Discusses some of the distinctive features of topic termination/transition sequences in conversation with which figurative closings are associated, focusing on how they reflect the participants' orientation to their moving to new topics. Interactional use of figurative expressions is considered in contexts where their use fails to secure topical…

In this paper, the author wants to look at notions of "space", in order to examine why "space is in the midst of a renaissance" (Kaplan, 1996, p. 147), why it is, as it were, "back on the map". His intention here is to focus merely on one aspect of current changes in space-time-- the notion and actuality of "cyberspace", the most obvious…

This paper is a narrative experiment inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) figuration of the rhizome. It is a textual assemblage of popular and academic representations of cyborgs that might question, provoke, and challenge some of the dominant discourses and assumptions of curriculum, teaching, and learning. Emboldened by Deleuze's penchant…

Photographs are the most frequent inscriptions in high school biology textbooks. However, little is known about how students make sense of and learn from photographs; even less is known about the different resources available for making sense of photographs when they appear in lectures. In this study, the use of photographs during lectures and…

Fifty-four young professionals in their first job after apprenticeship described their task-related and private interactions at work during five days, using a variant of the Rochester Interaction Records self-observation method (Reis and Wheeler, 1991). Results showed that more task-related interactions were reported than private interactions at…

The trouble with mathematics is that it looks a little more logical and consistent than it is. Mathematics has a universally recognised exactitude. It also has an inexactitude that tends to remain concealed. This author contends that the trouble with mathematics is that it is neither structured, nor unstructured. It is nearly structured, but not…

The focus of this paper is domestic propaganda. The author presents comprehensive reviews of four books: (1) "Bending Spines: The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic" by Randall L. Bytwerk (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2004); (2) "Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda…

Metaphors are used as a typical way to negotiate and to describe people's everyday experience. In the classroom, teachers commonly employ metaphors to engage students and to make abstract ideas appear more concrete. In particular, metaphors provide an effective means to help visualize abstract ideas. The study reported in this article describes…

We report evidence for dissociation between explicit and implicit access to word representations in a deep dyslexic patient (JO). JO read aloud a series of ambiguous (e.g., bank) and unambiguous (e.g., food) words and performed a lexical decision task using these same items. When required to explicitly access the items (i.e., naming), JO showed…

An ambiguity disadvantage (slower responses for ambiguous words, e.g., bank, than for unambiguous words) has been reported in semantic tasks (L. R. Gottlob, S. D. Goldinger, G. O. Stone, & G. C. Van Orden, 1999; Y. Hino, S. J. Lupker, & P. M. Pexman, 2002; C. D. Piercey & S. Joordens, 2000) and has been attributed to the meaning activation…

In this paper I attempt to do three things. Firstly, I explore the concept of resistance in the sociology of youth and education. I raise questions about the power of this concept to provide a descriptive language for understanding the way young people generally, and in this paper, young African-Caribbean men in London schools, deal with the…

We argue that beyond metaphors, according to which learning is a process of knowledge acquisition by individual learners (a "monological" approach) or participation to social interaction (a "dialogical" approach), one should distinguish a "trialogical" approach, i.e., learning as a process of knowledge creation which concentrates on mediated…

This article examines theorists', practitioners', and workers' extensive use of metaphors in the conceptualization of careers. Metaphor constrains career thinking to powerful stereotypes, yet also extends views through the consideration of alternative metaphors and the creation of new ones. Morgan's (1986) method of multiple metaphor is used to…

Most words in English are ambiguous between different interpretations; words can mean different things in different contexts. We investigate the implications of different types of semantic ambiguity for connectionist models of word recognition. We present a model in which there is competition to activate distributed semantic representations. The…

"The Mission" is an award-winning film that presents an allegorical treatment of colonial drama in the Americas. Depicting the fabled "Jesuit Republic," the film dramatizes historical events that span a period of more than 150 years, from 1610 to 1768. In scope and deed these events bear much that is relevant to the invasion and conquest of the…