bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Inquiry
Authors: Biernacki Richard
Published: March 2003

A model of culture as a partially coherent system of signs comprised the most widely employed instrument for analyzing cultural meaning among the new cultural historians. However, the model failed to account for meanings that agents produce by executing social practices rather than by only “reading” contrasts among signs. It also encouraged some analysts to conceive the difference between sign system and concrete practice as that between what is graspable as an intellectual form and what remains inaccessibly material or corporeal. This essay introduces three exemplars of the ties between signs and practices to show how the pragmatics of using signs comprises a structure and a generator of meaning in its own right. In the three exemplars, which are based on the tropes of metonymy, metaphor, and irony, I employ the analytic tools of linguistics to appreciate the non‐discursive organization of practice. Analysis of the diverse logics for organizing practice offers promising means for investigating how signs come to seem experientially real for their users. Finally, this view of culture in practice suggests new hypotheses about the possible interdependencies as well as the lack of connection among the elements of a cultural setting.
Some Afterthoughts on Culture and Explanation in Historical Inquiry
Authors: Lorenz Chris
Published: March 2003

I argue here that the articles in this forum contain basic agreements. All three reject naturalism, reductionism, and monism while retaining causality as an explanatory category, and all three emphasize the role of time and argue for a view in which culture is regarded as both structured and contingent.

The differences among the explanatory proposals of Hall, Biernacki, and Kane are as important as the similarities: while Hall favors a Weberian approach, Biernacki argues for a primarily pragmatic explanation of culture, and Kane for a primarily semiotic explanation. I argue that all three positions face immanent problems in elucidating the exact nature of cultural explanation. While Hall leaves the problem of “extrinsic” ideal‐typical explanation unsolved, Biernacki simply presupposes the superiority of pragmatic over other types of cultural explanation, and Kane does the same for semiotic explanation. Hints at cultural explanation in the form of narrative remain underargued and are built on old ideas of an opposition between “analysis” and “narrative.” This is also the case with the latest plea for “analytic narratves.” I conclude that a renewed reflection on this opposition is called for in order to come to grips with cultural explanation and to get beyond the old stereotypes regarding the relationship between historical and social‐scientific approaches to the past.
History as Moral Reflection
Authors: Martin Raymond
Published: March 2003

Book reviewed in this article:

The Degradation of American History, by David Harlan.
Telling More: Lies, Secrets, and History
Authors: White Luise
Published: March 2003

This essay argues that secrets and lies are not forms of withholding information but forms by which information is valorized. Lies are constructed: what is to be lied about, what a lie is to consist of, how it is to be told, and whom it is to be told to, all reveal a social imaginary about who thinks what and what constitutes credibility. Secrets are negotiated: continual decisions about whom to tell, how much to tell, and whom not to tell describe social worlds, and the shape and weight of interactions therein. All of this makes lies and secrets extraordinarily rich historical sources. We might not see the truth distorted by a lie or the truth hidden by a secret, but we see the ideas andimaginings by which people disclose what should not be made public, and how they should carry out concealing one narrative with another. Such insights involve a step back from the project of social history, in which an inclusive social narrative is based on experience and individuals' ability to report it with some reliability, and suggests that historians need to look at social imaginings as ways to understand the ideas and concerns about which people lie and with which people construct new narratives that are not true. The study of secrets, however, links the study of social imaginings with the project of social history, as the valorization of information that results in the continual negotiation and renegotiation of secrets shows individuals and publics imagining the experiences labeled as secret because of the imagined power of a specific version of events.
Max Weber on Causal Analysis, Interpretation, and Comparison
Authors: Ringer Fritz
Published: March 2003

Max Weber's methodological writings offered a model of singular causal analysis that anticipated key elements of contemporary Anglo‐American philosophy of the social and cultural sciences. The model accurately portrayed crucial steps and dimensions of causal reasoning in these disciplines, outlining a dynamic and probabilistic conception of historical processes, counterfactual reasoning, and comparison as a substitute for counterfactual argument. Above all, Weber recognized the interpretation of human actions as a subcategory of causal analysis, in which the agents‘ visions of desired outcomes, together with their beliefs about how to bring them about, cause them to act as they do.
On the Determinants of Mandatory Works Councils in Germany
Authors: Addison John T. , Schnabel Claus , Wagner* Joachim
Published: March 2003

German works councils are often thought of as operating in all firms that exceed the basic size threshold (of five permanent employees) established under law. Drawing on a new large‐scale, representative German data set, we report that only one‐fifth of firms in our sample have works councils even if such firms do account for almost three‐fourths of employment. The principal factors behind works council presence emerge as fairly conventional: firm size, firm age, branch plant status, the gender composition of the work force, and certain working arrangements. There are also signs of a close relation between workplace union density and council presence. However, some controversial causal links suggested in an earlier econometric literature receive little support.
Transferring Labor Institutions to Emerging Economies: The Case of East Germany
Authors: Frege Carola M.
Published: March 2003

The formal transfer of West German industrial relations institutions into the East has been successful. Yet the literature is sceptical about the extent to which supportive attitudes and behavior among the actors have been developed. This article compares unionized workers' reactions toward their new unions and works councils in the East and West German textile and apparel industry. The research, first of its kind, shows that East Germans do not significantly differ in their attitudes from their western colleagues and that overall there is a strong support for the new institutions.
The Determinants of Disciplinary System Effectiveness: A Line‐Management Perspective
Authors: Klaas Brian S. , Gainey Thomas W. , Dell'omo Gregory G.
Published: March 2003

This study examines how characteristics of an organization and its disciplinary system affect line‐management perceptions of disciplinary system effectiveness. Using responses from 418 organizations, we found a curvilinear relationship between disciplinary system restrictiveness and perceptions of disciplinary system effectiveness. Results also indicate that monitoring costs, investment in training, grievance systems, unionization, and pressure to perform are significantly related to perceptions of disciplinary system effectiveness.
Labor Union Response to Diversity in Canada and the United States
Authors: Hunt Gerald , Rayside David
Published: March 2003

Canadian and American research finds that organized labor's engagement with race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation until recently has been largely exclusionist. The Canadian labor movement emerges as having been somewhat more responsive to equity issues, particularly gender and sexual orientation, and at an earlier stage than its U.S. counterpart. The American movement, however, did create limited room for African‐American issues and unionization from early this century and now shows signs of broader engagement with diversity issues in general. The literature is strong in case studies pointing to exceptional situations involving minority militancy and union acceptance and in highlighting the role of activists inside and external to the labor movement. It suffers from a lack of large‐scale analysis and comparison.
Disorganized, Unilateral, and Participative Organizations: New Insights from the Ethnographic Literature
Authors: Hodson Randy
Published: March 2003

Disorganized workplaces are often overlooked in contemporary models of the workplace. Contemporary accounts more typically analyze organizations in terms of tight management control or in terms of participative workplace models. This article examines 109 organizational ethnographies describing a wide range of workplaces, including many poorly run and disorganized (“anomic”) workplaces. Such workplaces evidence high levels of worker resistance. In contrast, participative workplaces evidence high levels of citizenship behaviors. Unilateral or “top‐down” organizations are expected to encourage accommodation behaviors, but this hypothesis is not supported. Instead, both accommodation and resistance are highest in disorganized workplaces. The continuing importance of disorganized workplaces—workplaces that provoke strong worker resistance—represents an unmet challenge to organizational theory and practice.
A Comparative Analysis of Developments in Industrial Democracy
Authors: Poole Michael , Lansbury Russell , Wailes Nick
Published: March 2003

The purpose of this article is to analyze recent developments in industrial democracy (worker participation in management) in a comparative perspective. To give the article focus, the period from the mid‐1980s onward is selected for analysis, and four countries (United States, Germany, United Kingdom, and Australia) are targeted for systematic examination. Developments in both indirect and direct participation are explained on the basis of elements in the models that we present. Three particularly strong conclusions emerge. First, there are clearly a number of common forces that have affected developments in each country, but the precise forms of participation that have emerged vary in many key respects. Second, organizational changes at the level of the firm appear to be particularly important in the recent period. And finally, the very complex patterns that are observable reinforce our theoretical arguments of the importance of a complex multivariate approach.
Whither Strategic Choice: Do Managerial IR Ideologies Matter?
Authors: Godard John
Published: March 2003

Following the emphasis on managerial ideologies in the Kochan, Katz, and McKersie strategic choice model, this study employs survey data from 293 Canadian firms to explore the extent to which managerial ideologies about unions, participation rights, and employment involvement (EI) programs explain managerial actions and outcomes independently of context variables. It finds that they do matter, but are generally of secondary importance to context variables. There is thus need to marry strategic choice with more structural theories of variation.
Race and Gender Wage Gaps in the Market for Recent College Graduates
Authors: Weinberger Catherine J.
Published: March 2003

Using a large sample of recent college graduates, the study tests the hypothesis that observed race and gender wage differentials reflect between‐group differences in the type and quality of education attained rather than labor market discrimination. After controlling for narrowly defined college major, college grade point average, and the exact educational institution attended, white male and Hispanic male graduates earn 10 to 15 percent more per hour than comparable female, black male, or Asian male graduates.
Religious Institutions and Political Participation in America
Authors: Djupe Paul A. , Grant J. Tobin
Published: March 2003

Previous research on religious institutions and political participation finds that churches can increase participation among their members through the development of civic skills and the distinct political histories of religious traditions. This paper examines the various ways religious institutions promote the political participation of their members. We utilize the 1990 Citizen Participation Study to test seven hypotheses about the connections between religious institutions and political participation. We find, contrary to previous work, that church‐gained civic skills and religious tradition do not directly affect political participation among those currently active in religious institutions. Rather, churches bring their parishioners more effectively into the political process through the recruitment of members to politics and when members come to see their church activity as having political consequences.
The Relationship Between Dissociation and Religiosity: An Empirical Evaluation of Schumaker's Theory
Authors: Dorahy Martin J. , Lewis Christopher Alan
Published: March 2003

Dissociation can be broadly understood as alterations in consciousness where integrated processing of psychological and/or sensory information is disrupted. Following Schumaker's (1995) suggestion that dissociation elicited by religious ritual provides the basis for religious beliefs, the current aim was to empirically assess the relationship between dissociation, religious ritual, and religious beliefs. Four samples with varying levels of religious commitment were administered the Dissociative Experiences Scale, the Francis Scale of Attitude Toward Christianity‐short form, and the Maranell Religious Ritual Scale. Dissociation scores were highest in the young Catholic sample and lowest in the Fellowship group. However, these results are largely affected by the covariate of age. No relationship was found between dissociation, religious attitude, and religious ritual in the student sample. However, small to moderate significant correlations were found in the Catholic sample. Results are discussed with reference to Schumaker's theoretical proposal and directions are suggested for future assessment of the dissociation‐religiosity relationship.
When is Faith Enough? The Effects of Religious Involvement on Depression
Authors: Schnittker Jason
Published: March 2003

Although most scholars find that religious involvement is negatively related to depression, questions still remain regarding how individuals benefit from such involvement and evidence from nationally representative samples is rare. In this paper, I expand upon previous research by considering three types of general religious involvement (attendance at religious services, religious salience, and spiritual help‐seeking) and three types of effects (linear, curvilinear, and stress‐buffering). Using Americans' Changing Lives (House 1989)—a large, nationally representative, and longitudinal data set—I find a U‐shaped effect of religious salience on depression, no significant independent effect of service attendance, and a positive effect of spiritual help‐seeking. I also find that spiritual help‐seeking and religious salience exhibit significant stress‐buffering effects, but that these occur only when individuals experience multiple negative life events, and not when they experience any single type of discrete event. The theoretical implications of these effects are discussed, both as they contribute to research on the life stress paradigm and research on the psychology of religion.
Attachment, Working Models of Self and Others, and God Concept in Kindergarten
Authors: De Roos Simone A. , Miedema Siebren , Iedema Jurjen
Published: March 2003

An attachment theoretical model of individual differences in God concepts among kindergarteners was tested. Subjects were 72 kindergarteners (mean age 63 months) from two elementary schools. Children’s concepts of self, other, and God were measured using structured questionnaires. A questionnaire and an incomplete doll story procedure were used to tap the quality of the teacher‐child and mother‐child relationship. The model was partly supported. Contrary to our expectations, a punishing concept of God was not related to any of the independent variables. However, in line with the model, harmony and closeness in the teacher‐child relationship predicted a loving God concept and this association was explained by children’s working models of self. Working models of others predicted a loving God concept. Although the child’s representation of the mother‐child attachment relationship was significantly connected to the teacher‐child relationship, it was not predictive of the concept of God.
Communist Party‐Vatican Interplay Over the Training of Church Leaders in China
Authors: Leung Beatrice
Published: March 2003

The Catholic Church could not compromise with Communist states due to ideological incompatibility between atheist Marxism‐Leninism and religious beliefs. Christianity, in the perception of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), had been closely linked with “foreign cultural imperialism”. This study examines the clash of authority between the CCP and Catholic Church over seminary training, elucidating the CCP’s desire to retain institutional and ideological control over this particular sector of Chinese society. The findings highlight the ideological conflict between the dialectic materialism of the CCP, combined with the economic materialism (i.e., to get rich is glorious) mentality of the Deng Xiaoping‐Jiang Zemin era, and religious idealism.
Does the Medium Matter? The Relations among Bankruptcy Petition Filings, Broadtape Disclosure, and the Timing of Price Reactions
Authors: Dawkins Mark C. , Bamber Linda Smith
Published: March 2003

Drawing on a comprehensive sample of 330 bankruptcy petition filings from 1980 to 1993, we find that most of the market reaction does not occur on the bankruptcy petition filing date when the information becomes publicly available. Rather, most of the reaction occurs when news of the bankruptcy filing is more widely disseminated via the Broadtape. This “Broadtape announcement effect” persists after controlling for firm size, exchange listing, and predisclosure information. These are primarily timing differences since abnormal returns cumulated over an 11–day window centered on the filing date do not differ significantly across Broadtape disclosure date classifications.
Optimal Financial Crises
Authors: Allen Franklin , Gale Douglas
Published: March 2003

Empirical evidence suggests that banking panics are related to the business cycle and are not simply the result of “sunspots.” Panics occur when depositors perceive that the returns on bank assets are going to be unusually low. We develop a simple model of this. In this setting, bank runs can be first‐best efficient: they allow efficient risk sharing between early and late withdrawing depositors and they allow banks to hold efficient portfolios. However, if costly runs or markets for risky assets are introduced, central bank intervention of the right kind can lead to a Pareto improvement in welfare.
Optimal Leverage and Aggregate Investment
Authors: Biais Bruno , Casamatta Catherine
Published: March 2003

We analyze the optimal financing of investment projects when managers must exert unobservable effort and can also switch to less profitable riskier ventures. Optimal financial contracts can be implemented by a combination of debt and equity when the risk‐shifting problem is the most severe while stock options are also needed when the effort problem is the most severe. Worsening of the moral hazard problems leads to decreases in investment and output at the macroeconomic level. Moreover, aggregate leverage decreases with the risk‐shifting problem and increases with the effort problem.
Mean Reversion across National Stock Markets and Parametric Contrarian Investment Strategies
Authors: Balvers Ronald , Wu Yangru , Gilliland Erik
Published: March 2003

For U.S. stock prices, evidence of mean reversion over long horizons is mixed, possibly due to lack of a reliable long time series. Using additional cross‐sectional power gained from national stock index data of 18 countries during the period 1969 to 1996, we find strong evidence of mean reversion in relative stock index prices. Our findings imply a significantly positive speed of reversion with a half‐life of three to three and one‐half years. This result is robust to alternative specifications and data. Parametric contrarian investment strategies that fully exploit mean reversion across national indexes outperform buy‐and‐hold and standard contrarian strategies.
Fund Advisor Compensation in Closed‐End Funds
Authors: Coles Jeffrey L. , Suay Jose , Woodbury Denise
Published: March 2003

This paper examines the relation between the premium on closed‐end funds and organizational features of the funds and advisors, including the compensation scheme of the investment advisor. We find that the fund premium is larger when: (a) the advisor's compensation is more sensitive to fund performance; (b) the assets managed by the advisor are concentrated in the fund in question; (c) the advisor manages other funds with low compensation sensitivity to performance and with low concentration of assets managed by the advisor; and (d) the advisor's compensation contract evaluates performance relative to a benchmark.
The Information Value of Bond Ratings
Authors: Kliger Doron , Sarig Oded
Published: March 2003

We test whether bond ratings contain pricing‐relevant information by examining security price reactions to Moody's refinement of its rating system, which was not accompanied by any fundamental change in issuers' risks, was not preceded by any announcement, and was carried simultaneously for all bonds. We find that rating information does not affect firm value, but that debt value increases (decreases) and equity value falls (rises) when Moody's announces better‐ (worse‐) than‐expected ratings. We also find that when Moody's announces better‐ (worse‐) than‐expected ratings, the volatilities implied by prices of options on the fine‐rated issuers' shares decline (rise).
Rationality and Analysts' Forecast Bias
Authors: Lim Terence
Published: March 2003

This paper proposes and tests a quadratic‐loos utility function for modeling corporate earnings forecasting, where financial analysts trade off bias to improve management access and forecast accuracy. Optimal forecasts with minimum expected error are optimistically biased and exhibit predictable cross‐sectional variation related to analyst and company characteristics. Empirical evidence from individual analyst forecasts is consistent with the model's predictions. These results suggest that positive and predictable bias may be a rational property of optimal earnings forecasts. Prior studies using classical notions of unbiasedness may have prematurely dismissed analysts' forecasts as being irrational or inaccurate.
Explaining the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns in Japan: Factors or Characteristics?
Authors: Daniel Kent , Titman Sheridan , Wei K.C. John
Published: March 2003

Japanese stock returns are even more closely related to their book‐to‐market ratios than are their U.S. counterparts, and thus provide a good setting for testing whether the return premia associated with these characteristics arise because the characteristics are proxies for covariance with priced factors. Our tests, which replicate the Daniel and Titman (1997) tests on a Japanese sample, reject the Fama and French (1993) three‐factor model, but fail to reject the characteristic model.
Variable Selection for Portfolio Choice
Authors: AÏT‐SAHALI Yacine , Brandt Michael W.
Published: March 2003

We study asset allocation when the conditional moments of returns are partly predictable. Rather than first model the return distribution and subsequently characterize the portfolio choice, we determine directly the dependence of the optimal portfolio weights on the predictive variables. We combine the predictors into a single index that best captures time variations in investment opportunities. This index helps investors determine which economic variables they should track and, more importantly, in what combination. We consider investors with both expected utility (mean variance and CRRA) and nonexpected utility (ambiguity aversion and prospect theory) objectives and characterize their market timing, horizon effects, and hedging demands.
Contagion as a Wealth Effect
Authors: Kyle Albert S. , Xiong Wei
Published: March 2003

Financial contagion is described as a wealth effect in a continuous‐time model with two risky assets and three types of traders. Noise traders trade randomly in one market. Long‐term investors provide liquidity using a linear rule based on fundamentals. Convergence traders with logarithmic utility trade optimally in both markets. Asset price dynamics are endogenously determined (numerically) as functions of endogenous wealth and exogenous noise. When convergence traders lose money, they liquidate positions in both markets. This creates contagion, in that returns become more volatile and more correlated. Contagion reduces benefits from portfolio diversification and raises issues for risk management.
A Rose.com by Any Other Name
Authors: Cooper Michael J. , Dimitrov Orlin , Rau P. Raghavendra
Published: March 2003

We document a striking positive stock price reaction to the announcement of corporate name changes to Internet‐related dotcom names. This “dotcom” effect produces cumulative abnormal returns on the order of 74 percent for the 10 days surrounding the announcement day. The effect does not appear to be transitory; there is no evidence of a postannouncement negative drift. The announcement day effect is also similar across all firms, regardless of the firm's level of involvement with the Internet. A mere association with the Internet seems enough to provide a firm with a large and permanent value increase.
Term Structure of Interest Rates with Regime Shifts
Authors: Bansal Ravi , Zhou Hao
Published: March 2003

We develop a term structure model where the short interest rate and the market price of risks are subject to discrete regime shifts. Empirical evidence from efficient method of moments estimation provides considerable support for the regime shifts model. Standard models, which include affine specifications with up to three factors, are sharply rejected in the data. Our diagnostics show that only the regime shifts model can account for the well‐documented violations of the expectations hypothesis, the observed conditional volatility, and the conditional correlation across yields. We find that regimes are intimately related to business cycles.
Corporate Diversification: What Gets Discounted?
Authors: Mansi Sattar A. , Reeb David M.
Published: March 2003

Prior literature finds that diversified firms sell at a discount relative to the sum of the imputed values of their business segments. We explore this documented discount and argue that it stems from risk‐reducing effects of corporate diversification. Consistent with this risk‐reduction hypothesis, we find that (a) shareholder losses in diversification are a function of firm leverage, (b) all equity firms do not exhibit a diversification discount, and (c) using book values of debt to compute excess value creates a downward bias for diversified firms. Overall, the results indicate that diversification is insignificantly related to excess firm value.
Blocks, Liquidity, and Corporate Control
Authors: Bolton Patrick , Von Thadden Ernst‐Ludwig
Published: March 2003

The paper develops a simple model of corporate ownership structure in which costs and benefits of ownership concentration are analyzed. The model compares the liquidity benefits obtained through dispersed corporate ownership with the benefits from efficient management control achieved by some degree of ownership concentration. The paper reexamines the free‐rider problem in corporate control in the presence of liquidity trading, derives predictions for the trade and pricing of blocks, and provides criteria for the optimal choice of ownership structure.
Informed Traders and Price Variations in the Betting Market for Professional Basketball Games
Authors: Gandar John M. , Dare William H. , Brown Craig R. , Zuber Richard A.
Published: March 2003

This paper examines betting line changes from the opening to the closing of the point spread betting market on National Basketball Association games for evidence of informed trader betting. We show that within‐betting period line changes significantly improve the accuracy of betting lines as forecasts of game outcomes. We examine individual line change magnitudes and show that these are directly and proportionately related to biases in opening lines. Further, line changes are of sufficient magnitude to remove these biases by the close of betting. We interpret these results as evidence that informed traders are influential in this market.
Theory of Comparative Advantage: Do Transportation Costs Matter?
Authors: Cukrowski Jacek , Fischer Manfred M.
Published: March 2003

In this paper we present a formal analysis that incorporates returns to transportation into a Ricardian framework to predict trade patterns. The important point gained from this analysis is that increasing returns to transportation, coupled with appropriate distances between trading partners, can be shown to reverse Ricardian predictions even when there are no international differences in tastes, technology, or factor endowments. Additional gains from trade may emerge from reductions in aggregate delivery costs owing to scale economies.
Analysis of Interregional Labor Migration in Spain Using Gross Flows
Authors: Juarez Juan Pablo
Published: March 2003

In this paper we study the economic determinants of Spanish interregional labor force flows from an aggregate perspective. The study is based on a matching model of the labor market applied to migration, and uses gross rather than net flows as other studies do. Among the main results, we find that unemployment increases out‐migration because unemployed people search more actively, but when the unemployment rate is above a certain level this effect is reduced. We also find that the rate of change of relative wages is a significant determinant of migration in Spain.
Land Markets in the Harris‐Todaro Model: A New Factor Equilibrating Rural‐Urban Migration
Authors: Brueckner Jan K. , Kim Hyun‐A
Published: March 2003

Recent research in the Harris‐Todaro (HT) tradition has added an important new element to the model by incorporating an urban land market. Brueckner and Zenou (1999) (hereafter BZ) argue that a model where migration equalizes expected wages between city and countryside may overlook another important force that equilibrates the process of rural‐urban migration. This force is the migration‐induced rise in the urban cost of living, which occurs principally through escalation of urban land rents as the city population expands. Land‐rent escalation, which tends to limit rural‐urban migration, provides an important additional force that may help determine city sizes in developing countries. The present paper provides a simpler alternative to BZ's analysis by assuming that urban residents smooth their income as they cycle between formal and informal employment. This allows migration decisions to be based on the expected wage, as in the usual HT framework, in a model that includes a land market. The analysis shows that this modified framework generates results slightly different from those of BZ.
Protecting the Consumer Through Truth‐in‐Dieting Laws
Authors: Berzins Lisa G.
Published: March 2003

Although diets are ineffective in producing sustained weight loss, the multibillion dollar weight loss industry continues to make exaggerated claims of efficacy without substantiating outcome data. Lacking accurate information, individuals continue to pay for ineffective weight loss programs and products. In this article the author describes her application of social science data to influence state policy, which led to the passage of two first‐in‐the‐nation diet disclosure laws. The 1996 law mandates that dieting companies make advertising claims only based on outcome data. The 1997 law requires full disclosure of program costs, conditions, and credentials of staff, and grants consumers a 3‐day cancellation right. Together, the diet disclosure laws prohibit the use of deceptive practices and hold the diet industry accountable by requiring that all claims be based on representative group data.
The Interdependence of Israeli and Palestinian National Identities: The Role of the Other in Existential Conflicts
Authors: Kelman Herbert C.
Published: March 2003

The interactions between identity groups engaged in a protracted conflict lack the conditions postulated by Gordon Allport in The Nature of Prejudice (1954) as necessary if contact is to reduce intergroup prejudice. The article examines the Israeli‐Palestinian conflict from this perspective. After summarizing the history of the conflict, it proposes that a long‐term resolution of the conflict requires development of a transcendent identity for the two peoples that does not threaten the particularistic identity of each. The nature of the conflict, however, impedes the development of a transcendent identity by creating a state of negative interdependence between the two identities such that asserting one group's identity requires negating the identity of the other. The resulting threat to each group's identity is further exacerbated by the fact that each side perceives the other as a source of some of its own negative identity elements, especially a view of the self as victim and as victimizer. The article concludes with a discussion of ways of over‐coming the negative interdependence of the two identities by drawing on some of the positive elements in the relationship, most notably the positive interdependence between the two groups that exists in reality. Problem‐solving workshops represent one setting for equal‐status interactions that provide the parties the opportunity to “negotiate” their identities and to find ways of accommodating the identity of the other in their own identity.
Becoming a Heterosexual Adult: The Experiences of Young Women
Authors: Shibley Hyde Janet , Jaffee Sara R.
Published: March 2003

Adolescence brings new pressures on girls to adopt traditional genderroles and to become heterosexual adults in ways defined as appropriate by their peer group, their family, and the culture more broadly. We first review descriptive data on adolescent girls' early experiences with heterosexuality, including first intercourse and the experience of desire. Within a theoretical framework of cognitive social learning theory, we examine messages conveyed to girls by peers, parents, the mass media, and the schools. All four sources convey antigay attitudes while making homosexuality invisible; they also encourage traditional gender roles, an important component of which is heterosexuality.
New Ways of Thinking about Environmentalism: Models of Justice in the Environmental Debate
Authors: Clayton Susan
Published: March 2003

Justice has become important in public and private consideration of the environment, but a number of different ways of operationalizing justice can be seen. Previous literature suggests that principles stressing responsibility and the public good are more common than need and equity in thinking about environmental issues. The results from two questionnaire studies, presented here, confirm that environmental justice—responsibility to other species and to future generations, and the rights of the environment—emerges as the most highly rated consideration in resolving environmental conflicts and that this factor is distinct from traditional procedural and distributive justice factors. Highlighting the individual or the collective makes different justice principles salient but that the effect depends on one's original position.
How Teen Mothers Are Faring Under Welfare Reform
Authors: Kalil Ariel , Danziger Sandra K.
Published: March 2003

We examine socioeconomic and psychological well‐being among 88 low‐income minor mothers. Half of the young mothers receive cash welfare assistance and face new policy mandates regarding coresidence status and school attendance. Although most appear to be “complying” with the requirements of the new welfare rules and are satisfied with their current living arrangements, many are faring poorly on dimensions of psychological well‐being and life stress. Receipt of cash welfare is not a significant correlate of school success, parenting stress, or economic strain. Teen coresidence with their mothers does not appear to buffer against the experience of child care problems, depressive symptoms, or domestic violence. We discuss the implications of the results forresearch, policy, and services for teen parent families.
Ethnophaulisms for Ethnic Immigrant Groups
Authors: Mullen Brian
Published: March 2003

Ethnophaulisms (Roback, 1944) are the words used as slurs to refer to ethnic immigrant outgroups. This article explores the effects of attributes of ethnic immigrant groups on the cognitive representations of these groups in ethnophaulisms and the effects of these cognitive representations on behavior toward these immigrant groups. The results of these analyses, based on archival data spanning a 150‐year period of American history, provide a sobering picture of the cognitive representation of immigrants: a century and a half of thinking about smaller, less familiar, and more foreign ethnic immigrant groups in a simplistic and negative manner and a resultant tendency to exclude those immigrant groups from the receiving society. The implications of these results for theoretical approaches to intergroup perception and for immigration policy are considered.
Exploring the Interlanguage of Interlanguage Pragmatics: A Research Agenda for Acquisitional Pragmatics
Authors: Bardovi‐Harlig Kathleen
Published: March 2003

G. Kasper and R. Schmidt (1996) have argued that the field of investigation known as interlanguage pragmatics has been essentially modelled on cross‐cultural pragmatics. Taking Kasper and Schmidt's argument one step further, this article shows how interlanguage itself has been ignored in research on interlanguage pragmatics. Research has not established that pragmatic competence is independent of grammatical competence. Although grammatical competence may not be a sufficient condition for pragmatic development, it may be a necessary condition. I outline a research agenda in which the study of interlanguage becomes more central to the study of interlanguage pragmatics.
Deriving the Meaning of Unknown Words From Multiple Contexts
Authors: van Daalen‐Kapteijns Maartje , Elshout‐Mohr Marianne , de Glopper Kees
Published: March 2003

Students from 11 to 12 years old were invited to derive the meaning of five unknown words, each embedded in three contexts. We focused on the students&;apos; proficiency in three activities: decontextualization of the target word meanings from the contexts (decontextualization), testing initial ideas about the word meanings with subsequent contexts (cumulative testing), and formulating dictionary‐like definitions (defining). We compared eight students of high and eight students of low verbal ability. The students were led individually through the process of deriving the meaning of the target words, while thinking aloud. The study showed that even young students of low verbal ability are capable of performing meaning‐derivation activities that are in general ascribed to mature students of high verbal ability.
Can We Predict Task Difficulty in an Oral Proficiency Test? Exploring the Potential of an Information‐Processing Approach to Task Design
Authors: Iwashita Noriko , McNamara Tim , Elder Catherine
Published: March 2003

This study addresses the following question: Are different task characteristics and performance conditions (involving assumed different levels of cognitive demand) associated with different levels of fluency, complexity, or accuracy in test candidate responses? The materials for the were a series of narrative tasks involving a picture stimulus; the participants were 193 pre‐university students taking English courses. We varied the conditions for tasks in each dimension and measured the impact of these factors on task performance with both familiar detailed discourse measures and specially constructed rating scales, analyzed using Rasch methods. We found that task performance conditions in each dimension failed to influence task difficulty and task performance as expected. We discuss implications for the design of speaking assessments and broader research.
English Ambisyllabic Consonants and Half‐Closed Syllables in Language Teaching
Authors: Trammell Robert L.
Published: March 2003

This study justifies increased attention to word and phrase‐level syllabification in pronunciation instruction for students of English and for English foreign language students. The latter need to recognize what their native syllabification patterns actually are in order to combat interference arising from them in the L2. The apparent simplicity and automaticity of syllabification belies its complexity within and across languages and its importance not only to correct allophonic production but also to correct word‐stress, rhythm, and intonation.

The following pairs of English words reveal the importance of teaching students about half‐closed syllables as well as the traditional open and closed syllables (brackets mark the single consonant sound shared by the two syllables, hence the term ambisyllabic): Mi‐nos/mi[n]us, adore/a[d]o‐ra[ti]on, co‐mmune/co[mm]on, de‐ssert/ de[s]ert, re‐ply/re[p]licate. As the stress shifts from the first to the second syllable in these pairs of words, the syllabification of the first syllable changes from open to half‐closed with an ambisyllabic consonant. Trying to produce a conversational pronunciation of the second word in each pair with a clearly open or closed first syllable results in an artificial pronunciation.

In this study, the case for including the notions of ambisyllabic consonants and half‐closed syllables in teaching syllabification is made on articulatory, theoretical, instrumental, and psycholinguistic grounds. This expanded concept of syllabification is also shown to be important in studies of syllable structure transference between first and second languages and in contrastive analyses. However, much of the evidence adduced in supporting the case for ambisyllabification was indirect, since it came from studies aimed at proving or investigating other points.In this study, the case for including the notions of ambisyllabic consonants and half‐closed syllables in teaching syllabification is made on articulatory, theoretical, instrumental, and psycholinguistic grounds. This expanded concept of syllabification is also shown to be important in studies of syllable structure transference between first and second languages and in contrastive analyses. However, much of the evidence adduced in supporting the case for ambisyllabification was indirect, since it came from studies aimed at proving or investigating other points.

In spite of the length and detail of this study, it has had little impact. It is not likely that teaching and research practices in the areas concerned will change much until more direct instrumental research shows a clear physical difference between types of syllabification across languages. Experimental evidence is also needed on the negative effects of nonnative syllabification upon the rhythmic matrix of suprasegmentals, which helps to break utterances into decodable units of input for the native listener. That is, a connection between incomprehensible input and incorrect syllabification must be made clearer.
Children's Learning Strategies in Language Immersion Classrooms
Authors: Uhl Chamot Anna , El‐Dinary Pamela Beard
Published: March 2003

This article reports on an investigation of learning strategy applications in elementary French, Japanese, and Spanish immersion classrooms. The focus of this article is on identifying strategies that more and less effective learners use for classroom reading and writing tasks in the target language. Think‐aloud data from 3rd‐grade and 4th‐grade students were quantified and compared through matched‐pairs t‐tests. Although there were no differences in total strategies used by high‐rated and low‐rated students, there were some differences in the types of strategies students relied on when reading. Low students used a greater proportion of phonetic decoding than did high students. High students used a greater proportion of background‐knowledge strategies (including inferences, predictions, and elaborations) than did low students. Potential differences in the quality and flexibility of students' strategy use are explored.
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): Practical Understandings
Authors: Sato Kazuyoshi , Kleinsasser Robert C.
Published: March 2003

The aim of this article is to report on a study that documented the views and practices of communicative language teaching (CLT) by Japanese second language inservice teachers. Compared to theoretical developments of CLT (e.g., see Savignon, 1991), little is known about what second language teachers actually understand by CLT and how they implement CLT in classrooms. Using multiple data sources including interviews, observations, and surveys, the article reports how teachers defined CLT and implemented it in their classrooms. The study identified how teachers actually dealt with CLT in their classrooms teaching Japanese. It is interesting to note that their views and actions dealt little with the academic literature pertaining to CLT or their education (be it preservice or inservice) in learning about CLT. Instead, teachers resorted to their personal ideas and experiences, solidifying their notions of foreign language (L2) teaching in further pursuing their evolving conceptions of CLT.
A Native‐Like Ability to Circumlocute
Authors: Jourdain Sarah
Published: March 2003

The ability to circumlocute successfully is of utmost importance in compensating for gaps in lexical knowledge. Although all studies indicate that one’s ability to circumlocute increases with increasing proficiency, it is interesting that little attention has been paid to those learners who have the greatest ability to circumlocute, native‐like speakers. This study addresses the norms of native and native‐like circumlocution. It expands the discussion of strategies involved in this skill to include the means by which speakers frame their message and thereby set the linguistic context for their listeners. Participants in this study, both native and native‐like speakers, were found to employ similar strategies while circumlocuting, including the use of synonyms, analogies, and descriptions. These participants also consistently framed their speech to facilitate listener comprehension, and they frequently included in their discourse some reference to their status as a nonexpert in the field. Similarities in native and native‐like circumlocution found in this study help to provide some empirical validation to the notion of “native‐like.”
Towards Integrating Form‐Focused Instruction and Communicative Interaction in the Second Language Classroom: Some Pedagogical Possibilities
Authors: Nassaji Hossein
Published: March 2003

Much has been written, on both theoretical and empirical levels, about the idea of focus on form and the suggestion that some kind of form‐focused activity needs to be incorporated into second language (L2) communicative contexts. However, much less work has been published on how this aim can be pedagogically fostered. This article will first elaborate on the need to incorporate form‐focused activities within an integrative approach to L2 teaching. Pedagogical possibilities and strategies will then be suggested, and examples provided of tasks that may help to realize this goal in classroom contexts. Relevant empirical evidence on the effectiveness of such tasks will be presented and discussed.