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The present study aims to analyse the dynamics of land use and land cover in the Melap Forest Reserve in West Cameroon on the basis of a diachronic analysis of Landsat 4 TM, Landsat 7 ETM+ and Landsat 8 OLI_TIRS images for the years 1988, 2000 and 2018 respectively. Satellite images were processed using ENVI and ArcGIS software. The results showed that The Melap Forest Reserve consists of five main classes of land use/land cover; namely, forest, savannah, bare soil, cropland and built-up area. The analysis showed an ongoing deforestation and degradation of the forest. The forest class has been steadily decreasing from 1345 ha in 1988 to 664 ha in 2018, corresponding to a total loss of 680.9 ha (around 49%) over the 30-year period. The decrease in forest has led to an increase in savannah (+ 315 ha from 1988 to 2018); cropland (+ 351 ha); as well as built-up (+ 9 ha) and bare soil (+ 6 ha). The local communities are the main actors of these changes, principally through agriculture, wood extraction and breeding. Then, the present study suggests participatory management, which includes local communities, for the restoration and the management of the study area.

Framed by MCDA, our study examines diachronic changes in gender representation in five New Headway Elementary (NHE) editions. Our findings demonstrate that NHE’s gender representation is establishe...

Frames are indispensable tools for journalists to make sense of unfolding events, but they also constrain their perspective to most readily see what they expect to see. In this study, we examine ho...

During the height of same-sex marriage debate, the authors' research identified as an ideograph. This ideograph was defined synchronically by participants with shared concepts of commitm...

While the sonic logo for McDonald’s i’m lovin’ it campaign has been widely distributed and highly praised, little is known about the actual characteristics and meaning potentials of this particular musical discourse. From the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis, this paper seeks to unravel the discourse of the sonic logo as it appears in a collection of 475 commercials from the first fifteen years of the campaign. By adopting an otherwise rarely found diachronic perspective, the examination reveals how the sonic logo changes over time and thereby produces alternating meaning potentials. To account for these changes, the paper offers the concepts of alteration and adaptation. Based on these concepts, the paper reveals novel insights into how music can perform a determinative role in the multimodal discourse. In addition to the traditional functions of sonic logos, the music serves to engage viewers in appropriating the slogan of the campaign. This process is specified as the production of an emotive, which imply an instigation of an emotional engagement–related to current values and ideologies–beyond the more familiar capacities of music to express and induce emotions.

While the Washington Consensus is one of the most (in)famous economic policy paradigms of recent times, the literature on it still lacks a detailed, diachronic analysis of how it evolved within one...

Patterns and trends of declining reed-beds in four freshwater ecosystems in central Italy are investigated through an aerial orthoimagery-based diachronic analysis over a period of 24 years...

This article investigates how differentiated (e.g. private publishers) and undifferentiated patrons (e.g. the government) exercise ideological control over the selection and the translation of Taoi...

The subject of this paper is the study of the pre-Linnaean herbarium with the inventory number “VII F1 Hortus Botanicus Catinensis” belonging to the Department of Biological, Geological and Environmental Sciences (University of Catania). The volume examined comprises 186 pages (originally 190) with 1–9 specimens on each sheet. The herbarium samples mainly include angiosperms (386), but a few taxa belonging to gymnosperms (1) and pteridophytes (4) are also present. Unfortunately, some specimens are partially or entirely damaged or even missing; nonetheless, it has been possible to identify most of them. As far as the nomenclature is concerned, we find two kinds of handwriting (of which only that of Cupani can be identified), numerous corrections and/or integrations of the polylogus and different types of ink that were used. These elements allow us to state that we are speaking of a herbarium which was prepared by an unknown person and reviewed by Cupani.

This paper discusses the relevance of the distinctions made by Hjelmslev ([1943] 1961), between purport, substance and structure on the one hand, and content and expression on the other, for the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). It is shown that FDG, as a form-oriented theory, shares a number of aspects with Hjelmslev’s model; at the same time, however, it is argued that, as a function-to-form theory, FDG assigns a much more important role to the notion of substance. Three major differences between the two approaches are identified, concerning (i) directionality in the model (between substance and structure), (ii) motivation (of structure on the basis of substance) and (iii) the difference between “structure” (in the form of more or less stable primitives) and “structuring” (as a process). Subsequently, a corpus-based, diachronic analysis of the use, form and development of a number of related binominal noun phrases with the head noun beast (e.g. a beast of a party) is offered to illus...

Through the example of the Arabic translations of Pierre Bourdieu, this article analyses the conditions of the introduction and reception of a sociological thought of French origin in the contemporary Arab intellectual field and, more generally, those of the international circulation of ideas in a postcolonial context. The diachronic analysis reveals the interpenetration of logics of import and export, the differences between intellectual and academic national traditions in various Arab countries, as well as the difficult conditions through which modern works of social sciences are published and circulated in the Arab world. Hence, the general economy of these translations is characterized as selective, didactic and militant, while a foreignizing and at times literalist translational norm – notwithstanding the diversity of the translators’ terminological choices, given the absence of a normative framework – dominates their poetics. The author concludes with an analysis of the Arab translator’s habitus, ch...

Taking as a starting point research carried out in 2000 into the concept of Hispanic identity in Spanish-language newspapers in the city of New York, this article provides a diachronic analysis of these media over the period 2000–2012. In the first study, it was established that Spanish-language newspapers reflected an intercultural dialogue among different Latino groups, thus creating a pan-Hispanic identity. In this article we wish to go a step further and explore whether the Spanish-language newspapers may also reflect, and foster, a second level of intercultural dialogue between the Hispanic and the non-Hispanic communities. In order to carry out this research, a qualitative content analysis approach will be used to study a corpus of issues in two newspapers, El Diario-La Prensa and Hoy. By close reading and observation of the different elements present in them, both textual and visual, we will extract the most relevant aspects and give some examples to show that this second level is present in the me...

SummaryThe purpose of this article is to critically undermine two commonly held and closely related contentions regarding the British idealist tradition. The first is that the British idealist tradition went into rapid and terminal decline shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The second is that J. A. Smith was largely responsible for it. These aims are achieved through a diachronic analysis of Smith's conception of human imperfection as well as an assessment of Smith's intellectual legacy. As this article will show, contrary to the received view, Smith was a philosophical innovator who instigated an intellectual evolution within the British idealist. In particular, this article shows that Smith substituted aspects of his early Greenian philosophy with elements of Italian idealism. As a result, Smith was instrumental in moving British idealism away from its traditional underpinnings and towards more a Croce–Gentilian foundation. It is this neglected philosophical innovation which has given sc...

The present paper offers a synchronic and diachronic analysis of integrated participle clauses or IPCs in English, as found in constructions such as the mayor is busy washing his car or many students had trouble finding the correct answer. Typically, IPCs have developed from adverbial participle clauses into complement clauses. Given their adverbial origins, they can occur as complements to predicates that do not normally take nominal direct objects. Synchronically, criteria are discussed for distinguishing IPCs from adverbial clauses, and it is shown that the distinction between IPCs and adverbial participle clauses is non-discrete. Diachronically, the origins of IPCs are traced, showing that IPCs emerged gradually in the course of the Modern English period. It is argued that initially the primary mechanism of change was (analogically-induced) reanalysis, yet at a later stage IPCs began to assert themselves as a category in its own right, spreading to new contexts through analogical extension. Thus, the discussion illustrates how adverbial clauses can turn into complements, and at the same time shows how a new syntactic (if fuzzy) pattern takes shape. ispartof: Word vol:61 issue:1 pages:39-74 status: published

Investigating spatio-temporal trends in soil vulnerability to degradation based on the diachronic analysis of selected biophysical and socioeconomic drivers is a key issue for the identification of prone areas. The working hypothesis of the present study is that a given territorial system may undergo different (and sometimes contrasting) patterns of soil vulnerability (improvement, worsening or stability) in the long term, thus creating (or amplifying) spatial heterogeneity in land resource distribution. Areas classified as “critical” are regarded as soil vulnerability hotspots that require dedicated mitigation policies. The correct identification of “critical” areas to soil degradation is particularly important for the natural areas and, more generally, for the agro-forest systems preserved under various land protection regimes. Based on these premises, the objectives of this study are (i) to assess the spatial distribution of soil vulnerability in Italy over a long enough time interval (1990–201...

This commentary welcomes the broadening of methods and theories in psychosocial studies evident in this special issue, “Researching the Psychosocial.” Three features are highlighted: the shift to synchronous investigation from the diachronic analysis of cultural sense-making, the focus on the intertwining of affect and discourse, and the opening of new routes to exploring participants’ investments and deep attachments. These new ways of working are briefly contrasted with the turn to affect in cultural studies, traditional psychobiological approaches, fine-grain discursive psychology, and psychoanalytic psychosocial research.

The aim of this work is the diachronic analysis, over the past 60 years, of the vegetation changes in dune environments of a stretch of Tuscan coast. Aerial photos of the years 1954 and 2010 were compared using photointerpretation and GIS software, and phytosociological surveys in the field were carried out. In addition to the spatial dynamics of the identified phytocoenoses, we have analyzed the different degrees of anthropogenic alteration of the examined area by the development of a synthetic index already used in neighboring contexts. The results showed with respect to the past, a deep morphological transformation of the dune system, and a consequent high spatial contraction and fragmentation of psammophilous plant communities. Today, indexed values of anthropogenic alteration, although particularly high especially when compared historically, are mitigated by the marginal and punctiform permanence, in few of those dune areas spared from urban infrastructure, of the main psammophilous plant associations typical of Tyrrhenian coasts.

After the federal reform of 2001, Italian regions have gained greater autonomy in matters of social policy, including immigrant integration. In this paper, we assess frames of immigrant integration in eight Italian regions, i.e. Piedmont, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna in the North, Umbria, Marche and Abruzzi in the Centre, Basilicata and Calabria in the South, against the EU equal treatment and mobility rights-based regime. Through a diachronic analysis of the regions' official documents on immigrants' integration approved in the period 2000–2010, we shall consider: (1) the policy priorities identified and the measures funded and (2) the implementation structures. The analysis points out how the frames of immigrant integration emerging at a regional level shape different geographies of social inclusion which are sometimes openly in contradiction with the EU discourse on equal treatment and mobility rights. Immigration is perceived more as an economic asset for local labour markets' unsatisfied demand for low-...

The purpose of this analysis was to understand how organizational logics of a fundamentally local institution – the US community college – change with shifts in sociospatial scalar relations. Data included a 3.26-million word, diachronic corpus consisting of 165 issues of the Community College Journal from 1960 to 2011. Textual prominence, collocation analysis, and concordance analysis suggest that the community college shifted from a commitment to local democracy to an emphasis on competitiveness in a global economy. Rank order correlations and log-likelihood statistics identify significant trends.

This paper illustrates a procedure aimed at estimating diachronically soil sealing in suburban areas by using cartographical and statistical data. The procedure was applied (1949–2006) to the metropolitan area of Rome (Italy), a Mediterranean city with important land use changes observed during the last fifty years. A total of 1.477 random sites was chosen encompassing the entire investigated area (1.285 km2) and evaluated in terms of sealing condition in 1949, 1990, 1994, 2000, and 2006. Although resident population has been found quite stable since 1970s, the sealed surface area grew rapidly from 8% in 1949 to 26% in 2006. The sealing status of each site was found correlated to the distance from the city centre, while not correlated to the distance from the major roads, railways, and the boundaries of the neighbor protected area. These results suggest that soil sealing in Rome was associated to recent processes of urban sprawl which testify the slow transition from the semi-compact city to a mo...

The New Rhetoric project featured an eleven-year collaboration between Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca and Chaim Perelman, which culminated with their 1958 magnum opus, Traite de l'argumentation: la nouvelle rhetorique. Scholars have long speculated about Olbrechts-Tyteca's role in the New Rhetoric project and her relationship with Chaim Perelman. Building from the work of Barbara Warnick, a synchronic and diachronic analysis of their collaboration yields insight on the nature of their collaboration, putting a spotlight on the scholarship of Olbrechts-Tyteca and the role she played in the New Rhetoric project. Their collaboration pairs Perelman, the philosopher concerned about the human being reasoning, with Olbrechts-Tyteca, the literary critic who, using the theoretical frame of the New Rhetoric project, systematically developed the role of the comic in rhetorical theory.

Due to its particular border situation and historical past, Antakya (in south-central Turkey) has, in contrast to most cities in Turkey, been successful in protecting important components of its diachronically composed multiculturalism. In light of such qualities Antakya is able to permit a diachronic analysis of different subsequent ‘governmentalities’ (Foucault) and flexible network formations that reflect the various processes in government styles in twentieth century Turkey. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews the authors try to reconstruct the diachronic multiculturalism from a perspective of macro- and micro-powers, ‘conduct’ and ‘counter-conduct’.

The controversy surrounding the September 2002 dossier on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction has been pivotal in the decline of trust in the New Labour Government. The absence of a comprehensive, detailed and diachronic analysis of this episode therefore stands out as an issue that needs to be addressed. In doing so, this paper diverges from conventional narratives of the ‘September dossier’ affair in several respects. It argues that New Labour's desire for regime change in Iraq pre-dated the rise of the neo-conservative Bush administration and the events of 9/11; that the British Government were fully willing and active participants in the policy of regime change and that the production of the dossier was one of the key components of a broader political strategy designed to achieve this aim.

This article offers a short diachronic analysis of the development and success of Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), followed by an examination of the explanations cited by academics, political commentators and the party itself for its poor performance in the 2002 general election. A distinction is drawn between factors that are short-term in nature and those that are more fundamental to the party's current predicament, with the analytical emphasis being placed firmly on internal variables – that is, on the party's own capacity (or lack thereof) to act. The conclusion is reached that sympathisers and supporters of the PDS currently have very little reason to be optimistic about the party's future prospects.

Recruitment into peripheral possession trance cults has been explained as attempts to compensate for socio-economic deprivation and jural impotence. This model, best developed by I. M. Lewis, is reviewed and its predictions are tested against two types of Brazilian data. Firstly, national census figures of religious affiliation are compared with measures of socio-economic stress for a diachronic analysis. A second, synchronic analysis involves 62 respondents in Rio de Janeiro who completed questionnaires on socio-economic status, cultic affiliation, and perceptions of stress and gender inequality. The results offer only weak support for Lewis's original model, which may therefore profit from supplementation from other theoretical perspectives.

Linguistic evidence has long been applied to problems of historical reconstruction; and, in particular, considerable effort has been expended in the search for correlations between archeo‐logical and linguistic sources for history. Nevertheless, linguistic sources have remained, for the most part, insufficiently utilized. Historical inferences can be made from the kinds of evidence which inhere in the data of language relationships and from toponymy; and both these kinds of data have received extensive use. But historical inferences, of much more detailed and more complex kinds, can be made from the diachronic analysis of adopted elements, specifically word‐borrowings, in languages; and this sort of study has only too frequently not been undertaken. Applied in conjunction, the two categories of linguistic evidence reveal the probable approximate locations through time of, the relative historical sequence of interactions between, and the sequence of developments within, the groups of societies fro...