Suchergebnisse

International audience ; Bilingual and monolingual dictionaries are mainly used by students as reference resources and are generally appreciated for their apparent simplicity of use and their efficiency, in particular concerning the immediacy of the results. Nevertheless, and maybe for these same reasons, they are very often underexploited by the users. With the democratization of innovative technologies, the consultation of corpora offers new possibilities and perspectives to second language learners. Numerous studies have shown the importance of corpus exploitation both at the level of the development of autonomy and of the linguistic awareness of the learners. Based on these reports, the present article describes a comparative study using a bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary and a generic corpus to identify and understand certain items such as uncountable nouns in English. The experiment took place in a University Institute of Technology in France with the cooperation of students in the first year of Commercial Marketing. This work looks at the students' linguistic awareness according to the use of these three resources. The results of the study invite critical reflection on the means to be developed for effective practices of observation and intake of language by ESP learners. ; Les dictionnaires bilingue et unilingue sont principalement utilisés par les étudiants comme ressources de références et particulièrement appréciés pour leur apparente simplicité d'utilisation et leur efficacité, notamment l'immédiateté des résultats. Pourtant et peut-être pour ces mêmes raisons, ils sont bien souvent sous-exploités par les utilisateurs. Avec la démocratisation de technologies innovantes, la consultation sur corpus offre de nouvelles possibilités et perspectives aux apprenants d'une langue seconde (L2). De nombreuses études témoignent de l'importance du travail sur corpus tant au niveau du développement de l'autonomie que de la conscience linguistique des apprenants. Partant de ces constats, le présent ...

International audience ; Bilingual and monolingual dictionaries are mainly used by students as reference resources and are generally appreciated for their apparent simplicity of use and their efficiency, in particular concerning the immediacy of the results. Nevertheless, and maybe for these same reasons, they are very often underexploited by the users. With the democratization of innovative technologies, the consultation of corpora offers new possibilities and perspectives to second language learners. Numerous studies have shown the importance of corpus exploitation both at the level of the development of autonomy and of the linguistic awareness of the learners. Based on these reports, the present article describes a comparative study using a bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary and a generic corpus to identify and understand certain items such as uncountable nouns in English. The experiment took place in a University Institute of Technology in France with the cooperation of students in the first year of Commercial Marketing. This work looks at the students' linguistic awareness according to the use of these three resources. The results of the study invite critical reflection on the means to be developed for effective practices of observation and intake of language by ESP learners. ; Les dictionnaires bilingue et unilingue sont principalement utilisés par les étudiants comme ressources de références et particulièrement appréciés pour leur apparente simplicité d'utilisation et leur efficacité, notamment l'immédiateté des résultats. Pourtant et peut-être pour ces mêmes raisons, ils sont bien souvent sous-exploités par les utilisateurs. Avec la démocratisation de technologies innovantes, la consultation sur corpus offre de nouvelles possibilités et perspectives aux apprenants d'une langue seconde (L2). De nombreuses études témoignent de l'importance du travail sur corpus tant au niveau du développement de l'autonomie que de la conscience linguistique des apprenants. Partant de ces constats, le présent ...

Синтетический образ речи, найденный В. Путиным, пользуется неоспоримой популярностью и тиражируется в выступлениях других политиков и руководителей государства. Темп управленческой коммуникации возрос за счет усиления роли устной сферы общения, а также благодаря использованию метатекстовых средств, традиционных для научного стиля речи, организующих фактическую информацию и последовательность представления тем. Этапы развития дискурса власти маркируются метатекстом, квалифицирующим действия, фиксирующим фазы начало, продолжение, конец отдельного действия или всего проекта, указывающим на переход от одного эпизода к другому. Логические средства связи в речи Д. Медведева представлены шире, чем в устной речи других руководителей. В. Путин реже характеризует этапы развития мысли, его речь направлена к анализу предмета речи, к логике основных элементов, составляющих содержание. Любопытное соотношение элементов волюнтативности управленческого стиля и объективности научного можно назвать особенностью речи руководителя государства, что в меньшей степени свойственно для В. Путина и в большей для Д. Медведева. В связи с тем что этот подстиль обслуживает разные области деятельности (культура, учеба, торговля, сельское хозяйство, различные отрасли промышленности), в речи руководителя государства находит применение самая разнообразная терминология. В речи руководителей наблюдается тенденция к использованию средств выразительности (словоупотребительного и синтаксического уровней), средств учительной и убеждающей аргументации, приемов эмоционального воздействия и убеждения, которые раньше в языке власти наблюдались редко, были свойственны скорее политическому дискурсу. ; The synthetic image of the speech found v. Putin, is much sought after and duplicated in speeches of other politicians and heads of the state. Rate of administrative communication increased due to strengthening of a role of the spoken sphere of communication, and also thanks to the metatext means traditional for scientific style of the speech, organizing the actual information and sequence of representation of subjects. Stages of development of a discourse of the power are marked by the metatext qualifying actions, fixing phases the beginning, continuation, the end separate action or all project, indicating transition from one episode to another. Logical means of communication are presented in D. Medvedev's speech more widely, than in speech of other heads. v. Putin characterizes stages of development of thought less often, his speech is directed to the analysis of a subject of the speech, to logic of the basic elements making the contents. Scientific it is possible to call a curious ratio of elements of a voluntativenece of administrative style and objectivity feature of the speech of the head of the state that to a lesser extent it is peculiar for v. Putin and in bigger for D. Medvedev. Because this substyle serves different spheres of activity (culture, study, trade, agriculture, various industries), in the speech of the head of the state the most various terminology finds application. In the speech of heads the tendency to use of means of expressiveness (linguistic and syntactic levels), means of the teaching and convincing argument, methods of emotional influence and belief which in language of the power were observed earlier seldom is observed, were peculiar to rather political discourse.

В статье анализируются материалы предвыборной агитационной кампании 2016, размещенные на страницах «Российской газеты» и «Областной газеты» (Екатеринбург). Основное внимание уделено текстам предвыборных программ партии власти «Единая Россия» и партии «Коммунисты России», впервые участвующей в выборах. Предмет анализа речевые средства выражения ценностных предпочтений. Электорат «Единой России» все граждане страны. Доказано, что в тексте программы стратегически задана ориентация на базовые ценности, неподвластные социальным катаклизмам. Выявлена внутритекстовая парадигма ментально специфических номинаций-интегрем, описаны отличающиеся человекоцентричностью аксиологические суждения и установки. Для лингвоаксиологической интерпретации выделены лексемы и формульные сочетания, семантика которых отражает приверженность партии идеям рыночной экономики. Специально исследуются речевые средства выражения идей, составляющих основу «новой философии» внешней политики. Доказано, что единицы советского лексикона используются по типу вкрапления, а стилистический облик агитационной кампании отличается доминированием аксиологического консерватизма, от которого демонстративно дистанцируется партия «Коммунисты России», противопоставляющая себя всем другим политическим силам. Электорат партии россияне, сохранившие верность сталинским принципам общественного устройства. В ходе анализа охарактеризованы опознавательные вербальные знаки политического языка советской эпохи, реализованные в тексте предвыборной программы, выявлена базовая оппозиция «капитализм социализм», отражающая биполярное восприятие мира средствами тоталитарного языка. Выделены грани идеологического радикализма советского образца: бескомпромиссность, признание единственно верным учения Ленина Сталина, открытое использование в агитационных целях образа врага, конструирование упрощенной модели текущего времени, устремленного в советское прошлое, идеологический примитивизм. ; The research data are the articles devoted to election propaganda of 2016 published in "Rossiyskaya Gazeta" and "Oblastnaya Gazeta" (Ekaterinburg). Main attention is paid to the texts of election programs of the ruling party "United Russia" and the party "Communists of Russia", the latter participates in the elections for the first time. The subject of the analysis is verbal means of expression of valuable preferences. The electorate of the "United Russia" are all citizens of the country. It is proved that the strategy of the program is based on the main values that are not affected by the social cataclysms. The textual paradigm of mentally specific nominations is revealed; human-centered axiological judgment and views are described. Lexemes and word-combinations, whose semantics reflects commitment of the party to the ideas of market economy are allocated for special lingo-axiological interpretation. The verbal means of expression of the ideas that form the basis of the "new philosophy" of foreign policy are analyzed. It is proved that the Soviet vocabulary units are used to add the election campaign certain stylistic coloring, which is characterized by axiological conservatism. The party "Communist Russia" tries to stay apart from it, instead it opposes itself to all the other political forces. Electorate of the party are the Russians who have remained faithful to the Stalin principles of a social system. During the analysis we characterized the identification verbal marks of political language of the Soviet era that appear in the text of the election program, we also revealed the basic opposition "capitalism socialism", reflecting bipolar perception of the world by means of totalitarian language. The types of ideological radicalism of the Soviet era are allocated: uncompromising stand, acceptance of Lenin Stalin ideology as the only truth, frequent use of the enemy image in the propaganda purposes, construction of the simplified model of the current time directed in the Soviet past and ideological primitivism.

For more than a century, research has focused on bilingual language acquisition (Ronjat, 1913; Volterra & Taeschner, 1978; De Houwer, 1990, 2009; Tabouret-Keller, 2011, for a review) and, more recently, on factors influencing metalinguistic capacities development in bilingual children, in particular in the field of syntax (Davidson et al., 2010; Simard et al., 2011; Carrey Siu & Connie Ho, 2020, e.g.). On the one hand, research indicates the influence of interlinguistic transfers on the metasyntactic capacities of bilinguals (Foursha-Stevenson & Nicoladis, 2011). On the other hand, research suggests that family language policies influence the development of metalinguistic awareness in bilingual children (King & Fogle, 2013). From a sociocognitive transdisciplinary perspective combining psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics, this research is interested in the manifestation of consciousness and metasyntactic skills in 9/10 years old French-Norwegian children. Its purpose is to assess whether and how their bilingualism influences the mode of organization, access and use of their metasyntactic skills in reading comprehension. Following a mixed-method research design, data was collected with the participation of 33 mixed couples and their bilingual French-Norwegian child. The children attend the Oslo French School in CM2 and parents report using the one-person-one-language strategy with their child. To collect data on transfers, children took a grammaticality judgment test written in French and containing errors due to Norwegian syntactic calque. Then, 13 of them had a semi-structured interview in which they explained their answers. A group of children only exposed to French from birth also took the test in France. In addition, to collect data on parental language policies, each parent answered a questionnaire. Answers to the test were crossed with both the data from the parental questionnaire and those from the interviews with the children. Test results show existence of syntactic transfers when errors come from use of a preposition. Children's metasyntactic discourse confirms this result and indicates that family language practices and school discourse influence metasyntactic skills which are also weakened by interlinguistic transfers. Presence of interlinguistic transfers also influences degree of awareness, depending on whether it is metasyntactic, interlinguistic or multilingual. The children's metasyntactic awareness is observed in discourse, in overlaps of cognitive-linguistic speech-production times and in a slowdown in the actualization of explanatory discourse due to speech errors or slips. Regarding family language policies, results indicate that the more the couple uses the "one person-one language" strategy, the better the metasyntactic skills. In addition, the results show associations between the level of metasyntactic skills in children and the couple's composition, the couple's representations regarding language contacts, and the parental corrective practices of the child's bilingual speech. Moreover, according to Norwegian parents, if their child separates both languages properly, the child has better proficiency in both French and Norwegian. ; Depuis plus d'un siècle, la recherche s'est intéressée à l'acquisition bilingue du langage (Ronjat, 1913 ; Volterra & Taeschner, 1978 ; De Houwer, 1990, 2009 ; Tabouret-Keller, 2011, pour une revue) et, plus récemment, aux facteurs intervenant dans le développement de capacités métalinguistiques chez les enfants bilingues, notamment dans le domaine de la syntaxe (Davidson et al., 2010 ; Simard et al., 2011 ; Carrey Siu & Connie Ho, 2020, par exemple). D'une part, certains constatent l'influence de transferts interlinguistiques sur les capacités métasyntaxiques des bilingues (Foursha-Stevenson & Nicoladis, 2011). D'autre part, la recherche suggère que les politiques linguistiques familiales influencent le développement de la conscience métalinguistique chez les enfants bilingues (King & Fogle, 2013).Dans une perspective transdisciplinaire sociocognitive associant psycholinguistique et sociolinguistique, cette recherche s'intéresse à la manifestation de la conscience et des compétences métasyntaxiques chez des enfants franco-norvégiens âgés de 9/10 ans. Sa problématique est de savoir si leur bilinguisme influence le mode d'organisation, l'accès et l'usage de leurs compétences métasyntaxiques en situation de compréhension écrite ; et si oui, comment. Pour ce faire, une méthodologie mixte a été utilisée. Les données ont été collectées avec la participation de 33 couples mixtes et leur enfant bilingue franco-norvégien. Les enfants sont scolarisés à l'école française d'Oslo au CM2 et les parents déclarent utiliser la stratégie « une personne-une langue » avec leur enfant. Pour collecter des données sur les transferts, les enfants ont passé un test de jugement de grammaticalité écrit en français et comportant des erreurs dues au calque syntaxique norvégien puis, 13 d'entre eux ont passé un entretien semi-directif dans lequel ils ont expliqué leurs réponses. Un groupe composé d'enfants uniquement exposé au français depuis leur naissance a aussi passé le test en France. Par ailleurs, pour collecter des données sur les politiques linguistiques parentales, chaque parent a répondu à un questionnaire. Les réponses au test ont été croisées à la fois avec les données du questionnaire parental et celles des entretiens avec les enfants.Les résultats du test montrent l'existence de transferts syntaxiques quand les erreurs viennent de l'usage d'une préposition. Les discours métasyntaxiques des enfants confirment ce résultat et indiquent que les pratiques langagières familiales et les discours scolaires influencent les compétences métasyntaxiques qui sont aussi affaiblies par les transferts interlinguistiques. Ils influent également le degré de conscientisation, selon qu'elle est métasyntaxique, interlinguistique ou plurilingue. La conscientisation métasyntaxique de l'enfant s'observe en discours dans les chevauchements des temps cognitivo-linguistiques et par un ralentissement de l'actualisation des énoncés explicatifs dû aux ratages de la parole. Au sujet des politiques linguistiques familiales, les résultats indiquent que plus le couple utilise la stratégie « une personne-une langue », meilleures sont les compétences métasyntaxiques. Par ailleurs, les résultats montrent des associations entre le niveau de compétences métasyntaxiques et la composition du couple, les représentations du couple à propos des contacts de langues, les pratiques correctives parentales du parler bilingue enfantin et le fait que, pour les parents norvégiens, si leur enfant sépare bien les langues, il les maitrise mieux. ; I over hundre år har forskningen interessert seg for tospråklig tilegnelse av språk (se for eksempel Ronjat, 1913; Volterra & Taeschner, 1978; De Houwer, 1990, 2009; Tabouret-Keller, 2011). I den senere tid er søkelyset rettet mot faktorer som har innflytelse på metaspråklig kompetanseutvikling hos tospråklige barn, særlig når det gjelder syntaks (for eksempel Davidson et al., 2010; Simard et al., 2011; Carrey Siu & Connie Ho, 2020). Det er blant annet gjort observasjoner av interlingvistiske overføringer i metaspråklige ferdigheter hos tospråklige (Foursha-Stevenson & Nicoladis, 2011). Videre antydes det gjennom forskning at den metaspråklige bevissthet hos tospråklige barn påvirkes av familiens språkpolitikk (King & Fogle, 2013).Denne studien undersøker forekomsten av metasyntaktisk bevissthet og kompetanse hos fransk-norske barn i alderen 9-10 år i et sosiokognitivt transdisiplinært perspektiv, som kombinerer psykolingvistisk- og sosiolingvistiske tradisjoner. Problemstillingen går ut på å undersøke om barnas tospråklighet påvirker deres bruk av, tilgang til og organisering av metasyntaktiske ferdigheter i deres leseforståelse, og i så fall hvordan dette skjer.Det ble i studien benyttet blandet metode, der data fra 33 familier ble samlet inn. Foreldrene i disse familiene kommer fra ulik språklig og/eller kulturell bakgrunn, og barna er tospråklige; norsk og fransk. Barna er elever på femte trinn (CM2), ved den franske skole i Oslo, og foreldrene oppgir at de bruker en-person-ett-språk strategi sammen med barnet. I datainnsamlingen som omhandlet overføringer, gjennomførte barna en franskspråklig grammatikalsk skriftlig prøve, som inneholdt feil basert på norsk syntaks. Deretter ble det gjennomført semistrukturerte intervju med 13 av informantene, der de begrunnet svarene sine. Den samme testen ble utført av en gruppe franskspråklige barn i Frankrike. Videre svarte foreldrene på en spørreundersøkelse om familiens språkpolitikk. Svarene på den skriftlige prøven ble kryss-sjekket med data både fra foreldrenes spørreundersøkelse og de semistrukturerte intervjuene.Resultatene fra testen viser forekomsten av syntaktiske overføringer når feilene kommer fra bruken av preposisjoner. Barnas metasyntaktiske tale bekrefter dette resultatet, og indikerer at familiens språkpraksis, og skolediskursen påvirker deres metasyntaktiske ferdigheter. Videre vet vi at de metasyntaktiske ferdigheter også er svekket av lingvistiske overføringer, som i tillegg er svekket av interlingvistiske overføringer. Dette påvirker også graden av bevissthet, avhengig av om den er metasyntaktisk, interlingvistisk eller flerspråklig. Barnets metasyntaktiske bevissthet observeres i tale med overlapp mellom det kognitiv-lingvistiske og reduksjon i aktualiseringen av eksplikative utsagn som følge av talefeil. Når det gjelder familiens språkpolitikk, indikerer resultatet at jo mer foreldreparet bruker en-person-ett-språk som strategi, desto bedre blir de metasyntaktiske ferdighetene. Videre viser resultatene sammenhenger mellom nivåene av metasyntaktiske ferdigheter, foreldreparets sammensetning, foreldreparets forestilling i forhold til språkkontakter, og gjennom hvordan de retter barnas tospråklige tale. Resultatene viser også at norske foreldre tenker at hvis barna skiller godt mellom språkene, behersker barnet språket bedre.

This article examines the linguistic landscape of Manila during a protest march in November 2016 in response to the burial of deposed president Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes' Cemetery). This article is situated among linguistic landscape of protest research (Kasanga, 2014; Seals, 2011; Shiri, 2015) where data is composed of mobile posters, placards, banners, and other "unfixed" signs, including texts on bodies, t-shirts, umbrellas, and rocks. Following Sebba (2010), this article argues that both "fixed" linguistic landscape and "mobile" public texts are indices of the linguistic composition of cities, linguistic diversity, and ethnolinguistic vitality (Landry & Bourhis, 1997). Through a qualitative analysis of selected pictures produced during the protest march and uploaded onto social media, the multilingual nature of Manila is rendered salient and visible, albeit temporarily, and strategies of dissent are reflective of the language of the millennials who populated the protests.

The Soviet semi-official sphere is defined as a special type of semantic device presupposed the modulatively realized transition into another modality and state with proection to the approached social benefit-optimum achivement. There are revealed signs and special features of the characterized semantic field. The modulative transition principles and criteria are distinguished, which supposes tone, sense, emotion and modality exponents. There are defined semantic parameters introduced paradigmatics of analized units in their integrity and relation to the propaganda actions. The attention is drawn to the Soviet pathos specific features in their unity of wholeness and components. The modulative description principles of the units realised this sphere are outlined. The field of linguistic using and manifestation represented gives an opportunity to see not always experienced consequenses of political language in their directively organized systematizm ; Патетическая сфера советского официоза определяется как особый тип семантического устройства, предполагающего модулятивно осуществляемый переход в иную модальность и состояние, с проекцией к достижению приближаемого социального блага-оптимума. Выявляются признаки и особенности характеризуемой семантической области. Выделяются принципы и критерии модулятивного перехода, предполагающего тоновые, смысловые, эмоциональные и модальностные показатели. Выводятся семантические параметры, дающие представление о парадигматике разбираемых единиц в их единстве и отношении к пропагандистскому действию. Внимание обращается на специфику советского пафоса в единстве целого и составляющих. Намечаются принципы модулятивного описания воплощающих его единиц. Представленная область языкового использования и проявления дает возможность увидеть не всегда ощущаемые следствия языка политики в их направленно организованном систематизме.

Патетическая сфера советского официоза определяется как особый тип семантического устройства, предполагающего модулятивно осуществляемый переход в иную модальность и состояние, с проекцией к достижению приближаемого социального блага-оптимума. Выявляются признаки и особенности характеризуемой семантической области. Выделяются принципы и критерии модулятивного перехода, предполагающего тоновые, смысловые, эмоциональные и модальностные показатели. Выводятся семантические параметры, дающие представление о парадигматике разбираемых единиц в их единстве и отношении к пропагандистскому действию. Внимание обращается на специфику советского пафоса в единстве целого и составляющих. Намечаются принципы модулятивного описания воплощающих его единиц. Представленная область языкового использования и проявления дает возможность увидеть не всегда ощущаемые следствия языка политики в их направленно организованном систематизме. ; The Soviet semi-official sphere is defined as a special type of semantic device presupposed the modulatively realized transition into another modality and state with proection to the approached social benefit-optimum achivement. There are revealed signs and special features of the characterized semantic field. The modulative transition principles and criteria are distinguished, which supposes tone, sense, emotion and modality exponents. There are defined semantic parameters introduced paradigmatics of analized units in their integrity and relation to the propaganda actions. The attention is drawn to the Soviet pathos specific features in their unity of wholeness and components. The modulative description principles of the units realised this sphere are outlined. The field of linguistic using and manifestation represented gives an opportunity to see not always experienced consequenses of political language in their directively organized systematizm

Part 2: Process Modeling ; International audience ; Today's business processes have to address many, complex requirements. Mass customization leads to personalized, contextual products being offered by governments and enterprises and, as a result, the business processes for selling and offering these products are divers and contextual as well. At the same time, regulations in the area of compliance and a growing rate of change introduce additional complexity. These developments pose major challenges to the field of business process modeling. Conventional process modeling, in terms of activities and the flow they are executed in, has proven to lead to complex and often rigid business processes.In this paper, we present our experiences with specifying business processes based on activities and their pre and post conditions instead of flow. The resulting business processes are flexible: they allow knowledge workers to influence their own process and they do not require the explicit modeling of flows to deal with exceptions and switching between straight through and human processing.Our formalism facilitates an agile modeling process. The formalism helps involving business users in modeling as it can be expressed well into natural language. Furthermore, it allows for separation of concerns in modeling by having an algorithm consolidate the different areas of requirements into an executable business process. Analysts can focus on modeling the different concerns and are no longer required to manually consolidate all the requirements into a business process that is believed to address all of them.

Joseph C. Neal pioneered the urban frontier of the Old Northeast in depicting what he called "hard cases" from the Philadelphia slums in the long-overlooked Charcoal Sketches, first published in book form in 1838. His characters' inability to change with the times, their false and vulnerable toughness, and their urban vernacular language look forward to the humor of Mark Twain, political commentators, and radio and TV sitcoms. In Neal's work, the cash economy, the lightly ironic euphuistic character study, and metaphors of the city are used to describe the new social and ethical paradoxes of the urban-industrial world already emerging in the urban Northeast in his time.

Статья посвящена специфике использования метафоры в политической прессе, посвященной оценке политического лидера. В данном исследовании рассматривается роль метафоры как важного механизма обогащения и совершенствования языковой картины мира. В центре внимания при анализе особенностей использования метафоры в современной британской и американской публицистике находится прагматическая семантика политического текста.The article deals with the use of metaphor in mass media, portraying and evaluating some particular political leaders. It is devoted to the role of metaphor as an important tool in creating language picture of the world. The investigation focuses on the role of metaphor in pragmatic semantics of political journalism in the UK and the USA.

The riots in Stockholm in May 2013 were an event that reverberated in the world media for its dimension of violence that had spreadthrough the Swedish capital. In this study we have investigated the role of social media in creating media phenomena via text miningand natural language processing. We have focused on two channels of communication for our analysis: Twitter and Poloniainfo.se(Forum of Polish community in Sweden). Our preliminary results show some hot topics driving discussion related mostly to SwedishPolice and Swedish Politics by counting word usage. Typical features for media intervention are presented. We have built networks ofmost popular phrases, clustered by categories (geography, media institution, etc.). Sentiment analysis shows negative connotation withPolice. The aim of this preliminary exploratory quantitative study was to generate questions and hypotheses, which we could carefullyfollow by deeper more qualitative methods.

An exploration of the ways that shifting relations between materiality and language bring about different forms of politics in TehranIn Revolution of Things, Kusha Sefat traces a dynamism between materiality and language that sheds light on how the merger of the two permeates politics. To show how shifting relations between things and terms form the grounds for different modes of action, Sefat reconstructs the political history of postrevolutionary Iran at the intersection of everyday objects and words. Just as Islamism fashioned its own objects in Tehran during the 1980s, he explains, tyrannical objects generated a distinct form of Islamism by means of their material properties; everyday things from walls to shoes to foods were active political players that helped consolidate the Islamic Republic. Moreover, President Rafsanjani's "liberalization" in the 1990s was based not merely on state policies and post-Islamist ideologies but also on the unlikely things—including consumer products from the West—that engendered and sustained "liberalism" in Tehran.Sefat shows how provincial vocabularies transformed into Islamist and post-Islamist discourses through the circulation of international objects. The globalization of objects, he argues, was constitutive of the different forms that politics took in Tehran, with each constellation affording and foreclosing distinct modes of agency. Sefat's intention is not to alter historical facts about the Islamic Republic but to show how we can rethink the matter of those facts. By bringing the recent "material turn" into conversation with the canons of structural analysis, poststructuralist theory, sociolinguistics, and Middle East Studies, Sefat offers a unique perspective on Iran's revolution and its aftermath

This paper presents and analyses interviews held with decision-makers and actors involved in cross-border cooperation in the Greater Region, exploring the difficulties and constraints of the collaboration. In addition to problems caused by the different languages, administrative cultures and variations in the tasks and jurisdictions of the individual partners, the organisation of the Greater Region is also mentioned as a hindrance. Yet many difficulties concerning cooperation are minimised and in some cases overcome by the high level of commitment of the individuals active in crossborder cooperation. The paper concludes with recommendations to improve the working methods of cross-border cooperation.