Academic literature on the topic 'Language of Ambivalence'

Abstract Ambivalence is a phenomenon that transcends disciplinary divides and is associated with a myriad of mixed outcomes. Yet, identifying and representing the complexities of ambivalent experiences can be difficult using traditional qualitative methods. Thus, the goal of the present study was to advance a qualitative method, thematic co-occurrence analysis, to address this issue. To illustrate the usefulness of this method, I present a case study detailing 35 estranged adult children’s ambivalent responses and reactions to their parents’ (non)contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings reveal seven themes and four (non)relationships between them that reflect (a) theme independence, (b) unilateral co-occurrence, (c) unbalanced co-occurrence, and (d) complementary co-occurrence. These findings advance a theory of ambivalence and corresponding method to aid in the future investigations of ambivalent phenomena.

Abstract Ireneusz Kida. The Problem of Syntactic Ambivalence in Corpus Linguistics. Lingua Posnaniensis, vol. L IV (1)/2012. The Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-103-7, pp. 57-63. The purpose of this article is to present a technique of dual annotation of Old English ambivalent structures in diachronic annotated corpus linguistics. In languages there are often structures which are ambivalent, and it is difficult to establish whether they are main or dependent. These clauses are problematic for a corpus linguist annotating them for computer analysis of word order configurations. As a solution to this problem we suggest that such structures be annotated in two ways, namely on the one hand as main and on the other hand as dependent. Such a procedure allows one to obtain more objective results from word order analysis. Moreover, dual annotation is more flexible and is able to grasp the changeable nature of language

Jhumpa Lahiri’s latest book, In Other Words, is an autobiographical text that highlights the author’s journey to a new land and language. She grows up in America, communicates in Bengali with her parents during her early childhood and uses English in school; a sense of ambivalence about language dawns in her at this time. Her parents insist that Bengali be a dominant language in her life, but she falls in love with English, which later becomes her own language and the medium of her literary writing. During her doctoral studies, she feels an impulse to learn Italian and desperately strives to speak and write in that language. In Other Words, originally written in Italian, is the ultimate outcome of her aspirations to learn Italian. As the author switches from one language to another, from Bengali to English, and then from English to Italian, she forms an ambivalent sense of separation and proximity. This article seeks to explore Lahiri’s love for language, her sense of alienation and belonging, loss and achievement, and her search for identity and metamorphosis.

Contemporary popular discourse on Hebrew prescriptivism betrays an interesting ambivalence: acceptance of institutional standards on the one hand and objection to normative intervention on the other. This ambivalence can be traced to the tension between the Language Committee and the Palestine Teachers’ Association during the Second Aliyah. Both advocated that Israel adopt a modern national language, but the former was in favor of a systematic language planning, while the latter was in favor of spontaneous language adoption. In the 1950s, a similar tension developed between the older generation and the Sabras (native speakers), whose generational identity had crystallized during the pre-State period. The language promoted by the former group was an institutional variety bound to a prescriptive norm, while that promoted by the latter was a native variety bound to conventional norms and real-life experience. The tension in these two episodes led to a deep cultural rift—one that is familiar to every Hebrew speaker in Israel—between the formal language of the state and the natural language of Hebrew speakers. A crosslinguistic perspective reveals a resemblance between Israeli Hebrew and European Late Dialect Selection languages, suggesting that the ambivalence towards prescriptivism in fact indicates ambivalence towards the national language, which is perceived, simultaneously, as a manifestation of a

Contemporary popular discourse on Hebrew prescriptivism betrays an interesting ambivalence: acceptance of institutional standards on the one hand and objection to normative intervention on the other. This ambivalence can be traced to the tension between the Language Committee and the Palestine Teachers’ Association during the Second Aliyah. Both advocated that Israel adopt a modern national language, but the former was in favor of a systematic language planning, while the latter was in favor of spontaneous language adoption. In the 1950s, a similar tension developed between the older generation and the Sabras (native speakers), whose generational identity had crystallized during the pre-State period. The language promoted by the former group was an institutional variety bound to a prescriptive norm, while that promoted by the latter was a native variety bound to conventional norms and real-life experience. The tension in these two episodes led to a deep cultural rift—one that is familiar to every Hebrew speaker in Israel—between the formal language of the state and the natural language of Hebrew speakers. A crosslinguistic perspective reveals a resemblance between Israeli Hebrew and European Late Dialect Selection languages, suggesting that the ambivalence towards prescriptivism in fact indicates ambivalence towards the national language, which is perceived, simultaneously, as a manifestation of a stable national identity and an institutional interference in individual speech.

AbstractThe Canek manuscript is written in a distinctive linguistic style, probably a local variant of Spanish influenced by Yucatec Maya and archaic forms of Spanish. It also reflects a curiously ambivalent perspective on the Itza king Canek, at once aligning him with the pagan Indians and suggesting an affinity with Saint Francis. Like many other colonial texts, the four extant folia of this manuscript show a blending of verbal genres. This paper presents a discourse analysis of the manuscript, demonstrating that it is organized according to a systematic rhetorical structure based on syntactic foregrounding, poetic parallelism and thematic development. Placed in the context of other colonial documents, this one displays the cultural and linguistic ambivalence of its author.

The language of networks now describes everything from the Internet to the economy to terrorist organizations. In distinction to a common view of networks as a universal, originary, or necessary form that promises to explain everything from neural structures to online traffic, this essay emphasizes the contingency of the network imaginary. Network form, in its role as our current cultural dominant, makes scarcely imaginable the possibility of an alternative or an outside uninflected by networks. If so many things and relationships are figured as networks, however, then what is not a network? If a network points towards particular logics and qualities of relation in our historical present, what others might we envision in the future? In many ways, these questions are unanswerable from within the contemporary moment. Instead of seeking an avant-garde approach (to move beyond networks) or opting out of networks (in some cases, to recover elements of pre-networked existence), this essay proposes a third orientation: one of ambivalence that operates as a mode of extreme presence. I propose the concept of "network aesthetics," which can be tracked across artistic media and cultural forms, as a model, style, and pedagogy for approaching interconnection in the twenty-first century. The following essay is excerpted from Network Ambivalence (Forthcoming from University of Chicago Press).

Abstract The research of ambivalence is an actual problem of modern linguistics because of active promotion of Strategic Ambiguity as one of the major pragmatic categories in order to understand the complexity of the speaker’s communicative intentions. The investigation of implicitness as the core of the Strategic Ambiguity is the current research issue because of the growth of interest in the modern linguistics to the effectiveness of interpersonal interaction. The purpose of investigation is to determine the qualifying and classifying features of strategic ambivalence in order to demonstrate much significance of it in the interpersonal interactions in comparison with the true ambivalence. The main task of the article is to analyse different types of strategic ambivalence in the ironic utterances as well as the mechanisms of optimization of interpersonal interaction on the factual material of English language and propose a model for determining the strategically ambiguous communication. New prospects of the proposed investigation deal with a number of national and cultural peculiarities of implicit discourse on the descriptive material of related and non-related languages in order to increase efficiency of cross-cultural interpersonal communication.

Referenced by theory for seemingly contradictory purposes, the practice of “surface translation” has an ambivalent status within Translation Studies. This is not surprising, as the principle of ambivalence informs both its composition and its conversation with its reader. Nevertheless, a positive step toward a more productive conception of surface translation was accomplished by Jean-Jacques Lecercle (1990), who defined it as a formin extremisof linguistic interference or mixing. Guided by this conception, I would argue here that the practice is in all respects identifiable with the Classical and Medieval ornamental style known by art history as the “grotesque.” This is the first study to identify surface translation with the grotesque. Five specific points of comparison are leveraged here: 1) Both surface translation and grotesque art are created through the proscribed mixing of incompatible materials; 2) Both are peripheral art forms involving play with margins; 3) Both aspire toward the “perverse,” “comic,” and/or “monstrous” in their mixes; 4) Both tend to be explained as the product of impulsive thinking; 5) The experience that these mixtures are designed to produce is “ambivalence.”

This thesis explores the conceptualisation of subjectivity, the past and language in the work of one particular English novelist and critic, A. S. Byatt. In doing so, it examines significant points of overlap between Byatt's fiction and criticism, on the one hand, and, on the other, the discourses that have contributed to their formation. Whilst Byatt's work is inflected by recent critical examinations of the three concepts, this thesis is less concerned with how it reflects prevailing notions of subjectivity, the past and language, than with its participation in an ongoing examination of each. Although I do investigate the interplay between Byatt's fiction and criticism, my focus is on how this is played out in Byatt's fictional texts, in particular the novels. The Introduction offers a brief summary of other criticism on Byatt's work summarises the recent definitions of 'text' and broader discussions of postmodernism that have impacted on my approach to her fiction, and proposes a reading of these texts that accounts for their ambivalence. In Chapter One, I focus on the reconfiguration of subjectivity in Byatt's writing, particularly as it relates to textuality. Chapter Two explores the relationship between present and past in Byatt's fiction that is partly enacted through the texts' own engagement with past literatures, in particular nineteenth-century literature, and the related issues of historiography, linearity and memory that these texts investigate. Language, in particular Byatt's interest in its relation to 'things', is the focus of the third and final chapter of this thesis. Throughout each of the chapters is an exploration of Byatt's engagement or reexamination of a persistent 'thread of two' in Western discourse. Although each chapter focuses on one of the three concepts, each also explores the issues that arise from the conjunction of 'two things' in these fictions: text and subject, present and past, language and the world. Related to this is my consideration of how Byatt's fiction is characterised by a number of contradictory impetuses. Of particular interest is the ambivalence that arises from Byatt's partial engagement with recent critical theory - not only because it reflects larger cultural and discursive movements, but also because it contributes to a productive forging of new forms of fiction that combine an awareness of the concerns of literary and cultural criticism with a desire to evoke pleasure in the texts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s collection of short stories, Mosses from an Old Manse, serves as his contribution to the philosophical discussions on Transcendentalism in Concord, MA in the early 1840s. While Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and the other individuals involved in the Transcendental club often seem to readily accept the positions presented in Emerson’s work, it is never so simple for Hawthorne. Repeatedly, Hawthorne’s stories demonstrate his difficulty in trying to identify his own opinion on the subject. Though Hawthorne seems to want to believe in the optimistic potential of the spiritual and intellectual ideal presented in Emersonian Transcendentalism, he consistently dwells on the evil and blackness that may be contained in the human heart. The collection of short stories written while Hawthorne lived in Concord and surrounded himself with those dominant literary figures represents the clearest articulation of his ambivalent position on Transcendentalism.

The position of the maternal body within patriarchy is the topic of this discussion where, rather than looking at a linear sequence of events, various aspects of this position are explored. On an individual level, the intrusion of the father into the dyadic, and potentially incestuous mother-child relationship, marks the entry of the child into the Symbolic Order, and this reflects the mythical account of creation in the Old Testament, where actual maternity is repressed in favour of a paternal monopoly in creation. Just as monotheism both represses and appropriates many aspects of the goddess cult which preceded it and which it replaces, the maternal body is repressed and appropriated within patriarchy. The acquisition of language and awareness of sexual difference marking entry into the 'Law of the Father,' are constructed on a duality of self and other, a dichotomy of inside and outside with a border, represented by the skin, separating the two. This border, separating the symbolic from its other is tenuous and ambiguous, for it is not entirely impermeable barrier. What seeps across this border, what transgresses the barrier between inside and outside, is considered by Kristeva to be abject. Positioned at the threshold separating inside and outside, abjection is the threat of the ever present, but submerged mother crossing the threshold and disrupting social order. Throughout the paper are images selected from an entire body of related visual research which is closely linked to the ideas contemplated here.
Master of Arts (Hons)

Предмет истраживања у овом раду представља одређивање чворишних тачакаоко којих се образује идентитет у поетици Растка Петровића. Циљ је доказивања тезеда његово стваралаштво антиципира савремено схватање и разумевање идентитетакао конструкције, која се одвија унутар дискурса моћи, а он настоји да регулишеидентификацијске процесе унутар субјекта. Дело Растка Петровића указује начињеницу да идентитет представља сложену и динамичну мрежу сачињену одидентитетских конституената који се непрекидно укрштају, те се на местима укрштајаобразују амбивалентне субјекатске позиције из којих аутор исповеда своју онтолошкустрепњу и свест о конститутивној амбиваленцији. Укључивањем методолошкихпремиса из области студија културе (маргинализација, трансгресија, лиминалност) упроучавање аутентичних авангардних поетичких стратегија Растка Петровића, указалисмо на чињеницу да је аутор трагајући за собом остваривао своје поетско биће. На тајначин образовао се хибридни и лиминални идентитет у динамичком пољуантагонистичких дискурса, који се непрекидно међусобно пресецају.Реч је, дакле, о томе да поетичко-естетско-филозофско исходиштестваралаштва Растка Петровића чини идеја да се биће (оно што јесте), као иконституенти његовог идентитета (пол, род, раса, нација, класна, верска ипрофесионална припадност...) разумевају као процесуалне категорије које сунепрекидно изложене променама. Петровић, заправо, отвара пут савременомантиесенцијалном тумачењу бића као флукса (оно што је ток и што се мења) унутарсимболичких мрежа, односно дискурзивних пракси. На тај начин, ствара се могућностда се појам, односно концепт идентитета тумачи као стратегијски и позицијски, те је уПетровићевом делу идентитет увек релационо конструисан и изратито обележен не-припадањем. Истовремено, идентитет сугерише истост и подржава неки обликзаједништва који варљиво испуњава онтолошку празнину.Овај рад своје методолошко утемељење проналази у претпоставци да јеплуралитет у теоријским приступима и критичким праксама нужан, управо због2сложености и амбивалентности појма идентитет, који је интердисциплинаран по свомедосегу. Истовремено, овај рад се бави различитим аспектима идентитета са циљем дасе сачува и истакне свест о интеракцији између конституената идентитета и теоријско-критичких пракси које се њима баве. У фокусу нашег истраживања налази се културни,родни и наративни идентитет, тачније, модуси њихових конструкција. У том смислу,ова студија доказује да поетика, али и живот Растка Петровића представљајупарадигму културолошке и родне лиминалности. Сходно томе, путујући моделегзистенције показује се као пресудан у творби идентитета који се формира каохибридни, услед седиментације различитих култура.Исцрпна анлиза родног идентитета, односно маскулинитета, истичесубверзивни потенцијал Петровићевог дела у односу на патријархалнуфалогоцентричну бинарну културолошку матрицу. Растко Петровић несумњивоисказује свест о идеолошком карактеру родне улоге која му је намењена, те је процес„постајања“ мушкарцем изузетно сложен, обележен противуречностима и стрепњом.Посебан комплекс питања која се нужно намећу када је у питању ауторефлексијапредставља језик, јер је писац принуђен да доказ властитог постојања тражи у језику, упојмовима који су такође производ дискурса који не одобрава алтернативну мушкост.Тумачење наративног иденитета као ипсеитета које смо користили у раду,дакле, упознавање и конституисање себе као метакатегоријалног Другог, маркирало језначај културног дијалога коме је Растко Петровић несумњиво стремио. У питању једијалог у коме припадници мањинских/маргиналних култура и субкултура постајуравноправни саговорници. Истовремено, размена културних дарова обезбеђивала бипотенцијал за, из данашње перспективе посматрано, повлашћен статус агенса устварању сопствене културе, као и активно учешће у мапирању културе у свету.
Predmet istraživanja u ovom radu predstavlja određivanje čvorišnih tačakaoko kojih se obrazuje identitet u poetici Rastka Petrovića. Cilj je dokazivanja tezeda njegovo stvaralaštvo anticipira savremeno shvatanje i razumevanje identitetakao konstrukcije, koja se odvija unutar diskursa moći, a on nastoji da regulišeidentifikacijske procese unutar subjekta. Delo Rastka Petrovića ukazuje načinjenicu da identitet predstavlja složenu i dinamičnu mrežu sačinjenu odidentitetskih konstituenata koji se neprekidno ukrštaju, te se na mestima ukrštajaobrazuju ambivalentne subjekatske pozicije iz kojih autor ispoveda svoju ontološkustrepnju i svest o konstitutivnoj ambivalenciji. Uključivanjem metodološkihpremisa iz oblasti studija kulture (marginalizacija, transgresija, liminalnost) uproučavanje autentičnih avangardnih poetičkih strategija Rastka Petrovića, ukazalismo na činjenicu da je autor tragajući za sobom ostvarivao svoje poetsko biće. Na tajnačin obrazovao se hibridni i liminalni identitet u dinamičkom poljuantagonističkih diskursa, koji se neprekidno međusobno presecaju.Reč je, dakle, o tome da poetičko-estetsko-filozofsko ishodištestvaralaštva Rastka Petrovića čini ideja da se biće (ono što jeste), kao ikonstituenti njegovog identiteta (pol, rod, rasa, nacija, klasna, verska iprofesionalna pripadnost...) razumevaju kao procesualne kategorije koje suneprekidno izložene promenama. Petrović, zapravo, otvara put savremenomantiesencijalnom tumačenju bića kao fluksa (ono što je tok i što se menja) unutarsimboličkih mreža, odnosno diskurzivnih praksi. Na taj način, stvara se mogućnostda se pojam, odnosno koncept identiteta tumači kao strategijski i pozicijski, te je uPetrovićevom delu identitet uvek relaciono konstruisan i izratito obeležen ne-pripadanjem. Istovremeno, identitet sugeriše istost i podržava neki oblikzajedništva koji varljivo ispunjava ontološku prazninu.Ovaj rad svoje metodološko utemeljenje pronalazi u pretpostavci da jepluralitet u teorijskim pristupima i kritičkim praksama nužan, upravo zbog2složenosti i ambivalentnosti pojma identitet, koji je interdisciplinaran po svomedosegu. Istovremeno, ovaj rad se bavi različitim aspektima identiteta sa ciljem dase sačuva i istakne svest o interakciji između konstituenata identiteta i teorijsko-kritičkih praksi koje se njima bave. U fokusu našeg istraživanja nalazi se kulturni,rodni i narativni identitet, tačnije, modusi njihovih konstrukcija. U tom smislu,ova studija dokazuje da poetika, ali i život Rastka Petrovića predstavljajuparadigmu kulturološke i rodne liminalnosti. Shodno tome, putujući modelegzistencije pokazuje se kao presudan u tvorbi identiteta koji se formira kaohibridni, usled sedimentacije različitih kultura.Iscrpna anliza rodnog identiteta, odnosno maskuliniteta, ističesubverzivni potencijal Petrovićevog dela u odnosu na patrijarhalnufalogocentričnu binarnu kulturološku matricu. Rastko Petrović nesumnjivoiskazuje svest o ideološkom karakteru rodne uloge koja mu je namenjena, te je proces„postajanja“ muškarcem izuzetno složen, obeležen protivurečnostima i strepnjom.Poseban kompleks pitanja koja se nužno nameću kada je u pitanju autorefleksijapredstavlja jezik, jer je pisac prinuđen da dokaz vlastitog postojanja traži u jeziku, upojmovima koji su takođe proizvod diskursa koji ne odobrava alternativnu muškost.Tumačenje narativnog ideniteta kao ipseiteta koje smo koristili u radu,dakle, upoznavanje i konstituisanje sebe kao metakategorijalnog Drugog, markiralo jeznačaj kulturnog dijaloga kome je Rastko Petrović nesumnjivo stremio. U pitanju jedijalog u kome pripadnici manjinskih/marginalnih kultura i subkultura postajuravnopravni sagovornici. Istovremeno, razmena kulturnih darova obezbeđivala bipotencijal za, iz današnje perspektive posmatrano, povlašćen status agensa ustvaranju sopstvene kulture, kao i aktivno učešće u mapiranju kulture u svetu.
This thesis aims to determine the crucial points of identity formation in RastkoPetrović’s poetics with the intention to verify the idea that Rastko Petrović’s workanticipates the modern understanding of identity as a construct which emerges from thediscourse of power with its identificational processes within the subject. Rastko Petrović’soeuvre is an excellent example of the fact that identity represents a complex and dynamicnetwork of identity constituents that constantly intertwine, and, in the places where thecontacts happen, they form ambivalent subject positions from which the author narrates hisontological fear and the awareness of the constitutive ambivalence. By including some ofthe methodological premises from the field of cultural studies (such as marginalization,transgression, liminality) into the research of Petrović’s authentic avant-garde poeticstrategies, the thesis shows that, while searching for his inner self, Petrović was epitomizinghis poetical self, thus forming a hybrid and liminal identity in the dynamic field ofantagonistic discourses that constantly intersect.Therefore, we can say that the poetic, philosophical and aesthetic sources ofPetrović’s work are found in the idea that self (what is), as well as the constituents of hisidentity (sex, gender, race, nation, class, religious beliefs, professional orientation…) areunderstood as processing cathegories constantly exposed to changes. What is more, it canbe said that Rastko Petrović clears the path for the modern, antiessetialist interpretations ofself as flux (that which is a flow, which changes constantly) within the symbolic network, i.e.discoursive practices. In this way, arises the possiblity of interpretation of the notion, or theidea of identity, as strategic, or positional, meaning that in Petrović’s works identity isalways relationally constructed and strongly marked by non-belonging. At the same time,identity means sameness and supports at least some kind of unity feebly fulfilling theonthological void.Methodological foundation of this thesis is found in the assumption that the pluralityin critical and theoretical approaches is necessary, precisely because of the complexity andambivalence of identity, the term whose scope and range are interdisciplinary positioned. Atthe same time, the thesis examines various aspects of identity with the objective topreserve and enhance the awareness about the interaction between the constituents of4identity and theoretical and critical practices that deal with it. Cultural, gender and narrativeidentities or, more precisely, the modes of their constructions, form the central part of thethesis. In this sense, this thesis shows that the poetics, but also the life of Rastko Petrović,represent a paradigm of cultural and gender liminality, while the life on the constant moveproves to be crucial in the creation of identity which is formed as a hybrid one because ofmany layers coming from various cultures. A detailed analysis of gender identity or, moreprecisely, masculinity, stresses the subversive potential of Petrović’s work when juxtaposedto patriarchal, logocentric, binary cultural matrix. Rastko Petrović expresses an awareness ofthe ideological character of the gender role he was assigned with; therefore, the process of“becoming” a man is a highly complex one, marked with contradictions and fear. A separatecluster of questions that inevitably appear with introspection is found in language, sincewriter is compelled to search for the proofs of his existence in the language and in thenotions which are also a product of discourse that does not approve of the alternativemasculinity.The interpretation of narrative identity as ipseity, used in this work, as well as theintroduction and constitution of self as a meta-categorical Other, marked the importance ofcultural dialog which Rastko Petrović undoubtedly strived for. It is a dialog where themembers of minority cultures and subcultures are equal participants. At the same time, theexchange of cultural gifts provides the potential for a privileged status of agens in creationof one’s own culture, and also in active mapping of the world culture.

The present dissertation investigates the use of the fantastic and its functions in contemporary prose, the initial hypothesis being that the fantastic is not historically exhausted, but continues to be productive. The major part of this study consists of a close reading of four novels printed between 1995 and 2001: Marie Hermanson’s Värddjuret (1995), Majgull Axelsson’s Aprilhäxan (1997), Karen Duve’s Regenroman (1999) and Elfriede Kern’s Schwarze Lämmer (2001). Tzvetan Todorov’s definition of the fantastic as structural ambiguity is fundamental to the dissertation. In order not to bind the definition to a normative concept of genre, the fantastic is in this study considered as a narrative strategy. The dissertation’s analyses demonstrate that in these contemporary novels there is considerable variation of narrative devices, as well as of intertextual motifs deriving from the ‘archive’ provided by the tradition of the fantastic. The fantastic is to a great extent intertextual, but does not merely function as a “signal of fiction” in a postmodern game where ambiguity is no longer relevant. Instead, the narrated world in these novels is characterized by a deeply-rooted ambivalence, heterogeneity and instability. Both attractive and dangerous, the fantastic corresponds to a meeting with “the other” and the unknown, while dampening the conflict between the supernatural and the natural so clearly seen in Todorov. What is central is not the crisis of perception undergone by the novel’s characters as they choose between two opposing views of reality, but their mental state of mind. These characters are in a condition of “betwixt and between”, which in all four novels is linked to the theme of the artist. Via the fantastic, Regenroman initiates a confrontation with male myths of the artist and images of women. Schwarze Lämmer also engages the romantic fantastic tradition and investigates the link between adolescent delusions of grandeur and artistic creativity. Värddjuret, on the other hand, depicts the genesis of a female artist, while Aprilhäxan presents the female artist’s monstrous image of herself and fantasies of omnipotence. An additional function of the fantastic in these four novels is to thematize a concept of reality that is based, not on the contrast between the natural and the supernatural, but on the possibility of several different realities.

Background: Specific language impaired (SLI) children are at risk of emotionalbehavioural difficulties yet few studies have examined the part played by language Method: Cognitive-linguistic skills required by typically developing and SLI children to understand emotional ambivalence were investigated in three related studies using Donaldson and Westerman's 1986 methodology. This American study required children to answer questions related to stories evoking emotional ambivalence: The Puppy Story (love/anger); The Kitten Story (sad/happy). First study results replicated American findings on British subjects. The second study identified 5 cognitive-linguistic devices used by 32 typically developing children (7 - 11 years) when resolving two different types of ambiguity: emotional ambivalence and linguistic ambiguity (The Puppy Story/The Twins Story): mental role play (subjects answered questions in the character of the story protagonist), mime, metaphor, personal experience, folk psychology. Responses were analysed for expressive language performance/discourse errors. Differences were interpreted as differences in the cognitive demands of the tasks. Results: Children used different cognitive-linguistic devices resolving the two types of ambiguity. Girls became more specific in their use of cognitive-linguistic devices when answering questions relating to emotions. Children found linguistic ambiguity easier than emotional ambivalence to resolve showing that it was the emotional content not the ambiguity which created the difference in cognitive and linguistic stress. The third study compared 4 SLI children's responses to ambivalent emotion (Puppy Story) with those of the typically developing children. The Kitten Story was presented with pictures to support language skills. Results: SLI children's responses were less mature and atypical compared to language normal children's ability to understand ambivalent emotion and use cognitive-linguistic devices. The use of pictures did not help the children. Conclusions: Mental role play represents the gradual internalisation of empathy required for understanding emotional ambivalence which was lacking from the SLI children's data. Atypical metaphor use reflected the SLI children's inability to conceptualise the confusion inherent in contradictory emotions.

This study examines the functions of objects in a selection of British colonial travel accounts about Africa. The works discussed were published between 1863 and 1908 and include travelogues by John Hanning Speke, Verney Lovett Cameron, Henry Morton Stanley, Mary Henrietta Kingsley, Ewart Scott Grogan, Mary Hall and Constance Larymore. The author argues that objects are deeply involved in the construction of pre-modern and modern spheres that the travelling subject moves between. The objects in the travel accounts are studied in relation to a contextual background of Victorian commodity and object culture, epitomised by the 1851 Great Exhibition and the birth of the modern anthropological museum. The four analysis chapters investigate the roles of objects in ethnographical and geographical writing, in ideological discussions about the transformative powers of colonial trade, and in narratives about the arrival of the book in the colonial periphery. As the analysis shows, however, objects tend not to behave as they are expected to do. Instead of marking temporal differences, descriptions of objects are typically unstable and riddled with contradictions and foreground the ambivalence that characterises colonial literature.

This book explores ways of thinking, feeling, and talking about homosexuality in the 1970s, an influential decade sandwiched between the partial decriminalization of sex between men in 1969, and the arrival of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. Moving beyond divided Cold War Berlin, this book also shines a light on the scores of lesser-known West German towns and cities that were home to a gay group by the end of the 1970s. Yet gay liberation did not take place only in activist meetings and on street demonstrations, but also on television, in magazine editorial offices, ordinary homes, bedrooms—and beyond. In considering all these spaces and individuals, this book provides a more complex account than previous histories, which have tended to focus only on a social movement and only on the idea of ‘gay pride’. By drawing attention to ambivalence, this book shows that gay liberation was never only about pride, but also about shame; characterized not only by hope, but also by fear; and driven forward not just by the pushes of confrontation, but also by the pulls of conformism. Ranging from the painstaking emergence of the gay press to the first representation of homosexuality on television, from debates over the sexual legacy of 1968 to the memory of Nazi persecution, The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation is the first English-language book to tell the story of male homosexual politics in 1970s West Germany. In so doing, this book changes the way we think about this key period in modern queer history.

The chapter engages the nature–culture divide with the generative ambivalences of weathering in both language and physics. Taking the different uses of the enantiosemic and ambitransitive verb as indicative of the human’s fraught relationship with its environment and itself, it analyses multiple ways in which ‘weathering’ can involve subject–object relations, objectless subject–predicate relations, or even subjectless processes, and proposes to think them with mechanics, thermodynamics, and chaos theory.

The study is underpinned by a new author’s approach to understanding the involvement into cyber-socialisation as an integral psychological construct consisting of two relatively autonomous components: positive and negative involvement. The aim of this study was to identify relationships between youth engagement in cybersocialisation and the heterogeneous measures of a psychological well-being. For measurements the authors used the author’s ‘Questionnaire of involvement in cybersocialisation’, as well as Russian-language adaptations of the ‘Scale of psychological well-being’ C. D. Ryff, ‘Life satisfaction scale’ by E. Diener et al., and ‘Perceptible stress scale’ by S. Cohen & G. M. Williamson. The sample consisted of 268 persons aged 17 to 30 years, including 143 males (53.4 %) and 125 females (46.6 %), 131 employees in various organisations (48.9 %) and 137 full-time university and college students (51.1 %). Using an analysis of variance and regression, constructive engagement in cybersocialisation was found to increase indicators of psychological well-being and life satisfaction, and to decrease indicators of perceived stress, while destructive engagement in cybersocialisation had the opposite, negative impact on many of these indicators, and a significantly greater impact than constructive engagement. The findings confirm the ambivalent nature of cybersocialisation of contemporary youth and determine the prospects for a more detailed study of the structure and consequences of cybersocialisation processes in the developing information society of modern civilisation.

Abstract: Bruno Zevi was an enthusiastic promoter of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture and theories. However, the critical enquiry and propaganda of the Italian architect and historian about so-called “organic architecture” reveals a major cultural debt to Le Corbusier. In 1945, Zevi published “Verso un’architettura organica” [Towards an organic architecture], the first version of his history of architecture. The title is clearly a polemical reference to Le Corbusier’s book “Vers une architecture” (1923). In 1977, together with other architects, Zevi promoted the Machu Picchu Charter, a document to “update” the Athens Charter (1933). The places held significance: Athens was the birthplace of western civilization and architectural rationalism. Machu Picchu symbolised the contribution of an alternative way of viewing the world. Are those merely examples of Zevi’s provocations? The relationship between Zevi and Le Corbusier is problematic and ambivalent. Zevi adopts the educational and communicative methods of Le Corbusier and his critical writing style, but his interpretation of the French-Swiss architect also demonstrates an attempt to delineate a new concept of “organic architecture”, related to his researches on a historiographic redefinition of the Modern Movement. Resumen: Bruno Zevi fue un entusiasta promotor de la arquitectura y las teorías de Frank Lloyd Wright. Sin embargo, la investigación crítica y la propaganda del arquitecto italiano e historiador sobre la llamada "arquitectura orgánica" revela una importante deuda cultural para Le Corbusier. En 1945, Zevi publicó "Verso un'architettura organica" [Hacia una arquitectura orgánica], la primera versión de su historia de la arquitectura. El título es claramente una referencia polémica al libro de Le Corbusier "Vers une architecture" (1923). En 1977, junto a otros arquitectos, Zevi promovió la Carta Machu Picchu, un documento para "actualizar" la Carta de Atenas (1933). Los lugares celebradas importancia: Atenas fue la cuna de la civilización occidental y el racionalismo arquitectónico. Machu Picchu simbolizaba la contribución de una forma alternativa de ver el mundo. Son esos meros ejemplos de las provocaciones de Zevi? La relación entre Zevi y Le Corbusier es problemática y bivalente. Zevi adopta los métodos educativos y comunicativos de Le Corbusier y su estilo crítico escrito, pero su interpretación del arquitecto franco-suizo también demuestra un intento de delinear un nuevo concepto de "arquitectura orgánica", en relación con sus investigaciones en una redefinición historiográfico de la Movimiento Moderno. Keywords: Bruno Zevi; Le Corbusier’s legacy; modern language invariants; five points; organic architecture. Palabras clave: Bruno Zevi; El legado de Le Corbusier; invariantes de lenguas modernas; cinco puntos; arquitectura orgánica. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/LC2015.2015.760