Words Matter Research Articles

Sliding into PoMo-ism from Samuelsonianism

I give a personal account of how I got from an economics that was “Samuelsonian” (usually called by its enemies, self-defeatingly, “mainstream”) to postmodernism and beyond. The postmodern conviction is humanistic, dating back to Erasmus and Aristotle: Words Matter. It opposes the vulgar Marxism, before Lenin and especially Gramsci challenged it, still advocated by some, such as Gary Becker and Richard Posner, that words (and parties) don't matter.

“Misguided, misconceiving, mis-inspired”: Hill's “version” of Brand and the matter of words

“Misguided, misconceiving, mis-inspired”: Hill's “version” of Brand and the matter of words

Perspective: Musings on the Acropolis: Terminology for biogeography

ISSN 1948‐6596 opinion and perspectives perspective Musings on the Acropolis: Terminology for biogeography Samuel M. Scheiner Division of Environmental Biology, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22230, USA. e‐mail: sscheine@nsf.gov; http:// www.nsf.gov/staff/staff_bio.jsp?lan=sscheine Abstract. Biogeography, like all science, is better served when its vocabulary usage is precise, organized and simple. In this light, I examine three intertwined sets of concepts concerning scale and diversity. First, I show how ‘scale’ consists of four components: sampling unit, grain, focus and extent. Using those more precise terms prevents potential ambiguities in communication. I also clear up a confusion in the usage of ‘focus’ that I promulgated in an earlier paper. Second, I explain how organizing our concepts concerning species richness relationships both disambiguates those concepts and leads to the develop‐ ment of new theories. Third, I explore the multitudinous ideas and terms that have collected under the general concept of ‘diversity’ and propose one scheme for simplifying current confusions. Biogeography is in a period of unification of its disparate threads of ecology, phylogeography and phylogenetics. In weaving together concepts of scale and diversity, I hope that this essay contributes to that unification. age to those ancient Greek philosophers who gave us the foundations of our sciences. Introduction More precise vocabulary “Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.” (Plato) “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” (Child’s rhyme) On the contrary, words matter. They solidify con‐ cepts and ensure accurate communication. Im‐ properly used, they can obscure and sow confu‐ sion. Ecologists are notorious for inventing com‐ plex lexicons, although we are probably no worse in this regard than many other disciplines and pro‐ fessions. Sometimes those lexicons make mean‐ ings precise, but only if used properly. My purpose here is to examine three intertwined sets of con‐ cepts concerning scale and diversity, with a goal of making our vocabulary usage more precise, organ‐ ized and simplified. While none of this is new, our continued misuse of terminology bears its repetition. This essay was conceived while at the Fifth Interna‐ tional Biogeography Society meeting in Crete, lis‐ tening to the talks and their misuses and ambigui‐ ties of rhetoric. Having come down with the ’flu a short time later, I spent an entire day in my hotel room writing this paper while gazing up at the Acropolis, hence the title of this piece. It is a hom‐ “It is the mark of an educated man to look for pre‐ cision in each class of things just so far as the na‐ ture of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics) Biogeography deals with patterns and processes that vary in time and space from seconds to ep‐ ochs and micrometers to the entire globe. In re‐ ferring to these ranges of time and space, we make one of the most common vocabulary errors in our discipline by talking about differences in ‘scale.’ Because ‘scale’ has multiple components (Table 1A), the use of the word ‘scale’ is often im‐ precise (Dungan et al. 2002). Most often what is meant is ‘extent’ – as in, “Studies at landscape and continental scales” – and this meaning is usu‐ ally, but not always, obvious in context. The other frequent meaning of ‘scale’ is ‘grain.’ It is here that the use of ‘scale’ can sow confusion. Consider the following: “The accuracy of species richness data differs when compiled at landscape and continental scales.” That sentence © 2011 the authors; journal compilation © 2011 The International Biogeography Society — frontiers of biogeography 3.2, 2011

Words matter: a qualitative investigation of which weight status terms are acceptable and motivate weight loss when used by health professionals

BackgroundHealth professionals have an important role to play in the management of obesity, but may be unsure how to raise weight issues with patients. The societal stigma associated with excess weight means that weight status terms may be misunderstood, cause offence and risk upsetting patient-professional relationships. This study investigated the views of people who were overweight or obese on the acceptability of weight status terms and their potential to motivate weight loss when used by health professionals.MethodsA qualitative study comprising 34 semi-structured interviews with men and women in their mid-to-late 30s and 50s who were overweight or obese and had recently been informed of their weight status. Thematic framework analysis was conducted to allow the systematic comparison of views by age, gender and apparent motivation to lose weight.ResultsAlthough many people favoured 'Overweight' to describe their weight status, there were doubts about its effectiveness to motivate weight loss. Terms including 'BMI' ('Body Mass Index') or referring to the unhealthy nature of their weight were generally considered acceptable and motivational, although a number of men questioned the validity of BMI as an indicator of excess weight. Participants, particularly women, felt that health professionals should avoid using 'Fat'. Whilst response to 'Obese' was largely negative, people recognised that it could be appropriate in a health consultation. Some younger people, particularly those who appeared motivated to lose weight, felt 'Obese' could encourage weight loss, but it was also clear the term could provoke negative emotions if used insensitively.ConclusionsAlthough most people who are overweight or obese accept that it is appropriate for health professionals to discuss weight issues with patients, there is great variation in response to the terms commonly used to describe excess weight. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to discussing weight status: some men and younger people may appreciate a direct approach, whilst others need to be treated more sensitively. It is therefore important that health professionals use their knowledge and understanding to select the terms that are most likely to be acceptable, but at the same time have most potential to motivate each individual patient.

Kimberly K. Emmons, Black Dogs and Blue Words: Depression and Gender in the Age of Self-Care

Beginning with the now-familiar (though still evocative) figures of depression— Churchill’s ‘‘black dog’’ and the ephemeral ‘‘blues’’—Kimberly Emmons’ 2009 text on depression and gender seeks to remind us that, after all, words matter. On one hand, no one would argue with the premise. Of course words matter. Many a schoolchild can testify to the fact that words can even hurt you, all sticks and stones aside. What is most shocking in Emmons’ narrative, therefore, is the revelation that even in this extraordinarily textual age, an age in which words are texted, IMed, posted on Facebook, and literally surrounding us in constant if transient digital strokes, we can still forget their formative (as well as informative) power. By exploring the language patterns that ‘‘constitute the discourse of depression,’’ and by delineating the difference between self-doctoring and self-care, Emmons presents the persuasive power of depression as a rhetorical illness—that is, a real and tangible condition that is both constructed and made recognizable by language. This language itself has constitutive powers; the words of patients, clinicians and pharmaceutical commercials do more than reveal illness—they construct ‘‘new, typically gendered, illness identities’’ that affect strategies of diagnosis and intervention (p. 7). Obviously, terming an illness rhetorical in nature requires explanation. Aware of the usually negative connotations rhetoric implies (as manipulative discourse), Emmons spends a lengthy first chapter describing not only depression’s linguistic resources but also the concept of rhetorical illness more generally. Repeatedly referring to a ‘‘discourse of depression,’’ Emmons situates language as a cultural phenomenon in need of deciphering, and rhetorical analysis as a useful tool offering strategies for maintaining ‘‘complex, situationally sensitive knowledge of health and illness’’ (p. 14). Depression, in Emmons formulation, is a rhetorical phenomenon that is (1) saturated by language through cycles of storytelling, (2) revealed by

Editorial Policy on the Use of the Terms “Sex” and “Gender”

As Zoe Peterson and Charlene Muehlenhard (2011, this issue) elaborated, there is a long history of debate about the use of the terms “gender” and “sex” in the field of feminist psychology, as well as more generally in all psychological and social science research related to women and gender studies. They further noted that the generally preferred term now in psychology is “gender,” based on Rhoda Unger’s (1979) persuasive article. However, both terms are widely used, often interchangeably. Peterson and Muehlenhard conclude that the distinction will become less and less important over time. Others have suggested that we should take a definite viewpoint. In their chapter, titled “Words matter: The language of gender,” Smith et al. (2010) argued that the words we use affect how we think about issues and to what we pay attention. Many details are provided by Smith et al. about the naming of issues and how this affects the discourse regarding these issues within U.S. feminist thought. Based in these arguments and on Unger (1979), as past and present editors of Sex Roles, we believe that routine use of the term “sex” in the journals’ pages would suggest that the authors and editors believe that any differences in behavior and abilities are rooted in biology and that the journal’s reviewers and editors prefer essentialist and/or evolutionary approaches. Although it is impossible ever to know how much of human behavior is innate or biological and how much is learned or otherwise influenced by the environment or cultural context, we ask our authors to use the term “gender” because its implications are clearly broader and more inclusive than those of the term “sex.” This policy was developed by Sue Rosenberg Zalk during her editorship. As she routinely wrote in her letters to authors:

Verbal Style, Gubernatorial Strategies, and Legislative Success

This article examines the relationship between a governor's verbal style and his success in achieving his legislative goals. We add a measure of verbal style developed by Roderick Hart to a traditional model used by scholars of political chief executives to explain legislative success. We apply this model to the State of the State addresses of six governors of Florida who served between 1966 and 2006. Our findings reflect the validity of the truism “words matter.” Governors who use words and phrases that connote enthusiasm, activity, and realism are more successful in the legislative arena than those who do not.

Writing Perceptions: The Matter of Words and the Rollright Stones

This essay is concerned with art history as a form of creative writing, and with sensory perception in relation to a late Neolithic stone circle that forms part of the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire, themes that are explored through a series of fragments and reflections. The essay considers the insights that oral history can provide into an imagined prehistoric reception of the stone circle. It also examines what roles hearing, seeing, smell, taste and touch may have played for visitors to Rollright in the Neolithic period. The importance attached to substances such as stone and wood in prehistoric ritual is also addressed. The essay additionally suggests that a creative approach towards writing can disrupt habitual attitudes towards works of art. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

It's the Images and the Actions that Matter

I have always been told that words matter. Throughout my seminary training and ever since, I have been constantly reminded how words bounce around the ears and thoughts of those to whom I may have ...

Words vs. Deeds: What Really Matters?

This paper revisits the link between the nominal exchange rate regime and inflation, based on a sample of 145 emerging market and developing countries (EMDCs) over the period 1980-2010. We contend that, just as a de jure peg that is not backed by a de facto peg will have little value, de facto pegs that lack the corresponding de jure will likewise reap few of the low inflation benefits associated with pegging the exchange rate. To test our hypothesis, we exploit a novel dataset of both de jure and de facto exchange rate regime classifications. We find that pegged exchange rates are associated with significantly lower inflation in EMDCs than flexible exchange rates, and that this effect is much stronger for de facto pegs that are matched by de jure pegs than for those that are not. When it comes to anchoring expectations and delivering low inflation, therefore, both deeds and words matter.

Parafoveal processing of word n + 2 during reading: Do the preceding words matter?

We used the boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) to test two hypotheses that might explain why no conclusive evidence has been found for the existence of n + 2 preprocessing effects. In Experiment 1, we tested whether parafoveal processing of the second word to the right of fixation (n + 2) takes place only when the preceding word (n + 1) is very short (Angele, Slattery, Yang, Kliegl, & Rayner, 2008); word n + 1 was always a three-letter word. Before crossing the boundary, preview for both words n + 1 and n + 2 was either incorrect or correct. In a third condition, only the preview for word n + 1 was incorrect. In Experiment 2, we tested whether word frequency of the preboundary word (n) had an influence on the presence of preview benefit and parafoveal-on-foveal effects. Additionally, Experiment 2 contained a condition in which only preview of n + 2 was incorrect. Our findings suggest that effects of parafoveal n + 2 preprocessing are not modulated by either n + 1 word length or n frequency. Furthermore, we did not observe any evidence of parafoveal lexical preprocessing of word n + 2 in either experiment.

Words matter: recommendations for clarifying coral disease nomenclature and terminology

Coral diseases have caused significant losses on Caribbean reefs and are becoming a greater concern in the Pacific. Progress in coral disease research requires collaboration and communication among experts from many different disciplines. The lack of consistency in the use of terms and names in the recent scientific literature reflects the absence of an authority for naming coral diseases, a lack of consensus on the meaning of even some of the most basic terms as they apply to corals, and imprecision in the use of descriptive words. The lack of consensus partly reflects the complexity of this newly emerging field of research. Establishment of a nomenclature committee under the Coral Disease and Health Consortium (CDHC) could lead to more standardized definitions and could promote use of appropriate medical terminology for describing and communicating disease conditions in corals. This committee could also help to define disease terminology unique to corals where existing medical terminology is not applicable. These efforts will help scientists communicate with one another and with the general public more effectively. Scientists can immediately begin to reduce some of the confusion simply by explicitly defining the words they are using. In addition, digital photographs can be posted on the CDHC website and included in publications to document the macroscopic (gross) signs of the conditions observed on coral colonies along with precisely written characterizations and descriptions.

A "Nation" of Immigrants

in “nations of immigrants: do words matter?” Donna Gabaccia provides an illuminating account of the origin of the United States’ claim to be a “Nation of Immigrants.” Gabaccia’s endeavor is motivated by the question “What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile or an illegal or clandestine?” (Gabaccia 5). This question is very important to the immigration debate because, as Gabaccia goes on to show, “[t]o ponder this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagination of nations” (Gabaccia 5–6). In this paper, I am going to delve deeper into Gabaccia’s claim and argue that the issue of immigration is important for philosophers to consider because it is an issue that lies at the heart of the intersection between political philosophy and philosophy of race—an intersection that shows, more than anywhere else and in particular in the debate surrounding the use of the word illegal, how and why words do matter.

Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?

perhaps it is unfair, but i often ask my undergraduate students a trick question. The question is “What country in the world, in the year 2000, had the highest proportion of foreigners living on its national territory?” It is probably no surprise that the largest number of them answer “the United States.” When asked to explain, the least articulate students give the most revealing responses. They tend to report, accurately, that “everyone knows that the United States is a ‘nation of immigrants.’” Students are then surprised to learn that the correct answer to the question is not the United States but the United Arab Emirates, where 85 percent of the resident population in 2000 was foreign-born and where most foreigners worked on short-term labor contracts with the expectation they would return home again. Is the United Arab Emirates a nation of immigrants? My students do not think so, and neither do most of the leaders or natives of the United Arab Emirates. Switzerland, a country that has a longer history of importing temporary labor, today has a resident population of about 23 percent foreigners—almost twice the comparable figure for the foreign-born of the United States in 2000 (12.5 percent). Most Swiss vigorously deny they are a “nation of immigrants,” while many Americans insist on it (HoffmannNowotny 302). In 2005, again based on shares of population rather than numbers, the United States does not even make it into the top ten worldwide (Migration Policy Institute). Clearly, it is not just a matter of numbers. Although unfair, my trick question is a good way to open discussion. What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile, or an illegal or clandestine? To ponder this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagi-

A matter of words: Impact of verbal and nonverbal information on impression formation in high-functioning autism

Clinical intuition and resent research (Senju et al., 2009) suggests that adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) are able to use explicit verbal information but fail to react upon subtle nonverbal cues in order to understand others and navigate social encounters. In order to investigate the relative influence of different domains of socially relevant information in HFA as compared to matched controls, we used verbal and nonverbal stimuli as a basis for an interpersonal impression formation task. Results demonstrated a reduced sensitivity to nonverbal cues in individuals with HFA when consideration of conflicting information from the different domains was required, although HFA participants could well evaluate nonverbal stimuli in isolation. Thus, in a more complex experimental setting nonverbal information had a comparably weak impact on the impression formation confirming that social processing is preferentially based on verbal information in HFA.

Reply to “Letter to the editor: ‘Systemic cell theory, protoplasmic theory, and their logic of explanation’”

). He raises concerns regarding ourhistoriographical approach to the notions of “protoplasmictheory” and “cellular systems biology” that feature promi-nently in our treatise. We are a bit perplexed by the contentionthat “readers of the article are left alone to establish their ownconcepts of the theoretical backgrounds of systemic cell andprotoplasmic theory.” Judging from Muller-Strahl’s evocationthat

Conceptual Metaphor Theory in Light of Research on Speakers’ Gestures

Abstract Research on speakers’ gestures1 supports the basic idea that metaphor is not just a matter of words but a means of thinking of and experiencing, through manual activity, one domain in terms of another. However, gestures as data also raise several theoretical and methodological questions for conceptual metaphor theory, given their dynamic nature, the variability of tiieir symbolic status, and the varying degrees to which speakers are even aware of producing them. The closer examination of these graded qualities that comes with gesture analysis leads to new insights into metaphoricity itself.

Something-We-Know-Not-What, Something-We-Know-Not-Why: Berkeley, Meaning and Minds

It is sometimes suggested that Berkeley adheres to an empirical criterion of meaning, on which a term is meaningful just in case it signifies an idea (i.e., an immediate object of perceptual experience). This criterion is thought to underlie his rejection of the term ‘matter’ as meaningless. As is well known, Berkeley thinks that it is impossible to perceive matter. If one cannot perceive matter, then, per Berkeley, one can have no idea of it; if one can have no idea of it, then one cannot speak meaningfully of it. But if this is Berkeley’s position, then there is a puzzle, because Berkeley also explicitly claims that it is impossible to perceive/have ideas of minds. So if he is relying on a criterion on which terms get their meaning by referring to ideas, then, just as Berkeley rejects talk of material substance, so, too, must he reject talk of mental substance. Famously, however, Berkeley insists that there is no parity between the cases of material and mental substance. It is typically suggested that the disparity between matter and minds rests on the fact that although one cannot strictly speaking perceive minds, nonetheless Berkeley thinks that one can have experiential access to minds via reflection, and that this access allows for meaningful talk of minds. Of course, one can only have reflective experience of one’s own mind. But what of other minds, which one cannot reflectively experience? Here the usual tactic is to suppose that, although one cannot have direct reflective experience of other minds, nonetheless one can indirectly experience such minds via analogy to our own minds, and that this indirect experience grounds the meaningfulness of talk of other minds. In this paper, I argue that the reasoning behind Berkeley’s ‘likeness principle,’ that an idea can only be like another idea, can be generalized to argue against this experience-based account of our access to other minds. I claim instead that Berkeley allows for the meaningfulness of talk of other minds by expanding the criterion of meaning in a different way. I argue that Berkeley holds a criterion of meaning on which a term is meaningful just in case it signifies either an object of experience or an object that one has reason to posit on the basis of experience, i.e., an object that is necessary to explain our experiences. When an object is neither experienced nor explains our experiences, then and only then is Berkeley willing to reject it as meaningless. Thus he writes of “the word matter,” that “it is no matter whether there is such a thing or no, since it no way concerns us: and I do not see the advantage there is in disputing about we know not what, and we know not why” (Principles, §77.) The word is not meaningless merely because we do not know what matter might be; it is meaningless because we also do not know why it should be. Correspondingly, I argue that the term ‘mind’ is meaningful because although we have no experience of minds, nonetheless they play an important role in explaining our experiences.

Reproductive and Sexual Rights: Do Words Matter?

The 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development helped governments, the organs and agencies of the United Nations system, and nongovernmental organizations move beyond the confines of traditional family planning approaches. This watershed event fostered and defined subsequent international and national reproductive and sexual health policies and programs as well as global efforts to realize reproductive and sexual rights. However, moving beyond history, or the “archeology of Cairo” (as a participant at a meeting I recently attended called it), are we now simply using the language of the Cairo conference with little attention to the conceptual and operational implications of its words? Has the politically charged notion of rights with its attendant government responsibility and accountability succumbed to the less controversial notion of health? As the public health community recognized even before the Cairo consensus, barriers to reproductive and sexual health operate on a number of levels—including legal, social, cultural, political, financial, attitudinal, and practical—and interact in complex ways. What rights add to this mix is a framework for programming and for action and a legal rationale for government responsibility—not only to provide relevant services but also to alter the conditions that create, exacerbate, and perpetuate poverty, deprivation, marginalization, and discrimination as these affect reproductive and sexual health. By fixing attention on the responsibility and accountability of governments to translate their international-level commitments into national and subnational laws, policies, programs, and practices that promote and do not hinder reproductive and sexual health, the actions of governments are open to scrutiny to determine their influences—both positive and negative—on reproductive and sexual health, including barriers that affect the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of reproductive and sexual health services, structures, and goods. Despite the framework that the Cairo conference helped put into place, work falling under the rubric of reproductive and sexual rights now includes everything from the provision of abortion services to the reduction of maternal mortality—as though simply working on these issues is equal to working on rights. Consequently, one has to ask this: Are reproductive, and even sexual, rights becoming synonymous with reproductive, and sexual, health? Those who understand their work to be in the area of reproductive and sexual rights sorely need to discuss whether their efforts are aligned with the politics that underlie the words of the Cairo conference or whether, bluntly speaking, the politics are a historical artifact and it is simply time to move on. Bringing the political back into reproductive and sexual rights would require going beyond the technical dimensions of addressing reproductive and sexual health issues to the application of the norms and standards that are engaged by a human rights discourse. This includes attention to the basics of reproductive and sexual rights: the efforts that exist to ensure the sustained participation of affected communities; how discrimination that affects both vulnerability to ill health and access and use of services is being tackled; the extent to which any legal, political, and financial constraints are being addressed; how rights considerations are brought into policy and program design, implementation, and evaluation; and the existence of mechanisms that require government as well as intergovernmental and nongovernmental institution accountability. And so yes, in a word, words do matter. And they matter for the actions they inspire.

A Qualitative Study of Barriers to Mental Health Services Utilisation Among Migrants From Mainland China in South-East Sydney

Chinese-language speakers comprise the largest non-English speaking population in Australia but they have among the lowest rates of mental health services utilisation. A bilingual (Mandarin/English) researcher conducted in-depth interviews with China-born mental health patients and members of the general community, and mental health service providers. Participants identified several factors that limit access to mental healthcare as well as the quality of care received: mental health literacy, communication difficulties, stigma, confidentiality concerns, service constraints and discrimination. Cross-cultural communication was not just a matter of hearing individual words but also appreciating idioms and cultural and social references. Findings have implications for the prevention and treatment of mental disorders among migrants from China, and caution against assuming heterogeneity within ethnic groups. Mental health services must become more culturally competent in their attempts to engage the target group and to deliver both acute and continuing care.