Interpretable Dimensions Research Articles

Between Science and Supernaturalism: Mimesis and the Uncanny in Nineteenth-Century Theatre and Culture

Curiously placed between the realms of science and supernaturalism, the phenomenon of the uncanny double has a distinctive presence in both. Another kind of duality is at issue in the imagined presence of the doppelganger, as a figure in both physical and mental life. While the phenomenon of the Brocken spectre is one of the era’s most resonant manifestations of an uncanny mirroring of the body, later nineteenth-century developments in clinical psychology began to focus on the sense of an alien presence residing in unknown reaches of the human brain. As they did so, these clinical experiments involved an engagement with the interweave of mental and physiological expression. In Nicholas Royle’s words, the uncanny is associated with ‘a flickering sense (but not conviction) of something supernatural’. Somewhere between the conviction afforded by cognitive processes and the flickering sense intimated by the live wiring of the nervous system, new dimensions of reading and interpretation were opened up. My concern here is to explore how the overlay of scientific and supernaturalist frames is managed in some of the more influential literary and dramatic portrayals of uncanny mimesis. These include evocations of the doppelganger in works by Thomas De Quincey, James Hogg, and Walter Scott, and in Henry Irving’s theatrical productions. Irving’s interest in the double consciousness of the actor is discussed in relation to psychological theories of dual consciousness, and their exploration in clinical practice with patients diagnosed as hysteric.

Framing mechanisms: the interpretive policy entrepreneur’s toolbox

ABSTRACTPolicy entrepreneurs were, originally, neither conceived to be active meaning-makers nor did they interact with other actors. They invested other resources such as time, energy, reputation and money in coupling problems, solutions and politics. Adding the interpretive dimension of interactional framing mechanisms turns them into interpretive policy entrepreneurs. This perspective improves our understanding of policy cases in which initial frame conflicts are resolved by extensive meaning-making work by one specific actor. We illustrate this interpretive policy entrepreneur concept with the innovative Sand Motor mega-sand nourishment scheme case, an artificial peninsula of 21 million m3 at the South Holland coast. Designed to achieve multiple aims, this coastal management scheme should serve coastal protection, nature development as well as recreational purposes. In the risk-averse, complex policy domain of Dutch coastal management, the provincial government of South Holland turned out to be an adept meaning-maker by linking other actors’ problem definitions to their proposed solution. Fourteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews put the provincial government at the heart of several framing interactions that led to frame convergence and ultimately the resolution of the initial frame conflict. Our interpretive analysis of framing interactions concludes that interactional framing mechanisms can reveal interpretive policy entrepreneurs.

Unbound: Beyond the codex, the book as process/experience/event

Abstract This article argues that the book as ‘process’ and ‘event’ requires a different understanding of ‘book’: one that acknowledges the impossibility of meaning residing in the final object alone. The finitude of the codex form is made a mockery of by the infinite dimensions of language, interpretation and time: this article extends that notion by exploring the process of making artists books as experience(s) that engage spatial/temporal/sensory attributes of making as being fully involved in their knowledge and meaning. Such books pose knowledge as an ‘event’: foregrounding the making and not the outcome. By example, the bookwork, Skinful (2003), questions the role of the materiality of the bound codex as object and examines how time and process operate in the book as a metaphor for emotional encounters. To complement this, The Cruelty of the Classical Canon (2014), expands the paradox of the material book as a container of knowledge explored through ‘brute’ encounters with making and experiencing such an object. Both books explore the relationship between the body/embodied thought in the book-as-process.

Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East: Recent Contributions from Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology

Remembering the Dead in the Ancient Near East: Recent Contributions from Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology

Hydraulic fracturing as an interpretive policy problem: lessons on energy controversies in Europe and the U.S.A.

ABSTRACTThis special issue addresses hydraulic fracturing for shale gas extraction as an interpretive policy problem. Bringing together empirical cases from the U.S.A., the Netherlands, the U.K., Poland, and Germany, we identify three approaches to the interpretation of hydraulic fracturing in the article: understanding its meaning, contextual explanation of the institutionalization of its meaning, and policy design as intervention to alter its meaning. By exploring differences and similarities across these cases, we identified two central tensions in the meaning of shale gas in all cases: (1) economic opportunity or environmental threat and (2) transition toward a more carbon-free energy future or perpetuation of a fossil fuel system. We found that when actors shift the meaning of hydraulic fracturing to consider it predominantly an issue of threat, this explains the dominance of risk governance as an approach to managing the controversy. Alternately, when the meaning of fracking shifts from consideration as an economic opportunity or a bridge fuel to consideration of it as a barrier to an energy transition, this explains the decision to ban fracking. Therefore, a comparative assessment of the papers demonstrates the ways interpretive dimensions of politics can influence the governance of public policy.

Narrativity and Sound in German Radio Play Adaptations of Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy

In line with the strong emphasis on visuality in the wake of the “visual turn” in literary and cultural studies, graphic novel adaptations of literary texts have recently been the objects of scholarly study and narratological theory building. Much less attention, if any, has been accorded to radio play adaptations of novels like Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy . An analysis of radio play adaptations acquires a special significance in the case of this highly enigmatic work, which makes a seriously playful use of postmodern narrative strategies. It is perhaps above all this feature which made the adaptation of the novel’s first instalment, City of Glass , into a graphic novel by Paul Karasik and David Mazucchelli so successful. While the graphic novel visualizes characteristic features of its mother text, this paper explores the different modes of narrative sound in three German radio play adaptations of Auster’s novel. Alfred Behrens’ Stadt aus Glas , Katharina Bihler’s Schlagschatten , and Norbert Schaeffer’s Hinter verschlossenen Turen employ narrative devices like voices in both German and English, the evocation of city soundscapes, the narrative uses of music as well as issues of the simultaneity and/or difference of story and discourse time. The narrative auralization of Auster’s novels in the radio plays under discussion can be shown to foreground non-visual aspects of the pre-texts and to add further dimensions for interpretation that underline the usefulness of audionarratological analysis for adaptation studies.

Apuntes sobre el neobarroco: de teorías y metalenguas

This article addresses the notion of Latin American baroque, linking its aesthetic and interpretive dimension with the cognitive, to develop a located epistemology in Latin America, consistent with its tradition and cultural history. This exercise requires a transdisciplinary effort, therefore this article takes the form of notes, in the context of a broader research program focusing on the contribution of the sociologist Pedro Morande and writers Pablo Rokha and Jose Lezama Lima, in a transdisciplinary perspective that assumes theories of knowledge grounded in the identification of Baroque and Latin American appropriations as core of our cultural substrate and therefore epicenter of reflection on identity; developing emerging forms of writing grounded in a metalanguage that appeals to the neo-baroque as a foundation.

Multisensory Imaginings: An Audionarratological Analysis of Philip Roth's NovelIndignationand its German Radio Play AdaptationEmpörung

This article analyses the German radio play adaptation of Philip Roth's novel Indignation (Empörung, 2010) from an audionarratological perspective and shows how both the book and the radio play offer potential for multisensory experiences on the part of readers and radio audiences. The article furthermore explores how the two media differ in their semiotic and sensory affordances and possibilities. It is argued that aural signs and signals predetermine certain aspects of the storyworld in the radio play: for example, characters' and the narrator's voices, soundscapes, but also ambient sound and music. Due to its focus on the aural channel, radio drama calls on audiences' imagination in distinct ways, while also complicating narratological concepts. The ‘transcriptivity’ from written to spoken text that is inherent in the transposition of novel into radio play accounts for the fact that the radio play also adds new multisensory and interpretive dimensions to its pre-text. It therefore has to be considered in its own right, as an artistic form appealing to its audiences through its own sensory channels.

Theory Follows from Practice: Lessons from the Field

Theory is a distillation that makes the inevitable trial and error of teaching and learning count for lessons to be passed on. We learned this from working on engaged humanities projects, and also from reading Frederich Schiller, John Dewey, and others who share a fascination with doing as a trigger for feeling and thinking. The sometimes humble practice of service learning generates lessons that add up to the broad intellectual ambition of public humanities: to explore and expand the civic dimensions of art and interpretation, and to demonstrate through practise the centrality of the humanities to democratic processes and social justice. Theory not only informs engaged humanities practices: theory is transformed by these practices, as are those who participate in them. At a time when the value of the humanities is continually in question, it is all the more essential to engage the humanities in the dialogical process of refashioning education, community, theory, and the humanities themselves.

Your word is my command: Oxytocin facilitates the understanding of appeal in verbal communication

The hormone oxytocin is known to facilitate positive communication behaviors. In the current study, we aimed to examine how it affects the interpretation of verbal information during communication. We predicted oxytocin to promote the understanding of the socially most effortful dimension of appeal. After intranasal administration of oxytocin or a placebo, participants responded to a “four-ear communication” questionnaire. Results revealed that participants under oxytocin not only chose the dimension of appeal as first choice significantly more often than participants under placebo but also preferred it over most of the other dimensions of interpretation. The findings add to our knowledge of oxytocin as a facilitator of social approach and indicate how oxytocin might work in communicative settings.

Violência e vida familiar: abordagens psicanalíticas e de gênero

Resumo Busca-se examinar as possibilidades de diálogo interdisciplinar entre a psicanálise e a teoria de gênero, tal como tem sido usada em estudos acerca da violência na Saúde Coletiva, para abordar ocorrências de agressão e abuso na vida familiar e seus possíveis impactos na saúde, com especial atenção às repercussões psíquicas nas crianças e mulheres, bem como no grupo familiar como um todo. Com base em autores clássicos para ambos os aportes disciplinares, examina-se um caso concreto extraído de situação de atendimento à família. Esse exame é composto de três dimensões interpretativas: primeiro, considerações sobre o caso individual em seu contexto familiar; segundo, o caso visto da perspectiva das questões culturais; por fim, a relação entre a cultura e sua expressão individualizada no caso. Aponta-se para a possibilidade de se realizar uma abordagem que integre a dimensão intrapsíquica, que diz respeito ao funcionamento do mundo interno dos sujeitos envolvidos, à realidade sociocultural e histórica que constitui o seu contexto de vida. E com vistas a uma atenção mais integral dos casos, aponta-se a importância prática de combinar a reflexão e intervenção de natureza psicodinâmica, fruto do exame dos impactos intrapsíquicos da violência a partir de conceitos como trauma e terror, com reconhecimentos das expressões culturais no plano individual e familiar, que reforçam aceitações normativas de agressões, vitimizações, silenciamentos e banalizações das violências. O diálogo interdisciplinar permite compreender o desenvolvimento de sentimentos e comportamentos, reforçados culturalmente, tais como medos e vergonhas nas vítimas e reiteração das violências nos agressores.

Novel Approach to Surface Plasmon Resonance: A Third Dimension in Data Interpretation Through Surface Roughness Changes.

In a Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) experiment two key parameters are classically recorded: the time and the angle of SPR reflectivity. This paper brings into focus a third key parameter: SPR reflectivity. The SPR reflectivity is proved to be related to surface roughness changes. Practical investigations on (i) gold anodizing and (ii) polypyrrole film growth in presence of oxalic acid is detailed under potentiostatic conditions. These experimental results reveal the potential of using the SPR technique to investigate real-time changes both on the gold surface, but also in the gold film itself. This extends the versatility of the technique in particular as sensitive in-situ diagnostic tool.

Psychometric Properties of a Digital Citizenship Questionnaire

<p class="apa">The purpose of this study was twofold, i.e. to examine the extent to which students’ self-reported use of digital technology constituted meaningful and interpretable dimensions of the digital citizenship construct, and to test the adequacy of the construct in terms of its reliability, convergent validity, discriminant validity, and measurement equivalence for male and female students. The sample consisted of 391 undergraduates from 15 institutions of higher education in Malaysia. The data were collected using a self-reported 17-item questionnaire measuring university students’ digital citizenship behaviours. The results of the study supported and extended the results of previous work on students’ behaviors when using digital technology. The study found evidence that students’ digital citizenship is a valid and reliable multidimensional construct, and the measurement is gender-invariant. The findings are useful in making evidence-informed decisions in choosing and developing instructional interventions to produce ethical and responsible technology users, and in informing future research in the area.</p>

Gender and Personality Differences in the Self-Estimated Intelligence of Koreans

This study set out to examine gender and personality effects on self-estimated multiple intelligence. In all, 124 Koreans made self-estimates of 24 different kinds of intelligence. They also completed a short personality test. Results showed that males gave higher estimates than females on many different types of intelligence. Openness to experience, agreeableness and neuroticism were found to correlate with self-estimated intelligence. Income and education were also correlated with various self-estimated intelligence measures, but not overall self-estimated intelligence. The different intelligences factored into interpretable dimensions. Results were similar to those from different countries. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.

Of Codes and Coda: Meaning in Telegraph Messages, circa 1850-1920

Von Codes und Coda: Bedeutung in Telegrammen, circa 1850 1920?. This paper examines the telegram and its impact upon meaning and language, including Indian nationalist strategies subverting imperial control. After 1860, the British Indian Empire emerged as a crucial strategic element in the telegraph network of the globe. It included countries outside present-day India and the larger sphere of 'informal empire.' The paper uses the terms In dia and the Indian Empire in this broader sense. Changes in time and shorten ing of distance, allowed messages to be sent and received rapidly but permitted multiple interpretations of what telegrams meant. It was a world of electronic communication where codes and ciphers and mistaken meanings were recur rent: a world of shadowy meanings. This paper analyses the technological and interpretative dimensions of this asymmetrical world of transnational electronic communication flows.

From Distributional Semantics to Conceptual Spaces: A Novel Computational Method for Concept Creation

Abstract We investigate the relationship between lexical spaces and contextually-defined conceptual spaces, offering applications to creative concept discovery. We define a computational method for discovering members of concepts based on semantic spaces: starting with a standard distributional model derived from corpus co-occurrence statistics, we dynamically select characteristic dimensions associated with seed terms, and thus a subspace of terms defining the related concept. This approach performs as well as, and in some cases better than, leading distributional semantic models on a WordNet-based concept discovery task, while also providing a model of concepts as convex regions within a space with interpretable dimensions. In particular, it performs well on more specific, contextualized concepts; to investigate this we therefore move beyond WordNet to a set of human empirical studies, in which we compare output against human responses on a membership task for novel concepts. Finally, a separate panel of judges rate both model output and human responses, showing similar ratings in many cases, and some commonalities and divergences which reveal interesting issues for computational concept discovery.

The Effect of Loudness on the Perceptual Representation of Sounds With Similar Timbre

In this work, we study how loudness affects the structure of the perceptual representation of sounds with similar timbre. Using psychoacoustics experiments, we compare the perceptual representations of the same sounds presented either with their non-normalized, ecological sound pressure level or normalized in loudness. The corpus of sounds, recordings of the interior of different cars, moving at the same motor speed, and having the same price range, consists of sounds with similar timbre, produced by similar sources, in order to let participants focus on sound properties, rather than source differences. Two types of perceptual structures (multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis) were derived from data obtained with two types of tasks (pairwise comparisons and sorting tasks), and compared. In the non-loudness-normalized corpus, loudness was the main factor explaining participant's judgements for both tasks. Only in the loudness-normalized corpus did auditory attributes emerge that characterize the timbre of interior car sounds. In addition, tasks involving sorting data were found to be less appropriate than pairwise data to provide interpretable continuous dimensions.

Theory of mind in utterance interpretation: the case from clinical pragmatics.

The cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is an area that continues to provoke intense theoretical debate among pragmatists. That utterance interpretation involves some type of mind-reading or theory of mind (ToM) is indisputable. However, theorists are divided on the exact nature of this ToM-based mechanism. In this paper, it is argued that the only type of ToM-based mechanism that can adequately represent the cognitive basis of utterance interpretation is one which reflects the rational, intentional, holistic character of interpretation. Such a ToM-based mechanism is supported on conceptual and empirical grounds. Empirical support for this view derives from the study of children and adults with pragmatic disorders. Specifically, three types of clinical case are considered. In the first case, evidence is advanced which indicates that individuals with pragmatic disorders exhibit deficits in reasoning and the use of inferences. These deficits compromise the ability of children and adults with pragmatic disorders to comply with the rational dimension of utterance interpretation. In the second case, evidence is presented which suggests that subjects with pragmatic disorders struggle with the intentional dimension of utterance interpretation. This dimension extends beyond the recognition of communicative intentions to include the attribution of a range of cognitive and affective mental states that play a role in utterance interpretation. In the third case, evidence is presented that children and adults with pragmatic disorders struggle with the holistic character of utterance interpretation. This serves to distort the contexts in which utterances are processed for their implicated meanings. The paper concludes with some thoughts about the role of theorizing in relation to utterance interpretation.

Enacting corporate governance of healthcare safety and quality: a dramaturgy of hospital boards in England.

The governance of patient safety is a challenging concern for all health systems. Yet, while the role of executive boards receives increased scrutiny, the area remains theoretically and methodologically underdeveloped. Specifically, we lack a detailed understanding of the performative aspects at play: what board members say and do to discharge their accountabilities for patient safety. This article draws on qualitative data from overt non‐participant observation of four NHS hospital Foundation Trust boards in England. Applying a dramaturgical framework to explore scripting, setting, staging and performance, we found important differences between case study sites in the performative dimensions of processing and interpretation of infection control data. We detail the practices associated with these differences ‐ the legitimation of current performance, the querying of data classification, and the naming and shaming of executives – to consider their implications.

(Symbolic Semantics of Shape and Color)

(Symbolic Semantics of Shape and Color)