Neutral Connotations Research Articles

The Manchester Colour Wheel: Enhancing its Utility

The Manchester Colour Wheel was developed to investigate the role of colour in the perception of illness in gastroenterology. During validation it was found that positive, neutral, or negative connotations of the shade of a colour were more important than the colour itself. However, when asked to relate mood to a colour, the response rate was greater in individuals with mood disorders than healthy controls. This study assessed whether response rate could be made more uniform by changing the wording of the question. Mood/colour choice was compared, using two slightly different questions, in 105 and 203 healthy volunteers, resulting in response rates of 39% and 95% respectively, with the latter not associated with increased false positive responses. These results show that adjustment of the wording of a mood-related question may allow equal response rates irrespective of the mood status of participants.

Women's perception of the term ‘obstetrician’

This study aimed to find how aware pregnant women were of the meaning of the term ‘obstetrician’, their feelings about it, and their understanding of the role. The perceptions of pregnant women attending the antenatal clinic of a tertiary maternity unit were surveyed using an anonymous questionnaire. One hundred questionnaires were issued and 83 completed. Of the 83, 72 (87%) had previously heard the term ‘obstetrician’, but 50 (69%) of these did not know its meaning. Most women described neutral connotations with the term and had no preference about the term used; however, approximately one-third of the participants preferred non-Latin terms such as maternity doctor. A more descriptive term may help bridge the apparent gap in understanding and promote a more balanced doctor–service user relationship.

“Ragged urchins play on marquetry floors”: The discourse of filtering is reconstructed, 1920s–1950s

The idea of filtering has played a key role in our understanding of housing markets and in framing federal policy. The origins of the idea, however, and of the term itself, are poorly understood. Drawing loosely on the approach of discourse analysis, this article clarifies both issues, arguing that language shapes how we think about housing policy, and indeed policy itself. The concept of filtering emerged in Great Britain in the late nineteenth century where, by 1900, it informed arguments in favor of municipal (public) housing. It became influential in the United States in the 1920s but in 1938 was still referred to in different ways, notably as “hand-me-down housing.” Here, it was understood more narrowly, as an alternative to public housing. After 1939, the Federal Housing Administration, though not its leading consultant Homer Hoyt, popularized the term “filtering.” The neutral connotations of this metaphorical term suited the agency's goal of developing an apparently objective discourse of housing markets and market analysis. The term was normalized by the early 1960s.

The risk of overestimating and underestimating “religious cults” in South Africa

In South Africa on a number of occasions the media and other groups have referred to some religious groups as “cults”. The word “cult” is a loaded term which has positive, negative and neutral connotations. Unfortunately, the term has often been used not to describe a phenomenon but to classify groups that are not in line with the standards of society. This has lead to tension between such groups and churches, and members of society. This article reveals that the study of cults is a complex one and one to be pursued with caution. Measures are proposed for the studying of cults in order to provide a balanced overview. In order to provide balanced information on new religions and cults an Information centre associated with an academic institution needs to be established.

Portrayal of Schizophrenia in a Prestigious Newspaper in Brazil

Portrayal of Schizophrenia in a Prestigious Newspaper in Brazil

Smoking and The Simpsons

To determine the frequency of smoking on The Simpsons television show, and the relationship with the sex and age groups of characters shown smoking, and with positive, negative and neutral connotations associated with instances of smoking. Content analysis (performed from January to October 2008) of instances of smoking that appeared in the first 18 seasons of The Simpsons television show, which aired from 1989 to 2007. Frequency, impact (positive, negative, neutral) of instances of smoking; and frequency associated with age (child or adolescent versus adult characters), sex and types of characters on the show. There were 795 instances of smoking in the 400 episodes observed. Most (498; 63%) involved male characters. Only 8% of instances of smoking (63) involved child or adolescent characters. Just over a third of instances of smoking (275; 35%) reflected smoking in a negative way, compared with the majority, which reflected smoking in a neutral way (504; 63%) and the minority, which reflected smoking in a positive way (16; 2%). Child and adolescent characters were much more likely to be involved in instances of smoking reflected in a negative way compared with adult characters (odds ratio, 44.93; 95% CI, 16.15-172.18). There are a large number of instances of smoking in The Simpsons television show. Child and adolescent characters are much more likely to be portrayed in instances of smoking reflected in a negative way than adult characters. Viewing The Simpsons characters smoking may prompt children to consider smoking at an early age.

Spirituality and Cognition: Does Spirituality Influence What We Attend to and Remember?

This study investigated how spirituality as a positive life theme might be related to one’s unique style of cognitive processing. Study participants included 80 individuals; 40 older adults and 40 younger adults. Word recall and recognition tasks assessed memory for positive, negative, neutral, and religious words. Results indicated that spirituality does not appear to be related to cognitive bias, but that words with either positive, negative, neutral, or religious connotations are recalled and recognized at different rates.

Shall I compare thee? Simile understanding and semantic categories

Abstract The purpose of this article is to present a few research findings on the process of understanding simile, where special attention was given to the semantic relationship between its three major components: Tenor (hereafter T), Vehicle (hereafter V) and Predicate (hereafter P). By manipulating different degrees of conventionality among these three components and the explicit presence of a P, eight kinds of simile emerged (e.g. conventional T and V but with unconventional P). Questionnaires were formulated consisting of lists of sixteen similes, representing the eight kinds. Subjects were asked to provide a short interpretation of the given similes, to estimate whether the simile conveyed negative, positive or neutral connotations, and finally to grade the degree of difficulty they encountered in understanding it. Thus, for example, most subjects reported that (1) “John is like a snake” says that John is a cunning and dangerous person, that it conveys negative connotations and that they had no difficulty in understanding it. Other, more “difficult” similes got diversified answers. Thus, for example, some subjects claimed that they had difficulty in understanding a phrase like (2) “John is like the state of Israel,” and responses concerning its connotations and its specific meanings were more heterogeneous. One conclusion based on the results is that subjects tend to cling to existing semantic categories not only in understanding conventional similes (and, by implication, metaphors and symbols), but also when faced with highly novel ones.

Ideology and culture

Finding a pragmatic exit from the semantic labyrinth surrounding ‘ideology’ and ‘culture’, this article considers the neutral connotations of ‘ideology’ as a formative, intrinsically paradoxical, constituent of culture, and argues that the heterogeneous, volatile, and contested nature of all ideologies when viewed through some postmodernist lenses is their hallmark only under the historically exceptional societal conditions of high modernity. It moves on to consider the virtues of several non-reductionist variants of Marxist theory that postulate a subtle dialectic between ideology's coercive and emancipatory functions, aspects that can be seen at work at the generative and experiential core of all human cultures, and not just capitalist ones. These reflections lead to a call for a dialectical, anthropologically informed approach to the interface between culture and ideology. It concludes on a speculative note by suggesting that analogies made between ideological self-replication in cultural processes and the genetic basis of evolution could be more than metaphorical should the infant science of ‘memetics’ prove to have an empirically sound base.

The seven deadly curs’d sins …Lust

The seven deadly curs’d sins …Lust

Language, concepts and emotions: The role of language in the construction of emotions

In this study, I explore the relationship between migrants' linguistic resources, their environment, and their emotions, focusing on two Assyrian-Iranian migrants in Germany. By adopting an ecological approach, I examine how the memories they have created in Iran and Germany impact their emotional attachments to the Persian, Assyrian, and German languages. I argue that their experiences with these languages cause them to ascribe distinct emotional values to each. On the one hand, their strong feelings of belonging to a place (Iran), which correspond to their good memories of speaking Persian in that place, lead them to highly value that language and incorporate it into most aspects of their social lives. On the other hand, the migrants’ memories of a language with negative or neutral connotations (in this case, German) correspond with a lower level of reported social interactions in that language. This study shows that the language which these participants use to express their emotional involvement in particular moments of their life invokes specific feelings, and represents their inner world better than their other linguistic resources.

Polarized Semantic Change of Words Associated with Females and Males

The present laboratory experiment was inspired by semantic changes reported in etymological studies: Many words that at one time had a positive or neutral connotation became negative when later applied to females. In contrast to this negativity bias, male-associated words underwent a positivity bias. Miller and Swift (1976) referred to the gender-based biases as gender-related semantic polarization. We developed the concept further by distinguishing between gender-stereotypic and gender-non-stereotypic polarizations, which involved, respectively, gender-stereotypic (e.g., dependent-independent) and gender-nonstereotypic (e.g., honest-deceitful) affective connotations. In the experiment, participants learned four-letter invented words in association with male or female pictures; the connotative meanings that had been acquired during the learning process were later measured and related to respondents' gender schema and gender attitude. The results showed that the acquired connotations of words associated with male pictures were more stereotypically masculine than were those associated with female pictures. This gender-stereotypic polarization was independent of respondents' gender schema and attitude. Gender-non-stereotypic polarization, on the other hand, was a function of respondents' gender attitude: On gender-non-stereotypic connotations, respondents who had unfavorable attitudes toward women downgraded, whereas pro-women respondents upgraded, female-associated words relative to male-associated words. The interaction effect showed that semantic change can occur in favor of women, but not always in favor of men.

Relationship between affect and memory: motivation-based selective generation.

Two experiments examined the influence of anger and retaliatory motivation on memory for negative material. In the 1st study, 60 male undergraduates memorized words with positive, negative, and neutral semantic connotations. It was found that angered men who expected to retaliate against their provocateur recalled more negative words than other words, and more than Ss in all other affect and evaluation conditions. Angered men in the nonretaliation condition displayed no differences in negative word recall. The 2nd experiment investigated memory for details of a provoking experience. Angered men who expected to retaliate more accurately recalled the details of their provocation, but whether they were given the retaliation information before or after provocation had no bearing on memory for these details. Results are discussed in terms of a motivation-based selective generation hypothesis for the relationship between anger and memory.

Emotional expression of noise: A cross-cultural study

In our cross-cultural study of noise problems, the connotative meaning of the concepts of “loudness”, “noisiness” and “annoyance” were examined by using semantic differential in five countries. All concepts, except for loudness in Japan and China, were found to have negative images. Japanese and Chinese loudness were judged as neutral. In the present study, emotional expressions of various noises were examined by using the method of selected description in five countries—Japan, Sweden, West Germany, China and the U.S.A. Subjects were asked to select the adjectives which they thought appropriate for expressing their impression of each noise. On the basis of the adjectives selected and cluster analysis, it was found that “loud” in Japan, Sweden and China has neutral connotations, while “loud” in Germany and the U.S.A. has negative connotations. It was also suggested that “noisy” and “annoying” are not differentiated in Japan, while in the other four countries these two adjectives are used in different ways.

Verbal expression of emotional impression of sound: A cross-cultural study.

Emotional expression of four levels of six kinds of sound (aircraft noise, train noise, road traffic noise, speech, music and construction noise) was examined using the method of selected description in five countries-Japan, Sweden, West Germany, China and the U. S. Subject were asked to select the adjectives which they thought appropriate for expressing the impression of each sound. Using the method of selected description, the differences and similarities between sound sources and use of adjectives were expressed more clearly than when conventional semantic differential was used. On the basis of the adjectives selected and cluster analysis, it was found for sounds used in this experi mentthat “loud” in Japan, Sweden and China has neutral connotations while “loud” in Germany and the U. S. has negative connotations. It was also suggested that “noisy” and “annoying” are not differentiated in Japan, while in the other four countries these two adjectives are differentially used.

Localization in International Branding

International product policies, of which one of the important sub-areas is international branding, is among the top ten key subject areas that researchers are encouraged to study in order to strengthen the global marketing discipline (Hampton and van Gent, 1984). International branding is a localization process. This paper reports a preliminary effort to investigate this process by studying 261 localized Chinese brand names of foreign brands being marketed in Hong Kong. These localized brand names are found to be of reasonable length, easily pronounceable, and containing either positive or neutral connotations by themselves. Looking at these localized brand names in terms of translation from their original counterparts, most of them are found to be similar in length to their originals, reading similarly in Cantonese to the original names' pronunciation, and containing dissimilar connotations to those of the original names. Possible explanations are also discussed.

On the goals, principles, and procedures for prescriptive grammar: Singular they

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the goals of prescriptive grammar and the causes and consequences of the rift between prescriptive and theoretical linguistics. It also proposes a principle for guiding prescriptive recommendations in the future as well as a theoretical framework and procedure for predicting the consequences of prescriptive recommendations. The procedure illustrates a hypothetical prescription: the substitution of singular they for prescriptive he. Projected benefits the prescription include neutral connotation, naturalness, simplicity, and lexical availability. Projected costs include covert and overt referential ambiguity; partial ambiguity; conceptual inaccuracy; loss of precision, imageability, impact, and memorability; bizarreness involving certain referents and case forms; distancing and dehumanizing connotations; unavailability of the ‘he or she’ denotation; potentially disruptive and long-lasting side effects on other areas of the language. Procedures are also illustrated for determining the relative frequency of such costs and benefits and for estimating the relative disruptiveness of the costs normal language use. Implications of the data for several issues general interest to linguistics and psychology are explored. (Ambiguity, language change, prescriptive grammar, theoretical linguistics, language planning, pronouns, neologisms.)

Sex differences in information processing

Sex differences in cognitive activity were investigated. Using a list containing words with masculine, feminine, and neutral connotations, Experiment 1 revealed that masculine words were better recalled by male college students (n=16) while feminine words were better recalled by female college students (n=16). This difference was reduced on a recognition test. Experiment 2 demonstrated that the phenomenon was not due to a difference in the way males (n=20) and females (n=20) interpreted the meaning of the words. Finally, in Experiment 3, the memorial selectivity was shown to exist in the same manner for White middle-class elementary school (n=32) and high school (n=32) students. Learning and repression interpretations of the effect were proposed. Some practical implications of the data were suggested.

The Role of Ethnicity in Nigerian Education

Ethnicity and tribalism have frequently been used interchangeably, although the former has tended to acquire a neutral connotation with a scholarly flavor and the latter a pejorative meaning as a populist designation, especially when exploited by African politicians in political campaigns. All African nations are artificial polities fashioned by the colonial powers for their own administrative conveniences; and they are all marked by a high degree of ethnic divergence. Each country has a multiplicity of ethnic groups with different cultural histories, languages, religions, and value systems. There are no distinct class demarcations in the Western sense such as the upper, middle, and lower. The emergence of the middle class is only a very recent phenomenon. As pointed out by Smythe,1 in Nigeria class leveling is not the traditional form of social stratification. Rather, age, title, and lineage are the historical determinants of stratification; and individual achievement-especially in the Eastern Sector-is more relevant to a man's social and political status in the South than it is in the North. Wallerstein2 contends that ethnicity is both functional and dysfunctional. In a traditional rural setting, an individual is first a member of his or her family, then of a tribe; tribal and family loyalties are supportive of each other to some extent. Detribalization, or shifts in these loyalties, resulted from the colonial rule and the consequent process of urbanization. The factors responsible for urban migration include the desire to find better and more rewarding jobs; to obtain better education, since educational institutions tend to concentrate in cities; to escape from the tyranny of excessive family responsibilities; and to seek political power. Wallerstein further maintains that ethnic groups can be defined

Anticipation and stuttering: a pupillographic study.

Changes in pupil size were studied in 24 stuttering and 30 nonstuttering adults during a 4-sec period following the presentation of single-word auditory stimuli and before a signal to respond. Subjects were required first to respond with a single word which was the opposite of the word presented and later to give a one-word free-association response to words of both emotional and neutral connotations. Pupil size was measured also while subjects merely listened to the word stimuli. The process of attending to an auditory stimulus was associated with pupil dilation. Pupil response was significantly greater (in absolute diameter and in dilation) when subjects were required to give an oral response to the stimulus than when they simply listened to the stimulus. Furthermore, the extent of the pupil reaction was related to the nature of the stimulus presented. Such differences in arousal did not occur to any greater degree in stutterers than in nonstutterers. Moreover, among stutterers, measures of pupil size were not predictive of stuttering. Thus, the cues which the stutterer associates with the anticipation of stuttering do not appear to be reflected in the physiological changes associated with pupillary movement.