Theoretical-Methodological Foundations and Practical Systematization of Sociological Discourse Analysis

ABSTRACT The objective of the paper is to present the theoretical and methodological foundations of sociological discourse analysis (SDA) and to demonstrate the practical application of its procedural basis by way of an exemplary case that has as its theme the culture of devotion to organizations. The development of a practical SDA plan is a constructive and incremental process and its paths are outlined as procedures under development. There is no general and/or rigid rule on what procedures are necessary for achieving the research objectives; the contextualizing interpretation of the discourses will determine the practice. The use of SDA as an analytical lens enabled us to explore the internal dimensions of the discourse, considering the social reality in which it is produced and providing an understanding of the culture of devotion through the senses and meanings that are constructed by the workers of the company we studied.

Levering change: the contributory role of a mathematics teaching framework

Levering change is hard, and an incremental process. In the education process it requires an interaction between teachers, resources and learners. Levering change with human resources—teachers themselves, is a long term, time-intensive process requiring investment and commitment. The teacher–resources relationship is complex and not always optimal, particularly in disadvantaged educational environments where resources are constrained, and the education system is centralized and highly regulated. This article posits a mathematics teaching framework developed in a low-income educational context to make more transparent the relationship between teachers and resources to the benefit of learning both of teachers and of learners.

Studying Formability Limits By Combining Conventional and Incremental Sheet Forming Process

In this work it is assessed the potential of combining conventional and incremental sheet forming processes in a same sheet of metal. This so-called hybrid forming approach is performed through the manufacture of a pre-forming by conventional forming, followed by incremental sheet forming. The main objective is analyzing strain evolution. The pre-forming induced in the conventional forming stage will determine the strain paths, directly influencing the strains produced by the incremental process. To conduct the study, in the conventional processes, strains were imposed in three different ways with distinct true strains. At the incremental stage, the pyramid strategy was adopted with different wall slopes. From the experiments, the true strains and the final geometries were analyzed. Numerical simulation was also employed for the sake of comparison and correlation with the measured data. It could be observed that single-stretch pre-strain was directly proportional to the maximum incremental strains achieved, whereas samples subjected to biaxial pre-strain influenced the formability according to the degree of pre-strain applied. Pre-strain driven by the prior deep-drawing operation did not result, in this particular geometry, in increased formability.

Mechanisms for Financing Incremental Housing in Nigeria: Case study of Ibadan, Nigeria

Access to housing finance by all income groups is essential for the provision of adequate shelter for all. The study examined the mechanisms for financing incremental housing for the low and moderate income households in Ibadan, Nigeria and their effectiveness with a view to providing information that could inform policy towards effective incremental housing delivery in the study area. Primary data was collected with the use of questionnaire from 742 respondents from 4 randomly selected suburban local government areas of Ibadan, Nigeria. Two sets of questionnaires were used to obtain the data needed for the study. The results of the quantitative data were presented in both descriptive and inferential statistics while qualitative data were contextually reported. The results for housing development of the low and moderate income groups occurred in phases with the incremental process taking as much as 8-12 years for construction while improvement of the existing structure took about five and a half years. Chi-square analysis with values being significant at p<0.05indicated the financing mechanisms for incremental housing construction at the level of foundation (0.007), main structure (0.0005), roofing (0.002) and internal fixtures (0.000) vary significantly with the exception of land purchase and drainage cum sewage stages. Funding for the incremental housing process can be improved if the socio-economic and traditional attributes of the people in the area are promoted. This needs to be encouraged as a way of directing the financing mechanisms devoid of interest rate and default risks to incremental housing.

Visual object categorization in infancy

Humans make sense of the world by organizing things into categories. When and how does this process begin? We investigated whether real-world object categories that spontaneously emerge in the first months of life match categorical representations of objects in the human visual cortex. Taking infants’ looking times as a measure of similarity, we defined a representational space where each object was defined in relation to others of the same or different categories. This space was compared with hypothesis-based and fMRI-based models of visual-object categorization in the adults’ visual cortex. Analyses across different age groups revealed an incremental process with two milestones. Between 4 and 10 months, visual exploration guided by saliency gives way to an organization according to the animate-inanimate distinction. Between 10 and 19 months, a category spurt leads towards a mature organization. We propose that these changes underlie the coupling between seeing and thinking in the developing mind.

Experimental Study Regarding PA and PE Sheets on Single Point Incremental Forming Process

The present paper aims to present an experimental study on the behaviour of PA and PE sheets during the single point incremental forming. Due to the fact that the purpose of this research is to study the behaviour of PA and PE sheets during the single point incremental process both in terms of process forces and in terms of major and minor strain and thickness reduction, a Kuka Kr210 robot was chosen as an alternative to using a universal milling machine. The specimens were made of 3 mm PA and PE sheets. The size of the sheets was 250 mm x 250 mm. The forces measured on the three directions of the coordinate axes were compared. To measure the major strain, minor strain and thickness reduction, the digital image correlation method was applied.

Labour in a Single Shot: The Deskilling and Mechanisation of Labour in Harun Farocki

From the late 1960s until his death in 2014, the filmmaker and artist Harun Farocki repeatedly returned in his work to the subject of labour. This article examines a selection of Farocki’s films and video installations, delineating his recurrent chronicling of the historical trajectory of the labour process and technological development under capitalist industrialisation. In particular, it focuses on Farocki’s sustained investigation into capitalism’s drive to systematically displace forms of skilled craft from the production process by subordinating both manual and intellectual labour to an incremental process of deskilling and mechanisation, as well as his interrogation of the implication of various instrumental and automated visual technologies in such processes. In doing so, I underline the continuing significance of Marxist theory for analysing Farocki’s critical portrayal of capitalist modernity as dominated by an abstract and alienated historical dynamic toward the increasing rationalisation and control of production and social life.

The Nordic Council of Ministers: Aspirations for More Political Relevance

Due to changing circumstances and new challenges, the Nordic Council of Ministers underwent an incremental process of change and some modest transformation since the 1990s. However, there has never been a major overhaul of structures and contents owing to considerable inertia. The most recent modernisation process, aiming at more political relevance and flexibility, has been ambitious but whether it has been a success remains unclear thus far. Weaknesses and limits in cooperation in the Nordic Council of Ministers are obvious, i.e., no majority voting or ‘opting-out’ system, a lack in supra-national structures and policies and no common immigration, foreign, security and EU policies. Nonetheless, the organisation has at least some relevance and meaning for the Nordic countries and the potential to promote and facilitate cooperation in policy areas in which common interests exist, such as environment, climate, research and social affairs. Therefore, rather than constituting a common political order of its own, Nordic cooperation, as it is conducted within the Nordic Council of Ministers, is best characterized by differentiated integration, promoting full integration only to a limited extent but respecting integration to different extents and speeds by fostering cooperation and coordination of certain policies where possible and desired.

Assessing children’s incremental word knowledge in the upper primary grades

Word knowledge acquisition is an incremental process that relies on exposure. As a result, word knowledge can broadly range from recognizing the word’s lexical status, to knowing its meaning in context, and to knowing its meaning independent of context. The present study aimed to model incremental word knowledge in 1454 upper primary school children from grades 3 to 5 by investigating their abilities on three word knowledge tasks originating from the same set of 300 words: lexical decision, context decision, and definitional decision. A mixed-effects model showed significant differences in performance between tasks and between grades, and a significant interaction indicating that task differences were different for children in grade 5 compared to children in grades 3 and 4. In order to examine further the different task relation patterns at the word level, a cluster analysis was performed using the observed item means, which were corrected for the guessing chance. The analysis showed that for most words, recognition of its lexical status was easier than knowing its meaning in context, which in turn was easier than knowing its meaning independent of context. It is concluded that task relation patterns differ based on mean log frequency as a proxy of word exposure.