Search Results (95)

Numerous researchers have linked the description of the New Jerusalem in Rev 21 to Fallen Babylon in Rev 18 in order to establish intertextual opportunities for comparison and contrast. However, the New Jerusalem is seldom linked to the Tower of Babel in Gen 11—essentially, the urban archetype of Babylon in the Old Testament. Exploring these two urban metaphors—from a largely canonical, theological perspective—it appears that the New Jerusalem and the Tower of Babel stand out as two urban expressions of theological contrast. The two city metaphors contrast each other as they relate to themes of builders, unity/diversity, and temple language when describing divine and human activities. Full article

This study investigates the cybersecurity landscape of Aotearoa-New Zealand through a culturally grounded lens, focusing on the integration of Indigenous Māori values into cybersecurity frameworks. In response to escalating cyber threats, the research adopts a mixed-methods and interdisciplinary approach—combining surveys, focus groups, and case studies—to explore how cultural principles such as whanaungatanga (collective responsibility) and manaakitanga (care and respect) influence digital safety practices. The findings demonstrate that culturally informed strategies enhance trust, resilience, and community engagement, particularly in rural and underserved Māori communities. Quantitative analysis revealed that 63% of urban participants correctly identified phishing attempts compared to 38% of rural participants, highlighting a significant urban–rural awareness gap. Additionally, over 72% of Māori respondents indicated that cybersecurity messaging was more effective when delivered through familiar cultural channels, such as marae networks or iwi-led training programmes. Focus groups reinforced this, with participants noting stronger retention and behavioural change when cyber risks were communicated using Māori metaphors, language, or values-based analogies. The study also confirms that culturally grounded interventions—such as incorporating Māori motifs (e.g., koru, poutama) into secure interface design and using iwi structures to disseminate best practices—can align with international standards like NIST CSF and ISO 27001. This compatibility enhances stakeholder buy-in and demonstrates universal applicability in multicultural contexts. Key challenges identified include a cybersecurity talent shortage in remote areas, difficulties integrating Indigenous perspectives into mainstream policy, and persistent barriers from the digital divide. The research advocates for cross-sector collaboration among government, private industry, and Indigenous communities to co-develop inclusive, resilient cybersecurity ecosystems. Based on the UTAUT and New Zealand’s cybersecurity vision “Secure Together—Tō Tātou Korowai Manaaki 2023–2028,” this study provides a model for small nations and multicultural societies to create robust, inclusive cybersecurity frameworks. Full article

The research on teaching scaffolding for preschool children’s oral language development (OLD) has become an important topic in the academic world. However, there remains a lack of evidence-based research on the integration of scaffolding strategies integrated into creative art contexts to support children’s creative expression and language production. In this study, a qualitative case study was conducted to analyze the non-participatory observation and artwork analysis of five-year-old children’s drawing activities in a kindergarten in China based on socio-cultural and scaffolding theories. Three types of core scaffolding strategies were summarized. The findings reveal that the three strategies work together dynamically within the children’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD): (1) the visual prompt strategy enriches the vocabulary diversity of metaphors, adjectives, and ordinal words; (2) dialogic narrative co-construction effectively improves narrative coherence across exposition, rising action, climax, and resolution; and (3) emotional engagement strategies foster a safe expressive environment, promoting the integration of affective vocabulary with intrinsic motivation. Accordingly, a three-dimensional integrated “visual-linguistic-emotional” scaffolding model was constructed, emphasizing the practical guidelines of simultaneous scaffolding and gradual scaffolding withdrawal during the warm-up, creation, and sharing sessions of the drawing activity. This study expands the application of scaffolding theory in unstructured art contexts, and provides a systematic practical framework for the design of cross-contextual language support strategies and teacher training in preschool education. Full article

This study investigates the semantic development of V-diao in Taiwan Mandarin-speaking children, focusing on how they acquire both literal and non-literal meanings. Three key factors influencing this acquisition—type, metaphoricality, and context—were examined. This study recruited sixty elementary school children, divided into three age groups (7, 9, and 11 years old), along with twenty graduate students serving as an adult control group. Two truth value judgment tasks were employed: the Word-in-Sentences (WISE) task, which presents sentences containing the V-diao construction, and the Word-in-Scenarios (WISC) task, which uses stories and pictures as additional aids. The results indicated that V-diao₁ was the easiest for children to comprehend, followed by V-diao₂, while V-diao₃ and V-diao₄ were more challenging. Literal meanings of V-diao were found to be easier to acquire than non-literal ones, highlighting the metaphorical effect. Additionally, participants performed better on the WISE task than the WISC task, suggesting that contextual aids like stories and pictures did not enhance performance. These findings provide insights into the semantic development of Mandarin-speaking children and the role of metaphorical and contextual factors in language acquisition. Full article

This paper explores how sound design in the Harry Potter film series shapes the symbolic significance of written words within the magical world. Sound mediates between language and meaning; while characters gain knowledge by reading and seeing, viewers are guided emotionally and thematically by how these written texts are framed through sound. For example, Harry’s magical identity is signalled to viewers through the score long before he fully understands himself—first through music when he speaks to a snake, then more explicitly when he receives his letter from Hogwarts. Throughout the series, characters engage with a wide array of written media—textbooks, letters, newspapers, diaries, maps, and inscriptions—that gradually shift in narrative function, from static props to dynamic, multi-sensory agents of transformation. Using a close analysis of selected scenes to examine layers of utterances, diegetic sounds, underscore, and sound design, this study draws on metaphor theory and adaptation theory to examine how sound design gives writing a metaphorical voice, sometimes framing it as character, landscape, or moral authority. As the series progresses, becoming more autonomous from the literary source, written words take on greater symbolic significance, and sound increasingly determines which texts are granted narrative power, whose voices are trusted, and how viewers interpret truth and agency across media. Ultimately, written words in the films are animated through sound into agents of growth, memory, resistance, and transformation. Thus, the audio-visual treatment of written magic reveals not just what is written, but what matters. Full article

This quasi-experimental study investigates the impact of an embodied intervention on the semantics of transitive verbs in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), grounded in the “TIME IS SPACE” conceptual metaphor—where the future is mapped as forward and the past as backward. The intervention involved a pretest and a posttest design, using the induced plasticity technique to saturate motor areas through repetitive arm movements (either forward or backward). Then, we determined the influence of this saturation on the auditory comprehension of past- and future-tense sentences. Fifty-seven children (ages 5 years and 6 months to 6 years and 9 months) participated in the experiment. Participants were divided into four groups: two groups of children with DLD—14 Chilean students from speech therapy institutions who received the intervention and 15 who did not—and two groups of chronologically matched typically developing (TD) peers, with 14 children in each intervention condition. The hypothesis proposed that a psychoeducational intervention would enhance the comprehension of time–space conceptual metaphors in children with DLD, reflected by greater interference effects (higher RTs and lower ARs in matching vs. mismatching conditions). A 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 mixed ANOVA was used to identify significant differences in reaction times and accuracy rates. Results showed significant differences in the posttest for the DLD group with intervention versus the same group without intervention, particularly in the semantics of future tense with forward motion. Furthermore, the study found that the impact of the intervention depended on the level of narrative discourse comprehension. These findings suggest that embodied interventions leveraging metaphorical mappings of time and space can enhance verb tense comprehension, particularly in preschoolers with narrative comprehension challenges. Full article

This research contributes to the studies on the origins and transformations of Tchaikovsky’s Children’s Album, Op. 39 using the linguistic methods of discourse, metaphor, and comparative analysis to explore a number of connected questions and their impact on how the audiences and scholars perceive and understand the compositions. These methods are supported by the technology provided by computational linguistics, such as large language models along with music analysis algorithms based on signature pattern elicitation. This article examines how artificial intelligence technologies can shed light on the differing views on the Children’s Album. The meanings and implications of the published reordering of the pieces are explored. The influence of Schumann’s Album for the Young and the broader pedagogical and cultural significance of editorial transformations is investigated. Through this interdisciplinary approach, this study offers new insights into the compositional intent and interpretive possibilities of Tchaikovsky’s work. The presented results of the musicology, literary, computational, and linguistic analyses complement the few scholarly studies aimed at unveiling the intriguing metaphors and connections of the Children’s Album, which tend to remain in the shadows of his larger-scale piano and symphonic works. Full article

In Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece, Hölderlin introduces two narrative planes: the description of action and the reflection (or memory) of past events. The transition between these points of view is facilitated by the extensive use of metaphor. This paper examines Hölderlin’s use of metaphorical language through Plato’s conception of beauty as a link between the sensible and intelligible worlds and Kant’s notion of the “aesthetic idea” as an imaginative representation that “occasions much thinking” (viel zu denken veranlasst). This analysis shows how both sources constitute the theoretical framework for the construction of a New Mythology, as outlined in Das älteste Systemprogramm des deutschen Idealismus. Full article

Throughout history, societies have encountered numerous crises—including economic, ecological, political, warfare, and pandemics—that frequently intersect with architecture. These crises impose challenges and present new opportunities, necessitating a reexamination of architectural theory and practice. Architecture is compelled to navigate both external pressures of societal crises and internal epistemological dilemmas within its disciplinary framework, fostering innovative interpretative models. This study reconceptualizes crises as alternative analytical tools that advance architectural epistemology by adopting the metaphor of kriserion, a noun derived from the Greek language that meets the meaning of the word sieve in modern English language, drawn from the etymological origins of the term crisis, to investigate the production of architectural episteme. Focusing on tectonic theory, the research employs content and discourse analyses to scrutinize a corpus of texts, thereby identifying a selection representative of each sieve (kriserion) within this domain. The investigation engages with seminal works by figures such as C. Bötticher, G. Semper, E. Sekler, K. Frampton, M. Frascari, V. Gregotti, P. H. Kirkegaard, and I. K. Andersson, whose contributions have shaped the discourse on architectural tectonics. By offering a perspective on crisis as a tool in architectural epistemic production and introducing the crisis–tectonic intersection, this study demonstrates how architectural epistemology evolves from dichotomies to relationships and opens possibilities for interpretations. Full article

Amidst the centenary reflections on Franz Kafka’s legacy, this article explores his work’s ongoing resonance with the digital age, particularly through the lens of generative AI and cloud computation. Anchored in a close reading of Kafka’s “Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer”, this study interrogates how the spatial and temporal codes embedded in the narrative parallel the architectures of contemporary diffusion systems at the heart of AI models. Engaging with critical theory, media archaeology, and AI discourse, this article argues that the rise of large language models not only commodifies language but also recasts Kafka’s allegorical critiques of bureaucratic opacity and imperial command structures within a digital framework. The analysis leverages concepts like Kittler’s code, Benjamin’s figural cloud, and Hamacher’s linguistic dissemblance to position Kafka’s parables as proto-critical tools for examining AI’s black-box nature. Ultimately, the piece contends that Kafka’s text is less a metaphor for our technological present than a mirror reflecting the epistemological crises engendered by the collapse of semantic transparency in the era of algorithmic communication. This reframing invites a rethinking of how narrative, code, and digital architectures intersect, complicating our assumptions about clarity, control, and the digital regimes shaping contemporary culture. Full article

As user interactions on online social platforms increase, so does the public’s concern over the exposure of user privacy data. However, ordinary users often lack a clear and intuitive understanding of how their personal online information flows and how algorithms are involved in this process. We have developed a design to address this issue that visualizes data algorithms and transmission based on data collection and analysis. The primary contribution of this work is an innovative approach that uses metaphorical visual language to represent the flow of user data, algorithms, and information. It also aims to present these concepts interactively, allowing users to gain a more vivid understanding of the dynamic changes in their personal data. This participatory and interactive design seeks to provide users, as well as various stakeholders, an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between online society, privacy data boundaries, and users’ rights to be informed. Full article

This paper investigates the developmental trajectory of the debate concerning the nature of religious language, particularly the contrast between its literal and metaphorical dimensions, situating it within the broader context of linguistic, philosophical, and theological scholarship. Drawing on contemporary research, it offers a critical evaluation of three major approaches, with a detailed analysis of one in particular. The first two approaches, literalism and metaphoricism, are critiqued for their reductionist frameworks, which fundamentally erode the multifaceted nature of this discourse. The third approach, while avoiding these reductionist pitfalls, still calls for further clarification of the mechanisms underlying the interplay between these elements. Through conceptual analysis and grammatical examination, it demonstrates that this proposal, which posits a dynamic interaction—where neither dimension is subordinate to the other, but rather, they paradoxically coexist—yields a more accurate account. The findings suggest that this dialectical approach surpasses the conventional treatment of the literal–metaphorical nexus, proposing that religious language is not only communicative and comprehensible but also an evolving process in which grammatical perplexity fosters semantic depth and intellectual insight. Full article

Film, as a medium, serves not only as a significant source of entertainment but also as a powerful instrument in shaping attitudes, beliefs, behaviours, social norms, and identities. Since its inception, cinematic art has been closely intertwined with religious themes, with many film narratives drawing implicitly or explicitly from biblical texts and religious traditions. Consequently, theologians and ecclesiastical authorities were quick to identify film as a potential locus theologicus. Given film’s ability to spark debates on deeply ingrained views and beliefs, feminist theology, which critically reflects on gender power relations within religious communities and theological texts, finds it intriguing to explore how cinematic narratives can challenge the millennia-old depiction of God as a man. This article aims to examine how the art of cinema contributes to theological reflections on the female metaphors of God, particularly through female Christ-figures and God-figures, which occasionally appear in films such as Chocolat, All That Jazz, Always, Dogma, and The Shack. These characters defy traditional religious language, which often employs masculine imagery and metaphors for God, portraying female God as an independent chocolatier, a single mother, an elegant hairdresser, a beautiful young seductress, a curvaceous African American bread maker, and a witty, clownish girl. In these cinematic depictions, female God is compassionate, empathetic, kind, witty, forgiving, and profoundly in love with her human creations. At the same time, all of these female characters are powerful, assertive, strong, and self-confident. Full article

Background. The left and right temporoparietal junctions (TPJs) are two brain areas involved in several brain networks, largely studied for their diverse roles, from attentional orientation to theory of mind and, recently, predictive processing. In predictive processing, one crucial concept is prior precision, that is, the reliability of the predictions of incoming stimuli. This has been linked with modulations of alpha power as measured with electrophysiological techniques, but TPJs have seldom been studied in this framework. Methods. The present article investigates, using magnetoencephalography, whether spontaneous oscillations in pre-stimulus alpha power in the left and right TPJs can modulate brain responses during a linguistic task that requires predictive processing in literal and non-literal sentences. Results. Overall, results show that pre-stimulus alpha power in the rTPJ was associated with post-stimulus responses only in the left superior temporal gyrus, while lTPJ pre-stimulus alpha power was associated with post-stimulus activity in Broca’s area, left middle temporal gyrus, and left superior temporal gyrus. Conclusions. We conclude that both the right and left TPJs have a role in linguistic prediction, involving a network of core language regions, with differences across brain areas and linguistic conditions that can be parsimoniously explained in the context of predictive processing. Full article

Natural language inference (NLI) is a fundamental and quite challenging task in natural language processing, requiring efficient methods that are able to determine whether given hypotheses derive from given premises. In this paper, we apply explainability techniques to natural-language-inference methods as a means to illustrate the decision-making procedure of its methods. First, we investigate the performance and generalization capabilities of several transformer-based models, including BERT, ALBERT, RoBERTa, and DeBERTa, across widely used datasets like SNLI, GLUE Benchmark, and ANLI. Then, we employ stacking-ensemble techniques to leverage the strengths of multiple models and improve inference performance. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements of the ensemble models in inference tasks, highlighting the effectiveness of stacking. Specifically, our best-performing ensemble models surpassed the best-performing individual transformer by 5.31% in accuracy on MNLI-m and MNLI-mm tasks. After that, we implement LIME and SHAP explainability techniques to shed light on the decision-making of the transformer models, indicating how specific words and contextual information are utilized in the transformer inferences procedures. The results indicate that the model properly leverages contextual information and individual words to make decisions but, in some cases, find difficulties in inference scenarios with metaphorical connections which require deeper inferential reasoning. Full article