bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
STS, Symmetry, Archaeology
Authors: Webmoor Timothy
Published: February 2014

This chapter considers the disciplinary history of exchanges between the object-oriented fields of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and archaeology of the contemporary past. It uses the topology of knots to examine these engagements and introduce readers to several key issues. Knots are practical heuristics that are useful in subverting mereology, a dominant logic of modernist thought that figures epistemological, ontological, and sociological relations. Against mereology knots do not parse, but instead focus attention upon collective action and outcome. The chapter deploys a particular symmetrical weave that binds ropes through adding weight and friction-load. With respect to the intellectual ‘load’ of temporality, performativity/representationalism, scale and symmetry, key matters of concern for both fields, it is argued that there is slippage. Consequently, STS misses out on re-sharpening its provocative edge in not developing these issues through the rich empirics of archaeological practice. Archaeology, in this asymmetry, risks not contributing to the timely conversation around things transversing the disciplines.
The Burning Man Festival and the Archaeology of Ephemeral and Temporary Gatherings
Authors: White Carolyn L.
Published: February 2014

In north-western Nevada, USA, the Burning Man festival organizers and participants build and then remove all traces of a city that holds upwards of 50,000 participants (as of 2011). The city is built in August each year, fully occupied for one week, and then removed completely over the course of the following month. Using traditional archaeological methods along with ethnographic approaches and participant observation, the project has explored the construction and inhabitation of this city before, during, and after its use. This project focuses on the materiality of Burning Man, aiming to examine the material dimensions of the festival and its significance for those who create, reside in, and deconstruct Black Rock City, a temporary and, ultimately, ephemeral site.
The Contemporary Material Culture of the Cult of the Infant
Authors: May Sarah
Published: February 2014

Children’s material culture is ubiquitous in the modern world. Patterns of acquisition are a source of moral panic, but less attention has been paid to use curation and disposal. This chapter uses autoarchaeological approaches to consider these issues in relation to the child as a focus of devotion.
The Relationship between Ethnoarchaeology and Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past
Authors: Fewster Kathryn
Published: February 2014

This chapter explores the respective histories of both ethnoarchaeology and archaeologies of the contemporary past. On the surface the two subdisciplines appear to have much in common-they are both involved in studies of societies of the present and of the recent past. However, the methodologies that each employ in this goal, as a result of specific historical choices that practitioners of each subdiscipline made, are very different. Practitioners of archaeologies of the contemporary past generally use an archaeological methodology that was developed out of American ethnoarchaeology in the 1980s, while post-processual ethnoarchaeology in Britain undertook a major overhaul of these ideas. It is argued that archaeologies of the contemporary past could gain as much from an understanding of more recent developments in ethnoarchaeology with regard to methodology and ethics of representation, as they have from processual ethnoarchaeology.
Time
Authors: Olivier Laurent
Published: February 2014

Archaeology is not history; it is the memory of material things. The material environment of human societies has always been composite; it has always been composed of elements of the past while still continuing to exist in the present. In this context the construction of time past is the discovery of otherness, where time ceases to conform to the linearity of conventional history. Events do not simply and sequentially populate an empty past, because the time of memory functions in a wholly different way from historical time. The past can come back into the present. An approach attentive to the material memory constituted by archaeological materials must therefore function by construction rather than addition. In this configuration, archaeology is no longer the simple material illustration of history. It becomes instead a privileged field of observation of the world, enriching history with all the diversity of the individual trajectories followed by the subjects of the material universe.
VHS
Authors: Noble Jem
Published: February 2014

This chapter develops ideas from an artist’s residency exploring VHS video rental as a feature of changing spatial practices informed by forces of material-social agency and economies of mark-making. It addresses the circularity of relations between the materiality of VHS technology, the engineered recordings it has potentiated, the practices both of these have afforded, and the transformative effects of such practices on its materiality as they are evidenced in degrading picture and sound quality as archaeological trace. Drawing on posthumanist approaches to materiality and meaning-making as enmeshed fields of emergent, provisional, intra-determining boundaries, the chapter collides differing registers of research and reflection to provoke connective thinking about and partially comprising the form of a specified VHS rental tape as a distribution of properties and relations.
Waste
Authors: Reno Joshua
Published: February 2014

This chapter considers the origins of, and possibilities for, an archaeology of the contemporary world derived from observations of recently discarded waste. It begins with a discussion of the pioneering ‘Garbage Project’ founded by William Rathje (1945–2012) at the University of Arizona, contextualizing its emergence from ‘behavioral archeology’ as well as the distinct milieu of Cold War America, to which it owes it epistemological and material roots. The chapter reflects on Rathje’s legacy with a consideration of the folk-archaeological activities of waste workers at a large landfill in Michigan. A discussion of fieldwork conducted at this landfill reveals the ethical and political dilemmas associated with understanding others through their rubbish, as well as the opportunities this practice offers as a means of social reflection.
Going Gaga for Glitch
Authors: Benson-Allott Caetlin
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. During the ascension and commodification of Web 2.0, online music videos became host to a new kind of glitch: the digital stutter of insufficient buffering in Adobe Flash Player and other streaming media software. Some female performers recognized the potential of this electronic disruption to interrupt the male gaze and the traditional objectification of the female body. Working inside the genre of corporate music video and the logic of the glitch, performers like Madonna and Lady Gaga make visible their ambivalent relationships to patriarchal, heterocentric video culture through simulated freezes and drop outs in the streaming image. These “errors” open up intervals of frustration—and potential critical reflection—in the playback and, by extension, in the temporal structures of fantasy. In so doing, they remind the viewer that although she may perceive female music video stars as objects of fantasy, as fantasies they are not always under her control.
Workers Leaving the Factory
Authors: Peterson Jennifer
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This article discusses recent experimental nonfiction films about workers and industry. Since the cinema’s 1995 centenary, a growing number of films have been responding to the state of labor in the contemporary economy, in which industrial manufacturing has been largely replaced by global finance capital. The article analyzes four examples: Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) (Ben Russell, 2008), Exit (Sharon Lockhart, 2008), Foreign Parts (Véréna Paravel and J. P. Sniadecki, 2010), and The Unstable Object (Daniel Eisenberg, 2011). Mobilizing a style we might call “conceptual realism,” these films explore themes of labor in the face of ongoing crises in global capitalism. Utilizing a digitally informed observational aesthetic shaped by long takes and stationary camerawork, this paradoxical stylistic clarity works not in the service of establishing objectivity or a stable truth, but in the spirit of bearing witness to the innumerable experiences of contemporary labor that lie beyond recognition.
Digital Cinema
Authors: Elsaesser Thomas
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. Given the dominance of television and the internet, how can the cinema hold its ground among the public spaces and private occasions where cinema, television, and digital media compete with each other for audiences and attention? Is “digital cinema” a radical break, a contradiction in terms, or merely cinema by other means, essentially the same heterogeneous ensemble of technologies, special effects, and broad public appeal it has been for the past hundred years? This essay considers these questions in a broader context, examining, among others, whether cinema, television, recorded sound, and digital media belong together at all, considering their very different histories. The first half of the essay deals with multimedia convergence; the second half takes up the contradictory dynamics of digital cinema. The conclusion briefly addresses the epochal or epistemic changes associated with terms such as renaissance or revolution that the digital age is usually associated with.
Angels of Light
Authors: Geuens Jean-Pierre
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. By 1915, directors of photography were no longer satisfied with providing a correct exposure to their images. By apportioning different levels of light to adjoining areas of a scene, they started the process of enhancing the action with contrast, mood, and dramatic tension. Still, the cinematographers’ best efforts remained circumscribed by what they had actually captured on film, give or take some modest adjustment of light and color when timing the release prints.
The advent of digital technology gave directors of photography and colorists access to a wide array of postproduction tools allowing them to manipulate after the fact every detail in a given shot. Although this engineering of flawless imagery dazzles the audience’s senses, overly processed image enhancement ultimately conveys a vaporous, glossy world that could inhibit the viewers’ emotional and mental engagement.
Monstrous Noise
Authors: Cheng William
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. The 1999 survival-horror game Silent Hill features a grotesque soundscape that engages the player in terrible mind games. By underscoring the ways in which the industrial noises of this game haunt various borders—between diegetic and non-diegetic, real and virtual, lingering and ephemeral, organic and mechanical, surface and subdermal, instructive and manipulative—this essay frames its soundscape as an uncannily animate monster in its own right: abject, liminal, and always potentially transgressing against players’ bodies and inhabited spaces. Underpinning these considerations are broader investigations into the aesthetic economies of fear—namely, the frightening efficiency with which the minimal sounds (and overall reductive aesthetics) of horror media can often evoke maximal terror.
The Acousmatic Voice and Metaleptic Narration in Inland Empire
Authors: Buckland Warren
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This chapter develops a poetic perspective to analyze the unusual sound, image, and narrational structures of Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006). A poetic perspective examines how a film is made (rather than trying to work out what it means). This chapter examines the decision-making process that has gone into the construction of the film’s complex aural and visual narrative world: specifically, the issue of how shots and scenes are joined in Inland Empire to create a complex ambiguous world of multiple intersecting layers.
Debating the Digital
Authors: Thanouli Eleftheria
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This essay offers a close reading of Barry Levinson’s Wag the dog (New Line Cinema, 1997) in order to discuss a series of issues pertaining to the relation of cinema and reality in the digital era. Wag the Dog functions as an exemplary case study wherein the pro-filmic, the filmic, and the post-filmic events illustrate the complex interactions of the cinema/reality in this new phase of digital ontology. This essay follows the evolving nature of terms and concepts, such as analog and digital inscriptions, reference, indexicality, and fiction and nonfiction discourse while it traces the intricate interactions between film and reality in the current media-saturated social reality.
Between Artifice and Authenticity
Authors: Cateforis Theo
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. As the 1997 political satire Wag the Dog demonstrates, in our heavily mediated society, it has become increasingly easy to construct an object that appeals to our sense of the authentic. This article offers close readings of two key moments in the movie—the performances of the songs “The American Dream” and “Good Ol’ Shoe”—each of which reveals the myriad ways in which one can manipulate music to suggest an authentic emotional expression. Such moments, where the artificial and real are blurred beyond recognition, throw the notion of authenticity into doubt. The article concludes by suggesting an alternative, an authenticity located in the obviously fake and contrived. This “inauthentic authenticity” emerges most noticeably in Wag the Dog’s laughably clichéd political advertisements, which serve as a counterpoint to the narrative’s more devious machinations.
Sound Thinking
Authors: Stewart Garrett
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. Sustained parallel montage in the digital thriller Source Code (2011) serves the sci-fi plot of a computer-generated parallel universe into which a mutilated, nearly brain-dead American pilot finally escapes after being wired—by “synaptic mapping”—into the time-loop surveillance of a homeland terrorist. While still under life-support in the musically unaccompanied space of mission control, his debriefings transpire only as an electronic data stream, even his seeming speech coming across merely as closed-captioned signals. But his computer-triggered release into full-scale virtual reality at the end is marked by two levels of nondiegetic sound infiltrating the zone of his former electronic manipulation: not just the orchestral uplift previously reserved for his time-travel episodes but the voiceover of his own cell phone e-text as sign of a reembodied alternate reality. The essay explores the audiovisual ironies of “new media” in this out-of-body narrative mode.
The World in the Palm of Your Hand
Authors: Belton John
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This essays looks at ways in which documentary films have, over the course of their history, appropriated new technology in their pursuit of greater realism. It takes as its primary focus the use of lightweight, handheld digital cameras by Agnes Varda in The Gleaners and I (2000) and Trinh T. Minh-ha in The Fourth Dimension (2001), arguing that Varda uses the new technology to extend her practice of cinécriture, viewing the camera as an extension of her hand, whereas Minh-ha uses it to challenge the coherence of representation, breaking it down into discrete pixels.
Discursive Accents in Some Recent Digital Media Works
Authors: Demers Joanna
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. “Discursive accents” indicate the genre, style, or medium of a work. This essay likens discursive accents—the low drone in horror film soundtracks, the guitar rock of 1980s television, or the atonality of “new music”—to spoken accents. For, just as listeners to an unfamiliar language often attend to subtleties that go by unnoticed when words’ meanings are clear, listeners to discursive accents may attend to stylistic and generic frictions that might otherwise be swept away in more discursively straightforward works. In works by Animal Charm, Sean Griffin, Paul McCarthy, and Ryan Trecartin, image stabilizes and grounds the work in some discourse—usually just one—whereas discursive accents such as diegetic or nondiegetic sound and music destabilize the work by suggesting multiple discourses. In these moments of generic hybridity and stylistic instability, discursive accents retreat from meaning and exist more as immanent, unintelligible sound.
“I Am Beowulf! Now, It’s Your Turn”
Authors: Aldred Jessica
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This essay examines what is at stake when characters move from cinema to digital games and other interactive media according to the synergistic logic of transmedia storytelling. Using the Beowulf franchise as a case study, this essay considers how media franchises encourage cross-media consumption by blurring the boundaries between their film and game characters, often by highlighting shared technical processes and visual similarities and mobilizing a gamelike mode of address in relation to their film characters. It demonstrates how game characters that slavishly remediate their filmic counterparts tend to be faulted for how they approach, but fail to achieve, cinematic realism, sacrificing gameplay in the process. This essay questions the prioritization of game characters as successful avatars for their film characters, rather than as functional stand-ins for their players, and contends that the technological convergence of cinema and digital games has not necessarily led to successfully converged content.
Lion and Lambs
Authors: Donelan Carol , Rodman Ronald
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. With the advent of the Twilight Saga, the teen vampire subgenre has sunk its teeth into the blockbuster film franchise. Its migration into big-budget corporate cinema prompts a negotiation between the Hollywood film industry and the D-quadrant audience of young women and girls. The industry, for its part, has agreed to adopt a protective rather than predatory stance, offering young female viewers a PG-13 fantasy rather than exposing them to representations of sexual violence that “go too far,” are too threatening or age-inappropriate. At the same time, the industry not only acknowledges the existence of female desire, but represents its darker, uncanny dimensions. Newly composed musical scores play a major role in facilitating the experience of the uncanny for viewers without overshooting their tastes and sensibilities. The pop music in the films serves to initiate the audience into the adult music market.
Source Code
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This chapter attempts to think through the implications of eco-criticism in new media, especially for the theory of subjectivity. Because eco-criticism expands the concept of agency to nonhuman actors, it challenges older, exclusively humanist conceptions of subjectivity. Eco-critical perspectives on cinematic ontology, epistemology, and object formation (are we looking at organisms, ecologies, or a planetary system?) must also extend, in the age of informatics, to understanding what such extension implies for the human subject, both as matter of representation and as the site of interpretation and understanding. Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011) offers itself as a laboratory for conducting research into the becoming-environment of information and what that implies for human subjectivity.
The Absent Image in Electronic Music
Authors: Lyon Eric
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This essay discusses the separation between image and sound inaugurated with the introduction of sound recording technology in the late nineteenth century. Two areas are explored in depth: the development of sound-based art maximally divorced from the image and postrecording technology art forms that recombine sound and image in new ways. The latter part of the essay focuses on artistic sound/image relationships inherent in digital media.
Hugues Dufourt’s Cinematic Dynamism
Authors: Pasler Jann
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This article analyzes French spectral composer Hugues Dufourt’s composition titled L’Afriqued’après and examines the influence of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s paintings on his works since 2005. It explains that Tiepolo’s fresco technique evoked for Dufourt the realism of American cinema and discusses how Dufourt has translated his visual perceptions of the fresco images and their three-dimensionality into musical terms. It also highlights the characteristics of Tiepolo’s art similar to the cinema. These are the effects of dramatic acceleration and the simultaneous coexistence of fragments from disparate realities.
Instrumental Visions
Authors: Cameron Allan
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. As a musical genre, electronica frequently demonstrates an overt focus on technology and technological instrumentality, which is evident not only in its sonic aesthetics but also in the parallel discourse of audio production. This essay examines how electronica’s ongoing engagement with technology has been further developed and extended in associated music videos. These videos can be characterized by a loosely articulated aesthetic of instrumentality, with recurrent features that include visual abstraction, architectural and machinic forms, scanning and tracking imagery, and the projection of technological interfaces into environmental settings. Discussing a range of videos, including Alex Rutterford’s “Gantz Graf” and Michel Gondry’s “Star Guitar,” this essay shows how such videos explore and, in some cases, challenge the instrumental connotations of digital media technologies.
Scoring for Film and Video Games
Authors: Sadoff Ronald H.
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. The music for Hollywood feature films and “Triple A” video games has undergone an extraordinary transformation over the past decade. The proliferation of digital technologies has spawned innovative ways of creating film music and has redefined the post-production landscape. Through interviews with prominent practitioners, the soundtrack is illuminated by accounts of compositional and post-production processes drawn from real-world contexts. What becomes clear is that the collaborative efforts of composers and post-production professionals are now indispensible for the channeling of an expanding array of technologies that are being used toward creative ends. Answering to the demands of a dynamic nonlinear medium, the “adaptive music” composed for video games diverges notably in creative practices and modular workflow engaged in by its composers and programmers. These relatively new innovative ways of creating film scores and video game music cross-pollinate, drawing from their respective technologies, proprietary production techniques, and eclectic compositional styles.
Introduction
Authors: Vernallis Carol , Herzog Amy
Published: February 2014

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media edited by Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson. This collection examines the rapidly shifting landscape of audiovisual media in the digital age. The volume initiates a dynamic, transdisciplinary dialogue between and among scholars, and takes up a range of media texts including blockbuster cinema, music videos, video games, amateur video compilations, documentaries, immersive theater, visualization technologies, and video art. One resonant theme is the ways sound and image can exist in myriad relations. Alongside harmonic convergences and ecstatic audiovisual mélanges, we find glitches, noise, rupture, and uncanny vestiges of outmoded practices. Our own mélange of scholarly approaches attempts to capture the texture and feel of this diverse media field.
Phonetics
Authors: Embarki Mohamed
Published: February 2014

Phonetics is a linguistic field that studies speech in terms of production, transmission, and reception. The three domains of speech study the speaker (production), the hearer (reception), and what takes place between the two (transmission). To this purpose, phoneticians use methods derived from the science of physiology for production, from physics for transmission, and from psychology for reception. In this article, the first section deals with the principal phonetic descriptions of the Arab system produced by the early Arab grammarians of the classical period (2nd/8th––5th/11th). The second section presents the consonant and vowel systems of modern Arabic. The third section deals with the contribution of experimental phonetics to the specificities of the consonant and vowel Arabic systems focusing in particular on (1) pharyngeal consonants; (2) pharyngealized consonants; (3) temporal aspects (vocalic and gemination quantity); and (4) consonant and vowel variation.
Issues in Arabic Computational Linguistics
Authors: Ditters Everhard
Published: February 2014

This article focuses on the current state of affairs in the field of Arabic computational linguistics. It begins by briefly monitoring relevant trends in phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicology, semantics, stylistics, and pragmatics. Then, the chapter describes changes or special accents within formal Arabic syntax. After some evaluative remarks about the approach opted for, it continues with a linguistic description of literary Arabic for analysis purposes as well as an introduction to a formal description, pointing to some early results. The article hints at further perspectives for ongoing research and possible spinoffs such as a formalized description of Arabic syntax in formalized dependency rules as well as a subset thereof for information retrieval purposes.
Sociolinguistics
Authors: Al-Wer Enam
Published: February 2014

This article provides a critical overview of the application of sociolinguistic principles, methods, and analysis to Arabic data with reference to research conducted over the past three decades or so in various Arabic-speaking societies. It focuses on linguistic variation and change, the major concerns of (variationist) sociolinguistics. The article begins with an outline of the relationship between traditional dialectology and sociolinguistics, the ways dialectological data are incorporated into sociolinguistic analysis, and the benefits of maintaining the link between the two disciplines. Then an outline is presented of the basic principles of the variationist paradigm, which are intricately bound up with sociolinguistic methodology and theory; where relevant, research practices in studies on Arabic are cited. The article then critically reviews the “diglossia” model as an approach to analyzing variation in Arabic. Finally, an alternative and up-to-date model of analysis is given, with case studies from recent research used as illustration.
Arabic Folk Linguistics
Authors: Suleiman Yasir
Published: February 2014

This article addresses some long-standing issues in Arabic sociolinguistics. The starting point is the concept of diglossia, which has become the port of entry for any discussion of the semiliquid language situation in the Arabic-speaking world. It first outlines the most abiding criticisms against diglossia and then offers thoughts on these as a prelude to discussing Arabic folk linguistics. It is argued that a folk linguistic perspective should be incorporated in studying Arabic in the social world. This perspective is important in developing an insider understanding of the language that may be at odds with the findings of modern linguistics. To aid the process of developing this perspective, the article adopts the terminology and conceptual frameworks Arabic speakers use in describing their language situation wherever possible—hence, the choice of fusha and ‘ammiyya instead of any of their translations into English, including Classical Arabic and vernacular, which Haeri uses.
Orality, Culture, And Language
Authors: Holes Clive
Published: February 2014

This article explores the relationship between linguistic form and function in the varying cultural landscapes of the contemporary Arabic-speaking world, including spontaneous speech, the contemporary electronic media (television, radio, the Internet), cinema, theater, and traditional performed oral literature, which have been revived and “reinvented.” It is shown that the relationship between orality and language in Arabic is complex. The layman’s mental landscape is of a “high,” literary, codified variety of the language strongly identified with a unifying religion (Islam) and a “golden age” of past imperial and literary glories, carrying great cultural prestige; and a “low,” chaotic (often regarded as grammarless) but homely variety associated with domesticity, intimacy, and the daily round. The emotional resonances of the two varieties are and always have been different. Consequently, they have, through the ages, occupied separate functional niches in all linguistically mediated communication, be it speech, writing, song, poetry, cinema, or theater.
Psycholinguistics
Authors: Boudelaa Sami
Published: February 2014

Psycholinguistics—a blend of psychology and linguistics—is the scientific study of the mental processes underpinning our ability to acquire, produce, and comprehend language. This article focuses on two general strands of research that will give a rough idea about the present-day psycholinguistic enterprise: language comprehension and language production. It first gives a brief presentation of each of these. It then describes the research techniques used in psycholinguistics, followed by a presentation of the major issues driving research in the field. Third, it summarizes the specific questions that Arabic raises for psycholinguistic research and concludes with some remarks about the future of psycholinguistics.
The Classical Arabic Lexicographical Tradition
Authors: Sara Solomon
Published: February 2014

This article discusses three basic paradigmatic models that Arabic lexicographers adopted over time: (I) al-Khaliil’s model in Kitaab al-ʕayn; (II) al-Jawharii’s model in alhaah; and (III) al-Bustaanii’s model in Kitaab muħiiṭ al-muħiiṭ. Though the three approaches are procedurally opposed, all account for the lexical data of Arabic, offer justifiable procedures of how to account for the complexity of the data, and are maximally different from each other. The article presents a biographical sketch of these selected lexicographers, followed by a discussion of the design and composition of their dictionaries and where they fit in the historical flow of Arabic linguistic activity of their time.
Modern Lexicography
Authors: Buckwalter Tim , Parkinson Dilworth B.
Published: February 2014

This article is a critical survey of contemporary Arabic lexicography, covering a period beginning roughly with the first edition of the Hans Wehr dictionary and extending to present-day corpus-based machine-readable dictionaries and online lexical databases. It covers both monolingual and bilingual Arabic lexicography relating to the standard written language, Modern Standard Arabic, and to the dialects; however, only bilingual publications in which Arabic is the source language are discussed. The article reviews the different solutions that both Standard Arabic and dialect dictionaries have found to the issue of lemma representation (i.e., the choice of phonetic script) and the issue of lemma organization (i.e., whether to follow a root-based arrangement or one that is purely phonetic and alphabetical).
The Elasticity of Casino Gambling
Authors: Nichols Mark W. , Tosun Mehmet Serkan
Published: February 2014

This chapter examines the price, cross, and income elasticity of demand for casino gambling. The focus is specifically on casino gambling, as opposed to other forms of gambling, such as lottery or pari-mutuel wagering. Nevertheless, in the case of price elasticity comparisons with other forms of gambling are made to provide a context for the reader. Similarly, in the case of income elasticity comparisons are made between casino revenue versus income and sales tax revenue. Very few empirical studies have calculated elasticity estimates for casino gambling. One notable reason for this is the unavailability of accurate data on the quantity and price of casino gambling. Reasons for this and existing studies are reviewed here and recommendations are made for future research.
How Does Implementation of a Smoking Ban Affect Gaming?
Authors: Navin John C. , Sullivan Timothy S. , Richards Warren D.
Published: February 2014

This chapter reviews the literature on gaming and the restriction of smoking and then examines data on the riverboat casino market in the Illinois portion of the St. Louis Metropolitan area. This market is then used as a case study to discuss the issues of a localized smoking ban where patrons have access to neighboring substitute establishments that are not subject to such restrictions.
The Economics Of Online Sports Betting
Authors: Diemer George , Rodenberg Ryan M.
Published: February 2014

This chapter provides an overview of the online sports betting industry from an economic and legal perspective. The dual focus is necessary, given that the overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, regulatory environment lends itself to a decidedly “law and economics” inquiry. Following this overview of the pre-Internet environment is a multifaceted treatment of the online sportsbook, explaining the decided shift in its economic characteristics and the ambiguous legal status in which the industry resides. To avoid doubt, the economic-based coverage is applicable globally. In contrast, the accompanying legal discussion focuses on jurisprudence in the United States.
The Football Pools
Authors: Forrest David , Pérez Levi
Published: February 2014

In principle, the term football pools could be applied to any pari-mutuel wagering concerning the outcomes, or any other aspects, of football (soccer) matches. However, it has long been used more specifically to refer to long-odds, high-prize gambling games where entitlement to a share of the jackpot is linked to football results. Long odds are inherent in the product and are achieved by requiring players to match their guesses or forecasts with the results of a long list of fixtures. This form of gambling therefore closely resembles lotto, the principal difference being dependence of winning on football results rather than the drawing of numbers by random process. This chapter reviews the history of and literature on the football pools, focusing in particular on the United Kingdom and Spain.
The Lure of the Pitcher: How The Baseball Betting Market Is Influenced By Elite Starting Pitchers
Authors: Paul Rodney J. , Weinbach Andrew P. , Humphreys Brad R.
Published: February 2014

This study explores the impact of elite starting pitchers on the Major League Baseball betting market. Starting pitchers are the key defensive element of a baseball game, and their value is generally reflected in the market odds on baseball games. This study uses highly detailed and previously unavailable data to examine the role of elite starting pitchers on game betting volume, percentage bet on the favorite and the underdog, and percentage bet on the “over” and the “under” in the baseball totals market. Not surprisingly, games involving an elite pitcher see significant differences in betting percentages and play a key role in the determination of betting volume. In addition, the star-player nature of elite pitchers being of a defensive, rather than offensive, nature leads to bettors wagering significantly more on the under in games involving elite starting pitchers.
Information Efficiency in High-Frequency Betting Markets
Authors: Reade J. James , Goddard John
Published: February 2014

The betting industry has been transformed by the Internet. Growth of person-to-person betting, mediated through online betting exchanges, has been a key element of this transformation. Betting exchanges enable traders to either back (buy) or lay (sell) bets on a wide range of sporting events. Such continuously operating online betting markets have ensured the transition of the use of high-frequency data (sub-daily sampling) from the financial setting into the betting market context. This chapter reviews recent academic research on the topic of information efficiency in high-frequency, in-play football betting markets. Several studies have reported evidence violating weak-form information efficiency, in the form of a favorite-longshot bias in in-play betting prices. However, there is evidence in the literature in favor of semi-strong form information efficiency. One study reports interesting evidence in support of strong-form information efficiency. As in-play betting markets continue to develop, driven by further improvements in computing power, parallel growth is anticipated in research on information transfer and price formation in financial markets, an exciting new arena for academic study.
On The Long-Run Sustainability of Tote Betting Markets
Authors: Edelman David
Published: February 2014

For the past century, tote operators and horseracing bettors have enjoyed a mutually satisfying relationship. However, the past decade or so has seen periods of decline in tote (totalizator) betting, which many attribute to the (supposed) increasing population of well-informed and (hypothetically, in the extreme) so-called sophisticated players who are believed to be extracting disproportionate amounts from the pools such that other more “casual” players count their meager returns and stop playing. This chapter examines whether this hypothesis is valid, by considering the extreme case of many sophisticated players in the market. It also argues that, whatever factors could be contributing to periodic declines in tote betting, the damage to the markets if there existed a proliferation of expert bettors is minimal and could not (as is feared by many tote operators, governments, and players), by itself, be enough to seriously or irreparably damage pari-mutuel markets.
The Economics of Racetrack-Casino (Racino) Gambling
Authors: Thalheimer Richard
Published: February 2014

The inclusion of casino-style gambling (henceforth gaming) at pari-mutuel racetracks, beginning in 1990, has changed the landscape of the pari-mutuel racing and wagering industry in the United States. To investigate the implications of racetrack–casino (henceforth racino) betting on the pari-mutuel racing and wagering industry, this chapter examines long-run trends in pari-mutuel horse race wagering and reports results of economic studies of the effects of competition from state lotteries and casino gaming. The results of economic studies of the demand for racino wagering also are reported.
What Explains The Existence of an Exchange Overround?
Authors: Marginson David
Published: February 2014

This chapter analyzes factors that may explain the existence and magnitude of starting price–based overrounds on Betfair, the leading and globally dominant person-to-person Internet betting site. Drawing on both finance and horse race betting literatures, several hypotheses are developed and tested, using data on 2,184 horse races in the United Kingdom between 2008 and 2010. Results are discussed and explanations offered for the findings, such as a positive relationship between grade of race and Betfair overround (the higher the grade, the higher the overround). More broadly, this research suggests that microstructure analysis of order-driven betting markets, such as Betfair, constitutes a fruitful line of enquiry for those interested in understanding market efficiency.
The Science and Economics of Poker
Authors: Hannum Robert C.
Published: February 2014

Although poker has roots in card games played in Europe and the Middle East as far back as the fifteenth century, the modern game of poker originated in the early nineteenth century in the gambling saloons of New Orleans. It has long been the most popular card game among Americans. It has recently reached unprecedented popularity due to a variety of factors, including television and Internet exposure. Poker is somewhat unique among gambling activities due to the fact that it is not house banked and because of the considerable elements of skill required, which are not present in other casino-style and lottery-type games. This chapter explores the science and economics of poker.
The Kelly Criterion with Games of Chance
Authors: MacLean Leonard C. , Ziemba William T.
Published: February 2014

An important betting strategy in games of chance is the Kelly strategy, through which the expected logarithm of final wealth is maximized. In this chapter, the Kelly strategy and its associated fractional strategies are discussed. The advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy are described, in general, and in particular, with application to a variety of games: blackjack, horseracing, lotto, and anomalies in the index futures markets. The conclusion discusses the use of Kelly type strategies by great investors.
Exploiting Expert Analysis? Evidence from Event Studies in an Information-Rich Market Environment
Authors: Smith Michael A.
Published: February 2014

This chapter evaluates the record of media forecasters in selecting winners, with returns judged against the benchmark of information efficiency as specified in the efficient-market hypothesis, updating in particular prior analyses of the well-established Pricewise tipping column in the industry newspaper the Racing Post with a new and bigger dataset. Most notably, the analysis seeks to establish whether or not the feature’s previously impressive record had been maintained and to exploit new market information sources which permit insights into the dynamics of horse race betting markets over time to reveal the extent of arbitrage opportunities with respect to the Pricewise selections. This is used to permit a more comprehensive evaluation of the degree of information efficiency with respect to these “events.”
Motivation in Betting Markets: Speculation, Calculus, or Fun?
Authors: Coleman Les
Published: February 2014

Betting markets are diverse but share several distinguishing traits. Generally, they are open for short periods and have an endpoint that relates to an event whose occurrence (but not outcome) is known in advance. Due to substantial operating fees and taxes, betting is a less-than-zero-sum transaction, and there are limited opportunities to sell securities or to arbitrage positions. Betting markets, then, are very different from financial markets, which trade long-lived securities whose values are set by events conducted in private and that have sophisticated participants on both buy and sell sides and parallel derivatives markets. So what motivates those that take part in betting markets?
The National Lottery
Authors: Lepper John , Creigh-Tyte Stephen
Published: February 2014

The first National Lottery draw of the modern era took place on November 19, 1994. However, since the time of Queen Elizabeth I, running a state-sponsored lottery has been commonplace. Between 1566 and 1826, with a break between 1699 and 1710, state-sponsored lotteries were held in England either under a separate act of Parliament or by means of license from the sovereign. This chapter traces the development of the National Lottery and considers the introduction, nature, and performance of the modern lottery as well as a more general review of the economics of the National Lottery.
The Benefits and Costs of Slot Machine Gambling
Authors: Farrow Scott , Carter Chava
Published: February 2014

This chapter reviews the basic economic welfare criteria for slot machines, as implemented via benefit-cost analysis. More specifically, it provides a conceptualization of the benefits and costs of slot machines, as well as a scorecard for key elements of a benefit-cost analysis. The chapter also presents several illustrative empirical studies and discusses areas for additional research.
The Taxation Of Gambling Machines: A Theoretical Perspective
Authors: Vaughan-Williams Leighton , Paton David
Published: February 2014

Over the past decade, U.K. gambling sector has experienced several regulatory shocks that have led to considerable debate and controversy within the industry and policy-making communities. Although there is a well-established literature on the economic impact of the growth of gambling facilities on local and regional economies in the United States and the United Kingdom, relatively little research has focused on optimal taxation of gambling machines within these facilities. This chapter seeks to address this gap by examining the theoretical arguments for taxing gambling machines by means of a levy on machine takings rather than by means of a license fee levied per machine. Recent tax debates in the United Kingdom provide an ideal context for such a discussion.
Through the Looking Glass
Authors: Zabel Gary
Published: February 2014

This chapter is a philosophical meditation on art made in virtual worlds. It proceeds by locating such art within three thematic contexts, those of new media art, computer-generated virtuality, and worldhood. Discussion of these themes draws upon the resources of Western philosophy, including the work of Aristotle, Aquinas, Scotus, Kant, Marx, Bergson, Husserl, Benjamin, Adorno, and Deleuze. The meditation concludes by specifying six dimensional characteristics that make virtual worlds a unique medium of aesthetic expression: immersion, interaction, ambiguity of identity, environmental fluidity, artificial agency, and networked collaboration. While other art forms might share one or two of these characteristics, only the art of virtual worlds is capable of exhibiting all six, so that it is the full cluster of characteristics that makes this media unique.