A Mother's Value Lies in Her Sexuality: The Simpsons,Family Guy,and South Park and the Preservation of Traditional Sex Roles

This article examines the relationship between being a sexual woman and a good mother in The Simpsons, Family Guy, and South Park. Considering the sexual criticisms of women in the “Mommy Wars” which continue to be fought across the United States, we find that these three programs reproduce conservative assumptions about women's sexuality and motherhood. Through critical constructionist theories of humor and motherhood, mothers from each program are analyzed and the relationship between their sexuality and motherliness is examined in detail. We conclude with a discussion of the social constrictions of reality that humorous popular culture both exposes and reproduces.     

Teaching culture beyond nationalist boundaries: national identities,stereotyping, and culture in language education

The authors take a critical language pedagogy approach to examining a 2011 controversy over disparaging comments towards Mexicans made by commentators of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s automotive show Top Gear. In particular, they focus on the characterization of groups and individuals according to their nationality and examine the ubiquity of nationalism and its ability to shape our conception of culture and in turn our understandings of others as members of ‘X national culture.’ The fact that humor is often a justification for national stereotyping and that these stereotypes are also connected to racist discourse are also explored. In the second part of the article, the implications of the stereotyping debate for language classrooms are considered. The authors argue that the controversy itself can be used as a tool for critical engagement that helps students deconstruct the underlying nationalist paradigm in L2 classrooms and build greater intercultural awareness.

Español: Los autores examinan, desde una perspectiva de la pedagogía crítica del lenguaje, la controversia que surgió en el 2011 debido a los comentarios nocivos hechos hacia los mexicanos por los locutores del show automotriz del BBC, Top Gear. En particular, se enfocan en la caracterización de los grupos e individuos de acuerdo a su nacionalidad, y examinan la ubiquidad del nacionalismo y su capacidad para darle forma a nuestra conceptualización de la cultura y, a su vez, nuestra forma de ver a otros como miembros de una ‘cultural nacional X’. Los autores también exploran el hecho de que a menudo se utiliza el humor como una justificación para los estereotipos nacionales, y que estos estereotipos también están conectados al discurso racista. En la segunda parte del artículo, se consideran las implicaciones para la enseñanza de idiomas del debate sobre los estereotipos. Argumentan los autores que la controversia en sí se puede utilizar como una herramienta para promover una postura crítica que ayude a los alumnos a deconstruir el paradigma subyacente del nacionalismo en el salón de lenguas extranjeras y fomente la conciencia intercultural.     

Gender identity and lexical variation in social media

We present a study of the relationship between gender, linguistic style, and social networks, using a novel corpus of 14,000 Twitter users. Prior quantitative work on gender often treats this social variable as a female/male binary; we argue for a more nuanced approach. By clustering Twitter users, we find a natural decomposition of the dataset into various styles and topical interests. Many clusters have strong gender orientations, but their use of linguistic resources sometimes directly conflicts with the population‐level language statistics. We view these clusters as a more accurate reflection of the multifaceted nature of gendered language styles. Previous corpus‐based work has also had little to say about individuals whose linguistic styles defy population‐level gender patterns. To identify such individuals, we train a statistical classifier, and measure the classifier confidence for each individual in the dataset. Examining individuals whose language does not match the classifier's model for their gender, we find that they have social networks that include significantly fewer same‐gender social connections and that, in general, social network homophily is correlated with the use of same‐gender language markers. Pairing computational methods and social theory thus offers a new perspective on how gender emerges as individuals position themselves relative to audiences, topics, and mainstream gender norms.     

突降格及其语序意义的再现

突降法是英汉两种语言中都十分常见的修辞格。它的最大特点是不可前后颠倒的语序。因此,突降辞格的翻译不能套用一般的语序翻译原则。否则,辞格修辞效果就不可能再现出来。     

An improved algorithm for the triples test

An algorithm, in the form of a Fortran subroutine TRIPLE, is given to compute statistics for the triples test for symmetry, The computational complexity of the algorithm is O(n²) which is an improvement over the straight for ward method, which is O(n³).     

网络语言幽默风格的创新

网络语言的幽默不是一眼望穿的幽默，而是让人略一迟疑，稍加思考的曲径通幽式的幽默。网络语言的幽默风格的创新主要体现在一、语词使用上鲜明的E时代感；二、依托于高科技；三、借助网络的匿名性，损已利人造幽默。     

论鲁迅的"黑色幽默"

鲁迅常以冷静从容的幽默笔法叙述一些沉重、悲惨乃至残酷的场面或事物 ,这种笔法具有现代“黑色幽默”的性质。此种黑色幽默用于正面的人或事 ,未免不够严肃或慎重 ,但另一方面也表现了鲁迅对残酷现实的愤激之情 ,显示了他“敢于直面惨淡的人生 ,敢于正视淋漓的鲜血”的勇气     

The Steiner Tree Problem in Kalmanson Matrices and in Circulant Matrices

We investigate the computational complexity of two special cases of the Steiner tree problem where the distance matrix is a Kalmanson matrix or a circulant matrix, respectively. For Kalmanson matrices we develop an efficient polynomial time algorithm that is based on dynamic programming. For circulant matrices we give an -hardness proof and thus establish computational intractability.     

Laughing Your Way to Peace of Mind: How a Little Humor Helps Caregivers Survive

As the numbers of caregivers continue to increase, more attention is being focused on the unique stresses these individuals experience. Caring for a loved one tests the limits of even the most resilient, regardless of professional status or experience. Laughter is a universal elixir which allows people to cope more sanely with stress and caregiving responsibilities. Research on the emotional and physical benefits of laughter supports the use of humor by professionals and family members who occupy caregiving roles. This article addresses this research and examines common caregiver emotions while providing concrete guidelines for developing humor. Case examples demonstrate how laughter and wit are utilized by those caring for a loved one.     

Center and Distinguisher for Strings with Unbounded Alphabet

Consider two sets and of strings of length L with characters from an unbounded alphabet , i.e., the size of is not bounded by a constant and has to be taken into consideration as a parameter for input size. A closest string s* of is a string that minimizes the maximum of Hamming¹ distance(s, s*) over all string s : s . In contrast, a farthest string t* from maximizes the minimum of Hamming distance(t*,t) over all elements t: t . A distinguisher of from is a string that is close to every string in and far away from any string in . We obtain polynomial time approximation schemes to settle the above problems.