As cultures are mainly divided into collectivistic and individualistic, members tend to emphasize, through communication, either their position as part of their group or their independence from the group. This emphasis is manifested in using the pragmatic concepts of positive politeness and negative politeness. The present study looks into the reflection of these two cultures in Rockstar’s renowned video game, Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). It aims at identifying the two cultures as present in the game and showing their significance to its narrative. It fills the gap in the studies of language used within video games as well as its cultural reflections. The study addresses the following question: What are the positive and negative politeness strategies used in Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), and what are the implications of using these strategies in its narrative? By adopting Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory, the researcher analyzed the positive and negative politeness used in the scripted dialogue of the in-game cutscenes through the mixed methods approach. The researcher hypothesized that the protagonist shows adherence to a collectivistic culture using positive politeness, and he begins transitioning towards an individualistic culture using negative politeness. The results showed that 75% of the protagonist’s interactions contained positive politeness while only 25% contained negative politeness. This transition explains the protagonist’s loss of trust and loyalty to his group as he begins to witness the futility of maintaining such loyalty. It also supports the overall narrative of the game as well as its cultural foundations.
Maximum likelihood estimation method, uniformly minimum variance unbiased estimation method and minimum mean square error estimation, as classical estimation procedures, are frequently used for parameter estimation in statistics, which assuming the parameter is constant , while Bayes method assuming the parameter is random variable and hence the Bayes estimator is an estimator which minimize the Bayes risk for each value the random observable and for square error lose function the Bayes estimator is the posterior mean. It is well known that the Bayesian estimation is hardly used as a parameter estimation technique due to some difficulties to finding a prior distribution.
The interest of this paper is that
... Show MoreThis study aims to study argumentation in political debates by figuring out the logical fallacies employed in the debates of Clinton and Trump, the presidential nominees of the 2016 elections, and Biden and Trump, the leading contenders in the 2020 United States presidential election. The study attempts to answer the questions: (1) What relevance fallacies are adopted in the debate between Trump and Clinton? (2) What rhetorical devices are used to influence the audience and gain voters besides fallacies in the debates selected? The study analyses two texts from two arguments using Damer's (2009) taxonomy of relevance fallacy and rhetorical devices based on Perrine’s (1969) model of communication and interpersonal rhetoric to answe
... Show MoreA quadruped (four-legged) robot locomotion has the potential ability for using in different applications such as walking over soft and rough terrains and to grantee the mobility and flexibility. In general, quadruped robots have three main periodic gaits: creeping gait, running gait and galloping gait. The main problem of the quadruped robot during walking is the needing to be statically stable for slow gaits such as creeping gait. The statically stable walking as a condition depends on the stability margins that calculated particularly for this gait. In this paper, the creeping gait sequence analysis of each leg step during the swing and fixed phases has been carried out. The calculation of the minimum stability margins depends up
... Show MoreThe purpose of this paper is to statistically classify and categorize Building Information Modelling (BIM)-Facility Management (FM) publications in order to extract useful information related to the adoption and use of BIM in FM.
This study employs a quantitative approach using science mapping techniques to examine BIM-FM publications using Web of Science (WOS) database for the period between 2000 and April 2018.
The findi
In the present study, magnet silica-coated Ag2WO4/Ag2S nanocomposites (FOSOAWAS) were fabricated via a multistep method to address the drawbacks related to single photocatalysts (pure Ag2WO4 and pure Ag2S) and to clarify the significant influence of semiconductor heterojunction on the enhancement of visible-light-driven organic degradation. Different techniques were performed to investigate the elemental composition, morphology, magnetic and photoelectrochemical properties of the fabricated FOSOAWAS photocatalyst. The FOSOAWAS photocatalyst (1 g/L) exhibited excellent photodegradation efficiency (99.5%) against Congo red dye (CR = 20 ppm) after 140 min of visible-light illumination. This result confirmed the ability of the heterojunction be
... Show More<p>The speech act of request is face-threatening by nature and an inappropriate request can cause offence to the hearer, particularly when s/he has higher authority (Economidou-Kogetsidis, 2011). E-mail is frequently used to facilitate communication between student and professor in Iraq. Iraqi EFL (English as a foreign language) learners face pragmatic difficulty in making proper requests to individuals of higher authority via e-mail. Some studies have been conducted on Arab EFL learners to uncover the pragmatic behaviour of these learners in real-life requests using elicited data. This research fills a gap in Inter-language Pragmatics (ILP) literature in that it investigates the use of academic request in three diverse imposi
... Show MorePresupposition, which indicates a prior assumption, is a vital notion in both semantic and pragmatic disciplines. It refers to assumptions implicitly made by interlocutors, which are necessary for the correct interpretation of an utterance. Although there is a general agreement that presupposition is a universal property of Language, there are various propositions concerning its nature. However, this research work proposes that presupposition is a contextual term, thus, is more pragmatic than semantic in its nature.Although Semantics and Pragmatics are two distinct disciplines, they are interrelated and complementary to each other, since meaning proper involves both, and since there is no clear borderline between the two disciplines. How
... Show MorePoly-ether-ether-ketone (PEEK) was introduced in dentistry as an alternative to metal alloys.
To assess the effectiveness of PEEK-fixed retainers in preserving the stability of mandibular anterior and participant satisfaction as compared to the Dead-soft coaxial fixed retainer (DSC).
A single-centre, two-arm parallel groups
Green areas are an essential component of city planning, as they serve as an outlet for them to spend their free time, in addition to the environmental role that these green areas play in improving the city’s climate by purifying the air and beautifying the city. The study’s problem is summarized in identifying the appropriateness of the current spatial distribution of green areas in the city of Najaf with the current population densities and the pattern in which green areas are distributed using GIS and knowing the per capita share of those green areas in the city, the research assumes that the inconsistency of spaces between regions Green and residential neighbourhoods need to c