Ordinary Usage Research Articles

Infiltrating Functional English for Technical Students with the Concomitant of Project Transcripts: A Paradigm in Education

A powerful communication strategy plays a key role in professional settings, all the while demonstrating its ability to garner admiration and respect. Over time, Language is an ever-evolving system from a usage standpoint. Despite several existing methods, the quality of knowledge of technical communication remains a persistent challenge for non-native speakers at the instructional level. This paper explores how engineering students can acquire an understanding of and practice functional technical English by preparing micro and macro projects. This study examined 200 student projects, each comprising 20 pages and approximately 300 lines. These projects serve for statistical analysis and are evaluated based on specific five test areas, such as usage of tense, change of voice, concord, vocabulary, and connectors. The two groups (EG & CG) were offered pretest and post-test. The result of the analysis is interpreted with the help of line graphs that assess the comparability of the two groups. Remedial measures with sequence flow charts were suggested to the participants that served the purpose of mending their deficient areas, which, if believed, would enhance their career progression. This method would assist tertiary-level students in breaking language barriers, enabling them to express their ideas in writing and speaking more effectively using technical language, especially in the ordinary usage of technical means to explain complex technical principles. A language is language, when reflected in the correct sense with the ability to use it functionally rather than learning it for years.

Can minorities discriminate against majorities? An analysis of academic and ordinary usage

Can minorities discriminate against majorities? An analysis of academic and ordinary usage

Maintenance modeling of serial-parallel multi-station manufacturing system with failure-induced damage and assembly parts

This paper studies the joint optimization of maintenance scheduling and spare part management for Serial-Parallel Multi-station Manufacturing Systems (SPMMS) with failure-induced damage, which implies the failure of one component may induce the damage of other structurally-connected components. In the proposed hybrid spare part usage policy, either the assembly part, which is a pre-assembled spare part module, or the combination of multiple unassembled single parts can be used to retore the failed station. On the basis of the introduced reliability model, the hybrid usage policy is combined into the joint analysis of spare part inventory and corrective maintenance actions. Then, an opportunistic maintenance policy with the greedy algorithm is developed to reduce the computing complexity. The numerical examples show that the cost advantage of assembly parts and the hierarchical inventory sharing of spare parts can jointly affect the cost effectiveness of the SPMMS. The proposed hybrid spare part usage policy is more cost-effective than the ordinary usage policy, the substitution policy and the component-level policy. The policy comparisons among different hierarchical sharing policies also show that both the division criterion of failure states and the usage priority of spare parts have significantly impacts on the cost effectiveness of the SPMMS.

Constitutionalism beyond compare: Martin Loughlin’s inadvertent case for comparative constitutional studies

This review essay considers two objections to which Martin Loughlin’s jeremiad Against Constitutionalism might appear to be vulnerable: first, that his argument is entirely stipulative in the sense that all the work is done by a non-standard definition of his central concept and, second that, even if this is not the case, he has not done enough to substantiate his claims about constitutionalism’s deleterious effects. The answer given is that the first objection largely fails but that the second succeeds. Loughlin’s definition of ‘constitutionalism’ as the ideology that has arisen in support of the global spread of written constitutions on the American model is thus somewhat non-standard. In its ordinary usage, ‘constitutionalism’ is a polysemic concept that expresses an aspirational ideal that is deliberately underspecified and contested. There is no uniform ideology of constitutionalism, but a wide variety of national traditions. Nevertheless, Loughlin’s account does capture certain common features of the legitimating claims made by written constitutions on the American model and his argument is to that extent not entirely stipulative. To enlist us in his project of opposing constitutionalism, however, Loughlin needed to conduct a much more thorough assessment of the deleterious effects he alleges have accompanied the spread of constitutionalism. The post-war adaptations of the American model in Germany, India and South Africa departed from it in significant ways. Not all the problems associated with the American model can be attributed to them and, conversely, not all the problems constitutionalism is encountering in these three countries can be attributed to the American model. In ignoring these differences, Loughlin’s argument too often relies on uninterrogated normative priors and unsubstantiated causal claims. His book in that sense makes an elegant, unintended case for the need for comparative constitutional studies as a field.

Insurrection, Disqualification, and the Presidency

Abstract Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides in part that anyone who takes an oath as an officer of the United States to support its Constitution but engages in insurrection may not hold any civil or military office under it until Congress removes the disability by a two-thirds vote of each House. The insurrection of January 6, 2021, and the coming presidential election raise two pressing constitutional questions. For purposes of Section 3, is the President an officer of the United States, and is the Presidency an office under the United States? This Article makes the case that the President is an officer of, and holds an office under, the United States for those purposes. It contributes to the debate over the provision's reach by setting out the broad case for Section 3's application to Presidents and the Presidency, utilizing text, purpose, legislative history, canons of construction, ordinary usage, and contemporaneous judicial and executive interpretations. The Article demonstrates public understandings before and after ratification that Section 3 bars eligibility to the Presidency, both in general and for the most important disqualified rebel—Jefferson Davis. It catalogues descriptions of Presidents as officers of the United States from Washington in 1794 to Jefferson, Jackson, Van Buren, Harrison, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore, Buchanan, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Garfield, many of which occurred in the context of the President's election, constitutional position, and role in preventing domestic violence, preserving the Union, and enforcing the law during Reconstruction. Finally, it ties related Reconstruction statutes, legislative history, and contemporaneous judicial and executive interpretations into the broad case that Section 3 bars faithless Presidents from again taking the oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” until Congress permits.

An Analysis on the Students’ Mastery in Using Preposition in, on, at

The purpose of this research to analyze of students’ mastery in using preposition (in, on and at) and also concerned the problems faced for students’ mastery on using preposition (in, on and at). This research used qualitative research. The writer chose the Eleventh Grade students of SMKN 1 Bangkinang kota. The respondents are 36 students. Based on the result of the test, the writer conclude that the profile of students’ mastery such as: 3 students out of 36 students the level of preposition mastery is “good” and the percentage is 8,3%, 11 students or out of 36 students is “enough” and the percentage 30,5%, 21 students or out of 36 students is “poor” and the percentage is 58,3%, and 1 students or out of 36 students is “Failed” and the percentage is 2,7%”. The problems faced of students’ mastery are: the students confused to answer the question on using preposition (in, on, and at). They do not understand the differences of each preposition. Because it has similar meaning. Which explain the time and place. Students are less concerned when they to use in, on or at because they think it is less attention when talking directly. The problem that is caused by the language transfer. In contrary, this study concern with that rules. And they usually used generalization or ordinary usage without saw the context of sentence.

Human identification based on accelerometer sensors obtained by mobile phone data

In order to achieve secure usage digitally, many different methodologies (i.e., pin code, fingerprint, face recognition) have been employed. In this study, a novel way of user identification, which can be expressed as a biometrical method, has been proposed. The proposed approach was based on the characteristics of mobile phone usage (position changes in carrying, talking, and other actions). To assess and validate the proposed method, a dataset, which consists of millions of data collected from users with the help of accelerometers for several months during their ordinary smartphone usage, was obtained. This large dataset was reduced by randomly taking 3000 samples from each of the 387 devices in the dataset. The arbitrarily selected signals were labeled according to “one against all” (or “one vs. all”) strategies. Extracted features were classified by the k nearest neighbor (kNN) and the randomized neural network (RNN), machine learning methods. It has been seen that behavior-based biometric recognition can be accomplished with mobile phone accelerometer data, with 99.994% success rates for kNN and 99.97% for RNN.

The hammer, the mallet, and the nail

The hammer, the mallet, and the nail

Will-powered: Synchronic regulation is the difference maker for self-control

Philosophers, psychologists, and economists have reached the consensus that one can use two different kinds of regulation to achieve self-control. Synchronic regulation uses willpower to resist current temptation. Diachronic regulation implements a plan to avoid future temptation. Yet this consensus may rest on contaminated intuitions. Specifically, agents typically use willpower (synchronic regulation) to achieve their plans to avoid temptation (diachronic regulation). So even if cases of diachronic regulation seem to involve self-control, this may be because they are contaminated by synchronic regulation. We therefore developed a novel multifactorial method to disentangle synchronic and diachronic regulation. Using this method, we find that ordinary usage assumes that only synchronic––not diachronic––regulation counts as self-control. We find this pattern across four experiments involving different kinds of temptation, as well as a paradigmatic case of diachronic regulation based on the classic story of Odysseus and the Sirens. Our final experiment finds that self-control in a diachronic case depends on whether the agent uses synchronic regulation at two moments: when she (1) initiates and (2) follows-through on a plan to resist temptation. Taken together, our results strongly suggest that synchronic regulation is the sole difference maker in the folk concept of self-control.

Knowledge of language as self-knowledge

ABSTRACT In ‘Must We Mean What We Say?’, Stanley Cavell defends the method of ordinary language philosophy while arguing that the special status of philosophical claims about language arises from the fact that these statements are expressions of self-knowledge. Recently, Nat Hansen (2017) has explored Cavell’s position in relation to empirical research on linguistic usage. This paper challenges Hansen’s reading of Cavell, and presents an alternative interpretation that withstands some of Hansen’s objections. For Cavell, claims about ‘what we say’ are claims about observable matters of fact, but nevertheless they are not, and cannot ever be, observation-based claims. The point of observing ordinary usage is to remind the philosopher of what is contained within the practical mastery that she already possesses.

Does racism equal prejudice plus power?

Abstract An increasingly common view is that ‘racism’ can be defined as prejudice plus power. However, this view is ambiguous between two interpretations. The first proposes a descriptive definition, claiming that a prejudice plus power account of ‘racism’ best accounts for our ordinary usage of the term. The second proposes a revisionary definition, claiming that we should adopt a new account of ‘racism’ because doing so will bring pragmatic benefit. In this paper, I argue that the prejudice plus power view is unsatisfying on either interpretation.

‘Extremely Racist’ and ‘Incredibly Sexist’: An Empirical Response to the Charge of Conceptual Inflation

AbstractCritics across the political spectrum have worried that ordinary uses of words like ‘racist’, ‘sexist’, and ‘homophobic’ are becoming conceptually inflated, meaning that these expressions are getting used so widely that they lose their nuance and, thereby, their moral force. However, the charge of conceptual inflation as well as responses to it are standardly made without any systematic investigation of how ‘racist’ and other expressions condemning oppression are actually used in ordinary language. Once we examine large linguistic corpora to see how these expressions are actually used, we find that English speakers have a rich linguistic repertoire for qualifying the degree to which and dimensions along which something is racist, sexist, homophobic, and so on. These facts about ordinary usage undermine the charge of conceptual inflation. Without awareness of facts about ordinary usage, theorists risk making linguistic prescriptions that are unnecessary or counterproductive.

Plenty to Come: Making Sense of Correia & Rosenkranz’s Growing Block

Abstract Fabrice Correia and Sven Rosenkranz’s book Nothing to Come: a Defence of the Growing Block Theory of Time offers an incredibly rich and skillful defense of the growing block theory (GBT), a view of time that arguably has much intuitive appeal, and which has been under attack from many sides. Nonetheless, I have to report that the book’s tense-logical course of treatment has not worked for me; I still struggle with making sense of the GBT. This article begins by drawing out some implications of the book’s set up. First, the notion of existence in play here is not interpretable on the basis of ordinary usage. Second, it would be a mistake to take the tense-logical framework to have any metaphysical significance. I then articulate two main worries about their version of the GBT. The first worry takes a familiar shape: it is just hard to see how their view is dynamic in the relevant sense. The second worry is that the topic seems to have been changed. C&R’s logical system helps itself to key notions whose intended interpretation includes a solution to every metaphysical puzzle about the GBT, so that these puzzles are not so much addressed as enshrined in a formal system. That is, their view seems to answer the question of how language should behave, if the GBT were (somehow) true.

The first and the last word

In his book Coercion and the Nature of Law Himma proposes a conceptual analysis of law defending what he calls the Coercion Thesis. Himma’s approach to conceptual analysis is articulated in two steps. The first step is what Himma calls an “empirical observation” of “ordinary intuitions” as they are manifest in the “contingent linguistic conventions for using the relevant concept-term” in “ordinary talk.” The second step consists in identifying “the philosophical assumptions about the metaphysical nature of a thing to which the corresponding concept-term refers.” Our remarks are not intended to question the Coercion Thesis (which, on the contrary, they can possibly corroborate); rather, they intend to show that grounding conceptual analysis exclusively on the canons of ordinary usage of words and on the philosophical assumptions of an undefined and contingent linguistic and cultural community to which the last word is given is not free from risks.

On the Status of Rights

On the Status of Rights

Fake news: the case for a purely consumer-oriented explication

ABSTRACT Our current understanding of ‘fake news’ is not in good shape. On the one hand, this category seems to be urgently needed for an adequate understanding of the epistemology in the age of the internet. On the other hand, the term has an unstable ordinary meaning and the prevalent accounts which all relate fake news to epistemically bad attitudes of the producer lack theoretical unity, sufficient extensional adequacy, and epistemic fruitfulness. I will therefore suggest an alternative account of fake news that is meant as an explication rather than a traditional conceptual analysis of the term and that understands fake news solely from the consumer’s perspective. I will argue that this new account has the required theoretical unity, that it is epistemically highly fruitful, and that it is still very close to the ordinary usage. I conclude with addressing some of the main objections to this view.

Who Should We Count as Citizens? Categorizing People in Public Administration Research

AbstractCitizenship is a core concept in public administration research. This article examines how the concept was employed in 29 research articles published in Public Administration Review since 2009. It finds two difficulties. The first is a tendency to omit an explicit definition of the concept, contrary to good practice. The second is a tendency to adopt an implied definition of citizenship that encompasses all of the general population. The article considers possible justifications for current practice. Research would be improved by using the concept less frequently, defining it explicitly, adopting a definition that is closer to ordinary usage, and attending more carefully to the ways in which attitudes and behavior are influenced by a person's status within a jurisdiction.

A painful matter: the sandal as a hitting implement in Athenian iconography

The article examines a series of images on Athenian ceramic vases in which sandals are depicted as a hitting implement. This iconographic motif appears mainly in two contexts: educational scenes, where an adult hits a subordinate, and erotic scenes, where the hitting action is almost always performed by males upon female prostitutes. The utilisation of this specific mundane object, rather than equally available others, for these violent acts is explored in light of psychologist James J. Gibson’s term “affordance”, which refers to the potentialities held by an object for a particular set of actions, stemming from its material properties. I suggest that the choice of the sandal is not arbitrary: it supports these aggressors’ desire to cause pain to those of lower status, thereby controlling and humiliating them. The affordances of the sandal, stemming from its shape and material and the inherent potentialities for action, are perceived and exploited by the hitters. Though not designed as a hitting implement, in the hands of these privileged figures in these specific situations, the mundane, ordinary sandal becomes the medium, a social agent, by which their control attains physical embodiment. Thanks to the Athenian vase painters, we are able to register and visualise latent affordances of the sandal that previously lay out of sight. It seems that in the context of Athenian society, the supposed dichotomy between the ordinary usage and the extraordinary violent usage of the sandal collapses. In this particular case, hitting with a sandal seems as ordinary as donning it in everyday use.

Digital Methods for Hashtag Engagement Research

This article seeks to contribute to the field of digital research by critically accounting for the relationship between hashtags and their forms of grammatization—the platform techno-materialization process of online activity. We approach hashtags as sociotechnical formations that serve social media research not only as criteria in corpus selection but also displaying the complexity of the online engagement and its entanglement with the technicity of web platforms. Therefore, the study of hashtag engagement requires a grasping of the functioning of the platform itself (technicity) along with the platform grammatization. In this respect, we propose the three-layered (3L) perspective for addressing hashtag engagement. The first contemplates potential differences between high-visibility and ordinary hashtag usage culture, its related actors, and content. The second focuses on hashtagging activity and the repurposing of how hashtags can be differently embedded into social media databases. The last layer looks particularly into the images and texts to which hashtags are brought to relation. To operationalize the 3L framework, we draw on the case of the “impeachment-cum-coup” of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. When cross-read, the three layers add value to one another, providing also difference visions of the high-visibility and ordinary groups.

Intentionalism and bald-faced lies

ABSTRACT In Lying and Insincerity, Andreas Stokke argues that bald-faced lies are genuine lies, and that lies are always assertions. Since bald-faced lies seem not to be aimed at convincing addressees of their contents, Stokke concludes that assertions needn't have this aim. This conflicts with a traditional version of intentionalism, originally due to Grice, on which asserting something is a matter of communicatively intending for one's addressee to believe it. I argue that Stokke's own account of bald-faced lies faces serious problems and give several responses on behalf of intentionalism. Some bald-faced lies are best understood as irrational attempts to deceive. Others are best understood as indirect speech acts of various kinds. Still, others are best understood as conventional speech acts, which differ from communicative acts like assertion in the ways that they must be embedded in social institutions or practices. An overarching theme of this essay is that we should not make theoretical decisions about how to classify speech acts by consulting ordinary usage.