The author devised a classroom activity that facilitates discussion and increases awareness about sexual assault. Students read scenarios involving sexual situations that varied in ambiguity, then labeled whether the situations involved a sexual assault. Students also gave their definitions of sexual assault and completed an evaluation of the…

At the Appalachian Studies Association's thirty-first annual conference, in March, 2008, activist and author Silas House gave a thought-provoking keynote address. That Friday evening, on the Marshall University campus, in Huntington, West Virginia, not far from the coal fields of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, Silas offered some…

This article is a personal faculty perspective regarding academic accreditation. It describes the psychological process and consequences of losing accreditation. Compton Community College was one of the oldest community colleges in California and has served a diverse population of students for over 50 years. As a result of severe administrative…

This study examines the deployment of automated red light camera systems in the state of Texas from 2003 through late 2007. The deployment of new technologies in general, and surveillance infrastructures in particular, can prove controversial and challenging for the formation of public policy. Red light camera surveillance during this period in…

The prominent role of Boolean classes in qualitative data analysis software is viewed by some as an encroachment of logical positivism on qualitative research methodology. The authors articulate an embodiment perspective, in which Boolean classes are viewed as conceptual metaphors for apprehending and manipulating data, concepts, and categories in…

Four experiments were conducted to assess the roles of politeness and humor in the asymmetry of affect observed in verbal irony production. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants rated different replies (ironic, literal, or "no response") made to hypothetical scenarios for their politeness and humor, respectively. Participants in Experiment 3 were…

This article argues that Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" may be read as a series which attempts to assault the Christian doctrine of God. We believe that this demonstrably accords with Pullman's personal views, and that, through his story, he seeks to foster such views in his readership. However, the accuracy of his attack falls short of its…

Comprehenders often need to go beyond conventional word senses to obtain an appropriate interpretation of an expression. We report an experiment examining the processing of standard metonymies (The gentleman read Dickens) and logical metonymies (The gentleman began Dickens), contrasting both to the processing of control expressions with a…

In this contribution to the growing literature on conceptual metaphor as a fruitful heuristic for qualitative analysis, the authors re-analyzed transcripts of college student discussions of problematic situations involving cultural diversity and interpersonal conflict. The authors show how they identified metaphorical linguistic expressions and…

Classroom battles are real and not a metaphor. Warfare is a historical and present fact of human life. Life really is a battle and conflict inevitable; injuries to the psyche are just as real as those to the body. Schools cannot step outside society. It is not Foucault but Thomas Hobbes who offers the most perceptive insight into human behaviour…

This article approaches the current state of qualitative inquiry by constructing an allegory of neo-imperialism. It is based substantively on a history and contemporary anthro-politics of the Congo and in particular the city of Kisangani; metaphorically on Conrad's unsettling deployment of that same place as "the heart of darkness"; and…

In the opening pages of Marilou Awiakta's "Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom," the author offers a metacommentary on her delightfully hybrid text, likening it to a "double-woven basket (Cherokee-style)." The image resonates on many levels with the author's tribal traditions and thus serves to foreshadow the text's wealth of material on…

The investigation incorporated a changing criterion design to demonstrate effectiveness of a treatment program to increase recognition of similes by two hearing-impaired young adults. Results indicated that treatment increased the students' ability to correctly match similies and descriptive passages. (Author/CL)

Describes an "aphorism generator" used to stimulate audience participation in poetry. (DD)

Evidence has been mixed on whether speakers spontaneously and reliably produce prosodic cues that resolve syntactic ambiguities. And when speakers do produce such cues, it is unclear whether they do so ''for'' their addressees (the "audience design" hypothesis) or ''for'' themselves, as a by-product of planning and articulating utterances. Three…