Linguistic Tools Research Articles

Understanding Hand Hygiene Knowledge Gaps: Insights from Primary Healthcare in Portugal

Abstract Background Healthcare-associated infections cause a significant burden of disease globally. Hand hygiene is crucial for preventing these infections but despite recommendations, compliance with hand hygiene protocols among healthcare professionals is often inadequate. In Portugal, there have been several initiatives aiming to increase awareness on the importance of hand hygiene practices amongst healthcare professionals including in primary healthcare facilities. Nationally, there are two models of organization of primary healthcare facilities with differences in funding and allocation of resources. Methods In this study, the World Health Organization’s Hand Hygiene Knowledge Assessment Questionnaire for Healthcare Professionals was translated into Portuguese and validated with infection control specialists. It was then distributed to primary healthcare professionals in the Northern Lisbon area, in March 2024 to assess knowledge on hand hygiene practices and highlight potential training needs. The responses were analyzed, with the Kruskal-Wallis test carried out, followed by the Mann-Whitney U test when required. Results A response rate of 21,5% (65/302) was obtained, with most participants being nurses (58%), followed by physicians (34%). There was a statistically significant difference depending on the model of organization of the primary healthcare unit to which the participant belonged (χ2 = 8.428, p = 0.014, df = 2)., There was no significant difference between the score and the professional category of the participant (χ2 = 5.76, p = 0.12, df = 3). Conclusions The findings of this study show that the model of organization of a primary healthcare unit can impact the knowledge of professionals and not just practices. This study also underscores the significance of comprehensive assessments of the context before interventions and the need for further studies to understand how we can better inform future training initiatives. Key messages • Organizational differences in primary healthcare units impact hand hygiene knowledge among professionals, emphasizing the need for tailored training initiatives. • Comprehensive assessments of healthcare contexts, coupled with validated linguistic tools, are crucial for reliable intervention strategies in infection control.

Foreign Languages and Aesopianisation: When the Popularity of Fables Unlocks Spanish

Purpose. This article explores the concept of the ‘Aesopianisation’ of other languages, focusing on the idea of using Aesop’s fables as a language learning aid. The fable of “The Fox and the Grapes” serves as an example of the widespread popularity of Aesop's timeless stories, making them an ideal resource to unlock related languages, such as Spanish. Methodology. The integration of beloved fables into reading comprehension and classroom discussion captivates students' imaginations and may help to solve one of the most daunting challenges in education: mastering analytical reading. Employing content analysis, this article delves into the application of narrative popularity effect (NPE) (1), linguistic context predictability (LCP) (2), lexical interlingual cognates (LIC) (3), and collocational patterns (CP) (4) as four useful linguistic tools to solve one of the most daunting educational challenges: unlocking a foreign language through detailed analytical reading. Results. The findings reveal a remarkable ability of these tools to extract the lexicon and structures from ten selected popular fables in Spanish, underscoring the potential efficacy of this approach in language learning. Conclusions. The study suggests that combining linguistic and cultural awareness can be a powerful tool for learning foreign languages, demonstrating that the ‘Aesopianisation’ of a language is indeed possible.

Types of play behavior in the expression of the category of relations in the English and Italian languages

The article offers a comparative analysis of the semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the types of play relations in the linguistic world view of non-closely related languages. It involves identifying similarities and differences in the play expression of the category of relations in English and Italian languages. The purpose of the study is a more detailed understanding of the category of relations in the behavioral aspect based on lexemes expressing the concept of play in unrelated languages. The relevance and theoretical novelty of the linguistic analysis of play relations is due to the lack of comparative studies on this issue based on the material of the Italian and English languages in the behavioral aspect. We introduce the concept of observer: the subject of perception and interpretation (ObserverP) and the subject of perception (ObserverA), as an interpreter of types of play relations as a linguistic research tool. The result of the study of the types of play relations is the analysis of lexical units as markers of play behavior in the semiotic and axiological aspects. Analysis of the definitions of lexemes of the compared languages, recorded in dictionaries, showed that, depending on the type of play relations, certain differences appear in the axiological aspect, and, subsequently, manifest themselves in the contexts. In Italian language, a negative assessment is much less common than a positive one when deciphering the semiotics of play behavior. In English language, playful relations reflect the intentions of transferring real behavioural actions into the play; in Italian language, they embellish real behavioral actions. A comparative analysis of language material makes it possible to clearly identify and demonstrate similarities and differences in the understanding and expression of play behavior using material of non-closely related languages.

ФЕНОМЕН МОЛЧАНИЯ В КОНФЛИКТНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

The article applies the interdisciplinary approach to examine the phenomenon of silence. It juxtaposes diverse definitions of «silence» which emerged in various branches of humanities. The article is focused on the communicatively significant silence which is highlighted by the opposing interests – conflict discourse. As a sign vehicle, «silence» can be explored either as a cultural concept, or a communication strategy. The article also studies linguistic tools to represent the concept «Silence» in literature.

Proverbs in Aravind Adiga’s Novel: The White Tige

Proverbs are short and complex linguistic tools used in conversations as well as texts. Their brevity and power of expression is utilized by speakers and writes to say much with fewer words. Proverbs are used in literature such as dramas and novels. Writers use them to enhance meaning in their stories and create perspectives to make the unbelievable become believable. The perceived inherent general truth and element of universality of wisdom in proverbs is the reason as to why it is an important tool of writers who strive to convince their readers. Aravind Adiga has used proverbs in his novel, The White Tiger to that effect. This article is an investigation as to how the novelist has employed proverbs in the novel to create an enhanced sense of meaning. It explores the stylistical value they have added to his narration and the reason why the writer has depended on using proverbs in his work.

A Critical Discourse Analysis Study Of Selected English Medical Posters

Since time immemorial most world countries suffered from divers diseases that affected people's life which lead ,to death . But with the passage of time and the growth of science and technology, there has become an imperative need to awareness people about diseases, their spread and ways to prevent diseases. One of the most important medical awareness tools that have emanated lately are medical posters, which depend on convey medical information to different segments of society in simple and understandable way, by blending between written words, phrases ,images or illustrations to be more attractive and more convincing. Many tools are used in medical posters give increase to some controversy over their ideologies, which used to convey the purpose of medical posters, this study aims to critically investigate of how posters are used to reveal thoughts and strategies of the designer in order to convey meaning and convincingness people. which try to answers to the subsequent research questions: What are the major elements employed in English medical posters ? What are the ideologies carry in English medical posters? And how are medical tips portray as an images in English medical posters in general? This paper hypothesis that medical posters depend on Extra -linguistic tools in to send their messages and persuades people with medical tips over and above linguistic elements . the selecting data depend on three samples of English medical posters choosing from :Freepik ,World Health Organization and ISWAN .The posters analyzed in consideration of an selected model Van Dijk (2000) and Kress and Van Leuween (2006). The results of analysis show that designers of medical posters constructed the intended messages by employ both linguistic and Extra -linguistic elements, but they tend to depend more on Extra -linguistic elements. The results also demonstrate that people are more convinced via extra-linguistic elements specially on colors, illustrations and gaze, while the speakers tend to formulate their ideologies mainly via linguistic elements. Also the study shows how the designer of English medical poster portrays medical tips as an images by using appropriate design to guide audience through the information, create something eye catching, but easy to read. Design the center of medical poster to offer something visually interesting important medical tips image , or a schematic of the medical information. These results verify the aims of the study.

A visual ethnography of parent-child interactions during ‘story-time’ in Chinese family settings

ABSTRACT Story-time serves as an interactive linguistic tool through which parents encourage their children to share narratives. Grounded in sociocultural and narrative theories, this study employed a visual ethnographic approach to explore how parents perceive and engage in story-time interactions within 33 Chinese families. Data were collected through video recordings of story-time sessions and semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that story-time may function as a play-based educational tool, fostering positive parent–child relationships and supporting child development through activities such as child-centered reading and role-playing. Parent–child interactions were categorized into two primary types: those involving print-based materials and those centered around oral storytelling. Parents emphasized the importance of respecting their children’s preferences by allowing them to choose stories and by developing effective storytelling techniques to maximize the benefits of family story-time. Through these sessions, parents and children engaged in meaningful interactions that strengthened family bonds and contributed to the children’s holistic development.

Exploring Mahmud Yunus's Indonesian-Arabic Dictionary: Structure and Significance

Background: This study examines Mahmud Yunus' Arabic-Indonesian dictionary using a library research method. Gap: Limited research exists on the dictionary's structural features and supplementary content. Aim: The research analyzes the dictionary's components and applies Philip Mayring's content analysis. Results: The 14th edition of the dictionary includes linguistic tools like tashrif and wazan but lacks elements such as historical chronology, maps, and compiler details. It does feature visual aids related to everyday objects. Novelty: The study reveals missing supplementary content, suggesting areas for improvement. Implications: Updates could enhance its educational value. Highlights : Library Research Method: Emphasizes the use of primary and secondary data sources for comprehensive analysis. Structural Components: Identifies key elements in the dictionary, such as tashrif and wazan, and highlights missing features like historical chronology. Educational Value: Suggests the need for updates to enhance the dictionary's utility as a linguistic resource. Keywords: Mahmud Yunus, Arabic-Indonesian dictionary, content analysis, linguistic tools, supplementary features

THE EVOLUTION OF METAPHOR IN THE DIACHRONIC ASPECT ON THE MATERIAL OF ENGLISH POETRY

Metaphor is a linguistic tool used to express ideas or concepts through comparison. In the diachronic aspect, metaphor can be observed over time as it changes and evolves in a language.The term "diachronic" refers to the study of language evolution over time, and in this context, the article is focused on the evolution of metaphor in English poetry. The use of metaphor has been a consistent feature of poetry throughout history, and this article analyzes the ways in which metaphor has evolved over time in the English language.Different types of English poetry are analyzed in the article, ranging from medieval to contemporary, and tracing the evolution of metaphorical language in each era. This analysis involves identifying specific metaphors or themes thatwere popular in each era, as well as examining how the use of metaphor has changed over time [1, p.24]. Such methods as literary analysis, descriptive analysis, and comparative historical method were used to study metaphor in the diachronic aspect.By analyzing the use of metaphor in English poetry across different time periods, researchers gain insight into the historical and cultural contexts that shaped language use. It also provides insights into the cognitive processes involved in metaphorical thinking and language use. By examining how poets have used metaphor to convey meaning and evoke emotions over time, researchers gain a deeper understanding of how the human brain processes and interprets language.In summary, the study of the evolution of metaphor in the diachronic aspect on the material of English poetry is scientifically significant because it sheds light on the historical and cultural contexts of language use, provides insights into the cognitive processes involved in metaphorical thinking, and has practical applications in fields such as language teaching and natural language processing.

A hybrid BWM–CRITIC–VIKOR approach for assessing oil and gas risk scenarios in probabilistic linguistic term set

The oil and gas industry plays a crucial role in supporting energy supply and economic development. Mitigating risks in oil and gas projects is essential for reducing decision-making uncertainties, optimizing resource allocation, and fostering the competitiveness and sustainable growth of enterprises. Therefore, evaluating decision-making risks in the oil and gas sector is of significant practical importance. This paper proposes a comprehensive approach based on the BWM–CRITIC–VIKOR multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) evaluation model. An evaluation index system encompassing six critical dimensions—technology, economics, environment, security, societal impact, and political factors—is established. To enhance assessment precision, the AHP interval estimation method is employed to identify and eliminate indicators with low contributions. Subsequently, the probabilistic linguistic term set (PLTS) is introduced into the best–worst method (BWM) and CRITIC methods to calculate the weights for each index. This approach helps to circumvent the subjectivity inherent in single subjective weighting methods. To evaluate and rank alternatives, the PLTS is used as an evaluation linguistic tool within the VIKOR framework. Finally, this methodology is applied to decision-making in the oil and gas industry, and its effectiveness and superiority are compared with the AHP–TOPSIS method and the BWM–CRITIC method.

Pragmatic Implicature and the Articulation of Protest in Femi Osofisan’s Plays

This study was motivated by the need to explore the pragmatic strategies employed by Femi Osofisan in his plays Women of Owu, Morountodun, and Red Is the Freedom Road to depict protest and resistance. The purpose was to analyze the use of pragmatic implicature in these plays, illustrating how implied meanings and contextual cues enhance the expression of socio-political struggles. Utilizing a qualitative research design, the study conducted a content analysis of key speeches within the selected texts, examining the pragmatic implicature of the language used. Three major findings emerged: first, Osofisan’s use of implicature effectively exposed the moral hypocrisy and brutality of oppressors; second, the speeches affirmed the importance of unity and collective action in resistance movements; third, the implicit messages within the dialogues fostered a deeper emotional and ethical engagement with the audience, enhancing the plays' impact. The study concluded that pragmatic implicature is a crucial linguistic tool in Osofisan’s work, which enriches the narrative and powerfully conveys the dynamics of protest and resilience. This study contributed to a better understanding of how language can be used to articulate and inspire resistance within socio-political contexts.

Computer Analysis of Scientific Texts to Identify Ideological Narratives

This article is devoted to the problem of identifying hidden ideological attitudes in scientific articles on economics, as well as defining methods for analyzing the ideological landscape of Russian economic science. The problem of this review article lies in the absence of a developed generally accepted approach to the textual analysis of scientific publications. Thus, there is an extremely wide list of methods that can be used in this case. Nevertheless, the development of the most effective methodology requires a comprehensive analysis of existing approaches individually and a comparison of each of them with the others. The authors associate the solution of the problem of choice in the presence of several approaches and a variety of methods with the definition of such a basis that would allow the formation of a methodology that includes ideological classification within the framework of economic scientific literature, the use of computational linguistics tools, in particular natural language processing, in addition to classical narrative analysis tools to identify "ideological narratives". In this regard, the methods of identifying implicit meanings in economic texts are considered in detail. The proposed tools can be used in further research on this or related topics.

Phraseological Units with Color Components in the French Language: A Semantic and Cultural Analysis

This article explores the linguistic, semantic, and cultural significance of color-based phraseological units (PUs) in the French language. Colors in French PUs serve as powerful linguistic tools, symbolizing emotions, societal norms, and historical narratives. Through a detailed analysis of common colors such as blue, red, black, and green, this study reveals how these elements function syntactically and convey complex cultural meanings. The challenges of translating French color PUs into other languages are examined, highlighting the difficulties in preserving symbolic meaning and cultural context. This article aims to deepen the understanding of color symbolism in French phraseology and its role in shaping linguistic expression.

Behind the Script: Analyzing Figurative Language in "Free Guy"

This study underscores the importance of figurative language in film, particularly within a digitally-driven narrative like "Free Guy." It provides valuable insights into how linguistic creativity supports storytelling in contemporary cinema, enriching both the viewers' experience and the overall impact of the film. Using Barthes' theory of semiotics, which examines how meaning is constructed through signs and symbols, the study reveals that figurative language functions as a crucial signifying system in "Free Guy." Leech's theory of figurative language, which categorizes different types of figurative expressions, provides a framework for analyzing their specific functions in the film. This study identifies how metaphors, similes, hyperboles, personifications, and metonyms collectively enhance the storytelling process. The results of the study indicate that metaphor is the most dominant form of figurative language in "Free Guy," highlighting its significance in enhancing the narrative and thematic depth of the film. Similes and hyperboles also play crucial roles, particularly in character development and conveying humour. The presence of these figurative elements enriches the viewer's experience by providing additional layers of meaning, which strengthens emotional engagement and understanding of the story, while personifications and metonyms add vividness and relatability to the virtual world depicted in the movie. Furthermore, this study opens avenues for further exploration into the role of figurative language in different film genres and other forms of digital storytelling. Future research could examine how these linguistic tools influence viewer perception and emotional engagement across various cinematic contexts. Understanding the use of figurative language can reveal its power in shaping narratives, enhancing emotional engagement, and adding layers of meaning.

Empathic listening as a social semiotic practice within the tradition of Nonviolent Communication

Abstract This article investigates empathic listening as practised in the tradition of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), noting that this tradition is understood as a designed register of interpersonal connection, “concerned with progress toward a better world” (Hughes 2018). In the tradition, empathy is considered “a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing, … we give to others the time and space they need to express themselves fully and to be understood” (Rosenberg 2015: 91–92). The analysis in this article applies the tools of systemic functional linguistics to demonstrate that this empathic understanding is achieved by the empathiser supporting the speaker’s exploration of their emotions via a linguistic pattern of co-created, continuous thematic progression of resonated new information. The article provides insights into the linguistic machinery powering NVC empathy practice.

Proactive threat hunting to detect persistent behaviour-based advanced adversaries

Persistence behavior is a tactic advanced adversaries use to maintain unauthorized access and control of compromised assets over extended periods. Organizations can efficiently detect persistent adversaries and reduce the growing risks posed by highly skilled cyber threats by embracing creative techniques and utilizing sophisticated tools. By taking a proactive stance, businesses may increase their entire cybersecurity posture by anticipating and mitigating possible risks before they escalate. Security analysts perform thorough investigations and extract meaningful insights from large datasets with greater technical advantage by using Elasticsearch in conjunction with a variety of linguistic tools. This research presents a novel methodology for proactive threat intelligence to identify and mitigate advanced adversaries that use persistent behaviors. The authors designed and set up an Elasticsearch-based advanced Security Information and Event Management platform to offer a proactive threat-hunting strategy. This enables comprehensive analysis and detection by integrating Lucene, Kibana, and domain-specific languages. The goal of this research is to locate hidden advanced enemies who exhibit persistent behavior during cyberattacks. The framework can help improve the organization’s resilience to identify and respond to threats by closely examining activities like boot or logon auto-start execution in registry keys, tampering with system processes and services, and unauthorized creation of local accounts on compromised assets. This study emphasizes proactive actions over reactive reactions, which advances danger detection techniques. This technical study provides security practitioners seeking to improve defenses against new advanced attacks to stay ahead in a dynamic threat landscape.

Effective type label-based synergistic representation learning for biomedical event trigger detection

BackgroundDetecting event triggers in biomedical texts, which contain domain knowledge and context-dependent terms, is more challenging than in general-domain texts. Most state-of-the-art models rely mainly on external resources such as linguistic tools and knowledge bases to improve system performance. However, they lack effective mechanisms to obtain semantic clues from label specification and sentence context. Given its success in image classification, label representation learning is a promising approach to enhancing biomedical event trigger detection models by leveraging the rich semantics of pre-defined event type labels.ResultsIn this paper, we propose the Biomedical Label-based Synergistic representation Learning (BioLSL) model, which effectively utilizes event type labels by learning their correlation with trigger words and enriches the representation contextually. The BioLSL model consists of three modules. Firstly, the Domain-specific Joint Encoding module employs a transformer-based, domain-specific pre-trained architecture to jointly encode input sentences and pre-defined event type labels. Secondly, the Label-based Synergistic Representation Learning module learns the semantic relationships between input texts and event type labels, and generates a Label-Trigger Aware Representation (LTAR) and a Label-Context Aware Representation (LCAR) for enhanced semantic representations. Finally, the Trigger Classification module makes structured predictions, where each label is predicted with respect to its neighbours. We conduct experiments on three benchmark BioNLP datasets, namely MLEE, GE09, and GE11, to evaluate our proposed BioLSL model. Results show that BioLSL has achieved state-of-the-art performance, outperforming the baseline models.ConclusionsThe proposed BioLSL model demonstrates good performance for biomedical event trigger detection without using any external resources. This suggests that label representation learning and context-aware enhancement are promising directions for improving the task. The key enhancement is that BioLSL effectively learns to construct semantic linkages between the event mentions and type labels, which provide the latent information of label-trigger and label-context relationships in biomedical texts. Moreover, additional experiments on BioLSL show that it performs exceptionally well with limited training data under the data-scarce scenarios.

Digital Representations of Illness: Key Issues in Cancer Patient Narratives

Language has proven to possess tremendous power: words not only reflect our perception of the world, but they also have an impact on other people’s ideas (Foucault, 2002; Fairclough, 2003; Koller, 2017). This is especially significant in the case of health communication, which, in the last few years, has raised a particular interest as a result of the number of health-related discourses that have emerged on the Internet (Harvey, 2013; Brookes and Hunt, 2021). Exchanging information has become so easy and quick now that more and more people are starting to share their stories of illness, raising awareness and seeking for emotional support, which has highlighted the therapeutic role of storytelling (Conti, 2019). Given that cancer is the leading cause of death in the world (WHO, 2022), and considering the growing trend towards storytelling and the extraordinary power of language, the aim of this paper is to analyse how cancer patients use language in their narratives when describing their illness experiences. To conduct our analysis, we compiled a corpus of cancer narratives written in English and used corpus linguistic tools (McEnery and Hardie, 2012) such as Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et al., 2014) to explore how cancer, illness, health, life and death are represented. Preliminary findings show that, although the word ‘cancer’ seems to be commonly used by English-speaking cancer patients, they do not often talk about death, especially about their own, suggesting that death may still be a taboo in our society. In addition, as reflected in their narratives, patients seem to change their life expectations, values and priorities after living with cancer. Furthermore, our findings suggest that patients may understand certain issues such as ‘being healthy’ differently from the general population.

English as a language of preference in mathematics learning: perspectives from high school learners in township contexts

The exploration of language preference among mathematics learners in multilingual contexts remains a significant area of study. The aim of this study is to identify the most effective linguistic tools that contribute to the academic achievement of secondary school learners in mathematics. This study specifically examines English as a preferred language for mathematics instruction among high school learners in a Soshanguve community in the Tshwane West District of South Africa. It investigates the attitudes of mathematics learners towards the use of English as the medium of instruction and the reasons for their preference for learning mathematics in English. The study uses a non-experimental quantitative descriptive survey with a sample of 101 high school mathematics learners. Data was collected using a self-administered survey questionnaire conducted on paper. The primary data was analysed using descriptive statistics. The results indicate that English is the preferred language for learning mathematics. The study also demonstrates that the inclination towards the English language among high school learners is driven by factors such as pedagogical, social, linguistic competence, and economic considerations. The research findings suggest that the use of English as the medium of instruction is crucial for the acquisition and achievement of mathematics skills. This is because learners' indigenous African languages are inadequate as a medium of instruction in mathe­matics classroom conversations among high school learners. Therefore, it is recommended that the Department of Basic Education and mathematics educators should enhance learners' English language competence by implementing intense and enriched language programmes.

Analisis Wacana Kritis Norman Fairclough Pada Film Barbie 2023 Sebagai Representasi Budaya Patriarki

Film is part of audio-visual mass media communication and aims to convey social messages to the audience in accordance with the reality that is growing and developing in society. One of the films that has this purpose is the film Barbie Live Action 2023. The purpose of this research is to dissect the discourse in three dimensions, namely textual, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice. In this research, the type of research used is qualitative-descriptive research. The paradigm used in this research is the critical paradigm. The appropriate research method used for this research is Norman Fairclough's Critical Discourse Analysis method. In the textual dimension, the linguistic tools of Diction, Cohesion, Modality and figure of speech metaphor are obtained. In the discourse practice dimension, at the production level the Barbie film is produced with two backgrounds, namely Barbieland and the real world, namely the city of Los Angles, United States with English language dialogue. At a text consumption level, the film is the highest-grossing box office film of all time with earnings of $1.45 billion. Sociocultural practices have 3 levels, namely situational, institutional and social levels. Situational Barbie script was written during the pandemic. For example, the film Barbie was a box office success in almost the entire world and became the hope of the global community regarding the end of the pandemic. Furthermore, at the institutional level, which includes the media, is Greta Gerwig herself as a film filmmaker. Warner Bros. is the production house for the 2023 Barbie Live Action film. Then there is Mattel as the company behind the production of Barbie dolls. Finally, at the social level, this film shows how patriarchy persists in reality, the social and cultural system of American society still adheres to patriarchal culture and neglects women's rights and protection.