US citizenship policy in the pacific territory of Guam

In 1950 the United States Congress approved the Organic Act of the Territorial Government of Guam which provided the island with a republican form of local government and American citizenship. The Act, however, does not completely fulfill the requirements of US Constitutional principles and law. Guamanians do not have representation in the Federal Government and do not pay Federal income taxes. The Organic Act produced a strange and confusing relationship between the United States and Guam. The contention of this research is that the fundamental problem with US citizenship policy in the Territory of Guam is (1) constitutional ambiguity, and (2) associated misconceptions concerning the theory and practice of American federalism, both of which might be remedied through either semi‐sovereignty of American statehood, or Guamanian independence.     

A semiotic study of regional branding reflected in the slogans of Korean regions

The purpose of the present analyses of regional slogans is to provide a semiotic perspective for understanding the symbolic communication systems involved in the construction of Korean regional governments. This study attempts to evaluate the slogans in terms of the semantic and morphological aspects of the texts. Findings show an overuse of signs within the slogans of regional governments that weakened the delivery of information regarding local identity. A leading slogan for a large region may create a unique identity in relative terms, whereas second-tier regions tend to mimic the success of others. The present research illustrates that each region of Korea cannot be differentiated in terms of a semantic analysis of linguistic signs. The communication tendencies that influence the creation of slogans for Korean regions are morphologically complex but semantically simple, resulting in the failure of these regions to secure distinctiveness in their individual brand identities.     

From book to stage to screen: semiotic transformations of Gothic horror genre conventions

ABSTRACT

This paper adopts a multimodal social semiotic approach for exploring the semiotic changes involved in the transformation of a novel into stage and screen productions. It examines how semiotic resources are deployed in each medium through elements of mise-en-scène, such as speech, music, sound, lighting, props, staging, and cinematographic techniques, and the viewing perspectives that are thus established for audiences. The genre of Gothic horror is selected for this purpose, given how this form of performance has transfixed audiences for centuries and has been adapted for both the stage and the screen. In order to demonstrate how each performance medium has produced its own unique set of foregrounding devices to enthral and captivate audiences, a comparative analysis of excerpts from the novel The Woman in Black by Susan Hill, a videotaped theatrical performance, and the 1989 British television film of the same name is undertaken. The paper discusses the implications of the multimodal semiotic approach for developing a better understanding of the semiotic transformations that horror genre conventions undergo in different media and the viewership positions that are thus re-drawn for audiences. The paper concludes with a view of multimodal recontextualisation processes which form the underlying basis of human sociocultural life.     

Communities and citizens: Identity and difference in discourses of Asia‐pacific regionalism

In the post‐Cold War world era, increasing attention is being given to forces of regionalism in global politics. These forces raise the possibility of thinking about citizenship beyond the usual borders of the political communities of nation‐states. Yet the extension of questions of citizenship to regional levels does not dispel the problems of identity formation and the suppression or exclusion of difference in the construction of communities. In the burgeoning discourses of Asia‐Pacific regionalism there is a new orthodoxy which combines elements of neo‐realism, neo‐liberalism and what is often referred to as an ‘Asian way’. But this new orthodoxy neither surrenders nor disturbs sovereign statehood. As a result, discourses of Asia‐Pacific regionalism reinforce the kinds of citizenship granted by political communities of existing nation‐states of the region and fail to recognize difference within and between these communities.     

老年人生活质量指标体系的构建设想

老年人的生活质量问题 ,不仅需要从理论上进行严格界定与阐释 ,而且需要从量化研究上加以具体描述与分析。依据老年人对生活需求的基本性质 ,老年人生活质量的量化指标可以分为三类 :物质生活类质量指标、精神生活类质量指标和社会生活类质量指标 ,并由此构成完整的质量指标体系。对量化后的老年人的生活质量指标 ,尚需要作进一步的评价与相关技术测定分析 ,方能对老年人生活质量的某一水平及其差异提出有科学依据的结论与说明。     

The future of the JCPOA

Following the United States' withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, Tehran is unlikely to stay in the agreement merely to maintain the moral high ground, without economic and geopolitical gains. But even if it withdraws from the deal, Tehran may judge actual advancement of its nuclear capability strategically imprudent.     

The Face of the State

From a liberal perspective, policies designed to permit the participation of minorities in national institutions while retaining their cultural particularities are justified either on the grounds that culture has a particular importance or on the basis of equal treatment of individuals. This paper argues that such policies, while not without benefits, have at least the potential to compromise the perceived neutrality of an important state institution. It focuses on the Canadian decision to permit the use of religious symbols as part of the uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Advocates of such policies focus only on their benefits and ignore the potential difficulties; the paper argues that a more balanced assessment is required, one which weights advantages and disadvantages.     

The Rise of the Genotocracy

This article examines whether meritocracy is an effective device for legitimising socioeconomic inequality. It looks at two ways in which it could be said to do that—by allocating wealth and prestige according to merit, and by creating opportunities for those born in low income families—and concludes that the first only creates the appearance of fairness (an argument made persuasively by John Rawls) and the second is a largely unfulfilled promise. The author asks whether the low levels of social mobility in Britain and America are because they have not yet become fully-fledged meritocracies, or because they have, and considers Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s argument in The Bell Curve that meritocratic societies have a tendency to degenerate into genetically-based caste systems. It examines the research by Dalton Conley, Jason Fletcher and Benjamin Domingue on this point, which shows that genetic assortative mating declined over the course of the twentieth century, and tentatively concludes that Herrnstein and Murray were wrong—that flatlining social mobility is a bug, not a feature, of meritocratic societies.