Search

We conduct a large-scale study of online community variation in language. We show that factors of efficient communication, which have been shown to drive crosslinguistic variation in lexical semantic systems, also play a role in within-language variation across 1926 English-language Reddit communities. We study variation in stancetaking behaviour, a domain where efficient communication may be influenced by social motivations for language use. We find that communities indeed have efficient stancetaking systems, particularly with respect to their own communicative needs. However, contrasting with crosslinguistic work, we find that communities are often not optimized for their needs. Moreover, we find that community-level social factors correlate with how optimized they are. These results highlight the importance of accounting for social pressures for language use when studying how efficient communication drives variation.

Work has shown that greater need to refer to a semantic domain drives greater lexical precision within that domain, both across languages, and in lexical choice in (within-language) dyadic interactions. We complement this, studying the relation between communicative need and precision across communities of speakers of the same language. Taking kinship as our domain, we find evidence that differences in communicative need between communities within a language contribute to variation in lexical precision in use. We show that this variation is partly due to differences in the kinds of pragmatic contexts the communities talk about, but that community variation in lexical precision exists over and above the factors we study, suggesting that more work is needed to elucidate additional pragmatic influences on the simplicity--informativity trade-off.

There is a requirement for an objective method to determine a safe level of low‐level military occupational blast, having recognised it can lead to neurological damage. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effect of artillery firing training on the neurochemistry of frontline soldiers using two‐dimensional (2D) COrrelated SpectroscopY (2D COSY) in a 3‐T clinical MR scanner. Ten men considered to be of sound health were evaluated before and after a week‐long live firing exercise in two ways. Prior to the live fire exercise, all participants were screened by a clinical psychologist using a combination of clinical interviews and psychometric tests, and were then scanned with 3‐T MRI. The protocols included T1‐ and T2‐weighted images for diagnostic reporting and anatomical localisation and 2D COSY to record any neurochemical effects from the firing. No changes to the structural MRI were recorded. Nine substantive and statistically significant changes in the neurochemistry were recorded as a consequence of firing training. Glutamine and glutamate, glutathione, and two of the seven fucose‐α (1–2)‐glycans were significantly increased. N‐acetyl aspartate, myo‐inositol + creatine, and glycerol were also increased. Significant decreases were recorded for the glutathione cysteine moiety and tentatively assigned glycan with a 1–6 linkage (F2: 4.00, F1: 1.31 ppm). These molecules are part of three neurochemical pathways at the terminus of the neurons providing evidence of early markers of disruption to neurotransmission. Using this technology, the extent of deregulation can now be monitored for each frontline defender on a personalised basis. The capacity to monitor early a disruption in neurotransmitters, using the 2D COSY protocol, can observe the effect of firing and may be used to prevent or limit these events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to suggest the larger terms, parameters, and limits of autoethnographic method in life narrative, this essay explores three life narratives from filmmaker, writer, and critic Manthia Diawara that engage and exemplify different models of autoethnographic method, and points up the interests and issues raised by each. In the films Rouch in Reverse and An Opera of the World and the memoir/short film In Search of Africa, it makes distinctions among counter-ethnography, 'strong' autoethnography, and the terrain 'beyond' autoethnography and suggests their applicability to the literary memoirs of such writers as Annie Ernaux and Audre Lorde. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]