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This article examines the use of the horse as an image of the body and of passion in the Alexandrian theological tradition. It started with Philo, who regarded the horse as a symbol of passion. Clement and Origen adopted the Philonic interpretation. Origen, who exploited the image most, saw the horse as representing the body, bodily things, irrational passions and desires of the flesh. Finally, following in Origen's footsteps, Didymus also interpreted the horse as a figure of the body. In addition, both Origen and Didymus distinguished between the image of the horseman and that of the rider, following the example of a predecessor, whom they did not mention by name: Philo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to take a closer critical look at the multiple and multi-layered nature of urban centrality. Centrality is conceptualized here as a kind of prominence, perceived, planned and represented quality within the urban timespace. We employ three distinct ontological categories of the urban centre (centre-as-event, centre-as-thing and centre-as-structure) to take a deeper insight into the symbolism, ideological narratives and planning practices behind the genesis of the prominent urban places and times. With this approach, we expose even the seemingly subtle phenomena that (co-)shape multiple urban centralities. We are empirically focusing on the case of the city of Brno (Czech Republic). Attention is paid in particular to the period of socialism, more specifically to the influence of socialist ideology on the reorganization of urban central places and times. We are trying to overcome the traditional view of centralized and all-encompassing socialist transformation. Instead, the socialist Brno provides the case study to demonstrate a subtle fabric of overlapping, competing or simply coexisting socialist and pre-socialist centralities. We argue that the physical re-centralization of the city was in the end less significant than the efforts to symbolically recode the urban environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that ethnic paintings connotate situational ethnicity, adjusted by social change and ethnic boundaries. Based on anthropological fieldwork focusing on painter and mercantile communities, social-political connotations of ethnic art are discussed by applying an analysis of social semiotics in three discourses, employing the case of post-1990 Nepal. In particular: 1) Modern visual expressions of ethnicity are adopted into anti-hierarchical representations, as people engage in ethnic politics and cultural activities. 2) The two genres of ethnic painting, paubhā, and thangka, which were developed by traditional creators and informed by ethnicity, have experienced and developed a cross-boundary mode of operating in industries in response to social change. 3) In the market and mass media, the narrative of value construction regarding the tradition of ethnic art reveals a sign arena that identifies a drift toward the nation, the state, and civilization, prepensely attempting to mobilize semiotic resources through the lens of politics, the market, and global values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being a significant repository of Buddhist imagery, Thangka images are valuable historical materials of Tibetan studies, which covers many domains such as Tibetan history, politics, culture, social life and even traditional medicine and astronomy. Thangka cultural element images are the essence of Thangka images. Hence, Thangka cultural element images classification is one of the most important works of knowledge representation and mining in the field of Thangka and is the foundation of digital protection of Thangka images. However, due to the limited quantity, high complexity and the intricate textures of Thangka images, the classification of Thangka images is limited to a small number of categories and coarse granularity. Thus, a novel fusion texture feature dual-branch Thangka cultural elements classification model based on the attention mechanism and self-supervised contrastive learning has been proposed in this paper. Specifically, to address the issue of insufficient labeled samples and improve the classification performance, this method utilizes a large amount of unlabeled irrelevant data to pre-train the feature extractor through self-supervised learning. During the fine-tuning stage of the downstream task, a dual-branch feature extraction structure incorporating texture features has been designed, and MS Triplet Attention proposed by us is used for the integration of important features. Additionally, to address the problem of sample imbalance and the existence of a large number of difficult samples in the Thangka cultural element dataset, the Gradient Harmonizing Mechanism Loss has been adopted, and it has been improved by introducing a self-designed adaptive mechanism. The experimental results on Thangka cultural elements dataset prove the superiority of the proposed method over the state-of-the-art methods. The source code of our proposed algorithm and the related datasets is available at https://github.com/WiniTang/MS-BiCLR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education-UK and British private schools more specifically are often framed as a global brand of 'world-class' quality. However, the increased competition within the international education market has meant British private schools cannot rest on their laurels but instead must continue to project their 'world-classness' in a way that does not diminish their brand image. Drawing on interviews of parents and key gatekeepers, this paper examines how British private schools in Nigeria (BPS-NIG) and British private boarding schools in the UK (BPBS-UK) evoked and projected their supposed world-classness through the strategic use of white symbolism and the expensive admission process. The paper contends that the latter are types of soft-sell marketing techniques utilised by BPS-NIG and BPBS-UK to sell British schools without imperilling their brand image. The paper concludes by drawing attention to the racial implication of framing whiteness and white British specifically as synonymous with high-quality, 'world-class' education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of sound symbolism receives increasing interest in psycholinguistics. Recent research – including empirical effects of affective phonological iconicity on language processing (Adelman et al., 2018; Conrad et al., 2022) – suggested language codes affective meaning at a basic phonological level using specific phonemes as sublexical markers of emotion. Here, in a series of 8 rating-experiments, we investigate the sensitivity of language users to assumed affectively-iconic systematic distribution patterns of phonemes across the German vocabulary:After computing sublexical-affective-values (SAV) concerning valence and arousal for the entire German phoneme inventory according to occurrences of syllabic onsets, nuclei and codas in a large-scale affective normative lexical database, we constructed pseudoword material differing in SAV to test for subjective affective impressions.Results support affective iconicity as affective ratings mirrored sound-to-meaning correspondences in the lexical database. Varying SAV of otherwise semantically meaningless pseudowords altered affective impressions: Higher arousal was consistently assigned to pseudowords made of syllabic constituents more often used in high-arousal words – contrasted by less straightforward effects of valence SAV. Further disentangling specific differential effects of the two highly-related affective dimensions valence and arousal, our data clearly suggest arousal, rather than valence, as the relevant dimension driving affective iconicity effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the evolution of ethnic symbol consumption in the Basque Country following the end of ETA's violent activities in 2011. It delves into the shifting political and cultural context of the Basque provinces during this period, underscoring the impact that terrorism and its cessation have had on creating distinct patterns of cultural consumption. The focus then turns towards the case of the ‘Hand of Irulegi’, an Iron Age relic discovered in 2022 that allegedly contains the oldest inscription in an ancestor of Euskera—the Basque language. The paper argues that the rapid adoption of the Hand of Irulegi by Basque society as an ethnic symbol is directly related to transformations in the conception of Basque identity in the aftermath of ETA's dissolution. These transformations include, mainly, the intentional forgetting of recent historical events by a large segment of Basque citizens and the emergence of Euskera as the main fulcrum of contemporary Basque cultural identity. The Hand, due to its chronological remoteness and its exclusive association with the Basque language, seems to be custom‐made to serve as a symbol for this new type of identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Khorsabad (ancient Dūr-Šarrukīn), the newly built capital of Sargon II of Assyria, contained multiple instances of a sequence of five images or symbols (lion, bird, bull, tree, plow) which also appeared shortened to three (lion, tree, plow). What did they mean? There is currently no consensus. This paper proposes a new solution, suggesting that the images a) symbolize specific constellations and b) represent Babylonian/Assyrian words whose sounds "spell out" Sargon's name (this works for both the long and the short version). Combining these two traits, the effect of the symbols was to assert that Sargon's name was written in the heavens, for all eternity, and also to associate him with the gods Anu and Enlil, to whom the constellations in question were linked. It is further suggested that Sargon's name was elsewhere symbolized by a lion passant (pacing lion), through a bilingual pun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the use of metaphorical cards in psychotherapy with anorexic patients. The cards contain symbolic images that allow patients to communicate their emotions and connect with their true selves in a nonverbal way. The article emphasizes the importance of integrating nonverbal treatments like these cards alongside other therapeutic techniques for patients with eating disorders. The use of these cards can help patients establish emotional distance from painful memories and feelings, reduce resistance, and address conflicts within therapy. Overall, the use of metaphorical cards can be a highly effective tool in the therapeutic process for anorexic patients. [Extracted from the article]

The iconic Dupljaja chariot model from the Carpathian Basin informs us on cosmologies and technologies of Bronze Age societies in Europe between 1600 and 1200 BC. It communicates key elements of religious imagery and ritual practice alongside technical features of working chariots. Through a detailed reappraisal employing use-wear, compositional, and iconographic analyses as well as 3D modelling of the chariot model, the authors explore the social context of its creation and use. Integrating functional wheels with four spokes and iconographic depictions of the similar cross-in-circle symbol, the Dupljaja chariot combines and cross-references motifs with pan-European relevance in the Bronze Age. The study aims to better understand the interplay between the local and regional context of the Dupljaja chariot and how its distinct features arose from the material and ideological networks defining later Bronze Age Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A century of research has provided evidence of limited size sound symbolism in English, that is, certain vowels are non-arbitrarily associated with words denoting small versus large referents (e.g., /i/ as in teensy and /ɑ/ as in tall). In the present study, we investigated more extensive statistical regularities between surface form properties of English words and ratings of their semantic size, that is, form typicality, and its impact on language and memory processing. Our findings provide the first evidence of significant word form typicality for semantic size. In five empirical studies using behavioural megastudy data sets of performance on written and auditory lexical decision, reading aloud, semantic decision, and recognition memory tasks, we show that form typicality for size is a stronger and more consistent predictor of lexical access during word comprehension and production than semantic size, in addition to playing a significant role in verbal memory. The empirical results demonstrate that statistical information about non-arbitrary form-size mappings is accessed automatically during language and verbal memory processing, unlike semantic size that is largely dependent on task contexts that explicitly require participants to access size knowledge. We discuss how a priori knowledge about non-arbitrary form-meaning associations in the lexicon might be incorporated in models of language processing that implement Bayesian statistical inference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to improve the reliability of Tibetan Thangka sales channels, this paper combines blockchain technology to construct an intelligent model that can be used for Tibetan Thangka sales. This paper uses cryptographic encryption technology to encrypt the uploaded data to prevent Thangka producers or logistics turnover parties from tampering with Thangka‐related information, and uses the timestamp in blockchain technology to realize the traceability of Thangka‐related information. In addition, this paper uses the timestamp technology in the blockchain system to generate a traceable, query and supervised blockchain, which runs through the whole process of thangka from planting to selling. Finally, a sales model of Tibet Thangka based on blockchain technology is designed, and system performance analysis is carried out through simulation experiments. The experimental research results verify that the designed sales model has a certain effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the continuous development of rural revitalization and urbanization in China, the sustainable transformation of traditional rural architecture has become increasingly important. This study takes the Thangka exhibition hall in rural Malkang, Sichuan Province, as the research object and proposes a Thangka exhibition hall architectural design centered around solar heating and aiming for near-zero energy consumption. The research method involves establishing a solar energy system model on the roof of the exhibition hall and utilizing solar angle and area calculation formulas along with simulation software to calculate the optimal installation angle and area of solar panels, with the aim of achieving indoor temperatures that meet Thangka protection requirements while achieving zero-energy heating. Preliminary results indicate that this solar-centric near-zero energy architectural design can effectively promote the increase in indoor temperature through solar thermal conversion. Additionally, through calculation and simulation, the optimal installation angle for the solar panels achieving zero-energy heating is determined to be 24.25 with an azimuth angle of −1.2. The optimum installation area for solar panels is 8.2 square meters in the showroom and 2.7 square meters in the storeroom. Among these, the solar panel area for the Thangka exhibition hall constitutes 4.12% of the total area and is required for maintaining Thangka protection temperature requirements throughout the year, while the solar panel area for the storage room constitutes 1.88% and is also needed for the same purpose. Studying the optimal installation angle and area of solar panels can transform the exhibition hall into a near-zero-energy building, meeting the temperature requirements for Thangka preservation and human thermal comfort, while also achieving optimal economic benefits. This provides guidance and a reference for promoting near-zero-energy buildings in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Grace Jones," Irenosen Okojie's 2020 Caine-Prize-winning short story, received praise for playing with logic, time, place, and literary conventions, making the story challenging to understand. To help clarify this text, our essay examines "Grace Jones" through a transcultural lens, using Arianna Dagnino's genre characterization as the fusion of multiple cultural and literary traditions that reshape our "national collective imaginaries." Our readings utilize traditional African time concepts, contemporary clinical understandings of trauma, Ulrich Beck's risk society theory, planetary symbolism, Milton's Paradise Lost , and Christological imagery to elucidate the text. These interpretive modes enable us to read "Grace Jones" as a transcultural trauma text and leads us to suggest cultural cross-pollination reflects a feature of black diasporic writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the role of automobiles in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath." It discusses how automobiles became cultural signs in the 1930s, reflecting social class distinctions and cultural shifts during the Great Depression. It also explores how automobiles acted as vehicles for westward mobility but also revealed the limitations and gender dynamics within the family and delves into the symbolism of automobiles as technology and machinery.

Sound symbolism refers to non-arbitrary associations between word forms and meaning, such as those observed for some properties of sounds and size or shape. Recent evidence suggests that these connections extend to emotional concepts. Here we investigated two types of non-arbitrary relationships. Study 1 examined whether iconicity scores (i.e. resemblance-based mapping between aspects of a word’s form and its meaning) for words can be predicted from ratings in the affective dimensions of valence and arousal and/or the discrete emotions of happiness, anger, fear, disgust and sadness. Words denoting negative concepts were more likely to have more iconic word forms. Study 2 explored whether statistical regularities in single phonemes (i.e. systematicity) predicted ratings in affective dimensions and/or discrete emotions. Voiceless (/p/, /t/) and voiced plosives (/b/, /d/, /g/) were related to high arousing words, whereas high arousing negative words tended to include fricatives (/s/, /z/). Hissing consonants were also more likely to occur in words denoting all negative discrete emotions. Additionally, words conveying certain discrete emotions included specific phonemes. Overall, our data suggest that emotional features might explain variations in iconicity and provide new insight about phonemic patterns showing sound symbolic associations with the affective properties of words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The alchemical concepts of chemical symbolism, nomenclature, and affinity underwent fundamental changes between the 1770s and the 1820s, roughly simultaneously with the Chemical Revolution (ca. 1772–89), i. e. the replacement of the phlogiston theory with Lavoisier's New Chemistry. Using the old, alchemical symbols, Bergman devised a system of formulas to describe virtually all known inorganic chemistry, and he influenced Guiton de Morveau's Mémoire sur les Dénominations Chimiques, and the subsequent Méthode de nomenclature. Hassenfratz and Adet devised a new artificial sign language which, however, was too complicated and unintuitive to gain widespread acceptance. Bergman refined the concept of affinity, but his belief in phlogiston rapidly made the system obsolete. Wenzel realized that the dissolution of metals in acids is not just a question of affinity but rather of concentration, and he and Berthollet separately formulated early versions of the Law of Mass Action thereby making attempts to quantify affinity redundant. Richter formulated a principle that became known as the Law of Equivalent Proportions, describing acid‐base reactions and double decompositions of salts, but continuing to use Bergman‐style alchemical formulas. Only John Dalton's atomic theory with little globules denoting atoms and their combination into molecules made a definite break with the alchemical symbols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alegoría de la construcción and Alegoría del trabajo were the first mural paintings commissioned to Saturnino Herrán (1887–1918), and they occupied a significant place in one of the most important schools in Mexico. The non-invasive methodology employed included different documentation phases and in situ multi-technique analyses. Hyperspectral imaging and digital radiography were used for a general characterization of the materials and were complemented with localized analyses by portable microscopy, and XRF and FORS spectroscopies. A complete identification of the original and the restoration palettes was achieved. Results from this work allowed us to understand the production context, painting technique, and conservation state, thus providing insights for the proper conservation of these murals, while also unveiling a new perception of the artist and his historical place among the muralist movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If Company —with all its evasions and cancelled invitations—is a work of unprecedented unguardedness within the Beckett canon, then a special case may be made for its sincerity: that it resides in the novella's very gambits, decoys and "true feints." To arrive at such sincerity, Beckett may be read as the modernist novelist of voice—of a confessional voice that exposes its speaker without the buffetings character, plot, or self-dramatization. Such deprivations are, paradoxically, the product of a poetics of interiority and the practice of exagoreusis, a confessional mode in which a penitent verbalizes his thoughts without recourse to thematizing arrangement. Company 's sincere loneliness is therefore not found in any "congruence between avowal and actual feeling," as Lionel Trilling's seminal definition goes. Rather, it emerges as something inferential: that which remains when the impossibility of company is subtracted from a desire for it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experiment in what Elizabeth Bowen calls "creative criticism," this co-written fictional dialogue explores the figure of the heart in Bowen's work. Special attention is given to The Death of the Heart and to the short story "A Queer Heart," both first published in 1938. Drawing on correspondences with the fiction of Sheridan Le Fanu and E.M. Forster, the poetry of W.B. Yeats, and the philosophical thinking of Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Nancy, we dramatize an understanding of the value and importance of Bowen's work in embodying a new and singular modernist conception of the heart as other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Al-Jazeera Palestinian journalist who was killed by the Israeli on 11 May 2022 while she was wearing a blue press vest and covering an army raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli occupied West Bank. The funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh in Jerusalem in May 2022 saw Israeli police forcefully confiscating Palestinian flags. This act raises questions about the symbolism and implications of raising or removing flags. The following article explores the semiotic use of the Palestinian flag in Palestinian literature in Israel. I discuss the significance of the Palestinian flag in the narrative spaces created by Palestinians in Israel by examining various literary works, and the identity discourse presented by such works through the flag and its symbolic ability to deconstruct Israeli policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the framework of the enlargement methodological proposed by the thinker Arturo Roig, we expose the need for a Latin American symbolic or semiotic and we unravel Roigean symbol theory, in its double facet: axiology and normativity. Then, we reflect on the distinction between signification and meaning that allows us to open ourselves to the metaphorical system implicit in words as semantic marks. Subsequently, we explain the characteristics of the symbolic universe: conflict, discursive dualism and reversal, in order to show the Roigean interpretation of Caliban as an example of reversal of the symbolic function. Subsequently, we delve into the feminist interpretation of the Sycorax figure as a symbol of resistance and liberation. Finally, we highlight the importance of the scarf as a symbol and the struggle of women in their relentless struggle for their rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spontaneous, unwilled subjective imagery and symbols (including dreams) often emerge in psychotherapy that can appear baffling and confound interpretation. Early psychoanalytic theories seemed to diverge as often as they agreed on the meaning of such content. Nevertheless, after reviewing key findings in the empirical science of spontaneous thought as well as insights gleaned from neuroscience and especially embodied cognition, it is now possible to construct a more coherent theory of interpretation that is clinically useful. Given that thought is so thoroughly embodied, it is possible to demonstrate that universalities in human physiology yield universalities in thought. Such universalities can then be demonstrated to form a kind of biologically directed universal "code" for understanding spontaneous symbolic expressions that emerge in psychotherapy. An example is given that illustrates how this can be applied to clinical encounters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One speech sound can be associated with multiple meanings through iconicity, indexicality, and/or systematicity. It was not until recently that this "pluripotentiality" of sound symbolism attracted serious attention, and it remains uninvestigated how pluripotentiality may arise. In the current study, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and English speakers rated unfamiliar jewel names on three semantic scales: size, brightness, and hardness. The results showed language-specific and cross-linguistically shared pluripotential sound symbolism. Japanese speakers associated voiced stops with large and dark jewels, whereas Mandarin speakers associated [i] with small and bright jewels. Japanese, Mandarin, and English speakers also associated lip rounding with darkness and softness. These sound-symbolic meanings are unlikely to be obtained through metaphorical or metonymical extension, nor are they reported to colexify. Notably, in a purely semantic network without the mediation of lip rounding, softness can instead be associated with brightness, as illustrated by synesthetic metaphors such as yawaraka-na hizashi /jawaɾakanaçizaɕi/ "a gentle (lit. soft) sunshine" in Japanese. These findings suggest that the semantic networks of sound symbolism may not coincide with those of metaphor or metonymy. The current study summarizes the findings in the form of (phono)semantic maps to facilitate cross-linguistic comparisons of pluripotential sound symbolism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article delves into the multifaceted symbolism of the ear in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet," exploring its roles in gender dynamics, political manipulation, and tragic character flaws. It argues that the ear metaphorically embodies patriarchal control, gendered vulnerabilities, and political corruption within the play.

The article offers literary criticism on Mary Elizabeth Counselman's story "The Three Marked Pennies," highlighting its Modernist exploration of language's disconnection from reality. Topics include early speculative fiction's empirical view of language, Counselman's pioneering use of Modernist language deconstruction, and the breakdown of linguistic meaning in the narrative.

The article offers literary criticism on Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," focusing on the symbolic significance of architecture within the narrative. Topics include the contrast between the schoolhouse and church, Ichabod Crane's power dynamics, and the community's resistance to cultural intrusion.

The document provided is a list of reviewers for the Journal of Structural Engineering from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2023. It includes individuals from universities and institutions worldwide who have reviewed manuscripts submitted to the journal. The list showcases the diverse perspectives and expertise within the field of structural engineering, with researchers and professionals from various countries and backgrounds. This comprehensive list can be a valuable resource for library patrons conducting research in engineering, architecture, and materials science, as it provides a range of experts and potential collaborators from different cultural backgrounds. [Extracted from the article]

Schools are critical spaces for young men from refugee backgrounds. They play an integral role in literacy development, educational attainment, and providing a sense of belonging. Inclusive education practices for this group are largely absent in Australian schools. Research shows focusing on these young men from a non-deficit position assists with inclusivity. There is a lack of research exploring the agentic practices of young men from refugee backgrounds within schools. This paper explores the symbolic value of swagger for a group of young men from refugee backgrounds at a high school in Australia. A Bourdieusian theoretical framework guided critical awareness of power in schools. This research shows how a group of young men found a meaningful way to acquire social and cultural capital. Despite the school's constraints, this group developed a group identity reflected in their clothing and embodied dispositions referred to here as swagger. Our findings demonstrate the complex power relations at work, including the opportunity for the young men to resist and be included. In the spirit of Bourdieu's concern for reflexivity our findings point to the need for schools, teachers, and education policy makers to consider the workings of power in schools in more considered ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses Roger Scruton's understanding of what he called "moments of revelation". In two short essays, both entitled "Effing the ineffable", Scruton framed his discussion of moments of revelation with reference to the medieval Christian mystical discourse. Introducing the medieval discussion of this topic, this study provides an analysis of Scruton's approach to the theme. In tune with the traditional discourse on revelation, his general aim was to demonstrate that there are ways of revealing important truths about the supernatural, of the world "beyond the window", that do not require words to be pronounced. He calls our experiences of such phenomena moments of revelation and identifies four different transitory sources of revelation. This study deals with them one by one, after considering whether it is right to label such a revelation transcendental. The four sources of Scruton's moments of revelation are natural beauty, the beauty of painting, the beauty of music, and personal encounters. The first three examples are connected to his thoughts on art and beauty as a substitute of divine revelation. Perhaps the most surprising of these is the last ones, moments of intersubjective human relationships, "our knowledge of each other". Relying on both Buber and Levinas, Scruton makes the strong claim that it is in the other that we can experience that world "beyond the window". His phenomenological exploration of human encounters sheds light on concepts like grace, shekhinah, or real presence and gift. He explains the Christian understanding of the human–divine relationship as well along the lines of the nature of interpersonal human relationship, both of them being in a certain sense, he claims, transcendental. From grace, his account moves forward to self-sacrifice and finally arrives at his idiosyncratic understanding of gratefulness for life. His moments of revelation in art and interpersonal exchange turn out to be, indeed, late and secular versions of the Christian understanding of revelation. In its summary, this study claims that revelation, understood by Scruton as a form of general human experience, allows to catch a glimpse of that which is beyond the window, by the direct, sensually based experience of either the existence of another person or of the beauty of nature and art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The period between 1080 and 1160 saw an explosion in monastic construction throughout Western Europe. The textual sources from this period document this building boom and explicitly tie construction and refurbishment to monastic reform and the creation of spaces for spiritual renewal. Newly built or remodeled monasteries and churches were richly decorated with wall paintings and monumental sculpture and inscriptions. A new form of sculpture emerged during this period of increased construction—the historiated capital. Despite their small size, capitals in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were frequently decorated with figures of humans or animals, and these images usually referred to a narrative, with lapidary inscriptions serving as commentary to the images. This article will compare two capitals depicting the Sacrifice of Isaac to consider how location and movement around the capitals direct the interpretation and understanding of the narrative scenes and accompanying epigraphy. One capital is in the narthex of Saint-Seurin at Bordeaux, while the other is in the choir of Sainte-Foy at Conques. My analysis involves making connections between the location of the capital within the architectural space and its relationship to other sculpted imagery, monastic interpretations of their spaces, and the liturgical events that took place within those spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, two experiments utilizing sound symbolism were conducted to gain a deeper understanding of how the sounds and letter curvatures of a brand name evoke image associations among global consumers. The study applied the sound symbolism context and empirically tested the meanings that US and Vietnamese consumers associate with brand names using the Roman alphabet and the Korean writing system, Hangul. The results indicated that the criteria for recalling the word–shape association differed when a brand name was presented to American and Vietnamese consumers in Roman alphabetical form versus when it was presented in an unfamiliar foreign alphabet. When Roman alphabetical forms familiar to both American and Vietnamese consumers were presented, there was a tendency for letter curvatures and the associated shapes to match. When consumers were presented with letters and sounds in a foreign language, they tended to select a shape that corresponded to the sound characteristics of the given names. The influence of foreign letter shapes varied based on consumers' native language and whether they had learned a foreign language. Only Vietnamese consumers who had learned Korean tended to match the shapes to Hangul letter curvatures, even for subtle differences in curvature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the sound symbolic expressions of gender in Japanese names with machine learning algorithms. The main goal of this study is to explore how gender is expressed in the phonemes that make up Japanese names and whether systematic sound-meaning mappings, observed in Indo-European languages, extend to Japanese. In addition to this, this study compares the performance of machine learning algorithms. Random Forest and XGBoost algorithms are trained using the sounds of names and the typical gender of the referents as the dependent variable. Each algorithm is cross-validated using k-fold cross-validation (28 folds) and tested on samples not included in the training cycle. Both algorithms are shown to be reasonably accurate at classifying names into gender categories; however, the XGBoost model performs significantly better than the Random Forest algorithm. Feature importance scores reveal that certain sounds carry gender information. Namely, the voiced bilabial nasal /m/ and voiceless velar consonant /k/ were associated with femininity, and the high front vowel /i/ were associated with masculinity. The association observed for /i/ and /k/ stand contrary to typical patterns found in other languages, suggesting that Japanese is unique in the sound symbolic expression of gender. This study highlights the importance of considering cultural and linguistic nuances in sound symbolism research and underscores the advantage of XGBoost in capturing complex relationships within the data for improved classification accuracy. These findings contribute to the understanding of sound symbolism and gender associations in language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The traditional Malay song about a yellow ship, lancang kuning, recorded in 1979 for a research project on oral traditions in North Sumatra, is still popular today and can be found in multiple versions on the Internet. This article tries to find possible reasons for this lasting popularity by looking into the meaning and background of this song as performed by singers and storytellers in North Sumatra. Through a discussion of various versions of the song-text and its interpretation, the article shows how the theme functions in different contexts in Sumatra and beyond. Exploring its symbolic value in songs, traditional poetry, stories and ritual performances featuring a lancang kuning helps to explain its continuing relevance in various social contexts of the Malay world in past and present times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Iconic words and signs are characterized by a perceived resemblance between aspects of their form and aspects of their meaning. For example, in English, iconic words include peep and crash, which mimic the sounds they denote, and wiggle and zigzag, which mimic motion. As a semiotic property of words and signs, iconicity has been demonstrated to play a role in word learning, language processing, and language evolution. This paper presents the results of a large-scale norming study for more than 14,000 English words conducted with over 1400 American English speakers. We demonstrate the utility of these ratings by replicating a number of existing findings showing that iconicity ratings are related to age of acquisition, sensory modality, semantic neighborhood density, structural markedness, and playfulness. We discuss possible use cases and limitations of the rating dataset, which is made publicly available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"On the Edge: Life Along the Russia-China Border" by Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey is a monograph that explores the dynamics of bordering and de-bordering along the Sino-Russian border regions. The authors argue that state power, national interests, and border work have different impacts on the two territories, and that social groups on the ground define their home, community, similarity, or difference in ways that do not necessarily align with national frameworks. The book challenges the idea of a homogeneous understanding of states and borders, and examines topics such as security, migration, resource extraction, ethnic communities, trade, and urban development through rich ethnographic research and interviews. The authors also highlight the cultural and normative differences that affect relationships and mobilities between the two countries. Overall, the book provides a comprehensive and comparative analysis of the border region, shedding light on the complexities and nuances of life along the Russia-China border. [Extracted from the article]

Despite growing recognition that the Fourth Gospel's ecclesiological vision is modeled on aspects of the Gospel's Christology, the possibility that this extends to Jesus's death and resurrection has received little attention. Offering a close rereading of John's notoriously enigmatic story of Lazarus, this study seeks to demonstrate that the notion of Jesus's death and resurrection as a paradigm for discipleship is embedded in, and sheds interpretative light on, the complexities of this lengthy Johannine story. Through a fresh, multidimensional analysis of Jn 11.1–12.11 and other contextual factors, it is concluded that undergirding this narrative is the disciple's necessary participation in Jesus's death and resurrection; that the semiotic import of death within this paradigm encompasses affliction; and that this functional dynamic enabled the Johannine community to locate its affliction within a broader, hope-laden, purposive framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swastika, which literally means 'well-being', is a Sanskrit word. This object, which was transferred from India in ancient times to various parts of the world as a result of cultural and political changes, has associations with the sun and fire. The swastika, which is among the sacred objects in Hinduism and Buddhism, has values such as luck, fortune and blessedness, especially as a symbol of Agni, the god of fire, and Indra, the god of gods. The swastika, which is called gamalı haç (swastika) in Turkish and fylfot, gammadion, crooked cross, hakenkreuz, gammation, gammate cross, crux gammata in Western languages (English, Deutsche, etc.), is seen in both written documents and visual art products. This object, which reflects the wish for the future as a figure of luck, fortune at the beginning and end of the Vedas and sacred Buddhist texts as witnessed by written documents in India, is also seen in visual products such as sculptures, pots and pans, stones, rocks, etc. obtained from archaeological excavations. The present work stems from the aim of determining the place of the Sanskrit expression swastika in the pre-Islamic Turkish belief system as witnessed by Buddhist Uyghur texts. The study consists of six sections. The first section of the study includes the dictionary meaning of the term swastika of Indian origin and its reflections in various cultures. In the second section, the place and reflections of the swastika object in Hinduism and Buddhism are given. In the third section, there are evaluations on how the swastika, which was a respected object in many belief systems in the past, especially in Indian religions, became a political symbol with the Germans in the 20th century. The fact that the positive meaning of the swastika turned into 'brutality' and 'pain' with the Nazis is an 'oxymoron' in terms of human history. In the fourth section, the swastika, known as Az Tamga in the pre-Islamic Turkish belief system in the witness of visual art elements, symbolizes the 'unity of God' by taking the name 'wheel of fortune' in the Islamic period. The fifth section aims to reveal the linguistic and cultural level of swastika in the pre-Islamic Turkish belief system among the Buddhist Uyghurs. In this section, firstly, at the linguistic level, the equivalents of the Sanskrit word swastika in Turkish vocabulary are discussed; it is seen that there is no Turkish equivalent of the word; the Sanskrit word swastika is mainly expressed with Tocharian and Chinese words. The examples in Buddhist Uyghur texts generally show that the swastika object conveys 'holiness' both alone and with the help of other words. Finally, in the testimony of written texts, the other reflection of the Sanskrit swastika expression in the pre-Islamic Old Turkic belief system in the sixth section is that it inspired a phrase (oṃ svasti siddham) that expresses 'wish' in the category of 'applause' (prayer). This phrase, which usually appears at the beginning and end of Buddhist rituals, is related to the Sanskrit word swastika. The word swastika, which is discussed at linguistic and cultural level under various headings in the study, is an important cultural word that shows the Buddhist aspect of the Old Turkic belief system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hand ax, one of the oldest weapons and stone age inventions of mankind, has a history of approximately 1.5 million years. These hand axes, which have a purpose of being made beyond their functions rather than their functionality, have started to be made-described in a double-headed form, containing an intense symbolism, especially since the Iron Age. The double-headed ax, of which different examples emerged in different civilizations and cultures in the process, has found use in a wide geography as both an object and an element of decoration, first as a goddess, then as a god and king-hero weapon. In this study, the double-headed ax was considered as one of the important symbols (symbols) of the sacred phenomenon in the process of transforming from an image to an object, and at the same time, it was evaluated as one of the most important signs-reflections in intercultural interaction, especially in Anatolia. This article is a hermeneutic and phenomenological study on the relationship and symbolic origin of the double-headed ax, the first examples of which began to be seen in the Prehistoric period, but encountered with different names in many civilizations and cultures of the ancient world. Accordingly, a descriptive methodology based on cataloging the double-headed ax samples was not preferred in the text. Examples of double-headed axes in different cultures are included in the text only to emphasize the incidence and spread of the object-form. In addition, the connection of the double-headed ax with the halberd, which has a special place in Turkish mysticism and especially in Bektashi culture and is defined as the dervish dowry, has been tried to be established in the context of the symbolism emphasized in the article. This article consists of five parts. In the First section, the emergence of the first ax samples and its form, in the Sample section, the double-headed ax samples in different cultures and related cases are mentioned. Symbolic Origin section, the relationship of the double-headed ax form with the sky is tried to be justified. Bektashism and Teber section, this sky-centered symbolic language, in particular the Sufi thought Bektashi belief-phenomenon, the dimensions of the phenomenon shaped by its own practices and its connection with halberd are emphasized. In the evaluation and conclusion, the subject is interpreted with a holistic perspective, especially in the context of the relationship between language, name and meaning, and also, the concept of intercultural interaction with the double-headed ax is emphasized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this article is to examine the causes behind the recurring heroic motives of Thermopylae up to the present day. This phenomenon, referred to as the comparative heroisation process, is analyzed in the context of initiation, glorification, and identification of contemporary European soldiers with the Spartan warriors. The author(s) primarily employ a comparative historical method, incorporating some elements of a constructivist approach. The Battle of Mariupol, one of the largest clashes during the invasion of Ukraine, is specifically examined. However, instead of focusing on measuring the actual degree of similarity to Thermopylae, the author(s) concentrate on the metaphorical aspect. The central question raised is: why has the symbolism of Thermopylae persisted? Additionally, the authors explore the continuities and discontinuities that the Mariupol case demonstrates in comparison to earlier historical examples. The author(s) aim to demonstrate that the heroisation process does not necessarily require defenders to possess all sublime virtues. On the contrary, it may be sufficient for the community to aspire to acknowledge, identify with, or achieve certain arch-heroic traits or qualities, which can then be attributed to their respective national courageous champions, irrespective of how closely they resemble the heroic role models [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is based on the results of published authorial research on the relationship between the sound composition of language and emotion, leading to the conclusions and generalizations drawn here. In order to uncover deeper relationships between language and emotion, a methodology and corresponding automated system was developed that allowed the application of statistical methods over the phonemic composition of large volumes of textual data. So far, the English data and the results of the applied statistical methods confirm the existence of dependencies between phoneme composition expressed as vowel-consonant pairs and emotional valence (positive-negative emotion) for news texts from the Internet. The presented research necessitated the development of an automated system. The system was implemented with the participation of computer science students, within the framework of full-time courses. Our experience suggests that incorporating research topics into the undergraduate curriculum helps to understand both the role of information technology for research and the limitations of systems used as “artificial intelligence”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has two related goals: theoretical and empirical. First, it develops the theory of hegemony by integrating it with the concept of the collective emotional field in the context of nationalist memory politics. It then draws on the concept of hegemony to analyze the commemoration of the postwar anticommunist underground in Poland after 1989 and its grassroots reception. The article shows how memory politics work not only on the symbolic but also on the emotional level as a manifestation of a nationalist exclusionary affective politics of citizenship that creates a collective emotional field of pride but also of fear and threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research delves into the intricacies of the "Buddha Story Stele" in Cave 133 of the Maiji Mountain Grottoes, China, examining the sculptural combinations and conceptual nuances rooted in Buddhist culture from the 5th to the 6th centuries CE. The research focuses on discerning the identities of the "Two Adjacent-Seated Buddhas" and the Cross-Legged Bodhisattva carved on the stele, concurrently delving into the embedded symbolic significance within its structural composition. Our investigation posits that the upper, middle, and lower segments of the "Buddha Story Stele" respectively symbolize the post-Nirvana Dharmakāya Shakyamuni, the Bodhisattva Shakyamuni, and the Buddha Shakyamuni of Sumedha. Advancing scholarly discourse, it reevaluates the Cross-Legged Bodhisattva's identity and the configuration of the "Two Adjacent-Seated Buddhas", elucidating the interplay of imagery and conceptual themes. This study provides pivotal insights into the sculptural arrangement and religious thought transmission in the Maiji Mountain Grottoes, contributing significant academic and cultural value to preserve this unique heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the meaning and significance of Gringsing textiles for people of Tenganan Pegringsingan village specifically, and for people in Bali more generally. People in this village treat Gringsing textiles as a sacred object that provides protection for the people who make and wear it. The textile's name aligns with the literal meaning of Gringsing, which is the absence of, or protection from, illnesses. The concept of protection interconnects the makers and the users. During the process of creation, the makers create protection through each step of the process; then, in reciprocation, the textiles provide protection to the makers and users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how the life experiences of a Tibetan female thangka painter, Lutsojam (known as Lutso), are intertwined with the meaning of her artworks, in particular, with the thangka painting, "Avalokiteśvara with Mind at Rest," which I followed from its birth in Amdo Rebgong (Qinghai, China), to its visit to an art gallery in Beijing, and finally to its entry into the collection of an ethnographic museum in New York. Through painting thangkas and training her own apprentices (especially female apprentices), Lutso is able to support her family, empower other Tibetan women, and authenticate a religious identity that has been elided in the official narrative of Tibetan thangka art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backlash is not always pushing back against progress for women, but how is it still patriarchal? Sliced into three sections - on confluence, contestations, and cartographies - this article draws on a thesis about backlash as the exploitation of insecurity wrought by apparent crises to re/shape social orders, through re-fixing symbolic sites, namely the body, family, and nation. It begins by describing a confluence of types of actors and projects silencing feminist voice. Contesting gendered backlash narratives about the three sites are then explored, followed by a more theoretical section reflecting on cartographies of resonant concurrence and contradictions in backlash. Reflecting on masculinities, identification, and levels of hegemonic power, the argument is that the fixing of sites re/naturalises three deep-level patriarchal logics - phallogocentric binary (body), hierarchical (family), and categorical closed-systems (nation) principles - which helps us theorise the evolution of patriarchal hegemonies. This may inform more strategic countering of backlash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks to determine the link between the symbolic profile of North American skyscrapers and the features of North American culture, emphasizing the parallelism followed in the evolution of both. For this purpose, it resorts to a comprehensive or interpretative sociology combined with an incipient sociology of skyscrapers as a theoretical–methodological basis, complemented in turn with the notions of creativity and symbolism, resources through which the nuclear myths on which North American culture is sustained would become visible. The work reveals how the transformations in the style followed by American skyscrapers maintain a close relationship with the process of collapse of the original values proclaimed by American capitalism. So that the aesthetics characterized by a rationalist abstraction, perfectly fitted in the inaugural ascetic values of this first capitalism, would give way to an aesthetics of evanescent sign where an individuated consideration of the self would be given preeminence. In this sense, the work discovers how the symbology carried on the skyscrapers constitutes a first-level observatory in order to evidence the mutations that took place in the North American religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]