bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Testing the visible
Authors: Hughes Rebecca
Published: March 2015

This paper argues that test criteria for oral assessment tend to be biased towards features more easily captured by written performance than spoken. This argument is carried forward at different levels reflecting the typical areas articulated in evaluation criteria for tests of speaking: discourse management; fluency; lexis and grammar. The paper draws on insights emerging from corpus linguistics, speech processing and sociophonetic studies to suggest that key features of oral communication may be undervalued in traditional approaches to oral assessment. Conversely, linguistic features which are more typical of written mode (for example, wide lexical range) and which are difficult for the native speaker to produce in spontaneous speech are valued positively in second language tests and regarded as key indicators of proficient speaking ability.
Harnessing the lawless
Authors: Sharoff Serge
Published: March 2015

Bilingual dictionaries provide basic translation equivalents for a headword and typically limit the set of equivalents to words of the same part of speech as the headword. However, words taken in their contexts can be translated in many more ways. At the same time, equivalents listed in dictionaries are not adequate in many contexts, because of the contextual and collocational sensitivity of target language expressions. The problem is particularly acute for novice translators who lack the experience for finding contextually-appropriate translations. The paper proposes a methodology for finding translation equivalents in comparable corpora. This helps in training translation students to be aware of the translation potential of polysemous words from the general lexicon.
Modified output during task-based pair interaction and group interaction
Authors: Shehadeh Ali
Published: March 2015

This study investigated opportunities for Modified Output (MO) and the take-up of those opportunities by Non-Native Speakers (NNSs) during task-based pair and group interaction in response to self- and other-initiations. The population of the study consisted of 32 adult NNSs of English representing a variety of first language (L1) backgrounds. Data were collected through the same procedure for both interaction patterns using a decision making task. Pair interactions were audioâ€‘taped and group interactions were both audio- and video-taped. The results showed that pair interaction provided NNSs with quantitatively more opportunities for MO than group interaction. Conversely, the take-up of those opportunities was higher in the group condition than the pair condition in relation to the number of self-initiations in each situation. Results of the study were discussed in light of the current view of the role of MO in second language (L2) learning and the usefulness of self-initiated MOs in language learning. They were also discussed for pedagogical implications in a classroom situation. Finally, some limitations of the study were reported and suggestions for further research were made.
Coping with change in applied linguistics
Authors: Crystal David , Brumfit Christopher
Published: March 2015

Conversation recorded at Equinox office, London, 5 December 2004.
Fitting stories into boxes
Authors: Roberts Celia , Campbell Sarah
Published: March 2015

This paper examines a site where inequality is produced. Street-level bureaucrats make decisions about candidates’ suitability for inclusion in their organisation, and therefore paid employment, on the basis of their ability to produce ‘bureaucratically processable’ talk (Iedema, 1999). This requirement implicitly entails adherence to culturally specific conventions and possession of specific forms of linguistic capital (Bourdieu, 1991) and creates a linguistic penalty for those who do not know the rules of this cultural game. Drawing on the first ever substantial data set of video-recorded job interviews in the UK, this paper analyses how candidates born abroad are disadvantaged by two interactional procedures that are central to the institutional discourses of the job interview: narrative accounts and the keeping of a written record. In our data, candidates’ responses were constrained by the requirement to produce a ‘standard’ narrative, and to make their talk recordable. When things went wrong, less support was given by interviewers, and institutional requirements were tightened for those candidates who found them most difficult to manage.
Discourses of difference
Authors: Anderson Kate
Published: March 2015

Questions of how speech style is racially identified have pervaded linguistic research and public concern for decades. However, the types of evidence used in linguistic studies on this topic often restrict application outside of the discipline. Particularly, the dichotomy between privileged linguistic ‘expert’ interpretations of perceptions and lesser valued ‘lay’ reactions to speech raises methodological issues for application. This article discusses alternative methodologies for analyzing how race functions as a linguistic category in evaluative interactions. While linguistic studies often treat race as an unproblematic category attached to speakers, this study proposes a discursive approach that (re)considers how speech becomes ‘racialized’ in lay discourses of difference. Framed by a methodological approach that problematizes epistemological formulations of race, speech, and researcher knowledge, I offer evidence of a discursive approach’s applied usefulness through examples from membership categorization analysis (MCA) of one interviewee’s racial evaluations of speech. I argue that inclusion of a discursive approach to better understand racial speech evaluation promotes application of linguistic research by offering evidence that existing approaches cannot by nature of their epistemological tenets and methodological focus.
Perceptions of bilingual competence and preferred language direction in Auslan/English interpreters
Authors: Napier Jemina , Rohan Meg , Slatyer Helen
Published: March 2015

Given that the study of interpreting can be considered as an applied linguistic activity, this paper details a small-scale study which investigated 56 Australian Sign Language (Auslan)/ English interpreters’ perceptions of their bilingual status and compared these to their preferences for working into Auslan or English. The impetus for the study came from discussions with interpreter educators, researchers and practitioners in which it was asked ‘how bilingual’ an interpreter must be in order to interpret effectively. Interpreters are assumed to have a high level of proficiency in both their languages and traditionally interpret into their dominant language. An email survey that questioned interpreters’ perceptions about bilingualism in general, their own bilingualism and their preferred language direction was administered to accredited Auslan/ English interpreters in Australia. The results showed that for many of the interpreters, perceived bilingual status and preferred language direction when interpreting contravened established practice, preferring to interpret into their non-dominant language. The findings are discussed in relation to implications for the education and practice of signed and spoken language interpreters worldwide, and highlight the need for further study of the nexus between bilingualism and interpreting.
Managing the Division of Labor
Authors: Hobbs Pamela
Published: March 2015

Medicine, as a scientific discipline, is discursively constructed, and medical discourse is constitutive of medical work. In the modern hospital, the official record of this activity is the patient’s medical chart. The medical chart both records the patient’s progress and inscribes the expert division of labor, documenting the structuring of participation and the manner in which the work is performed. This paper examines the impact of institutional structure on medical work through a comparison of notes recorded in the obstetrical units of two hospitals where the division of labor is differently distributed. Both cases involved a patient who was admitted to the hospital in apparently-normal latent labor but was found on initial examination to display signs of placental abruption, a life-threatening obstetrical emergency. By comparing the recording and management of this condition on the two units, I demonstrate the relationship of organizational structure to the structuring of medical work. In so doing, I reveal the subtext constructed by the writers’ discursive practices, through which their professional and institutional identities are enacted and displayed.
Improving International Medical Graduates' Performance of Case Presentations
Authors: Tipton Sara
Published: March 2015

Health care professionals use case presentations to communicate patient information among themselves during treatment and management. It is a critical genre of performance for medical residents to master for professional success. This genre is characterized by uncertainty and unique rhetorical moves, grammar, vocabulary and discourse strategies. As the format is established but not universal, international medical graduates (IMGs) in the United States anecdotally report case presentations to be the most difficult of communication tasks due to their lack of familiarity with the genre, problems with grammar and vocabulary, and the inability to organize, summarize or articulate their findings into the prescribed, interactive format. Many report crippling anxiety. For communication skills trainers, reviewing the literature in health communication and applied linguistics greatly informs the training of case presentation delivery. This paper describes the communicative tasks required of residents, followed by the components and genre particular to case presentations and how the task is perceived by residents compared to their attending faculty. Next, it explains the linguistic features unique to the task. Finally, it describes an individualized program established to train IMGs to approach the case presentation with the attitude of confidence and the deliberate manner of speaking required for professional discourse.
Positioning language proficiency
Authors: Back Michele
Published: March 2015

In this article I work from the intersection of what Talmy (2010, 2011) termed the ‘interview as social practice’ and multilingual discourse to examine how researcher–participant subjectivities and notions of language proficiency were explored, assumed and resisted during my interactions with a participant I call Emilio. I use a discursive psychological approach to positioning (Davies and Harré 1990; Korobov 2010) and Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004a, 2004b) tactics of intersubjectivity to highlight the subjectivities revealed in both the content of our interactions and the interactional resources used. Findings indicate that Emilio’s and my perceptions of each other’s proficiencies in English, Spanish, and Quichua (an Andean indigenous language) were modified through acts of positioning, with both interlocutors using tactics of adequation and distinction during a language history interview to either support or contest initial co-constructions of ourselves as proficient speakers of Quichua. Emilio’s and my choice of languages also indexed our perceptions of the discursive activities in which we were engaged. With this analysis I demonstrate how language proficiency and language history interviews can become sites for resisting notions of proficiency among multilingual individuals, and the need to incorporate additional data to more comprehensively assess this proficiency.
The fractal nature of French tense/aspect acquisition
Authors: Lyle Cory
Published: March 2015

This article builds upon previous studies that contrast the Lexical Aspect Hypothesis (LAH) and the Discourse Hypothesis (DH) in order to establish principles of tenseaspect morphology acquisition. Whereas the LAH predicts that (beginning) language learners use verbal morphology to mark situation types (cf. Vendler 1967), the DH maintains that learners use verbal morphology to mark discursive features. I argue that both hypotheses lack sufficient theoretical/empirical evidence to rule out the possibility that verbal morphology is also sensitive to temporal deixis, especially given the widely-attested usage of the present tense in L2 past-time narratives. Therefore, the current study seeks to replicate Salaberry (2011) without controlling for tense. Twenty-eight learners of French as a second language judged the acceptability of various verbal inflections in a cloze narrative task and then engaged in a retrospective protocol. The results were submitted to a repeated measures ANOVA, which revealed a significant interaction among morphology, lexical aspect and discursive environment that are not envisioned by either the LAH or the DH. Moreover, the systematic (and not random or ‘default’) use of the present tense lends support to a fractal model of French morphology acquisition in which learners ‘soft assemble’ their (inter)language with the resources at hand.
Lexical composition of effective L1 and L2 students' academic presentations
Authors: Zareva Alla
Published: March 2015

The present study set out to examine the lexical profiles of L1 (n = 30) and proficient L2 students’ presentations (n = 30), aiming at finding out the overall lexical composition of successful academic presentations. It was also of interest to see how some of the presentations’ lexical features compared to findings about the lexical composition of students’ productively used vocabulary in writing. In addition to this, the analysis focused on the lexical composition of both groups’ oral production in an attempt to uncover patterns of lexical uses that may need to be discussed in oral communication courses, specifically targeting the development of L1 and L2 students’ presentation skills. Overall, the analysis revealed more similarities than differences in the lexical composition of the L1 and L2 presentations while, at the same time, outlined few areas that need to be addressed in oral academic instruction.
Pedagogic practice, culture and the globalization of yoga teaching
Authors: Bourne Jill
Published: March 2015

This paper examines the way in which teaching practices are delocated and relocated in different cultural spaces, and the literacy practices developed as a result of these changes. It argues that such changes give rise to unanticipated changes in outcomes, both in relation to forms of pedagogy and in relation to the construction of relationships between teacher and student, and student and ‘text’. The teaching of yoga offers a prime example of transnational flow, as adaptations in the West are re-exported into India, yoga's traditional home. Taking the practice of yoga teaching as an example, and working within the tradition of linguistic anthropology, audio- and video-recorded data are presented from Vedic Chanting classes in South India, as traditionally taught and as taught in response to a multilingual group of Western students, and contrasted with the emerging official pedagogic discourse of yoga in the UK. Following Ellsworth (1997), the paper asks: What kind of knowledge does this pedagogy offer? What techniques does it use to regulate knowledge and the relationship of the teacher and the students to that knowledge?
Discovering and developing student teachers’ practical teaching theory - writing logs as a tool?
Authors: Klemp Torunn
Published: March 2015

This paper explores how writing logs sustain student teachers’ professional development. This is done through analysis of logs written during field practice in initial teacher education. The reason for writing and sharing these logs with fellow student teachers and mentors is embedded in theories of writing to learn, following Vygotsky and Bakhtin. Sociocultural theory also guides the research process. The study is designed as a qualitative case study. Data is collected from nine student teachers’ logs over a period of one and a half years. The paper presents findings from the initial phase of a content analysis showing thematic breadth and presence of traces of learning theory and traces of pedagogical content knowledge. The examples presented indicate the potential logs have as rich texts representing a dialogue and a bridge between theory and practice.
Interactions and miscommunication in the Swiss vocational education context
Authors: Filliettaz Laurent
Published: March 2015

This paper identifies and discusses various challenges met by apprentices when joining the workplace at the very beginning of their training programme. These challenges have become of interest to policy makers and vocational researchers in a context where transitions from school to work are often seen as problematic experiences with growing numbers of young people dropping out of apprenticeship programmes. In a case study drawn from empirical data referring to the Swiss vocational education system, difficulties in sharing meaning at various levels and in (re)negotiating participation at work are described as typical patterns of interactions between apprentices and expert coworkers who train them. These challenges, it is proposed, are not external to language use, but are deeply mediated by discourse practices, including a variety of semiotic resources. From that standpoint, concepts and methods developed in the field of applied linguistics can be seen as relevant tools for illuminating the complexities associated with workplace learning. The paper explores possible continuities and complementarities between vocational education research and discourse studies and argues for an increased research effort in this field of applied linguistics.
(In)forming Formal Evaluation
Authors: Keogh Jayne
Published: March 2015

Practicum is a highly valued component of teacher education programmes, providing opportunities for preservice teachers to observe, learn and trial effective teaching in partnership with experienced mentor-teachers. To date, little research has investigated how school-based practicum relationships are interactively achieved, turn-by-turn, in situ. Employing a single case study, this paper analyses a conversation between a mentor teacher and a preservice teacher about high-stakes assessment of the teacher-mentee's practices. Methods derived from conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis reveal that the participants assemble a pleasant but asymmetrical mentoring relationship by means of a continuing three-part conversational structural arrangement in this particular educational site, talking-into-being mutually acceptable versions of teachers and of teacherly practices. However, opportunities for mutually mediated learning and relational knowing were lost. These findings suggest the need to examine additional examples of similar school-based mentoring conversations about evaluation to see whether the analytic phenomena revealed here are typical or atypical of such institutional interactions.
PIL of the Month – a Study of Best Practice in Patient Information Leaflets
Authors: Zethsen Karen Korning , Askehave Inger
Published: March 2015

Patient empowerment has become increasingly important within the health sector and an important patient information document like the Patient Information Leaflet (PIL) has been the subject of an ongoing discussion for more than a decade. The PIL has often been heavily criticized for its lack of userfriendliness in spite of legal (EU) requirements that the PIL be easy to read, understand, and act upon. In the UK, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has introduced a new best-practice initiative called the PIL of the month, the aim of which is to further the improvement of the userfriendliness of PILs. This initiative focuses on positive aspects of PILs, however, the published quality criteria on which the selection builds hardly mention linguistic features at all. We have analyzed a corpus consisting of 10 PILs of the month in order to find out whether the PILs of the month constitute best-practice examples of userfriendliness from a linguistic point of view and if so how? In general we found many positive features and improvements on more traditional solutions, though we also still found many features which have a negative impact on userfriendliness. Only one leaflet could be said to constitute a real best-practice example, six leaflets were a mixture of positive and negative features, whereas three leaflets were very far from constituting best practice from a linguistic point of view.
Professional explanations of disease trajectories
Authors: Hemmings Diane , Sarangi Srikant , Clarke Angus
Published: March 2015

Media representation of health and illness is a common pursuit of discourse analysts. Less common is the study of how healthcare professionals and researchers provide explanations about health and disease in interview situations. In this paper we focus on professional explanations concerning Type 2 Diabetes and Coronary Heart Disease which are major health problems in the Western world, consuming a significant percentage of the health budget in many countries. Efforts to halt the increasing incidence are directed, in part, to understanding the causes of both illnesses. As part of a larger project aimed at understanding causal explanations for these conditions, we interviewed 18 clinicians and researchers working in the field in the UK to determine their views on why the incidence of these conditions continues to rise worldwide. We adopt a rhetorical discourse analytic perspective to highlight the function and significance of raising these issues as causal explanations. While scientific physiological and epidemiological explanations reflecting current research featured in the interviewees’ accounts, of greater interest were the explanations of socioeconomic and political factors that contribute to the ongoing epidemic through the mediating physiological processes.
The shifting of health responsibility from government to people in Hong Kong
Authors: Ho Victor
Published: March 2015

With a view to putting in place a sustainable healthcare system, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government (HKSARG) has been working on a healthcare reform package stating the reasons for the reform and proposing some cost control initiatives. One reform initiative proposed is the Health Protection Scheme which aims to encourage the public to take out health insurance to enable themselves to pay for healthcare services provided by the private sector during both their working and retirement periods instead of relying on the public healthcare sector as the majority of Hong Kong people have been. This paper describes how the HKSARG and its related bodies convince the public to accept such a shift of financial responsibility by using various discursive strategies in constructing the discourse in the healthcare reform documents.
Archaeology of the Anthropocene
Authors: Edgeworth Matt , Benjamin Jeffrey , Clarke Bruce , Crossland Zoe , Domanska Ewa , Gorman Alice Claire , Graves-Brown Paul , Harris Edward Cecil , Hudson Mark James , Kelly Jason M. , Paz Victor Joaquin , Salerno Melisa Anabella , Witmore Christopher , Zarankin Andrés
Published: March 2015

What role will archaeology play in the Anthropocene – the proposed new geological epoch marked by human impact on Earth systems? That is the question discussed by thirteen archaeologists and other scholars from five continents in this thought-provoking forum. Their responses are diverse and wide-ranging. While Edward Harris looks to archaeological stratigraphy for a material paradigm of the Anthropocene, Alice Gorman explores the extent of human impact on orbital space and lunar surfaces – challenging the assumption that the Anthropocene is confined to Earth. Jeff Benjamin investigates the sounds of the Anthropocene. Paul Graves-Brown questions the idea that the epoch had its onset with the invention of the steam engine, while Mark Hudson uses Timothy Morton’s concept of hyperobjects to imagine the dark artefacts of the future. Victor Paz doubts the practical relevance of the concept to archaeological chronologies, and Bruce Clarke warns archaeologists to steer clear of the Anthropocene altogether, on the grounds of the overbearing hubris of the very idea of the Age of Humans. Others like Jason Kelly and Ewa Domanska regard the Anthropocene debate as an opportunity to reach new forms of understanding of Earth systems. André Zarankin and Melisa Salerno ground significant issues in the archaeology of Antarctica. And Zoe Crossland explores the vital links between the known past and the imagined future. As a discipline orientated to the future and contemporary world as well as the past, Chris Witmore concludes, archaeology in the Anthropocene will have more work than it can handle.
Cowboys and Bohemians
Authors: Symonds James , Vařeka Pavel
Published: March 2015

In this paper we examine a prominent but little studied aspect of everyday life in Central Europe, the Czech tramping movement. We aim to show how workers and students from Czech industrial towns and cities created and sustained imaginary rural spaces and flamboyant alternative personas. In some cases these shared fantasy worlds were understood to be a simple leisure pursuit. In other instances tramping activity was a form of resistance and provided a means of escape from the monotony of everyday life, and political repression by the Communist authorities.
Imaging Modern Decay
Authors: Pétursdóttir Þóra , Olsen Bjørnar
Published: March 2015

Photographs of abandoned homes, decaying towns and industrial ruins swarm the Internet. They also fill the glossy pages of art books and popular magazine issues, and are increasingly appropriating more prominent spaces in scholarly publication on modern decay and abandonment. While its popularity speaks to its attractiveness, this proliferating ruin imagery has also become the target of harsh criticism from both concerned scholars and people affected by ruination. To them much of this is little but “ruin porn”: a superficial and one-eyed portrayal of urban decay that turns social and material misery into something seductive and aesthetically pleasing. This paper takes a different position. Speaking from an archaeological perspective, and especially the archaeology of the contemporary past, it argues that the new engagement with ruin photography rather calls for a reconsideration and appreciation of the role of photography; not merely as a means of documentation but also an interactive and attentive way to approach things themselves. By scrutinizing what the critics have claimed to be the fallacies of the image (its selectivity, timelessness, superficiality and tendency to aestheticize), and by emphasizing ruin photography as an engagement with things, the paper aims to show that it is precisely the alleged shortcomings that make photography a valuable method in a new approach to things and ruins.
Let Heritage Die!
Authors: Kobiałka Dawid
Published: March 2015

This paper is a case study of the trams now kept at Depot No. 5 at Legnicka 65 in Wroc?aw, Poland. The site provides a context for exploring two core issues around archaeological approaches to the contemporary past. The first is how materiality and immateriality are deeply interwoven in the context of modern heritage sites, with the overlap providing the grounds for discussion on the material theology of modern ruins. The second is the consequences of seeing modern ruins as heritage sites worth preserving for future generations. The conclusion of this paper is that if heritage is to be saved, it should be saved first of all from its saviours.
Haunting Heritage in an Enchanted Land
Authors: Herva Vesa-Pekka
Published: March 2015

This article addresses the functions and meanings of Second World War German material heritage in northern Finland from a haunting perspective and in terms of magical thinking. While archaeologists and heritage professionals have primarily been interested in the historical information that Second World War sites and military material culture may contain, this article explores how encounters and engagements with Second World War materialities in the northern wilderness of Lapland can be considered to affect people and manipulate their perceptions, awareness and understanding of the surrounding world. Second World War sites and matériel may be taken to promote a kind of magical consciousness which enables a degree of restructuring of relationships between the self and world and the past and present.
Thresholds
Authors: Dunlop Gair
Published: March 2015

This photo essay summarises some investigations into the imagery and architectures of British nuclear research, in particular the fast reactor programme. I am interested in the interaction of the ‘nuclear imaginary’ and the actual sites in which the experimentation took place. My background is as a visual artist and researcher, with a particular interest in ‘entropic modernism.’ I define this as the exploration of modernism as lived experience, where the fading of 20th century ideals takes physical form. I consider the ‘nuclear imaginary’ as a constellation of anxieties, optimisms, technocratic and patriotic emotions and motivations, which leaves traces in factual material, the cinema and fiction of the time, and in propaganda and public discourse. The ‘imaginary future’ is a product not only of the tangible physicalities, the new infrastructures, the demographics of a rural population doubling and mutating into a scientific powerhouse; it’s inside our minds. It is important to consider the imagination as a part of the recruitment process to a specific kind of modern citizenship. When the actual future has rolled on by, and slower rhythms of a country town re-assert themselves, the idea of the future lingers on. The vestiges become rusty. Atomic fission has ceased. “The Atomics” remain.
Method, Theory, and Multi-Agent Artificial Intelligence
Authors: Lane Justin E.
Published: March 2015

The construction of computer models is becoming an increasingly useful and popular way of testing theories in the cognitive sciences. This paper will present a brief overview of the methods available for constructing and testing computer models of social phenomena such as religious beliefs and behaviors. It will focus on the importance of theoretical continuity and data replication in computer modelling while negotiating the relationship between specificity and ecological validity when models are extended into novel contexts. This paper will argue that computer modeling is an important supplement to the methodological toolbox of cognitive scientists interested in human social phenomena. However, this is only the case if developers pay close attention to research methods and theories and if the method of a model’s development is appropriate for the target phenomenon (Sun, 2006). It concludes that multi-agent AI models are the most appropriate computational tool for the study of complex social phenomena.
The Idyllic Sublime
Authors: Beckerman Michael , Rosar William H.
Published: March 2015

Michael Beckerman and William H. Rosar explore, in dialogue fashion, the role of music in the Western pastoral tradition in film.
Operatic Stothart
Authors: Rodman Ronald
Published: March 2015

This is a study of the leitmotifs and tonal organization in two versions of the musical Rose Marie: the original stage version by Herbert Stothart and Rudolph Friml from 1924 and MGM's film version (under the sole direction of Stothart) from 1936.
Patronage and Commerce at the Twilight of Mamluk Rule
Authors: Eger Asa
Published: March 2015

In the last fifty years of Mamluk rule, sultans actively engaged in commerce, warfare, and diplomacy in their northern regions of Syria and Anatolia with the Ottomans, Aqquyunlu, and Dulgadir and Qaraman beyliks. However, scholarship in general neglects the thirty-year period between Barsbay and Qa’itbay (1438–1468) or charts it as a period of decline. Further, aside from textual accounts, there is little material evidence pointing to the nature of interaction: commercial, military, or otherwise. This paper will present two unpublished inscriptions and argue that there is some evidence for Mamluk development and patronage on the frontier. The inscriptions, found in a village or small town in the Amuq Plain near Antakya in the Hatay Province of Turkey, bear the name of two fifteenth-century Mamluk sultans. The inscriptions’ words, location, and context introduce wider evidence of Mamluk sultans as patrons in developing commercial routes and khans and encouraging movement in general across northern Syria. This patronage occurred at a time when the dynamics of political power were fluctuating in surrounding southern Anatolia as they were in Egypt.
A Survey and Typology of Islamic Molded Ware (9th–13th centuries) based on the Discovery of A Potter’s Workshop at Medieval Balis, Syria
Authors: Mulder Stephennie
Published: March 2015

Medieval Islamic unglazed molded ware is a common but little-studied type with great potential for use as an interpretive tool in Islamic archaeology. This article presents the current state of knowledge about molded ceramics by organizing and synthesizing the evidence from published sites across the Islamic world and, using the information from these sites, generates a new typology with distinct periodization between the 9th to the 13th century. This typology is then compared with stratigraphically excavated finds from a newly-discovered 13th century molded ceramic workshop at the site of medieval Balis, Syria. Finally, the article argues that, like fine glazed ceramics, molded wares function as carriers of cultural meaning. Because they imitate more expensive luxury items made of metal, molded wares provide tantalizing clues to the taste and consumption patterns of a kind of “middle class” of urban dwellers in medieval Syria.
Collaborative meaning-making in delusional talk as a search for mutual manifestness
Authors: Jagoe Caroline
Published: March 2015

Delusional talk may pose predictable challenges to the hearer in identifying what the speaker intended to communicate, particularly if the speaker presumes the hearer to have access to assumptions based on delusional content. This paper explores delusional talk between participants with schizophrenia and an interlocutor, analysing how meaning is negotiated through achieving access to assumptions that are not initially manifest to the conversation partner. A Relevance Theory approach is taken to the analysis of the data revealing two strategies used by the interlocutor to negotiate meaning. The Relevance Theory notion of mutual manifestness emerges as a powerful explanatory factor. The pursuit of mutual manifestness and a mutual cognitive environment explains the interlocutor's meaning negotiation attempts, allowing the communicators to ‘align’ and engage in conversation. The interlocutor is also exposed as seeking to exit the delusional talk by moving towards topics which are based on assumptions which are clearly mutually manifest.
Assessments in outcome evaluation in aphasia therapy
Authors: Isaksen Jytte , Brouwer Catherine
Published: March 2015

Outcomes of aphasia therapy in Denmark are documented in evaluation sessions in which both the person with aphasia and the speech-language therapist take part. The participants negotiate agreements on the results of therapy. By means of conversation analysis, we study how such agreements on therapy outcome are reached interactionally. The sequential analysis of 34 video recordings focuses on a recurrent method for reaching agreements in these outcome evaluation sessions. In and through a special sequence of conversational assessment it is claimed that the person with aphasia has certain communicative skills. Such claims are systematically substantiated by invoking examples of the person with aphasia performing this skill either outside or inside the therapeutic setting. Substantiation can be seen as a form of validation of the claim and thereby a basis is set for agreement. The findings suggest that in this type of evaluation the requirements of producing a valid account in which the person with aphasia has been heard are being met.
WYSIWYG
Authors: Cavanagh William G.
Published: March 2015

As early as the Early Neolithic a ‘North-South divide’ developed in Greece, resulting in a very dense pattern of settlement in Thessaly and, evidently, much more openly spaced villages in the south. Is this pattern real or merely a consequence of some archaeological bias? The results of intensive surveys are reviewed to suggest that the pattern does give a reliable picture, and one not seriously obscured by a ‘hidden landscape’ of missing sites. A key element in the occupation of southern Greece is the long-lived village site; Kouphovouno, Laconia, is used to illustrate one such settlement of the Middle Neolithic period. In the concluding section it is argued that the forces of population growth and ecological constraints do not entirely explain the southern Greek pattern, and territoriality is put forward as an important mechanism.
Anomalous Mortuary Behaviour and Social Exclusion in Iron Age Italy:
Authors: Perego Elisa
Published: March 2015

This article explores the relation between abnormal mortuary behaviour and social exclusion in first millennium bc northeast Italy by analysing a sample of some 2000 cremation and inhumation graves from the Veneto region. By drawing from research on funerary deviancy and anthropological, archaeological and bioarchaeological approaches to social inequality, the analysis offers an investigation of Venetic socio-political practices of inclusion in vs exclusion from society, sometimes resulting in niches of extreme social marginality. First, I discuss how cremation represented the normative burial rite in Iron Age Veneto as well as a ritual meant to underline the social meaningfulness of dead individuals granted high degrees of social recognition. Second, I focus on the rarer inhumation ritual and its possible role in substantiating the incomplete social integration of the deceased. Third, I detail how selected practices carried out on non-cremated human remains, such as disarticulation, mutilation and burial outside the formal cemetery, may have been deviant funerary rituals potentially intended to exclude the deceased from society. Finally, this study discusses how the complexity of Venetic funerary practices sometimes resulted in the adoption of rituals not easily definable in terms of ‘deviancy’ and ‘normalcy’, which were variously adopted at different sites and in different chronological phases to express multifaceted concerns about the role of the dead within their community and the variable degrees of social inclusion granted to different individuals.
Function and Use of Roman Pottery: A Quantitative Method for Assessing Use-Wear
Authors: Banducci Laura
Published: March 2015

The study of ceramic function, use, and re-use is becoming an important facet of the archaeology of the ancient Mediterranean. The abundant and detailed ceramic typologies of classical archaeology have meant that the function of pottery is typically assumed based on vessel form. I propose a way of nuancing our understanding of ceramic function and use to reveal repetitive habitual actions: the traces of seemingly ephemeral behaviors of daily life. I introduce a method for the empirical study of ceramic use through the application of ‘alteration analysis’ (more commonly known as ‘use-wear analysis’): that is, the recording of accretion and attrition of the surfaces of domestic pottery. I describe a recording method to capture qualitative observations of pottery in a quantitative way. This approach allows for the generation of relatively large datasets that can be subjected to statistical analysis in order to observe real patterns of use. We can begin to make inferences about behaviors like cooking and serving, the length of ceramic use-life, and the extent of ceramic consumption. I demonstrate the utility of this method with a case study of ceramics from two Republican-period sites in central Italy.
Modeling the Impacts of Mediterranean Island Colonization by Archaic Hominins: The Likelihood of an Insular Lower Palaeolithic
Authors: Leppard Thomas
Published: March 2015

It has been suggested that the islands of the Mediterranean were first settled during the Pleistocene. Attention has in particular been paid to recent claims that the occupation of Crete by hominins dates to the Middle Pleistocene. This paper examines what—if Lower Palaeolithic pre-modern hominins did indeed colonize the Mediterranean islands—environmental and evolutionary impacts this would have had, what forms these impacts would have taken, and what traces these forms would leave. Such impacts are modeled using information derived from island biogeography, historical ecology, and evolutionary biology. Probable outcomes of colonization scenarios—including turnover in insular faunas, ecological cascade events, and morphological changes in isolated populations of Homo—are compared to the palaeontological and palaeoenvironmental record for the Mediterranean islands. The absence of any obvious correlation casts doubt on large-scale and sustained colonization of the more remote Mediterranean islands during the Lower Palaeolithic, although this does not preclude the possibility of chance and short lived colonizations by pre-modern hominins.
Discussion and Debate
Authors: Broodbank Cyprian , Galanidou Nena , Leppard Thomas P. , Phoca-Cosmetatou Nellie , Rabett Ryan J. , Runnels Curtis
Published: March 2015

Within a 48-hour period during January 2014, the JMA co editors received two papers—those of Curtis Runnels and Thomas P. Leppard printed above—that, quite fortuitously, each addressed the topic of Mediterranean island colonization by archaic hominins, albeit from radically different perspectives. Neither author was aware of the other’s paper, nor has either article subsequently been revised to take account of the other. Realizing the widespread current interest in this subject and the possibility for productive debate prompted by such variant approaches, we commissioned three sets of comments and invited Runnels and Leppard to respond. We are pleased to publish this discussion around questions of great importance for our understanding of the earliest insular prehistory of the Mediterranean, and with significant implications reaching well beyond it.
Handmade Burnished Ware and Prehistoric Aegean Economics
Authors: Small David B.
Published: March 2015

Attempts to explain the appearance of hand-made coarse ware in the Late Bronze Age Aegean have focused on analysis of decorative or formative elements of decoration or form and not upon mode or locus of production. Furthermore, little emphasis has been placed on locating this ware within the economic context of the Late Helladic world. A reanalysis of this pottery within its context argues strongly that its appearance represents a reaction to increased subsistence difficulties for the Aegean peasant.
Communal Hunting in the Natufian of the Southern Levant
Authors: Campana Douglas V. , Crabtree Pam J.
Published: March 2015

The Natufian culture of Palestine has been seen as an important state in the progression from hunting and gathering to food production. Henry (1875) first suggested that the Natufians used traps or surrounds to hunt gazelles collectively. This paper uses Faunal data from the site of Salibiya I in the lower Jordan valley to suggest that the Natufians practiced communal hunting of the mountain gazelle (Gazella, gazella). Ethnographic studies suggest that communal hunting entails planning, timing and the organization of large numbers of people. These are the same features of social organization needed for the initiation of agriculture. We suggest that it was the social organization needed for the communal hunt, rather than sedentarization, or demographic or ecological factors, that provided the preconditions for the beginning of agriculture.
Cypriot Bronzework in the Levantine World
Authors: Philip Graham
Published: March 2015

The present paper represents and attempt to consider one aspect of Cypriot Bronze Age material culture within a socio-economic perspective, rather than from the more traditional typological standpoint. The range of metal weapons found on Cyprus during the Early and Middle Cypriot periods is discussed, and suggestions made about possible reasons for the patterns observed. A comparison is then made with metal weapons from neighboring regions, showing that the relationship between the weapons found on Cyprus and elsewhere is complex and changes over time. Some possible explanations for these patterns are then considered.
Early Holocene Extinctions on Crete
Authors: Lax Elliott , Strasser Thomas F.
Published: March 2015

Archaeological and paleontological studies in the Mediterranean Islands have produced a growing body of data indicating a co-occurrence of endemic island taxa and initial human inhabitants. Many of these Pleistocene species persisted beyond the close of the Pleistocene, only to become extinct during the Holocene. On Crete paleontologists have studied the endemic taxa in terms of the means and timings of their arrival, their morphology and their taxonomy, but have generally avoided discussing the causes of their demise, while archaeologists have yet to undertake research projects which specifically attempt to illuminate the period of initial Neolithic colonization. This paper attempts to bridge the gap; its goal is to determine when the endemic taxa of the island became extinct. By exploring three competing models (climatic change, overkill, and habitat destruction/resource competition), the authors conclude that the available data for Crete point to faunal extinction being the indirect result of human activities of land clearance and the introduction of domestic animals.
The 'Libyan Landscape' from Thera
Authors: Negbi Ora
Published: March 2015

The narrative context of the exotic scenery depicted in the Theran 'Libyan Landscape' becomes more comprehensible now due to recent restoration of the 'Miniature Fresco' from the West House at Akrotiri. The historical authenticity of this fresco gains further credence from new archaeological evidence for Aegean enterprises overseas in the LMIA period. This paper re-evaluates the implications of new evidence on the absolute date of the Thera eruption, the extent and nature of maritime activity in the eastern Mediterranean in general, and the political, commercial and cultural intercourse between the rulers of Knossos and Avaris during the late Hyksos period in particular.