Search Results (47)

Language ideologies about gendered linguistic behaviour are crucial in shaping expectations and metapragmatic judgements on politeness. This study focused on how gender and language ideologies reinforce normative assumptions about the relationship between gender and (im)politeness and at the same time influence individuals’ perception of (im)politeness. Based on data collected from 251 respondents through online questionnaires administered between July 2024 and January 2025, the study investigated whether certain linguistic choices tend to be stereotypically associated with a particular gender and if the same utterance is evaluated differently depending on whether it is attributed to a man or a woman. Participants’ responses revealed systematic associations between linguistic forms and perceived gender, indicating that direct requests were more often linked to male speakers, while indirect or mitigated forms were associated with female speakers. Findings also showed that in 17 out of 19 cases, the same utterance was rated as more polite when attributed to a woman, suggesting that among Russian-speaking participants politeness was not only expected from women but also more readily perceived in their speech, reinforcing existing gender ideologies and stereotypes. Full article

The design and planning of Western-style constructions during the early Qing Dynasty in China constituted a significant multicultural encounter that fused technological advancement with aesthetic innovation. This cultural interplay is particularly evident in the imperial garden and pavilion projects commissioned by the Qing court, which served as physical and symbolic sites of cross-cultural dialogue. Influenced by the intellectual and artistic movements of the European Renaissance, Western architectural concepts gradually found their way into the spatial and visual language of Chinese architecture, especially within the royal gardens and aristocratic buildings of the time. These structures were not simply imitative but rather represented a selective adaptation of Western ideas to suit Chinese imperial tastes and principles. This article examines the architectural language that emerged from this encounter between Chinese and European cultures, analysing symbolic motifs, spatial design, ornamental aesthetics, the application of linear perspective, and the integration of foreign architectural forms. These elements collectively functioned as tools to construct a unique visual discourse that communicated both political authority and cultural hybridity. The findings underscore that this architectural phenomenon was not merely stylistic imitation, but rather a dynamic convergence of technological knowledge and artistic vision across cultural boundaries. Full article

This paper extends the resource-based view (RBV) of social entrepreneurship by introducing artificial intelligence (AI) as a dynamic, integrative capability that enhances the acquisition and optimization of four foundational forms of capital: human, social, political, and financial. While social ventures have long faced constraints in scaling impact due to resource limitations and institutional barriers, AI technologies—such as predictive analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing—offer new pathways for improving operational efficiency, stakeholder engagement, advocacy strategies, and financial sustainability. Through the development of a conceptual model and a series of theoretical propositions, this study positions AI as a transformative force that not only strengthens individual resource domains but also enables synergistic feedback loops across them. In doing so, the paper contributes to emerging debates on technology adoption in hybrid organizations, scalability in resource-constrained contexts, and the evolution of strategic management theory in the digital age. Practical implications are outlined for social entrepreneurs, policymakers, and funders seeking to responsibly integrate AI into social impact ecosystems, and future research directions are proposed to empirically test the framework across sectors and global settings. Full article

This article utilizes the Zhuangzi’s critical approach to language to expand contemporary discourse on the philosophy of fanaticism beyond the conceptual categories derived from European Enlightenment-era critiques of religious and political fanaticism. Recognizing some of the problematic tendencies that stem from the method of comparison itself, an articulation of a post-comparative paradigm is proposed, which emphasizes approaches from non-Western sources that are not predicated upon the comparison of similarities or differences with Western sources. The main body of this article explicates the Zhuangzi’s critiques of a linguistically and discursively conditioned fanaticism. These critiques focus on the following: (1) the interdependence of binary linguistic terms that constitute shifei discourse; (2) semiotic chains of cascading distinctions that confound attempts to ground shifei judgements; and (3) the relationship between unhealthy forms of language, thought, and anxieties and a discursively conditioned fanaticism. This article concludes with a brief reflection on how the Zhuangzi’s critiques of a linguistically and discursively conditioned fanaticism might open discourse on the philosophy of fanaticism in more ways than by merely adding a token Chinese voice. Full article

Intellectual preferences often align with the broader concept of standardization. The centralizing tendency observed in the sciences mirrors the patterns seen in linguistic standardization, such as the establishment of standard dialects in diverse speech communities. In both cases, there is a deliberate disregard for the complexities of the “lower” systems within the hierarchy and an exaggerated belief in the purity of the dominant system. The process of language standardization involves minimizing linguistic variation, often leading to the marginalization of non-standard varieties and reinforcing social hierarchies by privileging certain forms of language, which can restrict access to opportunities and institutional authority. The hierarchical tendencies observed in both scientific disciplines and linguistic standardization reflect a broader intellectual preference for centralized, “pure” systems, often at the expense of diversity and complexity. This paper explores the relationship between linguistic and scientific standardization, highlighting their influence on knowledge, authority, and social structures. Focusing on the global use of Greco-Latin scientific terminology, it examines both the practical advantages and cultural implications of standardized scientific language. While proponents emphasize its unifying role, critics argue it threatens linguistic purity and cultural identity. Through historical and contemporary debates, the paper argues that standardization serves as both a tool for communication and a contested space reflecting ideological tensions about language, culture, and knowledge. Topics include the politics of language standardization, the globalization of scientific vocabulary, debates on the interlingual lexicon, and the conflict between global communication and Arabic language preservation. Full article

Digitalised relationships expand political participation and promote the inclusion of various social segments, especially young people, who stand out for their digital literacy. Youth digital activism ranges from participation in traditional social movements to influencer actions that combine marketing, advocacy, and identity expressions. This article analyses the repertoire of connective engagement adopted by young social media influencer-activists in Brazil and Portugal. Based on four cases and 87 posts on Instagram, we examined the connective forms that were anchored in affectivity, embodiment, self-image and other discursive and aesthetic strategies that promote engagement. Activists employing diverse languages adapted to algorithmic impositions debate “uncomfortable”, silenced or disruptive topics in an attractive and humorous way. In discursive-affective marks, they generate engagement in a sphere of everyday political sensibilities—infrapolitics. Such actions call for decentred boundaries of conventional political action in order to see the potential of young influencers’ digital activism actions. Full article

This paper recounts the author’s reluctant journey of translating Matthew Fuller and Eyal Weizman’s Investigative Aesthetics: Conflicts and Commons in the Politics of Truth into Japanese, a process that turned out to be a mix of philosophical tightrope walking and comedic pratfalls. Along the way, we meet Baumgarten, the original translator who coined the aesthetica nomenclature, Kant, who insists that there can be no such thing as a science of sensibility, and a parade of Japanese translators who took great artistic liberties in rendering an alien term into a complicated language formed by three layers of different writing systems. The author reflects on his coining of a new translation for “aesthetics” in Japanese—Kansei-Jutsu (“Sensibility-Art”)—a term that baffled publishers, thrilled a few cultural studies scholars, and may have earned a side-eye from beauty salons already using “estetikusu” for facials. The translation saga spirals into debates about what “aesthetics” even means, culminating in a bittersweet realisation: translation is less about getting it right and more about sparking delightful, sometimes ridiculous, new ways of thinking. By the end, aesthetics re-emerges as a celebration of difference, proving that even conflicts can create a strange and wonderful commons when approached with an openness to diverse sensibilities. Full article

As we experience a sudden leap forward with machine learning models put into the decision-making apparatus of the state, social scientists are putting scrutiny on what actually goes into these datasets. Issues of ethics and representational harms are relevant questions that come up in the present day. Against this background, there has been little work thus far, bringing together various trajectories about the interplay between forms of contemporary citizenship and the politics of migration and diversity. Despite the persistent presence of diversity and migration as constructs that shape social relations in modern society, this gap is notable. Given their importance, it is crucial to continue analyzing these factors. This will contribute to more progressive ways of thinking about the relationship between the individual and the state. In this article, I draw attention to the civil registry identity categorizations in The Netherlands to explore some of the complexities surrounding the relationship between digitization and the often absent dynamics in public policy debates about migration and diversity. Drawing on cultural and political themes, I look at the digital as a language that can offer new perspectives on migration. I suggest that technology and its uses may work to enable the state to address and possibly resolve tensions in policy and practice between the intersection of regimes of rights (legal status) and diversity (forms of social cleavages). Full article

When it comes to relations between Thailand (Siam) and Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the Buddhist connections between the two countries are often discussed and are highly valued. Communications between Thai and Sinhalese monks can be traced back to the 13th century: the Sukhothai era. These communications were then continuously maintained in the Ayutthaya era and have been up until the present day. Despite being situated far from each other and being separated by the sea, the people in these countries have been interacting through maritime routes and cooperating with each other regarding religious, cultural, financial, diplomatic, and political matters for centuries. The continuous interactions between the two came to a halt in the 18th century due to political instability in both countries. Only in the middle of the 19th century did Buddhists from the two countries resume their travels and interactions, rebuilding their bilateral relations and cooperation. There are very few studies that provide information regarding the religious cooperation between Siam and Ceylon in the 19th century. Religious cooperation between the two countries in the 19th Century has never been thoroughly studied and presented in detail. The purpose of the research paper is to investigate how Buddhists in these two countries cooperated with each other to achieve continuity and solidarity in Theravada Buddhism in both countries. We will address this question by analyzing the available data, which can mainly be found in the form of letters written in the Pāli language exchanged between Buddhists in the two countries. These letters have been published in Pālisandesāvalī in Sri Lanka and in Samaṇasāsana in Thailand. Full article

The objective of this article is to analyze how the digital space has become a ground for encounters, comparisons, and sometimes even clashes among individuals who increasingly inhabit the Internet, not just as a gateway to consume products, but as a context in which to weave relationships that, in the era of the Metaverse, are no longer to be understood as opposed to face-to-face encounters but rather as a continuation that transcends space–time boundaries. The Internet has become a place where relationships can be formed in various ways, influencing daily life and individual as well as collective existence. This influence now extends across various realms, from recreational encounters to cultural exchanges, and from politics to social interactions. The focus of this article is to analyze relational transformations and consequently how each individual relates to the Internet, both within and outside digital circuits. A state-of-the-art review of digital studies primarily interested in issues related to identity, increasingly showcased on social media, aims to understand how relationships and interactions can be interpreted today. These interactions occur within the screens of devices, disrupting certain stages of each individual’s biographical experience. Knowledge often begins in digital contexts and does not necessarily translate into the “tangible” everyday life, to the extent that the term “Digital Society” no longer surprises but is part of routine language. The synergy between digital and physical spaces calls on the social sciences to carefully analyze the types of relationships we build and how we nurture them amid applications and platforms. Thus, this article explores what friendships and romantic relationships have become in this digital era. It delves into the role of individuals faced with this rapid influx of technology into contemporary society. What is the role of the person in navigating this technological excess? The article aims to shed light on these questions, emphasizing notions such as relationships, identity, complexity, and the individual. Full article

This article intends to examine debt as a basilar political–theological device acting in favor of the neoliberal ethos. The Papal Encyclical Laudato Si affirms in paragraph 52 that debt today serves the control over the poor peoples in the world. In this article we demonstrate how debt can be seen as a political–theological device that works as an instrument of this specific ethos, aligned with neoliberal principles. We intend to show how these elements are related using three analytical movements. In the first, we present how we understand political theology as a critical reflection about the forms of political power. We observe that power, in its form and in the way it operates, replicates the theological–political power status prior to modernity, operating an excluding inclusion machinery. In the second movement, we analyze the political theology machinery that impacts individuals in the operation of an “excluding inclusion”. Under the political–theological machinery, individuals, groups, or populations are considered as a part of the machinery; they are included because they are incorporated in the new organism as they are excluded from their original content—language, ethos, culture, and their constitution as subjects. Then, in the third, we present the notion of the device, explicitly, a device constituted by a web of odd components and flexible relations that, when isolated as independent elements, act in the subject’s formation. In these terms, debt as a device of the political–theological machinery works to form individuals; it is a device that operates the excluding inclusion to make subjects more and more adapted to the market rules and habits. The very sense of debt in the post-productive era is challenged. We present how the possible exits from this machinery involve not only the debate on the forgiveness of foreign debts, but also how they are intrinsically linked to the creation of a new ethos, new ways of life created by relations outside the orbit of debt control. The conclusion intends to show how necessary it is to restore to people new forms of control over a way of life that is not regulated and ruled by debt. The methodology employed analyzes arguments that originated from works and articles concerning this theme. Full article

In recent decades, prominent political theorists have responded to perceived flaws in liberalism by proposing more “radical” forms of democracy. What might a radically democratic state look like? I argue that we can find one answer, counterintuitively, by looking back to the thought of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ secularized theory of language introduces into political life a new way of conceiving human agency, one in which the commonwealth fills not only the negative role of stemming conflict, but the positive task of actualizing self-determination. By collapsing the distance between the true source of man’s politics and the nature of governance, Hobbes inaugurates a tradition of radical democratic thought that seeks to close the oppressive rupture of word and deed, maker and made. Yet rather than diminishing religious experience, Hobbes reconstitutes it in a new, profane, and political form. He invites us to acquire a capacity long reserved for God alone: the power to create human nature itself. Full article

An oeuvre as redolent with the spirit of satire and humor as Percival Everett’s can be said to represent, at the same time, an anthology of humorous devices—a “humorology,” so to speak—and a self-reflexive meditation on the existential, philosophical and/or metaphysical implications of such an attitude to language and life. The Trees (2021) is a book about lynching, in which a series of gruesome murders all allude to the martyrdom of Emmett Till. Even though such subject matter seems antinomic to humor, the novel is rife with it. We propose an examination of the various guises of humor in this text, from wordplay and carnivalesque inversion to the more sinister humour noir, black or gallows humor, and an assessment of their dynamic modus operandi in relation to political satire, literary parody and the expression of the unconscious. The three axes of our analysis of the subversive strategies of the novel will be the poetics of naming, from parody to a form of sublime; the grotesque, macabre treatment of bodies; and the question of affect, the dual tonality of the novel vexingly conjugating the emotional distance and release of humor with a sense of outrage both toned down and exacerbated by ironic indirection. In keeping with the ethos of Menippean satire, humor is, therefore, both medium and message. Full article

This research aims to investigate how to protect workers from discrimination dictated by an algorithm in the contractual conditions. Article 15 of the Italian Workers’ Statute declares invalid any agreement or act aimed at: dismissing a worker, discriminating him in the assignment of qualifications or tasks, transfers, disciplinary measures, or otherwise prejudicing him because of his affiliation or union activity, or his participation in a strike. These provisions shall also apply to pacts or acts for the purposes of political, religious, racial, language, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, or belief. Our work intends to explore the risk of gender or age discrimination in the contractual terms for platform workers in Italy. How can workers’ protections be preserved when decisions are made by an algorithm? The research is conducted with a multidisciplinary methodology. We first analyze both national and international literature and jurisprudence. Then, by means of probit models on INAPP PLUS 2021 survey data, we analyze contract characteristics, in particular the written form of the contract and the hourly minimum wage. Controlling for individual and job characteristics, we find evidence of discrimination according to gender and age of workers. We conclude with policy recommendations. Full article

The paper examines how Hindu nationalist social service organizations, specifically the Deseeya Seva Bharathi (DSB), reconfigured the religious conception of ‘Seva’ to advance the project of constructing a Hindu social identity during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state of Kerala. The southern Indian state of Kerala has remained an exception in the story of the rise of the Hindu nationalist movement in contemporary India, which has repeatedly failed to make any considerable political inroads in the state. However, the disastrous economic consequences and livelihood challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic in the state, which was heavily dependent on foreign remittance and service industries, have opened up new spaces of engagement for Hindu nationalists. Drawing on the fieldwork conducted in central Kerala during the pandemic, this paper will elaborate on how the DSB used the crisis moment of the pandemic to reach out to economically and socially disadvantaged communities using the language of ‘Seva’ to build a Hindu social identity, which imbues the influence of majoritarian Hindu nationalist politics. The paper argues that the DSB’s articulation of ‘Seva’ as a distinct and superior form of social service that is ‘self-less’, ‘non-instrumental’ and ‘non-reciprocal’ is significant in understanding the growing appeal of Hindu nationalist social service in the contested political sphere of Kerala, which is marked by competing social provisions by the state as well as other secular and religious groups. The paper notes that the reconfiguration of ‘Seva’ as a continuous religious concept enables Hindu nationalists to attain greater acceptance and legitimacy that even the secular state welfare could not achieve, while also concealing the inherent instrumental nature of its social service towards the construction of a Hindu social identity in the region. Full article