Search

In this study, we examined the use of compliments, self-praise, and self-denigration, as exchanged among nonnative English users. This was part of participation in an online cross-cultural exchange project (Ibunka 2019), which involved learners from six countries (Algeria, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands). The aim of the study was two-fold: first, to contribute to the burgeoning research on the three speech acts in online settings; second, to unravel how the project participants -- as nonnative users -- managed to build and sustain rapport/comity via these social acts, despite their assumed linguistic deficiency. The study's data were extracted from a corpus of 2055 posts and comments ([approximately equal to] 368654 words) and analysed in terms of: distribution (1105, 301, and 361 tokens were identified, respectively), topics (core vs. peripheral), sequential organisation (vertical vs. horizontal), and rapport/comity building potential. The findings were extensively discussed in light of the existing literature, especially relative to social networking sites. Some of these findings are of a particular interest to English language teachers, namely: using linguistic proficiency and incompetence as topics for the three speech acts and the latter deployment as metacomments and message openers/closers as well as for the management of relational work.

The situation caused by coronavirus disease 2019 closures in the spring of 2020 resulted in various restrictions for universities and led to a reorganisation of their operations. This created unprecedented challenges for all academic work. This study aimed to analyse the pandemic-related work experiences of doctoral researchers from several European universities. Thirty-eight doctoral researchers of management and organisation studies wrote voluntarily about their pandemic-related work experiences. The analysis focused on work communication since it emerged as the key theme in the writings. An analytical framework was developed to capture corporeal, virtual, formal, and informal dimensions of work communication in 72 relevant mentions that were extracted from the writings. These mentions created a rich evaluative space in that they evaluated different aspects of work communication. The general finding that all combinations of corporeal, virtual, formal, and informal work communication received both positive and negative evaluations theoretically made sense from a sociomaterial-technological perspective. Doctoral researchers must become immersed in specific sociomaterially and technologically constructed entanglements to achieve their goals of work communication. The findings revealed that these entanglements were both impeding the determinants of work communication as well as enabling researchers to carry out work communication in novel and creative ways.

Traditional research examining the communicational choices made by families with deaf children tends to emanate from the premise that families engage with either of the two grand discourses on deafness (i.e., the medical or cultural-linguistic perspective). This study investigated hearing mother's engagement with the educational options for their child from a dynamic, poststructural perspective. Three Flemish mothers were interviewed in-depth at the child's ages of 6, 9, 12, 18, and 24 months. The data were analyzed within a theoretical model that describes the positioning process of the mothers. This method yielded alternative explanations for former findings concerning mothers' decision-making processes, especially the difficulty of learning sign language as a second language in an effort to provide a bilingual-bicultural education, and highlighted the importance of having rich experiences. It further showed that a bilingual-bicultural position was scarcely available and poorly supported for these mothers. These findings are discussed in relation to recent international consensus statements on best practices in early intervention.

This study examines the use of technology for interaction by second-year college students in The Netherlands and its relationship with their integration and sense of belonging. The concepts of student integration and sense of belonging, as used in previous studies in The Netherlands, link student's persistence to their social interactions. Our findings reveal that technology use for interactions is positively correlated with students formal and informal peer interactions and with their sense of belonging in the college environment. The findings however, show no disparities between majority and minority students concerning their interactions, sense of belonging or ICT use. The overall results confirm that the use of new technology for communication benefits the interaction of students in college with peers and teachers and therefore it is also an important component for the persistence of minority students in higher education.

A digital learning and performance support environment for university student design tasks was developed. This paper describes on the design rationale, process, and the usage results to arrive at a core set of design principles for the construction of such an environment. We present a collection of organizational, technical, and course-related requirements that led to the particular choice and setup of the targeted environment. Building upon the established learning management system "Moodle", we designed a backbone structure called Product & Process that fitted onto the ASCE intervention model. Within the four phases of this model, students could find activity checklists, tools, and background information to support their design activities. In addition, the environment was supplemented with tools for group Communication and collaborative Report writing. The environment has been used for 5 weeks by 35 students who worked in small groups on a design task. We analyzed the students' appraisals for usability, and examined usage data from their action logs. The results indicated that the students were positive about the environment, and generally used its facilities fairly frequently. The discussion revolves around the issue of how to achieve a balance between constraints, freedom, and scaffolding. In addition, a set of design principles is proposed for the constructing of a future version of a learning & performance support environment.

Green gas is an attractive option for a local energy transition to combat climate change, notably in rural communities. As local initiatives require local acceptance, the study used a questionnaire methodology to capture opinions and intentions toward green gas in a panel of rural respondents (N= 403) and evaluated the green gas message framing to help improve communication strategies. This survey experiment used four frames in a 2 × 2 setup: an energy value core frame of responsibility for nature versus autonomy and a focus frame emphasizing the collective (i.e., the community) versus the individual (i.e., the household). Our findings highlight that the association with sustainability proves vital for a positive assessment of green gas, but its affordability is an issue. Moderated mediation analysis showed that subjective knowledge moderates between frames and intentions toward green gas: responsibility for nature contributes significantly, but only in the collective focus frame. These results are valuable in creating effective communication strategies about green gas adoption in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Global migration has led to a sharp increase in the number of language-discordant consultations (LDCs) in healthcare. Evidence on how healthcare providers (HCPs) meet migrant patients' needs while mitigating language barriers is lacking., Design: Using purposive and snowball sampling, we recruited twenty-seven Dutch HCPs (M age  = 45.07, SD = 11.46) and conducted semi-structured interviews to collect qualitative, open-ended data for identifying the communication strategies used with migrant patients in LDCs. We analysed the transcripts using deductive and inductive approaches (e.g., constant comparative method from Grounded Theory). Final pattern codes (i.e., key themes) were discussed among the research team until mutual agreement had been achieved., Results: Five key themes emerged from the analyses: HCPs often 'got-by' with (1) instrumental and (2) affective communication strategies used in language-concordant consultations to start medical consultations. When some instrumental communication strategies were deemed ineffective (e.g., lingua franca, gesturing, etc.) to bridge language barriers, HCPs turned to (3) incorporating digital tools (e.g., Google Translate). When HCPs were unable to communicate with migrant patients at all, (4) informal, ad-hoc and professional interpreters were involved. Finally, HCPs often (5) involved additional support to engage migrant patients to engage in treatment-related behaviours., Discussion and Conclusions: Our results highlight the importance of raising awareness among HCPs about using various combinations of different strategies. The development of a guideline indicating the optimal combination of communication strategies for different medical consultation goals may be useful in reshaping the current communication behaviour of HCPs in LDCs., Patient or Public Contribution: HCPs were the study population involved in this qualitative study. Refugee health advisors, general practitioners and linguistic specialists (i.e., members of the Right2Health consortium) with experience with the Dutch healthcare system were involved throughout the development of this research. This includes a review of the research question, participant information sheet and interview topic guide as well as providing interpretations of the data and feedback to this manuscript., (© 2023 The Authors. Health Expectations published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Objective: To gain insight into how communication vulnerable people and health‐care professionals experience the communication in dialogue conversations, and how they adjust their conversation using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) or other communication strategies. Methods: Communication vulnerable clients and health‐care professionals in a long‐term care institution were observed during a dialogue conversation (n = 11) and subsequently interviewed (n = 22) about their experiences with the conversation. The clients had various communication difficulties due to different underlying aetiologies, such as acquired brain injury or learning disorder. Results from the observations and interviews were analysed using conventional content analysis. Results: Seven key themes emerged regarding the experiences of clients and professionals: clients blame themselves for miscommunications; the relevance of both parties preparing the conversation; a quiet and familiar environment benefitting communication; giving clients enough time; the importance and complexity of nonverbal communication; the need to tailor communication to the client; prejudices and inexperience regarding AAC. The observations showed that some professionals had difficulties using appropriate communication strategies and all professionals relied mostly on verbal or nonverbal communication strategies. Conclusion: Professionals were aware of the importance of preparation, sufficient time, a suitable environment and considering nonverbal communication in dialogue conversations. However, they struggled with adequate use of communication strategies, such as verbal communication and AAC. There is a lack of knowledge about AAC, and professionals and clients need to be informed about the potential of AAC and how this can help them achieve equal participation in dialogue conversations in addition to other communication strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amongst numerous natural hazards, flooding annually causes the highest economic and societal losses in Europe. A reason for these losses are rising number of exposed assets in risk prone areas. Additionally, changes in extreme hydro-meteorological events impact the flood-resilience of such cities. Complementing government led protection and adaptation measures, private measures (dry- and wet-flood proofing, barrier systems, deflection of flood discharge, etc.) have been seen to decrease potential damages by flood events. Nevertheless, private protection and adaptation measures are not always adequately implemented, which is amongst others, the result of insufficient communication pathways between flood authorities and homeowners. The aim of the FLOODLABEL project is to increase the resilience and the adaptive capacity of cities in a smart manner. The FLOODLABEL is a prototype tool which aims at informing homeowners about their individual flood risks and to support the planning and decision-making of experts and local governments in risk management processes. By developing the FLOODLABEL tool both private stakeholders and homeowners can be involved in decision-making processes to enhance the resilience of communities. Hence, this study focuses on how homeowners in flood prone areas can be motivated to realise private measures by considering their knowledge about hazards, their risk behaviour and individual communication strategies wanted. The case study areas are sites in neighbourhoods that are prone to different types of flooding in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Austria. In these areas, the FLOODLABEL is explored and tested in terms of its social and technical functionality as well as its ability to improve risk communication. Preliminary results give insight into current protection and adaptation strategies realised by inhabitants and the different needs of risk communication depending on their risk behaviour. Further expected results are to integrate insights to improve communication strategies to provide tailored information. This can additionally be applied to advance planning support systems in risk management strategies in order to move towards more flood resilient communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

RiverCare is a 6 year Dutch research program that improves our fundamental understanding of river behavior for integrated flood risk management and collaborative maintenance. During-mid 2014 and December 2019, over 20 researchers from 5 universities have studied the hydro-morphological and ecological consequences of multiple river interventions that aim at reducing flood water levels and improving the spatial quality in Dutch rivers. As part of RiverCare, a multimedia strategy was developed to increase the accessibility of contributions and to get feedback from practitioners about the potential use of RiverCare (scientific) products in the Netherlands and abroad.The communication strategy is a joint effort between the RiverCare program (https://kbase.ncr-web.org/rivercare/) and the Netherlands Centre for River studies (NCR) (https://ncr-web.org/) to further discuss our work with the scientific and practical community and extend communication efforts after the program ends. The strategy includes an online knowledge-base that gives an overview about how methods and tools contribute towards more sustainable management. We use participatory methods for a user-centered design and carry out systematic evaluation to identify needs for improvement. Usability tests over the iterative design process were carried out with input of students and representatives of the intended audience who helped to improve the navigation and tailor content. The design aims to help users find out the most interesting project for their needs by means of an infographic, videos and an interactive map. For each project, researchers give an overview of their project outputs, innovative aspects and status for day-to-day practice while providing links to the storylines for practice, research outputs details including the supporting datasets. To increase the reach, RiverCare newsletters, blogs and news articles are being distributed through the NCR mailing list and other water platforms, both in the Netherlands as abroad.Systematic evaluation has been useful to tailor communication efforts and to give advice for other research programs in the field of environmental and risk management. Challenges are to reach a larger but interested audience to prove the effectiveness of our approach, to draw recommendations for improving current practices per main research themes and to explore the possibilities to further apply our results in other locations. Therefore, to hear and discuss the program's outcome, its implications and relevance, we will be inviting interested practitioners to explore our site, give feedback about their interests and register to the final RiverCare symposium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]