Speaking Out

Abstract

This study demonstrates that Republican female House members invoke women in their public statements at the same frequency as their Democratic counterparts. Despite this congruency, the specific issues that female partisan legislators emphasize when they invoke women in their statements are quite different. Republican women discuss how tax, business, and pension laws affect working women while Democratic female representatives concern themselves with laudatory tributes and funding for welfare state programs. In addition to controlling for party, the explanatory variable of race is also introduced to explain variation in emphasis, particularly regarding the issue of abortion. Congressional Recordentries contributed by the female members of the 105th Congress in 1997 serve as the data for this analysis.     

Nationalism, Comparatively Speaking

Abstract This paper is offered as an extended exploration of the common sense mythologies of modem nationalism. Using Fijian dualism as a point of comparison, it argues that nationalist ideologies of unity rest on a historically contingent principle of social order: namely, that societies are (normatively) distinct sets of like individuals. Nationalist movements use this principle to delineate and construct various 'nations." To illustrate this approach, the paper compares the unification of France to the disintegration of the Hapsburg Empire, and asks why a singular nation was invented in France, and a plurality of nations in the Empire. The paper suggests that these very different histories can be explained by considering the relationship of these nationalist movements to the hierarchical orders of monarchical absolutism and colonial subordination.
Our current definitions and conceptions stem from our own modern culture, even when anthropological experience … has modified them to some degree. This is not enough in the way of including ourselves - our own culture - in the picture, as true comparison requires. For our current definitions express our own culture, and our own culture … embodies an exceptional development . Any sociological generalisation must integrate it for what it is: an exception, an eccentric phenomenon. It follows that the general sociological model can in no case be modern, or modern with mere modification: it must be such a reflection of the wide experience of mankind that the modern exceptional development is clearly formulated and accommodated in it.     

Problem Gambling Within a Chinese Speaking Community

The purpose of this study was to obtain preliminary data on pathological gambling rates within a metropolitan Chinese community to determine if more costly extensive epidemiological surveys were justified. Two thousand survey questionnaires were distributed to parents through children attending a local Chinese speaking school. A response rate of 27.4% was obtained. Over a quarter of respondents were born overseas in either Mainland China or Hong Kong. Results indicated that gambling was not a popular activity with 60.0% of respondents stating that they never gambled. Of those who gambled, a third of respondents identified lotto as the preferred form. Using a Chinese translation version of the SOGS and a cut-off score of 10, a prevalence estimate of 2.9% for pathological gambling was found with males showing a higher rate (4.3%) as compared to females (1.6%). Respondents reporting a prior history of gambling in their country of origin were more likely to be classified as probable pathological gamblers. Despite the use of a sample of convenience, changes to the wording of two items in the Chinese translation of the SOGS and the possibility of false positive cases in the present study, it is concluded that further research into problem gambling in this community should be undertaken.     

Speaking seriously: The language of grading

Theory and Society -     

Taking Things Personally,and Publicising the Private: Encountering Erasure on the Frontlines of Academia

To understand the purpose of the Kunene hydro‐electic schemes in Angola one must examine the pattern of land settlement in Namibia established during the Herero‐German war of 1904–1908. At that time the White groups settled on the rich central pastoral land and also controlled the coast line. However the White south has three missing commodities which must be imported from the north: water, electricity, and labour. Thus it is the White groups who benefit most from the Kunene schemes. The profits from mining are accumulated in Johannesburg, New York, and London, while White mine workers receive high returns and Black workers receive low returns. The White farmers no longer face competition from the mines for water. The fishing and secondary industries receive relatively cheap power and water. Black farmers and herdsmen receive water, but the problem of irrigated farming in the ‘home‐lands’ has still to be solved.     

Speaking American: Popular Indian Fiction in English

A number of new popular writers have emerged in the last decade in India, of whom Chetan Bhagat is probably the best known, but there are many others who sell in unprecedented numbers. Appealing to that vast segment of readers for whom English may be a second language (unlike the literary successes of the last decades, who wrote for a global and local audience), this group of writers has their gaze and concerns focused on India. Yet, the new genres (such as chick lit and techie lit) reveal a striking reliance on an American (US) idiom. While the chick lit novels have a distinctly Indian flavor, they, and the other new genres, promote the valorization of entrepreneurship, easy urban relationships, and consumerism. My essay examines the language of Americanness used in these popular fictions.     

谈听说自主学习系统管理

据统计,人们在语言交际活动中,在听、说、读、写、译五大语言技能中,听力居首位,是一种非常重要的语言技能。听力不仅是获取信息的一种手段,也是汲取语言营养的不可缺少的渠道,听力还有助于促进说、写、读、译能力相应的提高和巩固,因此,听力在英语学习中占有重要地位。校方投入大量资金建立英语听说自主学习系统的语言实验室,在实践中取得了一定的成绩,但管理方面还有提高和改进的空间,本文谈谈听说自主学习系统的管理。     

Emulating Parental Levels of Taking Conflict Personally: Associations with Behavioral and Mental Health Outcomes in Adult Children

Taking conflict personally (TCP) is a construct that measures individuals’ tendency to perceive conflict as a personal attack and focus less on the content of a conflict. This study examined parent–child transmissions of the six dimensions of TCP, as well as the relationship between adult child TCP and their conflict communication, depressive symptoms, and anxiety. Data were collected from 110 (N = 330) mother–father–child triads. The results showed significant links between father-child reports of persecuted feelings (i.e., belief that others intentionally provoke conflict) and stress reactions (i.e., psychological reaction) during conflict. There were also significant links between mother–child reports of positive and negative relational effect (i.e., belief that conflict benefits/damages relationships). Adult children’s reports of four of the six TCP dimensions were associated with their depressive symptoms and anxiety, and the results showed significant indirect effects from parent TCP to adult child verbal aggression, constructive conflict, depressive symptoms, and anxiety.     

Speaking for the Common People and Taking Action for Women

WU QING has become a well-known figure among an increasing number of people in recent years. Those in the literary world know her as the daughter of Bing Xin, the most celebrated contemporary writer in the country. Wu has often participated in important events in literary circles on her mother's behalf. People in academia know her as an excellent English professor at the Beijing University of Foreign Languages Studies. Her educational philosophy of teaching and cultivating morals simultaneously makes many of her     

Speaking From the Pained Place: Engaging With Frank Dattilio

It was with interest that I accepted the invitation to provide a brief response to Frank Dattilio's article on cognitive restructuring in couples therapy. My reading of the article initially was as a practitioner in couples work for the last 28 years, and who is always curious about what can be helpful with couples. However, I also bring to my reading an understanding of couples work using the framework of the Emotionally Focused Therapy perspective.