of mild cognitive impairment using AI dialogue agent

AbstractBackgroundThe search for early biomarkers of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been central to Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and the dementia research community in recent years. While there exist in‐vivo biomarkers (e.g., beta‐amyloid and tau) that can serve as indicators of pathological progression toward AD, biomarker screenings are prohibitively expensive to scale if widely used among pre‐symptomatic individuals in the outpatient setting. Behavior and social markers such as language, speech, and conversational behaviors reflect cognitive changes that may precede physical changes and offer a much more cost‐effective option for preclinical MCI detection, especially if they can be extracted from a non‐clinical setting.MethodWe developed a prototype AI conversational agent that conducts screening conversations with participants. Specifically, this AI agent must learn to ask the right sequence of questions to distinguishing the conversational characteristics of the participants with MCI from those with normal cognition. Using transcribed data obtained from recorded conversational interactions between participants and trained interviewers generated in a recently completed clinical trial, and applying supervised learning models to these data, we developed a novel reinforcement learning (RL) pipeline and a dialogue simulation environment to train an efficient dialogue agent to explore a range of semi‐structured questions. We train and validate our AI dialogue agent based on transcribed data from a randomized controlled behavioral intervention study, where we use the transcribed data from 41 subjects (14 MCI, 27 NL). Each subject has an average of 35 turns of dialogue on average.ResultThe results show that while using only a few turns of conversation, our framework can significantly outperform state‐of‐the‐art supervised learning approaches used in a past study. An AI agent of 30 turns of dialogue achieves over 0.853 Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curves (AUC) and 0.809 AUC with 20 turns, as compared to 0.811 AUC with the full dialogue turns.ConclusionOur dialogue‐based AI agent presents a step toward using AI to extend clinical care beyond the classical hospital and clinical settings, where we find that AI‐generated dialogues produce more predictive linguistic markers.

Безпековий аспект відносин АСЕАН та КНР у Південно-Східній Азії

The article analyzes the the People's Republic of China (PRC) influence on the activities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the security sector. It outlines the specifics of the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China in the region and its connection to the formation of the Southeast Asia (SA) security architecture processes. The article highlightes modern trends and tendencies of China's geostrategic positioning in the region, the pros and cons of the Chinese foreign policy concept at both regional and global levels. For many years China was seen as a threat to Southeast Asian countries due to its political ideology and active support for the uprisings in those countries. In 1967, when ASEAN was founded, China had serious doubts about the motives of this newly formed international union. Beijing was deeply concerned that the organization could have a hidden military connotation that would consolidate anti-Chinese sentiment in Southeast Asia. Formal relations between China and the Association were established in 1991. In July 1994 China became a «consultative partner» within ASEAN Regional Forum on Peace and Security. In 1996 by signing the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation of 1976 China became a full dialogue partner. The transformation of the system of international relations, as well as the global rebalance of power in the post-bipolar era have contributed to the strengthening of China`s positions in world politics. On the one hand the end of the Cold War minimized the risks of a nuclear catastrophe, but at the same time it actualized and accelerated trade and economic cooperation tendencies. In such circumstances most of ASEAN member states sought brand new approach towards China, willing to benefit from its economic upswing. For its part, China's growing dependence on energy forces it to engage in solving regional security issues more actively. Nowadays China's foreign policy is represented by the Belt and Road Initiative, formerly known as the One Belt One Road. It is a global infrastructure development strategy that includes 2 large-scale projects: the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. Participating in those projects seems lucrative for most Southeast Asia countries, due to their close economic ties with China being nearly the main driver of their own economies. After all, China still remains a key trading partner among ASEAN member states. However, on the other hand, many of the political elites fear that participation in China's projects will put them in a position of dependence on Beijing. That`s why ASEAN tries to maintain the SA as a peaceful, neutral region, free from the dominance of any regional or non-regional state.

Untitled (Speech Poem #2)

Closed captions often do not fully convey the meaning, emotion, or even the full dialogue of spoken English to a d/Deaf audience. They are often incomplete, whether due to audist assumptions about the ability of d/Deaf to understand content (such as with captions that present allegedly less lofty language than that spoken by the actors on-screen), or the technological failure whereby caption decoders in televisions and in the devices cinemas use drop a line of dialogue. Other times, the failure of closed captions relates to the more subtle inability of formal written captioning protocols to capture tone of voice, or to really represent what emotional information is portrayed by a soundtrack. What does it mean to have “upbeat music” or to name the instrument itself? My work subverts this obfuscation of meaning, turning the tables to privilege disabled communities over non-disabled communities.

ETIQUETTE RULES – AN ESSENTIAL ATTRIBUTE OF COMMUNICATION

The article investigates etiquette rules, without knowledge of which a full dialogue between representatives of different cultures is impossible. An attempt is made to investigate the question whether etiquette rules can be universal. The study reveals that national and cultural features of speech behavior of communicants-speakers of different languages, representatives of different cultures do not coincide. To achieve the harmonization of communication, it is necessary to combine verbal means with nonverbal ones. The article focuses on the analysis of the features of such a common gesture as a handshake used in a variety of speech cultures. The author reveals the features characteristic of individual cultures, draws attention to the fact that the handshake as a greeting is a gender-marked gesture not only in Daghestan but also in European culture.

Chinese Dialogue Intention Classification Based on Multi-Model Ensemble

In dialogue systems, understanding the user utterances is crucial for providing appropriate responses. A traditional dialogue act classification (DA) task is to classify each user reply into “ACCEPT, REJECT, PROPOSE, and others”. In contrast, in this paper, we define the DA task on multiple round conversations between humans. The re-defined task is to classify a full dialogue according to the intention of one participant. We term this task as intention classification (IC). We, then, propose a hybrid neural network-based ensemble model for solving this problem. Two novel ensemble schemes are introduced for combining the classification results or features from various classifiers. One is ensembling features from each individual classifier using stacking, and we term this scheme as SFE. The other is adding wrong examples' weight to loss functions of each individual classifier using the AdaBoost scheme, and we term this scheme as MN-Ada. We have empirically examined the performance of the proposed ensemble schemes by using three popular deep neural networks, as well as one newly modified networks for IC. Extensive experiments have been conducted on a Chinese dialogue corpus. Our model can achieve state-of-the-art accuracy on the experimental dialogue corpus.

Whither Hamlet's “Words, Words, Words”? Notes on Dialogue and Designs in Hamlet

Four Hamlets and Hamlets have evolved from recent text-editorial practice, corresponding with, respectively, Q1 1603, Q2 1604–05, F 1623, and the composite received text combining Q2 and F. Q2 is the fullest and most authoritative text, F is a slightly shorter, cut revision containing passages omitted in Q2. At present, Q1—half the length of Q2—is either young Shakespeare's first version or, more likely, a later derivative of F1's ancestor (c. 1601–03). Although the most recent editors (of Arden 3 and the New Oxford Shakespeare) favor individual editions of Q1, Q2, and F, there remains much to be said for the received composite text that intercuts longer passages omitted in Q2 and F as a reader's text of the whole literary Hamlet. This Hamlet benefits from full dialogue by and about the Prince, including his important speeches cut in F and in most productions, 1.4.17–38 (notably “So oft it chances”), and his last soliloquy, 4.4.32–66 (“How all occasions do inform against me”). The whole Hamlet is a salutary corrective to the post-Romantic Hamlet-as-Coleridge and Olivier's voice-overed “man who could not make up his mind.” Not mad, he feigns well in prose that serves as easily in genial conversation with those of lower social station—guards, players, gravediggers—and like much else shows him something of a mensh. Hamlet was every inch a king-in-waiting (not much longer: “This is I, Hamlet the Dane”), and he dies, politically responsible, casting his vote for Fortinbras. In the perspective of our own time, “His greatest operational weapon is his humanity.”

Energy sufficiency in buildings, a synonym for passive and low energy architecture (PLEA)

ABSTRACTEnergy sufficiency in buildings means making the most of the environmental energy that can be exploited directly by the building’s physics. To happen this requires a full dialogue with place and proper design and materials to respond, as much as possible, to the energy needs within the building, typically related to the provision of comfort and the overall wellbeing of its occupants. It can be said that the Passive and Low Energy Architecture movement, PLEA, has promoted, for over thirty-five years, all avenues for energy sufficiency in buildings through the exploitation of ‘sound architectural’ design potentials. Between the approach of vernacular architecture, particularly relevant in the Mediterranean basin, and the concept of energy sufficiency, there is an opportunity to facilitate, enrichen and clarify the dialogue with energy service stakeholders and related policy makers to result in better architectural design, contributing towards the advancement of PLEA’s perspective, strategy, wisdom and practice.

Anarchy, anarchism and multiplicity: Preface to a fuller dialogue with Rosenberg

Anarchy, anarchism and multiplicity: Preface to a fuller dialogue with Rosenberg

Value marketing as a Determinant of Forming a Political Offer in the Process of Communication between Politicians and Voters

At the heart of the concept of value marketing is the evolution of its use. Starting with a mere information about the presence of a product on the market, through subsequently satisfying the needs of the buyer of the product or service, to finally reaching a full dialogue between the bidder (offerer) and the customer. This relationship is based, inter alia, on the common definition of the characteristics of the desired goods and their adjustment to the values indicated by the customers. Also, important values for the buyer of a political product should be similarly shaped in the marketing sense. Creating bonds, the partnership relations between the exchange parties on the political market is a mechanism that makes this process very effective. The article points to the “value” present in the political product and explains how it is created. It also analyses two key contexts of what “value” is, describes marketing and its core tools on the economic and political market. The author of the paper makes a hypothesis that “value” as the core of the political offer generated by the politician-voter relationship is of fundamental importance in political transactions and is at the same time a determinant of electoral decision. Key words: value, value marketing, provision of value, voter, politician, political offer, political market

Russia Interests & the Effect of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) on Global Economic Integration, 2015 2016

The study attempts to describe and analyze the effect of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) on global economic integration in Southeast Asia region using qualitative research method. The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) was establish on 1 January 2015, and launched a new period of economic integration in the Eurasian region. A Union formed among Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan is not simply a reincarnation of the U.S.S.R. as some politicians would claim. And it is not an attempt to create a certain one-sided economic club. The way the Union is developing is a sign of its potential power, which is quite the opposite the Union is strong due of a full and free dialogue with everyone. Before the establishment of the Union, the Eurasian integration process yielded obvious economic dividends for all its participants. For example, the total trade of Russia with Armenia grew by 64 percent during the last three business years, with Belarus 15 percent, with Kazakhstan 39 percent, and with Kyrgyzstan 31 percent. Even those states that joined the EAEU not long ago have already felt the positive effect. For instance, the inflow of foreign direct investment to the economy of Kyrgyzstan increased 2.3 times from January to June 2015 and amounted to US$498.5 million. Moreover, the volume of investment coming from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and Russia to Kyrgyzstan grew 2.8 times and 7.4 times, respectively. Without a doubt, the effect from being a member of the Union is different in each country, keeping in mind that positive changes are not visible straight away since the level of integration of each economy is different. And this is in line with one of the key principles of the EAEU. It is the principle of multispeed integration, which allows the states to gradually adapt to common laws and regulations as well as find their respective specialization areas.

The Prayer to Pan of Plato’s Phaedrus (279b8–c3): An Exhortation to Exercise the Philosophical Virtue

The current article offers a new reading of Socrates’ prayer to Pan in Plato’s Phaedrus. By means of a comprehensive approach, the paper shows that the prayer not only gathers together the most relevant topics dealt with during the conversation but it also exhorts us to engage in the way of life depicted by Socrates’ character, namely that of philosophy, which can be clearly distinguished from that of traditional rhetoric. To this extent, eros and logos, two elements closely related to Pan, show themselves to be of primary relevance. Besides these issues, we discuss the puzzling nature of the prayer, defending the idea that it was authored with the same writing method as the full dialogue. Socrates’ psychagogic attempt with Phaedrus is analogous to Plato’s didactic effort to engage the reader in philosophy: instead of supplying a straight message which must be learnt by heart by Phaedrus or the reader, both Socrates and Plato offer friendly logoi intended to promote active research in the receivers.

Performance in a Collaborative Search Task: The Role of Feedback and Alignment.

When people communicate, they coordinate a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic behaviors. This process of coordination is called alignment, and it is assumed to be fundamental to successful communication. In this paper, we question this assumption and investigate whether disalignment is a more successful strategy in some cases. More specifically, we hypothesize that alignment correlates with task success only when communication is interactive. We present results from a spot-the-difference task in which dyads of interlocutors have to decide whether they are viewing the same scene or not. Interactivity was manipulated in three conditions by increasing the amount of information shared between interlocutors (no exchange of feedback, minimal feedback, full dialogue). We use recurrence quantification analysis to measure the alignment between the scan-patterns of the interlocutors. We found that interlocutors who could not exchange feedback aligned their gaze more, and that increased gaze alignment correlated with decreased task success in this case. When feedback was possible, in contrast, interlocutors utilized it to better organize their joint search strategy by diversifying visual attention. This is evidenced by reduced overall alignment in the minimal feedback and full dialogue conditions. However, only the dyads engaged in a full dialogue increased their gaze alignment over time to achieve successful performances. These results suggest that alignment per se does not imply communicative success, as most models of dialogue assume. Rather, the effect of alignment depends on the type of alignment, on the goals of the task, and on the presence of feedback.

Indywidualistyczne i supraindywidualistyczne predyktory optymalnego oddziaływania resocjalizacyjnego na skazanych w warunkach wolnościowych

Spotkanie osiągające granice momentów dialogicznych, czyli sięgające głębi w komunikacji interpersonalnej, może być sytuacją tożsamościowo-twórczą, a zatem taką, w której tożsamość uczestników jest odgrywana, poznawana i doświadczana. Najistotniejszymi warunkami umożliwiającymi pełny dialog są: rodzaje relacji między uczestniczącymi stronami, uwaga i wzajemne zrozumienie oraz miłość. Relacje międzyludzkie różnią się ilością osób w nich uczestniczących, głębią, charakterem, intensywnością i mogą wskazywać na typ spotkania. W nurcie antropologii filozoficznej Teilharda de Chardina Barbara Pasamonik przedstawia proces komunikacji jako relację o charakterze utylitarnym – nastawioną na osiągnięcie czegoś oraz jako relację personalistyczną, która ma na celu „spotkanie kogoś” (Pasamonik 1999, s. 102). W tej drugiej nie ma zamiaru czysto poznawczego, który redukowałby „Innego” do przedmiotu poznania; chodzi raczej o możliwość obcowania, otwierania się na drugiego człowieka, co jest możliwe tylko w przypadku związku opartego na odpowiedzialności.

“Soda attracted girls like honey draws flies”: The Outsiders, the Boy Band Formula, and Adolescent Sexuality

This article examines The Outsiders against the backdrop of all-male pop singing groups during the 1960s such The Beatles and The Monkees. More specifically, it makes a case that S. E. Hinton’s classic text incorporates a variety of elements from the emerging formula for boy bands. Understanding this point not only places the 1967 narrative in fuller dialogue with its original historical era, but also adds a previously overlooked facet to the book’s initial attraction and ongoing appeal. The Outsiders certainly caters to adolescent desires for literary realism, but it doesn’t hurt that the novel also caters to readers’ budding sexuality.

Review of John B. Cobb, Jr. (ed.), 2012, Religions in the Making

In 1926, the philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead published his seminal work, Religion in the Making, reflecting on the place of religion in human life in light of his innovative cosmology. In this work Whitehead lamented that neither Christianity nor Buddhism had engaged in a full dialogue with contemporary science and cosmology, and he hoped for such reflection in the future. Three years later, Whitehead published a more systematic reflection on God and the cosmos, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Departing from most traditional monotheistic approaches, Whitehead presented creativity as the ultimate in his philosophy of organism, and he viewed God as its primordial accident. For Whitehead, God does not create the universe out of nothing, does not radically transcend the world, and is not omnipotent. Whitehead saw God as constantly interacting with the world, receiving each event into the divine life and proposing a divine aim for each new occasion, operating by persuasion, not coercion. While Whitehead was not a professional theologian, his philosophy of organism had an important influence on many Christian theologians in the decades that followed, and Mordecai Kaplan developed the ideas for Reconstructionist Judaism in awareness of Whitehead’s work. In Religions in the Making, one of the most distinguished leaders of Christian process theology, John B. Cobb, Jr., invites scholars from a variety of religions to consider the relation between Whitehead’s thought and the perspectives of their respective traditions.