Transaction Publishers Research Articles

Linguistic Interviewing as a Method for Determining the Degree of Representativeness of Antonymous Pairs in the English Language

In this article, the degree of representativeness of the examples (pairs of lexical units) which illustrate antonymous relations in the English language has been determined, utilizing the method of linguistic interviewing. The article presents the procedure and the results of the psycholinguistic experiment conducted. The peculiarities of the method of linguistic interviewing as a type of psycholinguistic experiment have been defined. A selection of antonymous pairs provided by leading linguists in the area of lexical semantics as illustrative examples in thirteen English-language linguistic works (monographs, textbooks and linguistic encyclopaedias) serves as the material for the experiment. All of the 101 respondents are scholars in the field of linguistics (Candidates and Doctors of Philological Sciences, as well as postgraduate students from the higher educational establishments of Ukraine), and are native speakers of Ukrainian, English being their first foreign language. In the experiment, the respondents were to identify which pairs of lexical items given in the list illustrate the relation of antonymy. Analyzing the results of linguistic interviewing, we were able to determine the pairs of antonyms with the highest and the lowest degrees of representativeness. The research demonstrated that gradable and complementary antonyms, mainly adjectives, have the highest degree of representativeness. In addition, we identified certain correlations with the results of linguistic interviewing conducted earlier, the respondents being linguistics scholars, including university and college professors, who are native speakers of English from five English-speaking countries.
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 Kotys, O. (2014). Psykholinhvistychnyi esperyment yak metod doslidzhennia pryrodnoiyikatehorii [Psycholinguistic experiment as a method of investigating a natural category].East European Journal of Psycholinguistics, 1(1), 114–121.
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 Lytvyn, O. L. (2015). Doslidzhennia antonimichnykh vindoshen u psykholinhvistychnomueksperymenti [A study of antonymic relations as evidenced in a psycholinguisticexperiment]. Naukovyi Visnyk Skhidnoievropeiskoho Natsionalnoho Universytetu imeniLesi Ukrainky: Filolohichni Nauky: Movoznavstvo, 4(305), 71–75.
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The Contextual Semantic Realization of the Lexical Units Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter vs. Hesitation, Hesitancy

This article is dedicated to the research of synonymous groups for the designation of doubt “Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter” and “Hesitation, Hesitancy” in contemporary English-language fictional discourse. Doubt is defined as an epistemic state in the cognitive world of individuals which provides motivation to undertake a further quest for information. The purpose of this work is to investigate how the set of semes identified in each component of the synonymous group is presented in the context of modern English fictional discourse. This research is directed towards verifying whether the use of all the components of the given synonymous groups is of equal importance in modern language discourse, as well as checking whether all the semes of “Hesitate, Waver, Vacillate, Falter” and “Hesitation, Hesitancy” are used correctly, based on the results of the componential analysis. The results of the research make it possible to form conclusions regarding the homogeneity or heterogeneity of contextual sematic representations in discourse, dependent upon the number of constituents which make up the synonymous group.
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 Ortony, A. (1988). The Cognitive Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.
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 Merriam-Webster, A. (1947). Webster’s Dictionary of Synonyms. First Edition. ADictionary of Discriminated Synonyms with Antonyms and Analogous and ContrastedWords. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam Co. Publishers.

God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion. By DavidO'Connell. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015. 319 pp.

God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion. By DavidO'Connell. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015. 319 pp.

Origins and Consequences of South Korea’s Social Development

Origins and Consequences of South Korea’s Social Development Walter C. Clemens Jr. (bio) Carter J. Eckert, Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea: The Roots of Militarism, 1866–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). Daniel J. Schwekendiek, South Korea: A Socioeconomic Overview from the Past to the Present (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2016). How to explain the transformation of South Korea, especially in the 1960s and 1970s? It was one of the most rapid and far reaching in world history. As Daniel J. Schwekendiek makes clear, the Republic of Korea (ROK) produced the world’s fastest growing economy in terms of GDP per capita after World War II. South Korea in the mid-2000s became the world’s tenth largest economy. While South Korea adapted practices from the United States, Germany, and Japan in the twentieth century, Schwekendiek argues that the ROK is now being “chased” by China and other rising economies. To understand a country such as South Korea is it more useful to utilize the tools of history or of social science? Given the two books discussed here, we need not choose. The reader can benefit from the work of two outstanding scholars, each of whom offers a different approach to knowledge. Students of Northeast Asia can forge their own synthesis, drawing from each approach. While Carter J. Eckert’s book is based on documents, interviews, and insights derived from other historians, Schwekendiek approaches his task as a social scientist. In this book and in previous studies he analyzes statistics from the Organization [End Page 341] for Economic Cooperation and Development, official ROK studies, and other sources. Free will or determinism? In the real world there is no absolute division. Both forces interact. Eckert quotes Karl Marx: individuals make their own history, but they do so “under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past.” While engaged in creating something new, revolutionaries often utilize and sometimes mask names and slogans borrowed from world history. Eckert argues that the foundations of the dynamic but strongly authoritarian Korean state that emerged in the decades after the Korean War were laid during Japan’s occupation. Having trained at the Japanese military academy in Manchuria in the early 1940s, Park Chung-hee and other future ROK officers absorbed the Imperial Japanese Army’s ethos of victory at all costs and later applied it to the tasks of Korean modernization. They believed that the army should intervene in politics in times of crisis and that a central authority should plan and monitor the country’s economic system. The book under review, the first of two volumes Eckert is writing on Park, traces these beliefs to Japanese teachings. To explain Korea’s modernization, however, Eckert takes the reader far and wide. He follows Korean intellectuals and activists as they encountered the ideas and policies that shaped China, Japan, the United States, and Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, having studied and traveled abroad, Yo Kilchun (1856–1914) wrote a nearly 600-page manifesto of the Korean enlightenment to provide Koreans with a detailed understanding of the unfamiliar world in which they found themselves and to offer models on which to base their reforms. Among them was Napoleon’s: making nations tremble. A half century later, Napoleon would capture the imagination of a young Park Chung-hee. To grasp what Korea’s enlightenment reformers learned, Eckert provides insightful sketches of social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer and Prussian military thinkers such as Clausewitz. A paradox is that Kim Il-sung acquired a similar orientation after serving with communist Chinese and Soviet forces. Indeed, North Korea’s juche ideology of self-reliance includes the can-do spirit that Eckert attributes to the ROK. Both Park and Kim believed that the state should maintain a strong disciplinary presence in society [End Page 342] and exploit violence to maintain order. For communist leaders in China and the USSR, the military was to serve the Communist Party and its leaders, whereas Japanese generals expected the military to dominate and lead politics. Both viewpoints posited that war and politics should be total—mobilizing all resources to serve political ends. Park learned...

God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion by David O'Connell

Reviewed by: God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion by David O'Connell Randall Balmer God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion. By David O'Connell. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. 2015. Pp. xxxii, 319. $69.95. ISBN 978-1-4128-5486-3.) David O'Connell finds that American presidents in the postwar era, from Dwight Eisenhower through George W. Bush, used religious rhetoric in two ways. [End Page 374] This first is communitarian, roughly the language and tropes of civil religion, which is intended to "help bring the American people closer together" (p. xiii). The second use of religious rhetoric is what the author calls coalitional, when a president aspires "to persuade just enough people with his words in order to achieve his political objective" (p. xiii). The first use unites; the second divides. O'Connell is more interested in the second use of presidential rhetoric: coalitional. He devises criteria to determine when a president employs coalitional rhetoric and even more elaborate criteria to ascertain the success of those efforts, including polling data and the editorial comments of four newspapers: New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. At the outset, O'Connell telegraphs his conclusions: For all postwar presidents, from Eisenhower to the second Bush, coalitional religious rhetoric was ineffective as a political tool. Having dispatched with suspense, the author proceeds to analyze the policy aims and rhetorical strategies of postwar presidents, although he does so with some creative couplings. He opens by pairing Eisenhower's appeals for appropriations for foreign aid and Ronald Reagan's demands for increased defense spending. O'Con-nell characterizes Eisenhower's appeal as a jeremiad, and of Reagan he notes the paradox "that a man so concerned about the onset of Armageddon would at the same time be so committed to providing the supplies that might make it happen" (p. 54). Still, the author argues, all the talk about atheistic communism and the "evil empire" yielded no discernible results. As Marlin Fitzwater remarked, "Reagan would go out on the stump, draw huge throngs, and convert no one at all" (p. 78). The Bushes, father and son, fared no better in their respective efforts to rally support for wars in the Persian Gulf. George H. W. Bush shamelessly used Billy Graham as a prop (albeit a willing prop), and he did attempt to justify the invasion using the arguments of a just war, although the Society of Christian Ethics voted overwhelmingly that the invasion was not justified. O'Connell fails to point out that, although George W. Bush frequently used the phrase "war on evil," he made no attempt to invoke just-war arguments. Jimmy Carter, the most pious of postwar presidents, receives his own chapter, one that focuses on his "Crisis of Confidence" speech—often called the "malaise" speech, although the word appears nowhere in the text. "There is no other speech quite like this in the history of American politics," O'Connell writes (p. 148). Although initial response to the speech was positive, it did not wear well, especially when Carter soon thereafter demanded the resignations of cabinet officials, creating a sense of upheaval and chaos in his administration. Both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson invoked religious language in their support for civil rights and racial equality, but that rhetoric, O'Connell argues, had no discernible effect. Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton employed the language of sin, confession, and redemption, but the author claims that "there is strong reason to believe their choice of words actually made matters worse for each man" (p. 205). [End Page 375] Absent in this survey is Richard Nixon. That is a defensible omission, perhaps, but Nixon used Graham as a prop far more than any other president, and H. Larry Ingle's book on Nixon's faith is conspicuously absent from the bibliography. O'Connell concludes that although presidents resort to religious rhetoric in times of political crisis, it provides precious little political benefit. Part of the reason, he suggests, is that "the force of religious rhetoric has become weaker over time as the religious foundations of American society have begun to crumble" (p...

Etzioni, A. Hot spots: American foreign policy in a post-human-rights world. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2014.

Etzioni, A. Hot spots: American foreign policy in a post-human-rights world. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2014.

Michael Peter Smith and L. Owen Kirkpatrick (eds.) 2015: Reinventing Detroit: The Politics of Possibility. Comparative Urban and Community Research Series, Volume 11. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers

Michael Peter Smith and L. Owen Kirkpatrick (eds.) 2015: <i>Reinventing Detroit: The Politics of Possibility</i>. Comparative Urban and Community Research Series, Volume 11. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers

Hostile Takeovers—An Analysis Through Just War Theory

This paper examines the dynamics of hostile takeovers (HT's) as a form of corporate warfare. There are a number of compelling reasons for believing this to be an accurate approximation to corporate reality and therefore an appropriate analogy. In circumstances where it is all-too easy for either of the protagonists to act unethically (Berle and Means, The modern corporation and private property, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1991), there is an evident need for an appropriate template through which to analyse and evaluate the ethical dilemmas that HT's inevitably raise (Armour and Skeel, Georget Law J 95:1727, 2007)—whilst also, where possible, employing its prescriptions as a means of corporate conflict resolution. This paper evaluates just war theory (JWT) as one such template. In seeking a conceptually adaptable framework for analysing, interpreting and articulating antagonistic behaviour during a HT, it became apparent in the course of the research that JWT provided a potentially useful and viable template within which to pursue the above. The research questions centre not necessarily on whether this template could in some way be a substitute for statutory and regulatory constraints on unethical conduct but, rather, whether it might better inform all stakeholders of the importance of ethically informed restraint in the interest of the greater good.

Why Do Adults Engage in Cyberbullying on Social Media? An Integration of Online Disinhibition and Deindividuation Effects with the Social Structure and Social Learning Model

The dramatic increase in social media use has challenged traditional social structures and shifted a great deal of interpersonal communication from the physical world to cyberspace. Much of this social media communication has been positive: Anyone around the world who has access to the Internet has the potential to communicate with and attract a massive global audience. Unfortunately, such ubiquitous communication can be also used for negative purposes such as cyberbullying, which is the focus of this paper. Previous research on cyberbullying, consisting of 135 articles, has improved the understanding of why individuals—mostly adolescents—engage in cyberbullying. However, our study addresses two key gaps in this literature: (1) how the information technology (IT) artifact fosters/inhibits cyberbullying and (2) why people are socialized to engage in cyberbullying. To address these gaps, we propose the social media cyberbullying model (SMCBM), which modifies Akers’ [Akers RL (2011) Social Learning and Social Structure: A General Theory of Crime and Deviance, 2nd ed. (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ)] social structure and social learning model. Because Akers developed his model for crimes in the physical world, we add a rich conceptualization of anonymity composed of five subconstructs as a key social media structural variable in the SMCBM to account for the IT artifact. We tested the SMCBM with 1,003 adults who have engaged in cyberbullying. The empirical findings support the SMCBM. Heavy social media use combined with anonymity facilitates the social learning process of cyberbullying in social media in a way that fosters cyberbullying. Our results indicate new directions for cyberbullying research and implications for anticyberbullying practices.

The tragedy of European civilization: towards an intellectual history of the twentieth century

The Tragedy of European Civilization: Towards an Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century Harry Redner New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2015, 257 pp. The image of the sinking Titanic's band playing a requiem to the ship-builders' hubris presaged that of concentration camp inmates playing classical music as their fellow Jews were being herded toward the infamous ovens. In both cases, the tragedy unfolding around them was beyond the musicians' power to stop; so too, both catastrophes might have been prevented--in the first case by better technology and more safeguards, and in the latter by taking seriously the lethal anti-Semitism of a virulently militaristic, anti-rationalist ideology that would soon engulf not only Europe but also the world. But while the vagaries of Nature with its storms and icebergs can never be expected to disappear altogether, the Holocaust marked a historical watershed: it would come to symbolize the tragedy of the civilization we may call European or, indeed, Western. What makes it a tragedy in the classical sense is that the flaw was--is --internal, self-inflicted. As intellectual historian Harry Redner demonstrates in his seminal book The Tragedy of European Civilization, the unlikely though not always unwitting executioners of the West were philosophers, psychologists, and other wordsmiths who not only predicted but also contributed to the demise of the very ideas that had nurtured them. Like Oedipus who had slayed his own father, these brilliant minds had blinded themselves, using the dagger of language against itself. Rational individualism, which lay at the core of their--our--civilization, had been sabotaged from within: a metaphorical murder-suicide that defies explanation, or at least justification. These Western quasi-jihadists didn't even expect virgins in heaven; they had opted for a living hell. A Galieian-born Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Australia in 1946, where he became a professor of intellectual history, Redner's topic is the European conversation around the turn of the last century regarding man's nature, his place in society, the role of the state, and the value of freedom. Such books are rare in this country, for American academia has not been especially hospitable to this discipline, preferring empirically oriented political science, sociology, and psychology (with emphasis on neurobiology) to social thought. Yet Continental philosophers' mesmerizingly ambiguous verbiage has infiltrated beyond the ocean and is now ubiquitous on our college campuses as well, its carriers mostly French. Indeed, French Theory, or Theory for short, writes Redner, currently exerts a strong influence ... on all the special 'studies' courses that came to proliferate during the 1970s, such as cultural studies, gender studies, legal studies, post-colonial studies, and many more. What few realize is that the not-so-invisible hand behind these benign-sounding disciplines belongs to the redoubtable, deranged genius of Friedrich Nietzsche, operating through the glove of his no less erratic, certainly inconsistent, yet appallingly seductive disciple, Michel Foucault. Thus, Redner's book is not of mere antiquarian or esoteric interest, for the tragedy of which he speaks continues to affect us all to this day, in ways both manifest and subtle. Understanding its origins may not be sufficient to reverse it, but it could postpone or at least alleviate the severity of the devastation. The key message of this remarkably lucid, if occasionally esoteric, study is the revelation that Nietzsche--and several other thinkers including Karl Marx, Oswald Spengler, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein--did not merely play the violin as the ship of Reason sank into an ocean of hatred and barbarism, they urged it on, whether from self-hatred--subliminal or otherwise--misguided idealism, profound disenchantment with logic, or a mixture of all three. …

Israeli, R. From Arab Spring to Islamic Winter. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2013.

Israeli, R. From Arab Spring to Islamic Winter. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers, 2013.

God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion. By David O'Connell . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2014. ix + 319 pp. $54.95 Cloth

God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion. By David O'Connell . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2014. ix + 319 pp. $54.95 Cloth

Community gardening and governance over urban nature in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward

Lefebvre's right to the city (RTTC) framework argues for a renewed politics of inhabitance in cities, which enfranchises urban residents to imagine and create urban space to meet their needs. Another theoretical framework, Urban Political Ecology (UPE) works to “untangle the interconnected economic, political, social, and ecological processes that go together to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes” (Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003. Antipode, 35 (5): 898). In this paper, I draw connections between the RTTC framework and literature in Urban Political Ecology (UPE) to consider how their intersection can inform analysis of grassroots urban agriculture initiatives in the Lower Ninth Ward Neighborhood of New Orleans. I argue that community efforts to transform vacant lots into productive gardens and food forests constitute a specific form of claims on the right to the city, and on the right to alter and improve urban ecology. These claims play out at the scale of the neighborhood, rather than that of the city, and are manifested within specific urban sites managed by residents of a particular neighborhood. I characterize specific, neighborhood-scale urban greening efforts as “political moments” (Becher, 2012. Political moments with long-term consequences. In: Smith, Michael Peter, McQuarrie, Michael (Eds.), Remaking Urban Citizenship: Organizations, Institutions, and the Right to the City. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers, pp. 203–220), which, despite their locational and topical specificity, offer profound potential for broader urban social change.

CarmenMeinert and Hans‐BerndZöllner, eds.: Buddhist Approaches to Human Rights: Dissonances and Resonances. Bielefeld and Piscataway, NJ: Transcript (distributed in North America by Transaction Publishers), 2010; pp. 246.

CarmenMeinert and Hans‐BerndZöllner, eds.: Buddhist Approaches to Human Rights: Dissonances and Resonances. Bielefeld and Piscataway, NJ: Transcript (distributed in North America by Transaction Publishers), 2010; pp. 246.

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Micro­microcelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet

Micro­microcelebrity: Branding Babies on the Internet

Understanding Moral Sentiments: Darwinian Perspectives? Edited by HilaryPutnam, SusanNeiman and Jeffrey P.Schloss. Pp. 273, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, 2014, $54.95/£47.17.

The Heythrop JournalVolume 56, Issue 4 p. 704-704 BOOK REVIEW Understanding Moral Sentiments: Darwinian Perspectives? Edited by Hilary Putnam, Susan Neiman and Jeffrey P. Schloss. Pp. 273, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick and London, 2014, $54.95/£47.17. Benjamin Murphy, Benjamin Murphy FSU-PanamaSearch for more papers by this author Benjamin Murphy, Benjamin Murphy FSU-PanamaSearch for more papers by this author First published: 15 June 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12250_16Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume56, Issue4July 2015Pages 704-704 RelatedInformation

Fat and Thin Sex: Fetishised Normal and Normalised Fetish

Fat and Thin Sex: Fetishised Normal and Normalised Fetish

Art as a Means of Transporting the Knowledge of Place

Sigurd Bergmann, Religion, Space, and the Environment, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick-London, 2014

Review of Taiwan in Transformation: Retrospect and Prospect, second edition, by Huang Chun-chieh. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2014

Review of Taiwan in Transformation: Retrospect and Prospect, second edition, by Huang Chun-chieh. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2014