AFTERWORD: DREAMING IN… ENGLISH?

Focusing on the articles in this issue by Doerr and Lee and by Takamori, this commentary asks what it means to identify some languages as heritage languages and others as not, and considers the various social processes, contexts, and ideologies that mediate the ways in which we go about doing so. The goal is to further draw out the complexities and the contradictions embedded in such processes of identification, both of and through language, as illustrated by these authors.     

Tunisia and the Critical Legal Theory of Dissensus

Schmitt insists that the sovereign decision is unavoidable, that even an anarchist is caught in the trap of sovereignty when he tries to ??decide against decision??. This article begins to think about a critical legal vocabulary that might suspend the necessity of the will to constitute, while emphasising the creativity of the constituent moment. The terms inoperativity, dis-enclosure and dissensus are developed and deployed in order to think about certain aspects of the Tunisian revolution. In particular, the article focuses upon the refusal of the state of the situation, the subtraction of loyalty and the insistence of a form of life beyond Ben Ali??s sovereign order.     

Criteria-Based Content Analysis: An empirical test of its underlying processes

Abstract

Criteria-Based Content Analysis (CBCA) is a tool to assess the veracity of written statements, and is used as evidence in criminal courts in several countries in the world. CBCA scores are expected to be higher for truth tellers than for liars. The underlying assumption of CBCA is that (i) lying is cognitively more difficult than truth telling, and (ii) that liars are more concerned with the impression they make on others than truth tellers. However, these assumptions have not been tested to date. In the present experiment 80 participants (undergraduate students) lied or told the truth about an event. Afterwards, they completed a questionnaire measuring “cognitive load” and “tendency to control speech”. The interviews were transcribed and coded by trained CBCA raters. In agreement with CBCA assumptions, (i) truth tellers obtained higher scores than liars, (ii) liars experienced more cognitive load than truth tellers, and (iii) liars tried harder to control their speech. However, cognitive load and speech control were not correlated with CBCA scores in the predicted way.