Multifunctional teasing as a resource for identity construction in the talk of British Bangladeshi girls1

This paper explores how multifunctional teasing is used as a resource for the construction of linguistic identities, establishing a link between previous research on teasing and the field of language/discourse and identity. I draw on a corpus of 38 episodes of teasing contained in 80 minutes of spontaneous talk between five adolescent Bangladeshi girls who formed a friendship group at their comprehensive school in East London. The qualitative analysis of the data reveals that the teasing in this group can serve four main functions: an accomplishment of fun‐based solidarity; a release of underlying tensions; a display of toughness; but also a display of respect for other speakers’ dispreference for taboo subjects. Building on Ochs’(1992) notion of indirect indexicality my discussion of the data will focus on the social meanings of these different functions of teasing which range from maintaining and managing friendship to (re)negotiating class and culture‐related identities. I shall argue that the identity work achieved by and in the teasing needs to be seen in relation to stereotypical notions and ideologies about class, gender and culture‐specific (language) practices which shape the girls’ construction of themselves as British Bangladeshi working‐class adolescents.     

A Laboratory Training Model for the Development of Effective Interpersonal Communications in Social Work

This laboratory training model developed out of the observed difficulties students were having in bridging the gap between classroom and field. Students were confused and scared in their initial contacts with clients. They needed a neutral setting in which to practice the necessary communications skills.

The paper describes specific methods, techniques, and structure of two laboratories developed to meet these needs along with evaluations and conclusions.     

Influence of a Community Health Worker Intervention on Mental Health Outcomes among Low-Income Latino and African American Adults with Type 2 Diabetes

This study investigated the influence of a community health worker (CHW) diabetes lifestyle intervention on mental health outcomes. Our study was guided by the principles of community-based participatory research. Data were collected from 164 African American (N = 94) and Hispanic adults (N = 70) participating in a randomized, 6-month delayed intervention group design for improving glycemic control. The intervention time periods were baseline to 6 months for the treatment group and 6–12 months for the delayed group. Linear mixed models were used to conduct longitudinal analyses of the Problem Areas in Diabetes (PAID) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ) scales. In the model adjusted for demographics, the PAID dropped significantly from pre-intervention to post-intervention within both the treatment and delayed groups (p < 0.05) with an average intervention effect of ?6.4 (p < 0.01). The PAID dropped even further within the immediate group from 6 to 12 months. Although the PHQ did not change significantly, the PHQ-2 had an average intervention effect of ?0.3 (p < 0.05) in the model adjusted for demographics. This study contributes to an understanding of how a CHW-led diabetes intervention can result in positive mental health outcomes for Latinos and African Americans with Type 2 diabetes. It also highlights the importance of further exploring what factors may contribute to racial/ethnic variation in mental health outcomes for African Americans and Latinos with diabetes and the role CHWs can play.     

Religion,governance and performance: evidence from Islamic and conventional stock exchanges

Based on a dataset of 31 conventional and Islamic stock exchanges we compare financial performance across these two groups for 2007–2011 period. Our results suggest that CEs and IEs are differently exposed to institutional constraints and have different drivers of profitability. Islamic stock exchanges’ performances are essentially driven by traditional listing and trading services and are affected by institutional factors such as the degree of foreign trading openness of their economies and measures of society development. Furthermore, they ensure greater stability during crisis, although Shari’ah compliant investments don’t affect their revenue generation. Conventional stock exchanges have higher trading intensity, higher level of revenues’ diversification and high capital investments, as they operate with different business models. Our results could have relevant business and strategic implications for further convergence between the two groups. Moreover our analysis could be significant for firms wishing to list their shares into Shari’ah Compliant Stock Exchanges or into Conventional ones and traders choosing the most convenient trading venue.     

Rationalizations of Condorcet-consistent rules via distances of hamming type

In voting, the main idea of the distance rationalizability framework is to view the voters’ preferences as an imperfect approximation to some kind of consensus. This approach, which is deeply rooted in the social choice literature, allows one to define (“rationalize”) voting rules via a consensus class of elections and a distance: a candidate is said to be an election winner if she is ranked first in one of the nearest (with respect to the given distance) consensus elections. It is known that many classic voting rules can be distance-rationalized. In this article, we provide new results on distance rationalizability of several Condorcet-consistent voting rules. In particular, we distance-rationalize the Young rule and Maximin using distances similar to the Hamming distance. It has been claimed that the Young rule can be rationalized by the Condorcet consensus class and the Hamming distance; we show that this claim is incorrect and, in fact, this consensus class and distance yield a new rule, which has not been studied before. We prove that, similarly to the Young rule, this new rule has a computationally hard winner determination problem.