Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time-course of meaning activation of different types of ambiguous words. Unbalanced homonymous ("pen"), balanced homonymous ("panel"), metaphorically polysemous ("lip"), and metonymically polysemous words ("rabbit") were used in a visual single-word priming delayed lexical decision task.…

Depending on how one does the math, there are between a quarter-million and a million words in the English language. Of all these words, the author holds in contempt only one. That word is "like"--not the tepid expression of mild appreciation but the parasitic form that now bleeds the mother tongue, marks the user as a dunce, and, were it truly…

The main goal of the present study was to characterise the pragmatic abilities of French children with cerebral palsy through their understanding of irony and other people's mental states. We predicted that children with cerebral palsy would have difficulty understanding false-belief and ironic remarks, due to the executive dysfunction that…

As part of a belief in higher education (HE) aiding "creative capital", McWilliam and Dawson argue for a shift in pedagogic attention towards "Small C" creativity, which emphasises group endeavour over individual. Their radical 'liquid-learning" prescription, based on swarm intelligence, gives rise to the pedagogy of metagroups and modes of…

This article describes some of the local Aotearoa New Zealand context of a general "mainstream" undergraduate counselling degree. Students' learning is shaped to produce a professional practice for the local context of Aotearoa New Zealand. As counsellor educators informed by social constructionism, we detail our theoretical position and…

During this article, I look at three images of thought which feature in Deleuze and Guattari's "A Thousand Plateaus" and consider their relevance to contemporary pedagogy. Deleuze and Guattari begin by discussing tree-like thought, which involves an insular depiction of the world. I suggest that the performative apparatus, which structures…

In this article I examine the theme of wilderness through the lens of American philosopher Henry Bugbee. His conception of wilderness goes beyond the literal sense of the word to what Mooney (1999) terms "a generous space of listening, mutuality of address and presence" (p. ix). I contend that Bugbee's metaphorical expression of wilderness has…

Previous studies have shown metaphoric comprehension deficits in children with learning disabilities. To understand metaphoric language, children must have enough semantic knowledge about the metaphorical terms and the ability to recognize similarity between two different domains. In the current study visual and verbal metaphor understanding was…

Recent evidence shows that children can use cross-situational statistics to learn new object labels under referential ambiguity (e.g., Smith & Yu, 2008). Such evidence has been interpreted as support for proposals that statistical information about word-referent co-occurrence plays a powerful role in word learning. But object labels represent only…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of a sociocognitive teaching strategy on young children's understanding of light. It explores their understanding of the concept of light as an entity that is transmitted independently of the light source and the final receiver. The study was conducted in three phases: pretest, teaching…

The main aim of this study is investigating metaphors developed by the students regarding the concept of "map" at private institutions which provide them with specialized courses (Dershane). About 338 students in one of these private courses in Istanbul city center accepted to participate in the research within 2012 to 2013 academic…

This study examines and classifies the metaphors that twelfth grade students formulated to describe the concept of "learning mathematics". The sample of the study consists of 669 twelfth grade students (317 female, 352 male) of two Anatolian and two vocational high schools located in the city center of Denizli. The following questions…

This essay explores the relationship(s) between English and Spanish in the novel "Raining Backwards" (1988) by Cuban American Roberto G. Fernandez. While the many linked plots and characters suggest many protagonists, this study demonstrates how language itself takes on the role of protagonist. Through the author's use of calques and…

In this paper, I examine the textmaking potentials of the popular cultural resources of professional wrestling, including its modes of textual expression, as performed by Kyle, a boy in the middle years of elementary school. Kyle remixed wrestling, and its performative affordances, style and textmaking potentials across time and space. Using a…

As new media proliferate, professors need to be particularly attentive to the ways by which students learn--in and out of the classroom--and how scarce classroom time can be organized. This article argues that professors' comparative advantage lies as an exemplar of discipline-based thinking. Effective training in how to think about problems (the…