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Texas ScholarWorks was established to provide open, online access to the products of the University's research and scholarship, to preserve these works for future generations, to promote new models of scholarly communication, and to help deepen community understanding of the value of higher education.
UT Tower and campus image credit: Earl McGehee, CC-BY, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ejmc/7452145850
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Part-of-speech ambiguity and the category of ka- in the Arabic grammatical tradition
(2023-04-22) Phoennik, Connor; Noy, Avigail; Pat-El, Na'ama
Arabic grammar traditionally recognized only three parts of speech: the noun (ism), the verb (fiʿl), and the particle (ḥarf). Over the centuries, scholars propounded a battery of criteria to assign any given word to one of these three categories, but certain word classes defied easy placement within the tripartite system. Among these were exceptives and other pseudo-verbs, and temporalizers like mud and mundu, as well as prepositions (ḥurūf ǧarr), many of which were category-ambiguous between particle and noun. The category of ka- (or kāf), “like, as,” featured prominently in this debate, with advocates of its nounhood often adducing verses of poetry in which kāf behaved as a noun. Meanwhile, opponents supplied restorations (taqādīr, sg. taqdīr) to account for aberrant usage at the surface by conventional means. Of the Andalusian grammarians, who were especially engrossed in this debate, Ibn Maḍāʾ contended that, owing to its synonymy with mitl—a proven noun—kāf had always to be a noun, even in prose. Though those of Ibn Maḍāʾ’s works germane to kāf are not thought to have survived, other grammarians record his view. Their own comments on kāf and related matters reference the main touchpoints in the discourse, without which any argument for or against kāf’s nounhood would be inadmissible. I conclude that Ibn Maḍāʾ’s minority opinion is the better portrayal of kāf because more reliable gauges of nounhood suggest as much, as does the evidence from etymological derivatives of kāf in prose.
Patient expertise & self-management
(2023-04-21) Tomasky, Stephanie I.; Zhang, Yan (Ph. D. in information and library science); Dillon, Andrew
Patient expertise and self-management are terms that have been co-popularized through the success of the Chronic Disease Self-Management Program and Expert Patient Program. This review looks at the intersection of literature that focuses on both patient expertise and self-management. These concepts are not well-defined and the treatment of each of these terms in the literature is diverse and occasionally contradictory, but patient expertise is generally regarded as some form of useful health knowledge and self-management can be understood as a set of behaviors including recognizing, treating, and preventing symptoms of illness. The relationship between these concepts is not established in the literature, so this review poses six potential relationship dynamics based on how they are interrelated within the literature set. Much of the research agrees that patients should be empowered, active, and informed, and these are the goals of operationalizing patient expertise and self-management. However, barriers to these goals include negative provider attitudes, extensive labor burden, and information relevance. In addition to these barriers to achieving the stated goals of this research, the corpus also exhibits significant limitations and gaps including diagnostic specificity, institutionalized verification, assumption of diagnostic onset, and disregarding disability. These limitations inhibit the utility of the research and the gaps call for further research to enhance academic understanding of this topic area.
The principles of Neo-Bolshevism
(2023-05-04) Kohn, Elena; Garza, Thomas J.; Alexandrova, Marina
Western capitalist narratives often dominate the portrayal of Russia, the Soviet Union, and the former Soviet space. With respect to reform and resistance, Western narratives benefit greatly from sweeping under the rug the enormous successes in social life and policy of places like the Soviet Union. Western feminists often attribute the beginning of feminism in Russia to the fall of the Soviet Union, and focus on its growth since. Previous research presents a monolithic narrative of womanhood in Russia, portraying Russian women as passive and oppressed, as dictated by Western feminist values. In fact, starting in the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution, Russian women worked to de-gender labor and separate women from marriage, an idea unheard of in the West in the 1910s. This paper aims to explore Russian feminism free from a Western exceptionalist lens, and to use such analysis as a model for a more inclusive, international, rebooted Marxist revolution.
The necessity of versatility in 21st century opera : how the pandemic reinforced existing trends in contemporary American opera, and the pedagogical implications
(2023-05-17) Hollingshead, Leah; Sanikidze, Tamara; Grove, Jill
The nature of this paper is to examine the trends in American operas composed within the 21st century, examining how these movements were accelerated or otherwise impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper will conclude with the pedagogical implications of these findings.
“If we talk about politics on WhatsApp, it’s a joke” : understanding perceptions of WhatsApp among Mexican-American users through imagined affordances and media ideologies
(2023-05-04) Glover, Katlyn Marie; Woolley, Samuel C.; Straubhaar, Joseph
In recent years, users have been moving their digital communications to private spaces on encrypted messaging apps (EMAs). The popular Meta-owned EMA, WhatsApp, plays an especially important role in everyday communication for Spanish-speaking communities in the U.S. Importantly, the relevance of WhatsApp and EMAs as political communication tools is growing given the prevalence of targeted political mis- and disinformation to Spanish-speaking communities on these apps. This could have damaging effects on our democracy, given that these campaigns often include election-related disinformation. What are the ways in which perceptions of WhatsApp among Mexican-American users affect political communication on the app? In answer to this, I analyze data from 24 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Mexican-American WhatsApp users in the state of Texas, an emerging battleground state, through the theoretical lens of imagined affordances and media ideologies. I find that WhatsApp users perceive the app as a social space reserved for personal and lighthearted conversations with networks of family and friends. These socially-constructed perceptions dictate communication on the app, and therefore alter the norms by which users engage in political discussions on WhatsApp. Specifically, political content and discussion occurs in the form of humorous or entertaining content, such as memes, to follow these norms. The primary relevance of this finding is that political communication on WhatsApp is not necessarily considered serious or informative, which may allow mis- and dis-information to creep into these closed channels if presented in ways that adhere to these socially-constructed norms. These findings also highlight the ways in which Mexican-American users both share and perceive political information online, which serve as important context for understanding the app’s role in political communication in this community. Thus, I argue that WhatsApp is a necessary tool for political communication among this community, but the social norms instituted by users may provide space for false information to proliferate.