Search

The chapter introduces a diachronic approach distinguishing six periods, from traditional diplomacy to public diplomacy as the concept is conceived nowadays from a European point of view. Diplomacy is approached from a communication perspective, studying how a diachronic analysis enlightens the emergence of public diplomacy as a bridge between diplomacy and the diversity of publics. The chapter aims at developing a rationale legitimating the presence of communication researchers in public diplomacy and emphasises the link between public diplomacy, public relations and international public relations.

This reflective essay presents the journal as a transnational networking instrument for TESOL teacher education at the in-service level and beyond. The introspective and retrospective dimensions associated with journaling can be beneficial on many different levels for in-service teachers. The diachronic analysis and re-examination of daily in-class professional experience serves as a basis for reassurance and evidence of progress. Not only is the journal a safe haven to express frustrations, but it also provides insights into the need for concrete strategies to avoid certain pitfalls in the teaching and learning process. It also discloses new methods, issues or factors which need to be considered for further research. Finally, in terms of TESOL teacher education research, the reflective journal serves as a knowledge base for the formation of a centralized corpus, providing an overview of the profession from a large picture perspective, if it is shared as a transnational networking instrument.

The Meskat system, which is an ancestral anti-erosion practice, has faced abandonment in the last decades. The present study is intended to monitor the spatial and temporal evolution of the Meskat system in the region of Sousse (Tunisian Sahel). Satellite images from the Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) 5 sensor were used for four years of 1987, 2003, 2007 and 2011. The detection of land use changes was applied with the Geomatica Focus software, based on a supervised classification. Analysis of land use validation and classification highlighted nine land use classes, with an average global success and Kappa indexes of, 86 and 84%, respectively. Results of the space-time evolution of the Meskat system showed that it is mainly divided among three watersheds: Sabkha Halek El Menjel, Wadi Laya El Hammam and Wadi Hamdoun. The diachronic analysis of these three watersheds classification between 1987 and 2011 revealed an expansion of urban areas at the expense of the Meskat system. Indeed, urban areas recorded an increase of 1, 8, and 4%, while areas occupied by Meskat system were decreased by 6, 8, and 13% for the Sabkha Halek El Menjel, Laya El Hammam Wadi and Hamdoun Wadi watersheds, respectively.

This chapter places the paleopathological and isotopic results described in the previous chapter in a larger interpretive context. Here, we place our isotopic results in further comparative context, using published reference values for an array of edible animal and plant resources from both terrestrial and aquatic contexts, and employ multivariable statistical analyses to infer diet composition over time and within contemporaneous groups. We then frame our human isotope results and the diet trends inferred from them within the results of our dental paleopathological analysis and previously published paleopathology research on Lambayeque and other north-coast archaeological human remains. Of particular interest in this chapter is the comparison of pre-Hispanic and Spanish Colonial periods, and Early/Middle Colonial versus Middle/Late Colonial periods, which provides significant insights into indigenous lived experience over the course of the Colonial era.

Loanwords are words borrowed from another language. This paper conducts case studies of Chinese loanwords in the Tang Dynasty, including both transliterated and liberally translated words, e.g. “Kurung slave”, “lion”, “camel bird” and “nail aromatic”. With synchronic and diachronic analysis, the study finds that the incorporation of loanwords not only brings in new words, but also triggers semantic interactions between loanwords and native words, resulting in the misconception of both loanwords and native words.

This chapter reports on a diachronic analysis of three lithic assemblages from Quadra Island, located in the Discovery Islands archipelago of the Northwest Coast of North America. Situating my analysis within a rubric of heart-centered practice, insights flow about the genealogies of technological practice and ancestral communities of skilled practitioners who inhabited the study area throughout its deep history. By using a combination of quantitative morphometric methods and reflexive introspection, I weave a narrative of technological change occurring alongside simultaneous gestural continuity for hundreds of generations of lived human lives. I argue this provides evidence for the dynamic, sophisticated, yet enduring knowledge and practice of the inhabitants of the Discovery Islands throughout their deep histories that persist in the present.

The paper presents a research on a masonry building typology, formed by pebbles stones with brick courses, well known and spread in a wide area in Northern Italy, but never studied in depth. The sample of buildings selected for this work is located in Vimercate area, near Milan, where it has been possible to lay out a diachronic scheme of the geometrical features characterizing the listed masonry: dimensions of component materials, distance between the courses, etc. The studied sample included different buildings typologies, like churches, civil houses, palaces and villas, realized with brick stripes and pebble stones. Crossing historical information coming from different authors with the surveyed textures, a relationship between this technique and its mechanical characteristics was investigated. Therefore, it has been possible to observe the trends of the technique, referring to an optimal ratio between the thickness of the wall and the distance among brick stripes, as well some archaeometric data on the production and supply of bricks in the area through time.

This contribution explains how complex statistical methods such as factorial correspondence analysis, both descending hierarchical classification (Alceste, Topics) and ascending hierarchical classifications (Leximappe-Lexinet, Calliope), can be used to study which concepts and topics dominate a particular discourse in society at a certain period in time. The text demonstrates how semantic and thematic shifts can be traced over time and which future developments might be more or less probable. The examples are taken from three projects: first, a geographical and textual analysis of official biographies of members of the last Central Committee of the USSR from the year 1989; the second example, a synchronic and diachronic analysis of a corpus of conference abstracts submitted to the annual conferences of the American, French, and German national associations of sociology; and the third example, drawing from Pete Dale Scott’s concept of ‘World Parapolitics’, focuses on a diachronic perspective on the representation of conflicts in the international press.

A multimodal perspective on mathematics thinking processes is addressed through the semiotic bundle lens and considering a wide notion of sign drawing from Vygotsky’s works. Within this frame, the paper focuses on the role of gestures in their interaction with the other signs (speech, in particular) and investigates the support they can provide to mathematical argumentation processes. A case study in primary school in the context of strategic interaction games provides data to show that gestures can support students in developing argumentations that depart from empirical stances and shift to a hypothetical plane in which generality is addressed. In this regard, by combining synchronic and diachronic analysis of the semiotic bundle, specific features of gestures are pointed out and discussed: the semiotic contraction, the condensing character of gestures, and the use of gesture space in a metaphorical sense.

This chapter explores the political strategies that are mobilized in the name of “intercultural cities”. While there are significant common threads between cities, the author highlights the plurality of intercultural strategies in order to take account of historical, institutional and organizational specificities. This chapter proposes a new model of comparison that makes it possible to carry out both synchronic and diachronic analysis. Preliminary analyses make it possible to observe the presence of four components common to many intercultural strategies: the recognition of diversity, the fight against discrimination, the importance of rapprochement between communities and the promotion of a civic sense of belonging.

The information embedded in core academic journals is useful to learn effectively, recommend prestigious learning resources, and reflect the academic level of subjects in some areas. This article involves 11 Guangdong medical academic journals published from 1989 to 2015, which are collected from the Chinese Science Citation Database. We divide these journals into 4 small subjects and analyze them from both the time and subject dimensions. From the time dimension, the total cited curve presents an exponential trend. The annual averaged cited quantities are larger than those in the past. The earlier papers are published, the longer the interval between the published year and the year that reaches the cited peak. From the subject dimension, the cited curve of traditional Chinese medicine is apparently different from the other 3 subjects. These journals overall appear relatively consistent cited characteristics. The citation theory of periodical data can help us understand the citation rule of online learning data and use them more efficiently.