The medical literature reports that antiretrovirals (ARVs) are considered attitudinal objects (Dunbar-Jacob, 1995). Drawing on the pragmatics of emotion (Caffi & Janney, 1994), this study analyzes how patients' stances about their ARTs shape their emotional relationships with their treatments. The data, collected in a public hospital in…

The author presents a summary of selected theoretical concepts and empirical evidence from the field of psychology, relating to the meaning of the term "meaning." He first summarizes experimental techniques for the investigation of meaning in terms of six approaches: conditioning methods, word association methods, word association/verbal learning…

The role of attitude in the extensive underperformance reported among West Indian children in British schools is of critical importance. This includes attitudes of the host community towards West Indians and vice versa. Suggests that there are strong links between attitudes towards a language and attitudes towards speakers of that language.…

Structural variables differentiating kinship identities, such as sex, generation, and type of relationship (lineal, collateral, conjugal), are reflected in sentiments about family identities. In particular, componential variations in kinship terms predict Evaluation, Potency, and Activity ratings of the terms fairly accurately. Between 44 and 92…

Responses of Chicano and Anglo high school students to the concepts of mother, father, female, and male indicated: (1) ethnic differences in ratings of father and male; (2) sex differences that crosscut ethnic lines; and (3) the importance of sociocultural variables in accounting for differences between Chicanos and Anglos. (CM)

This study examined the degree to which readers' affective responses to levels of language usage reflect their attitudes toward language usage. The subjects, 51 college juniors and seniors, read nine simulated newspaper interviews and completed five semantic differential scales that indicated their impressions of the interviewee's personality and…