Linguistics

Beyoncé and Dolly Parton’s versions of Jolene represent two sides of southern femininity

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, April 23, 2024

On her new album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé puts a new spin on Dolly Parton’s classic song, Jolene.

Key Points: 
  • On her new album, Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé puts a new spin on Dolly Parton’s classic song, Jolene.
  • Some people commenting online were vocal about not liking Beyoncé’s version, often citing its lack of vulnerability when compared to Parton’s version.
  • There are upwards of 80 covers of Jolene, but Beyoncé’s is a departure from the rest.
  • The Houston native’s Jolene is decidedly Black, and therein lies the crux of the different reactions towards the song.
  • It is important to examine the story Dolly Parton tells on Jolene because it, too, is rooted in her racial and gendered identity as much as Beyoncé’s Jolene is.

How is Beyoncé’s story the same but different?

  • Towards the end of the song, Beyoncé and her partner turn a corner and offer hope against the disruption that Jolene represents.
  • Beyoncé’s Jolene is introduced by Dolly Parton herself in a short interlude.
  • Parton makes a clear association between her experience with Jolene and Beyoncé’s experience with “Becky with the good hair” (or “hussy” as Parton says).
  • But the term has evolved to encompass racially ambiguous women with European or Asian features, lighter skin and loose curls or straight hair.
  • Why would we expect the song to be the same when these two women are far from?


Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
Kadian Pow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Young people in Britain aren’t bad at learning languages – but the school system doesn’t make it easy for them

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, April 23, 2024

But are the British really bad at learning foreign languages?

Key Points: 
  • But are the British really bad at learning foreign languages?
  • This comparatively short period of formal language learning is likely to have a substantial impact on language attainment amongst school leavers.
  • Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have native languages which are taught both as second languages and through bilingual or immersion schooling.
  • UK students’ learning of these native languages shows that when given significant exposure to a language, they can achieve fluency.

Choosing to learn

  • Another factor to consider is why students learn languages, and how this affects their achievement.
  • There will certainly be young people who feel that language learning is something they have to do, rather than something they want to take part in.
  • However, other students are motivated to learn languages which they feel a personal connection to or see personal value in.
  • English has become a global lingua franca, and consequently Anglophones can feel like foreign language skills are less needed.
  • This also means that English language skills are a useful extra for many people around the world and allow them to get by in many countries – that’s a strong motivation to learn.
  • Read more:
    The UK is poorer without Erasmus – it's time to rejoin the European exchange programme

    There is no evidence that British young people have an inability to learn foreign languages.


Abigail Parrish does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Grant Christie Joins Acentra Health as Senior Vice President of Market Strategy and Solutions

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, March 26, 2024

MCLEAN, Va., March 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Acentra Health, a Virginia-based technology solutions and clinical services company dedicated to helping government healthcare agencies accelerate better health outcomes, announced the appointment of Grant Christie as Senior Vice President, Market Strategy and Solutions.

Key Points: 
  • MCLEAN, Va., March 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Acentra Health, a Virginia-based technology solutions and clinical services company dedicated to helping government healthcare agencies accelerate better health outcomes, announced the appointment of Grant Christie as Senior Vice President, Market Strategy and Solutions.
  • Christie most recently worked at NTT DATA, where he led the public sector government consulting and advisory division, overseeing 500 consultants in delivering a range of services across more than 20 states.
  • His work spanned various health and human services programs, including Medicaid, behavioral health, child support services, and eligibility.
  • "Grant’s deep experience in U.S. healthcare technology combined with his specialized knowledge in Medicaid systems will be invaluable in shaping the innovative solutions and services Acentra Health brings to the market,” said Kelly Loeffler, Executive Vice President and Chief Growth Officer, Acentra Health.

MITRE Opens New AI Assurance and Discovery Lab

Retrieved on: 
Monday, March 25, 2024

The new AI Assurance and Discovery Lab will evaluate AI-enabled systems intended for use in consequential applications including national security, healthcare, and transportation.

Key Points: 
  • The new AI Assurance and Discovery Lab will evaluate AI-enabled systems intended for use in consequential applications including national security, healthcare, and transportation.
  • “The opening of MITRE’s AI Assurance and Discovery Lab is an exciting development in the most fertile frontier of technological progress—extracting maximum value from AI while mitigating some of its risks,” said Sen. Mark Warner.
  • “As we seek to embrace AI safely and with the proper guardrails in place, ventures like MITRE’s AI Assurance and Discovery Lab will be invaluable to our efforts across government.
  • “The grand opening of MITRE’s AI Assurance and Discovery Lab, which will support the secure implementation of advanced AI systems in federal agencies, is another step forward for our region’s leadership in research and applied sciences.”

Language Services Market Report 2024-2032, by Service (Translation Services, Interpretation Services, and Others), Component, Application and Region

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, March 21, 2024

DUBLIN, March 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Language Services Market Report by Service (Translation Services, Interpretation Services, and Others), Component, Application, and Region 2024-2032" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Key Points: 
  • DUBLIN, March 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Language Services Market Report by Service (Translation Services, Interpretation Services, and Others), Component, Application, and Region 2024-2032" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
  • As globalization continues to drive companies towards international expansion, the market is expanding, providing a significant impetus to the language services market.
  • Many leading language service providers in Europe leverage artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing to offer efficient and scalable language services.
  • Moreover, companies in the language services market are expanding their localization offerings to cater to the needs of global businesses.

Jorie Koster-Hale Named CEO at Falling Colors Corporation

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, March 12, 2024

SANTA FE, N.M., March 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Data and financial processing company Falling Colors Corporation (FCC) has named Jorie Koster-Hale as its new CEO.

Key Points: 
  • SANTA FE, N.M., March 11, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Data and financial processing company Falling Colors Corporation (FCC) has named Jorie Koster-Hale as its new CEO.
  • Prior to joining Falling Colors, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship (Harvard) and was lead data scientist for an enterprise AI company in Paris.
  • Co-founder Pamela Koster, stepping down as CEO of FCC, will remain CEO of the Falling Colors Group, which includes the charitable Falling Colors Foundation and FC3 Ltd. Co., currently renovating the historic White Building in Santa Fe.
  • Koster-Hale's plans include expanding Falling Colors' capacity to support public and behavioral health across the US, continuing to build an ethical and employee-centered governance structure, and ensuring that Falling Colors continues to thrive in the face of an uncertain economic and political environment.

Reports of the death of psychoanalysis are exaggerated, as Adam Phillips’ elegant, elusive writing shows

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Psychoanalytic ideas were dominant in several academic fields, held in esteem by intellectuals, and well known, if notorious, among the general public.

Key Points: 
  • Psychoanalytic ideas were dominant in several academic fields, held in esteem by intellectuals, and well known, if notorious, among the general public.
  • Boiled down to its essence, psychoanalysis is an approach to understanding the mind’s dynamics and treating its ailments.
  • Review: On Giving Up – Adam Phillips (Penguin) But although its influence has shrunk, reports of the death of psychoanalysis are exaggerated.
  • Almost all are in humanities fields: screen and cultural studies, gender studies, criminology, linguistics and history and philosophy of science.

A celebrated literary figure

  • The prolific writings of Adam Phillips epitomise this modern day humanistic expression of psychoanalytic thinking.
  • Phillips, who has worked for many years in England as a psychotherapist, is also a celebrated literary figure.
  • He has received high praise as “the best living essayist writing in English”, “one of the finest prose stylists in the language” and “our greatest writer in psychology”.
  • The hallmark of Phillips’s work is taking an idea or phenomenon, often ordinary or obscure, and patiently investigating its hidden complexities.

On Giving Up

  • On Giving Up is not, in fact, about giving up in any systematic way.
  • The lead essay inspects the many forms of giving up, from renouncing a vice to abandoning all hope.
  • Giving up can be a form of “enlightening disillusionment”; failure at one task but success at something else.
  • There are a few false notes: is suicide really the “only paradigm” for giving up and is it true “no one writes in praise of giving up”?

Hypnotic style

  • Phillips’s style throughout the book is almost effortlessly fluent and erudite.
  • The theoretical dimension of his work musters a variety of literary critics and French writers, but always circles back to Freud and his commentators.
  • For psychoanalytic aficionados, he is especially drawn to the British and French mystics: Wilfred Bion, Jacques Lacan and D.W. Winnicott.
  • After a while, despite the simple words and the smooth sentences, the experience becomes hypnotic.

Curiosity versus knowledge


Clues to why Phillips’s work is so clever and thoughtful in the reading but also so insubstantial in what it leaves behind can be found in two ideas he presents at each end of the book. In the prologue he cites with approval the psychoanalyst Marion Milner’s distinction between narrow and wide attention and near the conclusion he develops a distinction between curiosity and knowledge.

  • A related issue arises when Phillips draws a distinction between curiosity and knowledge.
  • A true psychoanalyst, after all, “is someone who is, above all, curious about curiosity.” It is hard to argue against the value of curiosity, but to place it in opposition to knowledge is odd.
  • Normally, we might think curiosity drives us towards knowledge and knowledge rewards and reinforces curiosity rather than dulling it.
  • It is not obvious why psychoanalysis or any other approach to studying the mind could not aspire to be both a form of (widening) curiosity and a form of (narrowing) knowledge.
  • But in Phillips’s work we see a highly developed psychoanalytic curiosity that abstains from making clear knowledge claims.

Psychology versus psychoanalysis

  • I’m sure he would agree what he is doing is not psychology in the usual senses.
  • Psychoanalysis of Phillips’s variety doesn’t aspire to be any kind of science and it sets itself up as a radically different approach to the study of mind and behaviour.
  • A psychology of giving up, for example, would be less astute in unravelling the inner complexities of self-sacrifice and renunciation than Phillips’s psychoanalytic account.
  • Such an approach is not inherently preferable to Phillips’s form of psychoanalysis, but it is decidedly different, and not because it is deficient in curiosity.


Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

ConverSolo to Provide AI Language Learning Tools to Quebec Colleges and University

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, February 21, 2024

A First of its Kind AI Application in Higher Learning

Key Points: 
  • ConverSolo Inc., the AI language learning software company, reports that it has been contracted by Montmorency College, Vanier College, and the University of Sherbrooke, all Quebec-based institutions, to develop AI-powered learning materials through its Bokomaru Publications business division.
  • At Montmorency College, ConverSolo Inc. will provide Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) links to conversational robots which will integrate with the college's Moodle website.
  • The AI-powered solution will provide students with interactive oral practice using their webcams and intelligent video-feedback on interactions with simulated clients.
  • ConverSolo has been engaged by Vanier College in a pilot project to develop custom AI-powered writing and speaking tutoring systems for students learning their second language.

GLOBO Awarded Minority Business Enterprise Subscription in Houston

Retrieved on: 
Tuesday, March 5, 2024

PHILADELPHIA, March 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GLOBO , an interpreting and translation services provider, has been added to the Minority Business Enterprise database of the Houston Minority Supplier Development Council ( HMSDC ), a regional affiliate of the National Minority Supplier Development Council ( NMSDC ).

Key Points: 
  • PHILADELPHIA, March 05, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GLOBO , an interpreting and translation services provider, has been added to the Minority Business Enterprise database of the Houston Minority Supplier Development Council ( HMSDC ), a regional affiliate of the National Minority Supplier Development Council ( NMSDC ).
  • GLOBO maintains a Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) certification by the NMSDC, which is granted to businesses that are at least 51% owned, controlled, and operated by individuals from minority groups.
  • GLOBO’s national certification and new subscription to the HMSDC opens new opportunities and partnerships with organizations in the greater Houston community seeking supplier diversity.
  • “Receiving the Minority Business Enterprise recognition reflects our ongoing commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts,” said GLOBO CEO Dipak Patel.

LabVantage Introduces a Digitally Native Ecosystem to Boost Speed and Success in R&D Laboratories

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, February 22, 2024

This ecosystem will enable R&D labs to improve efficiency, productivity, decision-making, collaboration, and ultimately time-to-market while reducing operational cost.

Key Points: 
  • This ecosystem will enable R&D labs to improve efficiency, productivity, decision-making, collaboration, and ultimately time-to-market while reducing operational cost.
  • LabVantage will present its LIMS solutions and integrated ecosystem at Pittcon 2024 (Booth #2133), February 24-28, in San Diego, California.
  • Some LabVantage customers have experienced a 30% reduction in repeated experiments by implementing LabVantage’s semantic search tool, AILANI.
  • For more information on LabVantage, its LIMS solutions, and digitally native R&D ecosystem, visit www.labvantage.com or email [email protected] .