Digitizing Peircean semiotics to analyze students’ peer-review comments: classroom use of an application in open-source R

ABSTRACT

Statistical software applications are increasingly used to measure student engagement in the classroom. However, more work remains to be done to clarify how meaning is created and measured in classroom settings. With the growing use of technology in the classroom, students’ peer review has become a standard practice to improve students’ writing skills. This article examines the use of an open-source R software application based on Peirce’s sign theory to analyze students’ peer-review comments. Peer review is the assessment of student or professional work by others. The importance of open-source R as a platform lies in the fact that users can extend its code without having to ask permission. The results suggest a new approach, based on computational and social semiotics, to the assessment of students’ peer-review comments in higher education.     

The Mujahideen in Bosnia: the foreign fighter as cosmopolitan citizen and/or terrorist

This article explores the idea of the Mujahideen in Bosnia as ‘cosmopolitan citizens’. During the Balkan War in the early 1990s, these foreign fighters flocked to Bosnia in order to take up arms alongside those whom they understood to be their besieged Muslim brethren. Although this act of transborder mobilization can be framed as an act of cosmopolitan citizenship, the subsequent ‘problem’ of the Mujahideen in a post-9/11 context destabilized their original cosmopolitan act through a re-enactment of borders and the revocation of their (literal) citizenship. Within the larger post-9/11 narrative, where the Mujahideen must necessarily be understood as terrorists/potential terrorists, they are an interesting point of study in an examination of what can be seen as the sinister side of transnational citizenship, and they expose what Appadurai (A. Appadurai, 2006. Fear of small numbers: an essay on the geography of anger. Durham: Duke University Press.) calls our ‘fear of small numbers’. Particularly compelling is that the post-9/11 Mujahid is an unsympathetic figure, and is always already a questionable candidate for ‘citizenship’ as it is commonly understood. Furthermore, his (sic) original ‘cosmopolitan’ act suggests that, although the ‘cosmopolitan ideal’ is the achievement of a citizenship that transcends or escapes borders, the cosmopolitical must nevertheless be assigned value in order to be ethically intelligible.     

Women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion in Mexico City: citizenship,experience and clientelism

In April 2007, after a period of intense social debate, the Mexico City Legal Assembly legalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, which was an unprecedented development in women's rights in Mexico. Within the context of a proliferation of public discourses about women's citizenship rights changes in women's social status in Mexico, this article explores the extent to which the newly legalized character of abortion is interpreted by women as a right. Drawing on 24 interviews with women who had a legal termination of pregnancy between 2008 and 2009, this research shows that legalization opens up new and complex relationships between women as subjects of rights and the state. Such relationships are expressed as three discursive figures: legal abortion (1) as a concession from the government, (2) as ‘excessive’ tolerance by the state, and (3) as a right to be protected and guaranteed. The analysis shows that women's interpretations of the right to legal abortion are mediated by profound transformations, which Mexican society is currently undergoing. These include changes related to a shift from a clientist political culture to one more framed in terms of citizenship, the subjective effects of family planning policies, and their ambivalent relationships with Catholic notions of women and motherhood, and the effects of feminist discourses of women's citizenship, abortion, and reproductive rights.     

Focus Group Follies?

Abstract

Media coverage of the contemporary British Labour party routinely suggests party leaders, notably Tony Blair, have been overly reliant on using focus group as a means of obtaining voter feedback. The paper explores this popular understanding by considering how and when qualitative forms of opinion research began to play a significant role in developing campaign strategy. Following their incorporation into party planning during the mid-1980s, focus groups provided an increasingly influential (and at the time more discreet) source of data and support for the leadership's Policy Review later that decade. Following the 1992 election defeat selective findings from the party's qualitative research programme became integral to the public relations' initiatives of Labour's self-styled “modernisers,” particularly in their largely successful attempt to delegitimise and then marginalise the role of the party's once formidable affiliated union supporters in internal affairs. Crucially this contributed to a climate that enabled the key moderniser Tony Blair to emerge and win the leadership.     

中共十八大对反腐倡廉政策的新发展

中共十八大系统地分析了当代中国党风廉政建设和反腐败实践所面临的新形势,在反腐倡廉政策方面提出了新的政策问题、政策思想、政策观点、政策原则、政策目标和政策工具、政策措施,基本建构了中国目前阶段新的反腐倡廉政策体系,体现了执政党的反腐倡廉政策向科学化、民主化和体系化方向发展的趋势。深入研究中共十八大对反腐倡廉政策的新发展,对于把握未来一个时期当代中国反腐倡廉政策的走向具有重要的理论价值和实践意义。     

论第三代中央领导集体反腐政治体系的构建——党的权力运行秩序视阈下的解读

基于社会主义市场经济的不成熟、不完善,从而滋生大量诱发腐败的劣变生态因子的情况,第三代中央领导集体在继承我党廉政建设有益经验的基础上,积极探索构建反腐政治体系。在政党文化层面,积极推进观念化意识形态的创新,为有效有序运行党的权力提供科学而恒定的价值方向和准则规范;在内政治社会化层面,强化对领导干部的政党文化内化教育;在政治制度层面突出准则和规范的实施以及源头防治功能,推进制度反腐新路径;在政治关系层面坚持"以法为轨"的准则,推动新形势下党的权力运行民主化和善治化;在政治行为层面加强对反腐工作规律的认识和继续实行群众参与制度化建设。     

Au Revoir to “Sacred Cows”? Assessing the Impact of the Nouvelle Droite in Britain

This article assesses the impact of the Nouvelle Droite on the extreme right in contemporary Britain. Occupying a central focus is the role of Scorpion magazine, edited by Michael Walker. The author examines the promotion of the Nouvelle Droite by Scorpion, and in particular Walker's attempts to encourage the British far right to bury two of its “sacred cows”: conspiracy theory and biological racism. He then identifies how Nouvelle Droite thought influenced the ideology and discourse of the 1980s National Front, before moving on to discuss its impact on Nick Griffin's recent attempts to modernize the ideology of the British National Party.     

“90后”大学生恋爱心理及矫正研究——以西安2000例“90后”大学生恋爱心理调查为例

恋爱是大学校园中持续被关注的热点话题,与前几代大学生相比,“90后”大学生表现出具有鲜明时代烙印的特点。通过对2000例‘90后”大学生的恋爱心理进行问卷调查,从恋爱现状、恋爱观、恋爱对象选择、恋爱行为、性心理及其行为等方面总结了其行为和心理表现,并在此结果上分析这一群体的心理特征,找出影响其特征的因素,旨在总结“90后”大学生的恋爱心理,对存在的问题提出矫正方法,寻求自我改变提升的方式。     

加快县级党校发展之我见

2011年全国县级党校工作座谈会结束后,县级党校的发展迎来了新的历史机遇,如何做到与时俱进,把握时代脉搏,具有前瞻性和开放性,加快发展成了当前面临的首要任务。文章结合实际,对县级党校的发展提出了建议与对策。     

商业银行理财产品的法律性质研究

银监会将商业银行理财产品的法律性质定位为委托代理关系,但是实践中商业银行理财产品的运作方式与传统的委托代理关系相差甚远,那么商业银行理财产品的法律性质究竟为何？本文在对商业银行理财产品不同类别进行区分的基础上,对其法律性质分别予以了论述。