Stylistic Analysis : “a Cup of Tea” by K.Mansfield

Written by ASUMAN BIRDAL STYLISTIC ANALYSIS : â€Å"A CUP OF TEA† by K. Mansfield The common view that a literary text is likely to be comprehended better if it is studied in parallel with stylistic analysis which emphasizes the crucial role of the linguistic features of the text contributes much to the development of literary criticism. M. A. K. Halliday is one of the text linguists who sees ‘grammar’ as a network of systems of relationships which account for all the semantically relevant choices in language, which is the standpoint of the stylistic analysis as well. In the light of M. A. K. Halliday’s discipline, I will try to analyse a piece of literary text written by Katherina Mansfield in the format of a short story titled â€Å"A CUP OF TEA† and try to criticise the text objectively in relation to its grammatical (functional) features . Before this , I’d like to give a brief information about the content of the story. A. INFORMATION ABOUT THE STORY Scanning the story first, we come across with a rich couple named Rosemary and Philip leading an untroubled, desirable life and they seem to love each other since- we have no implication whether they love each other for money or not – and everything goes well in their lives. Rosemary spends money without getting into trouble and giving no reason or excuse to her husband in doing this. Everyone in a society admires Rosemary not maybe for her beauty but for her remarkable features such as being interested in current movements from every aspects, seeming as an intelligent young woman, reading the modern books. Philip is not as bright as Rosemary but he makes himself realize as soon as he enters the story towards the end. Apart from the couple, there is a girl who meets Rosemary in a street by asking for money to have a cup of tea then is picked up by her to have a cup of tea at her home and begins to be directed by her. We infer this from the fact that whenever Rosemary wants her to enter the scene she is there but when, at the last scene, Rosemary is jealous of her, the girl is easily disappearad without giving no sign for us to follow the reason of her disappearance. And we have one more character having a part in the story :the shopman. He is also under the effect of Rosemary; we can understand this from his polite behaviours which are made obvious in the text with circumstantial features. But he is the person also who utilizes by the weakness of her. He tries to draw her attraction on the enamel box and succeeds it; he promises her to keep the box for her because he knows her and he knows that she will come to buy it; she has the power of money and gets whatever she desires without acconting for anything to anybody. Not only we encounter with her weakness in her dialogue with the shopman but also in her being jealous of Miss Smith when he utters lovely words for this girl and behaves as it is predicted by Philip who knows directing her and makes her behave as he desires taking advantage of her faulty character successfully. In that sense Philip is an intelligent man and effective on Rosemary who is also obviously the symbol of possessive female by being jealous of the girl she has met in the street; so she has no self-confidence ,she is a little bit credulous. She asks directly-having no hidden meaning in her words- ‘Am I PRETTY? ’, which ironically reveals her ex-behaviours to Philip even she supposes that Philip is not aware of the truth. B. ANALYSIS When we look at the story from the point of ‘transitivity functions’ included in the stylistic analysis which tell us about the language and its reflection on processes ,participants ,circumstantial functions we realize that main participant is ‘ Rosemary’ and most of the processes are acted by her. When we count all the sentences describing her or the ones in which she takes place we realize her dominancy at once. The other participants I’d like to analyse on this text -apart from ‘Rosemary’- are the girl,Miss Smith, and Philip. Even though Philip hasn’t got as many turns as Rosemary and Miss Smith, I’d like to examine the processes of him in order to display the currents of events as a whole- he is the efficient figure in the sequences of events in the story-; in other words it is vital to handle it here to maintain the entirety of the text. To do this I will follow M. A. K. Halliday’s process in which ‘Ideational’, ‘Interpersonal’, ‘Textual’ Functions of language are daelt with in order to support all my commentations on Katherine Mansfield’s work.

Examine The Way Shakespeare Presents The Power And Control Capulet Exerts Within The Play

Shakespeare clearly demonstrates that Lord Capulet is a very protective father. This is because in Act 1 scene 2 Capulet says â€Å" hopeful lady of my earth† In this quote Shakespeare shows that Capulet is a loving and protective father because children died easily and the words ‘hopeful lady’ means that Juliet was his only hope , Juliet was very precious for him because she was his only child. Also in that quote Shakespeare used flattering language.Lord Capulet was a responsible and protective father which the audience in those times found as a typical father, however throughout the play Capulet gives Juliet freedom to choose who she wants to marry which wasn’t considered as normal in those days. â€Å"My child is yet a stranger in the world† This could suggest that he does not feel ready about Juliet being married. The word ‘stranger’ shows that she’s naive and inexperienced. And that she hasn’t been long enough in the à ¢â‚¬Ëœworld’. Shakespeare shows that Lord Capulet has the ultimate power and control in his household.His power and control is shown trough his relationship between his wife, daughter and others members of his family. In act 1 scene 5 Capulet is presented as a kind and friendly man by starting his sentence â€Å" Welcome , gentlemans† But as he goes along Shakespeare shows that he can be manipulative not only over his family. â€Å"Ladies that have their toes unplagu’d with corns will walk a bout you. † This quote maybe is suggesting that he’s manipulating woman. Also throughout the scene he says â€Å"Am I the master here, or you? Go to.†The language used here is dominant. Shakespeare uses rhetorical question to show that Lord Capulet has control to tell people what to do and authority over his family, also he’s foreshadowing the disasters that are soon to come. He uses imperative words. Paris asked Capulet to marry Juliet, not Julie t herself which was found normal for the audience, however it gives a small bit of evidence to support that he, being Juliet’s father had power over Juliet’s own decisions. Juliet changes more than any other character throughout the play.In act 1 scene 3 Juliet says â€Å"But no more deep will I endart mine eyes Than your consent gives strength to make it fly† Juliet is being obedient by saying that she’ll do what her parents tell her to do. The word ‘consent’ suggests that she need her parent’s permission to do what she wants. But when she meets Romeo, she become more confident regarding the path of her life. Act 3 scene 5, Capulet tells her that she is to marry Paris, but instead of doing what he said she goes against her father’s will, â€Å"I will not marry yet.And when I do, I swear it shall be Romeo† This shows Juliet transformation throughout the play, she changes from an innocent obedient girl into a brave confide nt girl, this is because she confesses her love for Romeo to her parents. Lord Capulet expected Juliet to be happy with the match with Paris because Juliet obeys him, and in those days fathers picked their daughter’s husband and they couldn’t disagree with it; they should be happy and thankful. Also Paris was rich, he was related to the Prince and good looking.â€Å"Not proud you have, but thankful that you have† In this quote Shakespeare uses flattering language. As the play goes on Juliet makes a number of important decisions, she falls in love with the enemy of her family, gets married, would be an embarrassment to her family, and finally kills herself, this wasn’t expected from a girl in those times, the audience might have been shocked with her acts in the play because the society expected daughter to obey their parents. Destiny is the most powerful theme of the play. This is because destiny controls the end result in Romeo and Juliet’s ill-fa ted union.This is evidence from the line â€Å"A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life† Shakespeare mentioned that Romeo and Juliet were ‘star-cross’d they’re destiny to die. He foreshadows Juliet and Romeo’s death. The prologue points out that Romeo and Juliet have fate against them. Is says that their love is â€Å"death-marked† and they have no control over what happens. Juliet tells Romeo of her vision of him dead at the bottom of a tomb. This is foreshadowing to the already destined event these two lovers will soon face. Before Romeo enters the house of the Capulets, he speaks about an unknown danger â€Å"hanging in the stars†.The word ‘star’ might suggest that events expected to occur being written in the ‘stars’, and explains how life is predetermined by fate. He says that he defies fate, by saying that he defies what is written in the stars. In act 5 scene 3 Romeo says â€Å"Shall I beli eve That unsubstantial Death is amorous,† Shakespeare used Oxymoron by saying ‘Death is amorous’ to create an dramatic effect. Romeo refuses to accept that Juliet is dead. What Romeo does not realize is that he has no control over is destiny. No matter how angry or motivated he is to change what is written in the stars, he cannot. It is already predetermined.Overall I feel that power and control of Capulet was critical in the development of the play because he certified to carry the feud between the Capulets and Montagues. However I think fate was the most important theme because it controls the end result in Romeo and Juliet’s ill-fated union, and no one can change destiny. From the beginning of the play Shakespeare uses foreshadowing to emphasise how important fate is. If it wasn’t for destiny Romeo and Juliet wouldn’t have met, married and therefore wouldn’t have settled the dispute between the Capulets and Montagues. Examine the way Browning reveals power and control In My last DuchessMy last Duchess is about the imbalance of power and control between man and women. On the surface the poem is about a dominant possessive duke who killed her wife because she was too easily admired by others and blushed The Duke holds a sort of ownership over his wife. â€Å"My last Duchess† The title itself revels that the speaker, the Duke, is very possessive. The word ‘my’ suggests that the Duke is very dominant and controlling. Browning used the voice of a possessive narrator, this might be because to show how completely he ruled over her. The quote â€Å"The curtain drawn for you, but I â€Å"shows that he’s possessive and powerful.The pronoun ‘I’ suggests self-importance. Nobody is allowed to touch the curtain but him. Furthermore, the Duke is presented as a controlling person; the evidence for this is â€Å"since none puts by’ The Duchess could be covered up giving him comp lete control thru the opening and closing of the curtain. Now he controls who sees the picture, but he cannot control time and mortality. The narrator is presented as a commanding, powerful and jealous. At the beginner of the poem the narrator, the duke, is giving the ambassador of his second wife a tour of his artworks in his house. We can see this in the quote â€Å"Will’t please you sit and look at her?†Really a command rather than a question. Throughout the poem the narrator uses the pronoun ‘My’ to show how dominant and possessive the Duke is. â€Å"My gift† This quote he used an arrogant tone, and the word ‘my’ again shows ownership. Moreover on the poem we can he is cold and powerful, the evidence for this is â€Å"I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. † This quote might be telling us that the Duke is vague, and that he ‘gave commands’ or orders to kill the Duchess. And foreshadows the Duchess dea th. He’s jealous that he can’t even bring himself to talk to her about her behaviour – murder is the only solution he can come up with.His jealousy isn’t just about romantic attention; it’s about any kind of attention. We know he is self-obsessed because of his repeated use of ‘I’. The narrator presents the Duchess as a happy, cheerful and flirtatious. which has displeased him. As the ambassador looks at the portrait of his late duchess he says â€Å"Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek† The Duchess blushed easily. We could see this furthermore on the verses 23-24: â€Å"she liked whate’er She looked on†. He’s jealous of the attention his wife shows to other, he’s jealous of every smile and every blush that she gives.He claims she flirted with everyone and did not appreciate his â€Å"gift of nine-hundred-years- old name. † He describes her cheek as having a â€Å"spot/ Of joy† in it, p erhaps a slight blush of pleasure ‘joy’. On the verse 14 he says â€Å"her husband’s presence only,† This suggests that it wasn’t just â€Å"her husband’s presence† that made her smiled and blush in this way, although the Duke seems to believe that it should have been the only thing that would. From the beginner of the poem we might conclude that his wife was no longer alive. The evidence for this is â€Å"as if she were alive.†We immediately begin to suspect that the duchess is no longer alive, but left enough uncertainly to capture our attention as readers. â€Å"That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall† In these lines, we are given our first hint that the duchess wasn’t that important to the duke, suggesting that his late wife was nothing more than her external appearance. The word â€Å"last† is the evidence that she was dead. As his monologue continues, the reader realizes that the Duke in fact caused the Duchess’s early end, when her behaviour escalated, he â€Å"gave commands;† In the verses 46-47 he says â€Å"There she stands As if alive.†This is another evidence that the Duchess is no longer alive, Browning uses juxtaposition to create an effect on the reader. We might conclude that he had his wife killed because the final image of the expensive bronze statue , a metaphor â€Å"Taming a sea-horse , thought a rarity,† The Duchess is being tamed by someone powerful , the Duke , which killed her because of jealousy, and to show that he had power and control to do anything that pleased him. We never got to hear her point of view. Did she really disrespect his â€Å"nine-hundred-years-old name† as he claimed she did?What is your response to the pieces of literature you have read? Make links between the ways the writers have considered and presented the theme. You will be hearing from us shortly , The conscript , Hawk roosting and My last duchess are all poems about power and control which we can link with the play Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is a play about love, conflict, power and control. At the start of the play there’s a fight between the Montagues and the Capulets, which later in the play results Romeo and Juliet’s early death.Whereas ‘My last Duchess’ is about jealousy, selfishness, power and control, which also ends with death. In ‘Romeo and Juliet’ power is presented in fate, love and parental control. As ‘My last Duchess’ power is presented between man and women. Both of the poem and play uses commanding language and an imperative. In ‘Romeo and Juliet’ power and control can have an effect in individuals, similar to the Duchess. Both of the play and poem we can see that power and control corrupts the end result of the main characters.This has an impact on the reader because we can realise that power and control has a devastating cons equence. Lord Capulet and the Duke have a lot of similarities. Both of them has power and control, but it is viewed in a different perspective. Capulet wanted the best for his daughter that’s why he used his power and accidentally caused her death. As in ‘My last Duchess’ the duke wanted to kill his wife because of jealousy and to show that he’s won’t let anyone disrespect him or unpleased him , and that the only way to show his power was to kill her.Shakespeare also presents the theme of power and control between Lord Capulet and members of his family. Act 1 scene 5 Shakespeare presents Capulet’s power within his relationship between Tybalt, he says â€Å"Am I the master here, or you? † Shakespeare might have used rhetorical question to show his power and commanding word. He uses the pronoun ‘I’ to show that he’s the one who controls what happens. Browning also uses the pronoun ‘I’ frequently, this mig ht be because to show how self-obsessed, selfish, powerful and narcissistic he is. â€Å"Will’t please you sit and look at her?†This is really a commanding rather than a question which we can link with Lord Capulet being powerful and using rhetorical question. Romeo and Juliet and ‘Hawk roosting’ both seem to be about power and control. ‘Hawk roosting’ is about a dominant hawk that feels superior. The poem shows the world as seen from a hawk’s point of view. The hawk seems very determined and powerful, the evidence for this is â€Å"I sit in the top of the wood† This can be taken two ways , literally he is positioned at the top of the wood, but also metaphorically he is at the top of the tree- at the top of the food chain.Shakespeare also presents the theme of power and control , but the difference is that he presents power and determination within Capulet. â€Å"Am I the master here, or you? † The language used here is do minant, also Shakespeare uses a rhetorical question to shows that Lord Capulet has power and authority to tell people what to do, similar to hawk roosting â€Å"I am going to keep things like this† here Browning shows that the Hawk is powerful and determinate, and that no one can challenge him and he has power to do anything without needing permission from anyone.Both of the poem and play use the pronoun ‘I’ repeatedly which suggests self-importance and power. The techniques used in these quotes are dominant language, rhetorical questions and an imperative. The impact on the reader is that both the play and the poem show how people use their power to control. Friar Lawrence and the doctors in the poem ‘The conscript’ have some similarities. Shakespeare presents the power of religion within Friar Lawrence. Whereas in ‘the conscript’ power is shown by the doctors secularly.At the very beginning of the poem, the reader can realise that is a bout unsympathetic doctors. â€Å"Indifferent, flippant, earnest, but all bored† Here the poet is describing the doctors, from the word ‘bored’ we can deduce that the doctors are not doing their job properly. Friar Lawrence uses his religious power to make serious decisions such as suggesting the idea that Juliet could fake her death to be unrestricted and be with Romeo afterwards. ‘The Conscript’ uses the image of Jesus â€Å"With arms outstretched and drooping thorn-crowned head†

Major Works Data Sheet Essay

In this column, choose five quotations from the text, one focusing on each of the following literary elements: In this column, analyze the significance of your quotations. Allow the following questions to guide your responses: Why is this important? What does this reveal? Why does the author say it this way? What is the tone/mood of this passage? Theme â€Å"Seek happiness in tranquility and avoid ambition.† -Victor Frankenstein This is part of the theme of the book, sometimes too much knowledge is a bad thing, like the death of Victors family members. He did not think through the consequences of creating such a creature and therefore it led to the death of his family. He now wishes that he had been happy and thankful for the life that he was living instead of attempting to alter it, because then maybe his family would still be alive. Characterization â€Å"William, Justine, and Henry – they all died by my hands.† -Victor Frankenstein This quote is an expression of the sorrow and the guilt that Victor feels for being the reason his family died. Because of the death of his family he has a very Debbie Downer outlook on life and does not end up making the monstrous creature his companion. Setting â€Å"When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, the, a monster, a blot upon the earth from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?† – The monster, Chapter 13, page 105 The creature realizes what a monster he is, because everyone he encounters runs from him in terror. He is lonely on this Earth and wants Victor to make  him a companion in female form. Symbolism â€Å"What was I? Of my creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant, but I knew that I possessed no money, no friends, and no kind of property. I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome†¦was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned. â€Å" -The creature, chapter 13 Sometime after being created by Victor, the creature no longer thought that he was happy and did not understand why he was alive. He tried to fit in with the world around him but everyone was afraid of him and at one point or another he just gave up on trying to fit in with society. In this quote he explains his actions and the reasoning behind them. Imagery â€Å"It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open†¦Ã¢â‚¬  -Victor Frankenstein, Chapter 5 This is when Victor brings the creature to life, the creature that he has work endlessly, spending all of his time on it. This scene is used in movies to make audiences fear the monster that Victor created.

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Business - Research Paper Example This strategy was a part of the nation’s attempt to maintain the targeted exchange rate value of its domestic currency against a basket of major and influential currencies in the world. Despite a few reports about illegal resource transfers across international premises, the Chinese managed to keep a major proportion of their total stock of financial resources with themselves through profound government intervention (Morrison, 2009). The hypothesis testing conducted in the previous section, in connection with the susceptibility of Chinese firms to impacts of the crisis, also found an insignificant effect of the same. In fact, the subtle truth is that, even though the Chinese experienced hardships on account of the financial distress, they were far better off than what the Western economies felt, where recession was declared officially. As far as statistics are concerned, the Bank of China, the largest nationalised commercial bank in the nation, was responsible for a total of $10.8 billion amount of investment in US owned mortgage-backed securities, nearly 3.5% of its total investment securities portfolio in 2006. Although this figure fell down to 1.4% by the end of 2008, yet, according to Fitch Ratings, this was the highest figure among all other Asian financial institutions (Chim, 2007). The investment into securities was a consequence of excessive stocking of US financial assets, which amounted to a sum of $2.13 trillion as on June 2009, in order to keep its exchange rate floating at the targeted level, compared to that of US dollars. The Chinese government considered it wiser to invest in US securities rather than holding such a huge quantity of money idle (Morrison & Labonte, 2009). The exposure of the Chinese economy to US financial securities however, was not limited to just mortgage backed securities; rathe r there were huge investments of Chinese renminbi on credit

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Unit 7 mini - Coursework Example It is important to note how long the carnival will last for a budget to be set. In this case it commences from the 11th to the 20th of September, 1998. A budget committee should be set for the selection process of any proposal. This helps in determining the amount of funds that will be allocated the carnival. Their work is to come up with a budget for every single detail that will be available. The budget proceedings also includes a charge incurred during the week of the carnival. In this case, the risk to be experienced will be overcharging the citizens since the people of Spokane County will take part in the selection of qualified firms for setting this event. The firm that submits an affordable and a well evaluated budget will stand a chance to secure the available carnival contract. Quality of products is a crucial aspect of getting into a contract with Spokane County. Nobody will want poor quality products of their carnival, it poses a risk not only to the firm but also to all the people attending the carnival. An opportunity in the contract exists where quality services are offered and well trained workers are employed based on the level knowledge and skills (Jaafari, 2001). Services offered have to meet the eye of the consumer. The major risks likely to be encountered with this field will be failure to satisfy consumers’ needs. This may lead to a termination of the contract mainly because it is a long term contract for up to 5years. The Spokane County Carnival is expected to have technical equipment such as carnival rides that are meant to satisfy the residents. The firm that provides these services and state of art equipment at reasonable fees lands the contract. According to Jaafari 2001, innovativeness is also crucial, people are accustomed to change, and hence the firm that comes up with new ideas, new carnival games, and shows have a

Gangs and gang behavior - week 5 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 1

Gangs and gang behavior - week 5 - Essay Example disruptive conduct disorders before entry into school system (Kalb &Loeber, 2003) and, according to Loeber and Farrington (2001), these problems develop later during growth. The later theory is backed by Vaughn and colleagues (2009), who argue that children become more exposed to an array of risks during the elementary period and onward and also argue that children get more vulnerable to bad peer influences outdoor. In other cases, some theories do not highlight other potential causes of this problem of gang involvement, for example, Loeber, Farrington and Petechuk (2003) including Tremblay (2003) discover that concentrated disadvantages obstruct socialization of juveniles. Loeber and Farrington (2001) talk about relevant family variables present at the preschool level, low social resources and a number of family hitches inclusive. On another account, Pogarsky, Lizotte and Thornberry (2003) identified broken families, parental delinquency, poor child management, abuse, grave matrimonial conflicts and inexperienced young motherhood. With regards to the above, it is vivid to see that other theories actually forget to put into account other relevant factors. In another analysis, theories contend for example Kroneman, Loeber and Hipwell (2004) who strongly assimilate societal poverty with behavioral problem and specifically girls, Hipwell (2002) as well as Wei (2005) make a conclusion regarding the same theory highlighting girls become the most affected in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Some factors are common across all the four developmental stages as well as the theories, therefore, this means that a single theory can be developed out of all the theories with respect to the developmental stages of a

The Environment and Technology in Feed (responses) Assignment

The Environment and Technology in Feed (responses) - Assignment Example However, on the other, it is causes serious environmental problems such as the destruction of Jefferson Park. When more artificial elements are incorporated into life, the natural elements are apparently forced out. Therefore, Feed just like every other dystopian piece of literature shows how the future might end in apocalypse if necessary actions are not taken immediately. It shows how government uses technology to literally control the minds of people, thus, the story serves as a gentle reminder to make young readers see beyond the truth shown to them. The Teen Ink article as well as the Colson Article provide in depth information regarding the genre of YA dystopia and further exemplify how the genre has shifted throughout time. The latter furthermore identifies that it is the â€Å"courage and vision to begin anew† portrayed through stories of this genre that make it so popular among modern day teens (Colson 2012). Hope is identified as the â€Å"most powerful emotion† in YA dystopia, however, in Feed, Anderson does not seem to portray it too much, as in the end, the rebellious Violet dies and throughout the story her thoughts are always dismissed and no one listens to her (Teen Ink 2014). I completely agree with the plot and themes presented in the novel, however, I believe that Anderson could have inclined a bit more towards hope rather than truth so that his readers could end with a better note of â€Å"uplifting sense of triumph†

Does social media promote freedom Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Does social media promote freedom - Assignment Example On YouTube, he watches videos with content unsuitable for young people. On all his accounts, he posts comments, shares and likes on photos, videos, music, etc. he finds worth his attention. Lucy is 10 years old. She can only use her mother’s iPad after she is done with her homework. Using her information, Lucy’s mother created a Facebook account for her daughter. On Facebook, Lucy plays with free applications such as Farmville, Chefville and Pet Society. Some things she wants to get for her pet in Pet Society need to be bought with gold. Lucy’s mom doesn’t want to buy gold so Lucy is starting to be bored with this app. One time, Lucy posted a picture on Facebook. The picture did not appear on her Facebook page. Also, she got a message that the picture was offensive. Her mother had to help her reply to the message and adjust the settings of her profile. Vien is 18 years old and a student majoring in film-making. She has a YouTube account and primarily uses it to upload her home videos and do research for her distance learning classes. Since opening an account on YouTube was free, Vien didn’t need to figure it into her tight budget. Right now, she is very upset. The film her teacher assigned for a research paper was indeed available on YouTube. However, only a few minutes of it was uploaded by the user. There was a link to the full video but, when Vien went on the site, it asked her to pay $10 to access the full video. a. 21-year old Mark works as a freelance consultant. When meeting clients, Mark is available any time of the day. He lives alone in his comfortable & spacious apartment and pays all the bills from money he has earned. His consultancy fees vary, depending on the case. There is no curfew in this building so he can come and go as he pleases. This is perfect for his job which is the reason he decided to stay here. When he does not feel like meeting a client, he calls and tells them he is sick or has a sudden

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Special education - Essay Example I found it necessary that preschool teachers needs to acquire full knowledge on the background of their students (family types, racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, income strata, parent-education levels and language backgrounds); Learn their strengths academically as well as their weaknesses, so that they would be able to determine which teaching strategy to adopt and implement to this kind of learners. I also observed during the sessions with both the preschoolers and their teachers that, most of time, preschool teachers are exerting more effort to get the attention of the children, to let them speak and interact during the small group activities. Preschool teachers are very patient and never lose their patience and temperament. Another observation is that, only few parents or guardians are around with the kids, to observe them as well as to monitor their daily activities. The preschool teachers were good in seeing the children in a variety of situations at the school and are able to identify their respective needs and problems. Practically, I can say that the classrooms are very conducive to preschoolers’ learning process; the walls of the classrooms are quite attractive, with visual aids posted on it, flashcards, coloring books, educational toys and wide-range of multimedia are readily available for the students’ use. Perhaps, these are the means of the educators in order to stimulate the preschoolers more intellectually. The preschoolers were also provided with books, worksheets, and other forms of learning materials. They have good playground, security and there were kiosks for the parents and guardians as they stay. There were varied approaches to teaching observed. Most activities start in large group where the students dance, sing or recite poems all together. There were instances that they do activities alone like when they practice to write their names, color their drawing book, answer workbooks

Project Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Project - Literature review Example Ennis, (2005) in his journal claim that a range or approaches or theories have been developed concerning attribution, self-efficacy and self-esteem. Self-efficacy is described as the judgment of how well a course of action that is needed in dealing with the eventual situation can be executed by an individual. Kleinbeck, Quast, Thierry, Hacker, & Forschungsgemeinschaft, (2005) expound on Ennis’ definition, by describing it as the confidence of a person in his or her aptitude to the organization and execution of a particular course of action to deal with an issue or execute a job. On the theory of self-efficacy, the writers argue that the major determinant of effort, setting of objectives and persistence is efficacy. The conception suggesting that people with higher self-efficacy are inclined to be more accomplished and motivated on a particular work is supported by empirical research. In addition, self-efficacy has been linked to the application of the cognitive strategies the perceptions of self-efficacy project triumph over the real or actual levels of ability Kleinbeck, Quast, Thierry, Hacker, & Forschungsgemeinschaft, (2005). Moreover, another concept in the motivation field is about the locus of control (Denton, 2002). In this concept, people should be more motivated in a manner such that they are made to feel like they are in control and ownership of their failures as well as successes. In addition, in one formulation of the theory of control, we find that one of the three fundamental psychological requirements, together with relatedness and competence is independence. It is within this structure or context that the personal differences in the degree to which these fundamental requirements are accomplished are in compliance with the variation with the motivation levels. Nonetheless, the locus of control has a close relationship with the attributions concept. Attributions are the beliefs of a person as regards the causes of a bad or good performance. There are numerous kinds of attributions, and these include ability, lack and effort (Denton, 2002). In the ‘Motivation in the real world’ text by Gellerman (1992), we are told that the most effectual systems of motivation in flourishing and successful organization in the United States are benefit programs and good pay, selectivity in the process of hiring, as well as the encourage of employment on long term basis. Some other means are flexible policy implementation, cooperative groups or even none at all, as well as a rational policy that puts the motivation of employees above any other thing Gellerman (1992). However, in the ‘Understanding Employee Motivation’ a research by Lindner (1998), factors of motivation are put or arranged in order or importance. The first one is interesting work, followed by good pay and lastly full appreciation or recognizing of the job done. Coming next is job security or assurance, good conditions for working, growth and prom otions in the corporation. Ranking low on the list is individual loyalty to the workers, sympathetic help with individual problems and considerate disciple. Some other ways that can be used to increase the motivation of workers is promotions, enlargement of jobs, external and internal stipends, rewards and job enrichment. To make work more interesting to the workers, job enlargement is the best approach as it increases the variety and number of

Basic hygiene practices for food preparation and cooking Essay Example for Free

Basic hygiene practices for food preparation and cooking Essay Every day people get ill from the food they eat. Micro-organisms including bacteria, viruses and moulds found in food can cause food poisoning, leading to a whole host of unpleasant symptoms, such as stomach pains, diarrhoea and vomiting. Food poisoning can sometimes lead to gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach and bowel), or more serious health problems such as blood poisoning (septicaemia) and kidney failure. Anyone can get food poisoning but some people, including babies, children and older people, are more likely to have serious symptoms. This is why this is vital as in the Seaview nursing home the residents are frail older people and several also are in poor general health. They are many basic hygiene practices for food preparation and cooking. This includes: Surfaces Equipment Sell by dates Food Cooking storing Surfaces Food poisoning affects thousands of people every year and many of these cases go unreported. The exact numbers of cases of food related illness that occur each year are unknown. This is because many people do not seek the help of their doctor when their doctor when they develop symptoms. Food poisoning can be extremely dangerously especially for the very young, older service users and those who are ill or infirm. It is therefore important that care workers actions do not increase this problem. To prevent contamination of food it is necessary to follow recognised hygiene procedures to make sure that risks are kept to a minimum. Cleaning and disinfection chemicals are available to maintain the correct standards of cleanliness. Usually these chemicals are added to water to make a cleaning solution. Some come ready to use in spray or aerosol bottles for convenience. Substances used for cleaning food preparation areas fall into three categories: Detergents – are chemicals that will dissolve grease and assist the removal of food debris and dirt. Detergents do not kill bacteria. Disinfectants – are chemicals designed to destroy bacteria and reduce them to a safe level. However disinfectants are not effective at removing grease and dirt’s. Disinfectants have a very strong smell and have the potential to taints foods and if in contact with surfaces that food is prepared on extra care should be taken in rinsing with hot (above 82C) water. Sanitizers– are a combination of both detergents and disinfectants and are designed to kill bacteria and remove dirt and grease at the same time. image00.pngimage00.png Disinfection can also be carried effectively using heat i.e. using hot water (above 82C). Chemicals can be used in addition to this process however are less effective where hot water is not available or a preliminary clean had not been carried out. The combination of the above chemicals and very hot water provide an effective way of keeping surfaces clean. Any work surfaces that is used for food preparation must be strong, durable, easily cleaned, resistance to stain or to absorbing liquids and not easily damaged. In professional food areas stainless steel tables are used for food preparation activities. They are usually on wheels which have brakes so that they can be moved easily which allows for ease of cleaning. It is vital that work surfaces are kept clean and bacteria free. The clean as you go method should be used. This means that all equipment and surfaces should be cleaned as soon as they have been used. This describes cleaning that is carried out as soon as the mess is created, the aim of this is to prevent cross contamination and to keep work areas clean and tidy. Examples of this might be Washing and sanitising of a chopping board straight after use and Cleaning up a floor spillage immediately after it has happened. Any spills should also be mopped up immediately they occur. Work surfaces should be left clean and clear when work has finished. The 5 stages of cleaning work are: Remove food particles and spillages using a suitable damp cloth Use a hot water and detergent solution to remove any grease and debris Rinse thoroughly with very hot water (82C) Use a suitable disinfectant to reduce bacteria to a safe level Final rinse with hot water and dry using paper towels (or allow to air dry) Equipment Only clean equipment if you have been trained to do so. This is especially important where the equipment has sharp cutting surfaces and or moving parts that are run by electricity. Care should be also taken with equipment that is hot or generates a lot of heat, for example cookers and deep fat fryers When training has been done some basic steps should be followed when cleaning equipment. The basic steps are: Disconnect the equipment from the power source Take extra care when removing any blades Remove all waste food Thoroughly wash and sanitize all parts Reassemble the equipment taking care to fit all components correctly in case they fly off during use Sanitize again those parts that will come into contact with food Ensure that all safety guards are refitted correctly. All other small items of equipment like pots, pans, cutlery, plates and glassware can be cleaned in the usual way. This may either be in a dishwasher or by hand using detergent and hot water. Sell by dates Perishable is foods that are likely to go off quickly. They normally have a sell by and use by date on them. Selling food after its sell by date is an offence. The food can be used up to and including the use by date. For an example a carton of milk may have a sell by date till the 14th march and the use by date may be the 16th march. The milk can be used on the 16th and before but not after. Most other foods have a best before day; this indicates the month up to which it will be in its best condition for eating. Some foods don’t have to require a date for example fresh fruits vegetable’s and meat from the butcher. Food It is vital that certain precautions are taken when providing food for service users. Washing of the hands is vital so hands must be washed: Before entering a food area After using the lavatory Between handling different types of food such as raw meat an cooked Before and after touching foods After coughing into the hands or using a handkerchief After touching face and hair After carrying out cleaning or handling rubbish It is essential that this is done because many bacteria live on the surface of the skin. Many of these are harmless however some can cause illness. Bacteria can be acquired from other sources and can contaminate food. Handling raw mean and poultry and then handling cooked meat is very dangerous unless hands are thoroughly washed in between. Touching the nose or coughing and sneezing over food or preparation areas should be avoided. This is because personal cleanliness is essential or bacteria will be transferred to the food. Also avoid touching the food with hands and glove wearing or using of the tong when possible is a good thing to do. This is because the less hands are in direct contact with food, the less chance there is of contamination. Touching dishes or cutlery that is to come into contact with food should also be avoided. This is because this cuts down the transfer of bacteria. Keeping the hair covered with either a hat or net and not combing hair in the food area should also be done as hair and scalp can carry bacteria that can fall into the food. Also keeping cuts and grazes covered with brightly coloured dressing as wounds are infected with bacteria and if the dressing comes off it can be easily found. Not smoking in the food areas is vital as it is against the law and can contaminate food. Also when ill food handling should not be done. This is vital because a person who is ill can infect food. Another thing that should be done is wearing clean protective clothing as there are fewer bacteria on clean clothes. Cooking Heat kills bacteria and this is why food must be cooked thoroughly. Cooking food at temperatures over 70Â °C will kill off any bacteria. If food isnt cooked at a high enough temperature, bacteria can still survive. Take special care that you cook meat all the way through. Unless you’re cooking steak or lamb and beef joints rare, it shouldn’t be pink in the middle. Use a clean skewer to pierce the meat. If it’s cooked properly, the juices will run clear. If you’re cooking meat so it’s rare, make sure that it’s properly sealed (browned) on the outside. Large pieces of meat take longer to heat up to the centre. The need for sufficiently high temperatures reaching the centre is very important. Always re-heat pre-cooked food thoroughly and only do so once. When cooking food in the microwave, stir it well from time to time to ensure that it’s evenly cooked all the way through. It is bad practice to mix previously cooked food with newly cooked food. Topping up soup lowers the temperature and increases the risk of bacteria growing. It is much safer to make up food in smaller quantises as and when it is needed. Eggs can carry salmonella, so to safeguard service users, eggs should be cooked for around seven minutes at 70ËšC. High risks foods such as eggs and chicken that are eaten immediately after cooking are safe providing the temperature is high enough. If there is going to be a gap in time between the foods being cooked and being eaten, it must be kept hot. Equipment should be used to hold the food at a temperature of 63ËšC or above. This is could be a heated tray, trolley or service counter. When using this type of equipment; heat the equipment to at least 63ËšC before loading the food, ensure the food is already fully cooked and at a minimum temperature of 63ËšC and never use the equipment to heat up cold or partially heated food. Reheating food can increase the risk of food poisoning. Some food handlers often make the mistake of thinking that because food has already been cooked it is free of bacteria. They believe that is only needs warming up. If it happens, bacteria had ideal conditions for growth for example food, warmth and liquid. Guidelines for food that needs reheating is as follows: Don’t get the food out of the refrigerator too soon and leave it lying it around Handle as little as possible and keep it covered Divide larger items into smaller portions where possible Heat the food to at least 70ËšC as its core Serve quickly following reheating Never reheat cooked food more than once If reheating ready-made meals from a shop, follow the manufactures instructions in addition to the above advice. Storing If you don’t follow the storage guidelines that come with your food, you could be letting yourself in for real problems. Storing food in the wrong place or at the wrong temperature can lead to the growth of bacteria. This means that even one piece of food left out for a couple of hours can contain millions of bacteria as bacteria flourish at body temperature which is 37ËšC. The reason foods are stored in a refrigerator is because bacteria and viruses can’t multiply below 6ËšC. The correct temperature for a refrigerator is between zero and 5ËšC. Chilled foods should be put away quickly but don’t overcrowd the refrigerator as it raises the temperature. With cooked food, let steam evaporate first before covering and placing in the refrigerator. Always keep the refrigerator clean by washing the inside surfaces with warm soapy water. Never thaw then refreeze food. To slowly defrost, take the dish out of the freezer and leave it in the refrigerator overnight rather than on the counter top. Place meats on a plate on the bottom shelf. When defrosting with the microwave, cook the dish immediately. Never freeze food that has gone beyond its use by date and remove old food regularly. Keeping the refrigerator at the right temperature helps prevent bacteria from multiplying. The correct temperature for a refrigerator is below 5ËšC and a freezer and should kept at minus 18ËšC. Check both the refrigerator and freezer regularly with a reliable thermometer. To maintain a constant temperature, keep the door shut whenever possible. When storing food in a fridge: Don’t allow the juice from the raw meat, fish and poultry to spill or drip onto any other foods. Put fruit and vegetable’s items into the salad drawer Keep milk and fruit juices on the bottom rack in the door Place dairy products , dressings, spreads, sauces, cream and convince foods on the centre and top shelves Store raw meat, fish and poultry on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. this prevents cross contamination as the blood as the other liquids from the meat and fish cannot drip down onto other foods Cooked foods should be kept on the top shelves of the refrigerator Mayonnaise and ketchup should be kept in the refrigerator after opening Never place food in an open tin in the refrigerator. Use secure containers instead and throw the food out after two or three days Keep seafood either in the refrigerator or in the freezer until you are ready to prepare it Cross contamination occurs when food is put in contact with other contaminated foods. An example of this could be the blood from a piece of chicken dripping onto a plate of cooked food. Cross contamination means that the bacteria or other pathogens have been transferred from an infected food item. They either become infected or contaminated. If food looks or smells in any way, throw it out. A sure sign of spoilage is mould. Most mouldy foods should be binned along with leaking cartons and food which has gone past its use by date. Most frozen foods should be thrown out after three to six month’s. When storing food in the freezer, remove it from the wrapping and place it in a labelled and dated freezer bag. Remember to expel all the air from the bag before sealing it. If a power cut has occurred then foods that have started to defrost should be thrown out. If the power comes back on and if there is any doubt about which foods have defrosted and refrozen, the food should be thrown away. Food that does not need keeping cold should be kept in a sealed container in a cool dry cupboard or larder. It should never be stored on the floor. Vegetables can normally be kept in a cool, dry place in loose bags or racks but not in plastic bags. This makes them sweat and rot quicker.

Hul Vijeta Essay Example for Free

Hul Vijeta Essay Taking learnings from earlier years, a successful redemption programme was implemented, reducing liability substantially. To maximise redemptions by all whoselsalers in the network in the most efficient manner, thereby reducing HULs liability. Challenge: To overcome problems faced in previous redemption drives i. e. poor attendance, long waits and wasted agency resources for visiting cities with gift/ rewards vendors. And to maximise redemptions, given the background and geographical spread of venues. Objective Challenge Target Audience HULs wholesalers, ( Vijeta Programme members) primarily small businesses, who have stiff targets and are wooed by schemes from competition. They earn reward points on every purchase and can redeem them for gifts. Redeem your points for rewards in your own city - that was the theme. Given that it is an annual event, the task was to create ‘a difference’: This was done by creating a dedicated †¢ Vijeta AV †¢ Invites to event. Event collaterals:Backdrops A 74 city redemption drive over 2 days in the cities with maximum points’ liability. . Day one for Platinum and Gold members, Day 2 for Silver. 2. A formal invite with members’ Vijeta points personalised, sent well in advance. 3. 3 Teams of 4 students each per zone ( instead of Agency resources) managed the redemption events with daily reports to a Direxions coordinator. 4. HUL received transaction reports within 48 hours of the transaction being done! Direxions coordinated with vendors to ensure that the value, quality and supply/ quantity of products was commensurate with expectations and demand. 6. A soft copy of all points in each city to enable correct rewards being redeemed 1. 30,000 reward requests requested nationally 2. Rs. 100 Million worth of rewards redeemed.

An Introduction To Theological Reflection

An Introduction To Theological Reflection Stephen Pattison article entitled Some Straw for the Brick: A Basic Introduction to Theological Reflection introduces a model of theological reflection called critical conversation. In this model the conversation is between three parties, namely the students own faith presuppositions, the particular situation/context being looked at and the Christian tradition. Pattison is by no means suggesting that the critical conversation model is the only model of theological reflection. He has chosen it because its derived from others forms of theological reflection and lists seven advantages to it. ( pg. 139). According to Pattison, purpose of this model of theological reflection according is to help people think through and analyse their own experiences, the issues and the situations that they face and in so doing the practical theology gets underway. As far as Pattison is concerned the critical conversation has more to do with asking the right questions than arriving at the right answers. He also appears to suggest that theological reflection has less to do with academic ability than with inventiveness and imagination, creativity that seeks to discern patterns in a particular situation. Why critical reflection one might ask? Pattisons answer to that question is as follows: a). It helps us to bring about an understanding of human and religious experience in contemporary society whether superficial or complex. He suggests that, more complex the situation, require a depth in the conversation by drawing resources from other secular knowledge base, i.e. or Christian theology. b). It connects belief and practice to everyday life. c). Prevent people from making false assumptions. d). Helps one to grow deeper in faith and appreciation of theology. Theological reflection must become the filter of the ministry of the church. Critical reflection serves as a critical tool for the purposes of practical theology It is active enquiry, .dynamic, deep searching and open ended. Not intended to produce universally acclaimed answers by everyone and in every places in all cases. Theological reflection should not be seen as relevant to all people in all situations because of the different contexts. It is worth pointing out that theological reflection undertaken by individuals may well reveal more about the person and their perspective than it does about a secular situation or Christian theological tradition. To avoid that Pattison recommends that individuals be self-critical when doing theological reflection on their own. Theological reflection should be done as a group exercise instead. Helen Cameron illustrates the importance of this through her group work with TAP. Clearly this important point is articulated by all the other writers whose work form part of this review. Theological reflection in group setting is conducive to a deep and enhanced critical conversation likely to produce à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Any enquiry must aim at enriching the individual but crucially must be for the benefit of the Christian community. Such an outcome is bound to give new meaning and new orientation to the ministry of the church as has been the case throughout the churchs history. The weakness of this model of theological reflection is that it can be too subjective as it appeals to peoples particular theological bias, temperament and cultural leaning. Relativism, idiosyncratic are.. mutually interrogative method can lead to further questions, does not provide eternally valid answers which can be applied to everyday life. Asking questions and engaging in critical conversation is not an adequate way of conceiving theological reflection. Pg. 142 (limitations) Also the conversation may no be academic enough. One other criticism to be said about Pattisons model of theological reflection is that it assumes everyone can do it. The fact of the matter is not everyone has the skill Ballard page 2. Elaine Graham Elaine Graham etal recognises that the subject of theological reflection has been research extensively resulting in the production of numerous publications. However for her and fellow writers their article entitled Method or Mystique in Theological Reflection: Methods offers a challenge to the vague manner theological reflection is viewed. They point to the fact received understanding of theological understanding are largely under- theorised and narrow, and too often fail to connect adequately with biblical, historical and systematic scholarship (pg.1). As such they aim to help the reader engage in patterns of theological reflection that are richer in the source they draw on more rigorous and more imaginative. Their introductory chapter gives a history outline of the discourse. We have an account, of understanding practical/pastoral theology as a discipline concerned with practical training which is broader and understands theology as critical reflection in a variety of settings. Graham etal, sites Donald Scon who argues for a shift from theoretical knowledge, technical rationality and scientific precision which is all theoretically and not practically based consequently eroding public trust of experts. According to them, professional knowledge of expertise is only acquired in a particular context or situation that is implicit and problem based. Furthermore the learning takes place by responding with flexibility to situations, willingness to be a proactive learner and risk taking. (pg. 4) This view that knowledge comes by experience is also shared by Kolb in his book on model of experimental learning. (pg. 5) As such theology ought to be understood as a process rather than product. Christi an practice, alongside systematic biblical and historical theology is crucial to theological reflection. In their view such engagement with these traditional Christian resources is weak. It is to this interrelated problem of traditional Christian resources that Theological Reflection: Methods reverts. My third article for review is entitled Characteristics of Theological Action Research by Helen Cameron etal. The article comes from the book written by her and others called Talking about God in Practice. In it a methodology of research called Theological Action Research is introduced. TAR is a brain child of Action Research Church and Society made up of two teams that are ecumenical and interdisciplinary chosen. The team members are all theological practioners and researchers, made up of a team from Heythrop and the other team from outside. ARCS objectives are realised when dialogue goes on in each team and also across the teams. The teams demonstrate willingness to share good practice and ideas of theological research between teams. As a model TAR has four stages called a cycle of theological reflection and are the following; experience, reflection, learning and action. The methodology require that each stage of the cycle is carefully examined and documented using its action research process and social sciences methods of collecting data. Theology plays a key part in all the stages of the practice right from the beginning to the very end. That also includes the shared reflections of the practitionrs and researchers. We can conclude that the lessons learnt are the following: Theological reflection and theology is directed at life situations in every human experience whether be a believer, church community including those who confess to be atheists. According to Metz, as he made reference to Karl Rahners a critical observation of Vatican II. God is a universal theme, a theme concerning all humanity or it is simple no theme at all. (pg 57 M.K). Rahners ascertion is an attempt to address an abserd belief which was sectarian and excluded others in taking part the faith dialogue/God. It is also true to say that when theology becomes self-absorbed by ignoring the worlds reality of human suffering, poverty injustice etc. it loses its purpose. The theological reflection model looked at in this review appear narrowly focused atà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦. with a particular racial group, principally white European and middle class. We live in a diverse à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦.. The church is a reflection of society that is multicultural, ethnic Robert Kinast in his article on the subject makes the same point that theological reflection is a threefold movement, which begins with the lived experience,

Disabled American Veterans Essay example -- History, War, Veterans

â€Å"Serving those who have served† (About Disabled American Veterans 1). This is the mission statement of the DAV, or the Disabled American Veterans. The DAV helps thousands of disabled American veterans in their life after war. A poll taken in 2009 found out that there are 21,900,000 American veterans. 5,500,000 of the American veterans are disabled (American Veterans By the Number 1). Only 1,200,000 disabled American veterans are members of the DAV (About Disabled American Veterans 1). â€Å"Building Better Lives for America's Disabled Veterans† (DAV 1). The DAV was founded when our country was struggling with the effects of World War I. American veterans that came home from World War I started the DAV in 1920. A lot has changed in the last ninety-one years, but the wounded and sick from the wars still need the DAV's help in life cope with their disabilities (Wars & Scars 1). In 1932 the DAV was deemed the official voice of the nation’s wartime disabled veterans (About Disabled American Veterans 1). The DAV have many missions in helping the veterans. Some mission statements are â€Å"Providing a structure through which disabled veterans can express their compassion for their fellow veterans through a variety of volunteer programs† (Mission Statement 1), â€Å"Extending DAV's mission of hope into the communities where these veterans and their families live through a network of state-level Departments and local Chapter† (Mission Statement 1), and â€Å"Representing the interests of disabled veterans, their f amilies, their widows and spouses, and their orphans before Congress, the White House, and the Judicial Branch, as well as state and local government†(Mission Statement 1). â€Å"Providing outreach concerning its program services to the Am... ... a Board of Directors and an Executive Committee. The Disabled American Veterans plans to provide health care, transportation, unique rehabilitation, and get the veterans a voice on Capital Hill. Both disabled American veterans and the families of the American veterans can receive help from the DAV. Volunteering is a big part of the funding of the DAV, and the volunteers can be nominated for the Jesse Brown Memorial Youth Scholarship. The Disabled American Veterans is partners with many other places to provide special events for the veterans like at Golden Corral give veterans free meals on Military Appreciation Mondays. Another way the DAV gets funding is through donates from people. With all the help the DAV gives to veterans, the DAV makes day to day life easier for the veterans. Of the five million disabled veterans, the DAV provides help to the veterans.

The Effects Of Anabolic Steroids :: essays research papers

The Effects of Anabolic Steroids   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  You've seen them, and you thought you knew what was going on. The muscle-heads at the gym, the all-star basketball player, the amazing offensive tackle, and the lightning fast swimmer. All of them used steroids, and you knew it. They were all unnaturally strong, and looked like gods. But what you could not see is the terrible side effects which come through the use of anabolic steroids. These powerful drugs have both positive and negative results from their use. Along with increased strength and size, users of steroids suffer from ailments like cancer, bad acne, hair loss, damaged organs and intense mood swings.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Anabolic steroids are a group of muscle building chemicals, which are synthetic versions of the male hormone, testosterone. Developed in 1935 they were prescribed to aid in muscle and tissue repair by those who had undergone surgery or had degenerative diseases. Now they are used by athletes and patients alike. But they are illegal to use if not prescribed by a physician, and have been banned by nearly all athletic organizations, both professional and amateur.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  When you think of someone who uses steroids you typically picture someone who is massive, and whose muscle mass is very well defined. A picture comes to mind of the giant body builder, who is so big he can't touch his back because his biceps are in the way, but he can manage to bench press his car. The possible growth and development is amazing. With much less work necessary, the results can be astounding. Athletes can get bigger, stronger and faster, with less effort than previous. The limits of an athletes potential with steroids seem to be unbounded. These are the positive aspects to the use of steroids. One study showed that as much as ten pounds of lean muscle mass could be gained by a mature adult using steroids over a years period. The resulting size and strength increase would be greater more easily attained than without use of steroids.(Taylor pg 45) Also, the type of body structure that may males are looking for can be easily obtained through the use of steroids. Large pectoral muscles, as well and big biceps and a well defined stomach are what many teenage users are after. Society dictates what the current trends are, and our society has dictated that athletic looking men (and women) are in. But not everyone can be so fortunate to have a beautiful body with their given gene pool. So through the use of steroids, people can attain the wonderful body that they so desire. One ex-user commented that after he had used steroids and bulked up,

We Must Strive to Protect Privacy in Technology Essay -- Argumentative

We Must Strive to Protect Privacy in Technology Technology is getting more and more complex as the years come and go. The availability of personal information is easier to access and the risk of it being tampered with is also high. As the years pass, the threat of privacy invasion gets greater and greater and easier to happen. There are several ways that privacy is able to be invaded and there will only be more to come. Americans have had their personal information given away without even knowing it. From dozens of public and private sources that have created consumer profiles, â€Å"the average American is profiled in up to 150 commercial databases† (Hinds 7). People are trying to â€Å"prohibit collection of personal information on the internet without consumer authorization† (Hinds 9). This is a very difficult thing to have happen, but it is a goal of several people who feel the same way. The amount of technology that is able to raid privacy is growing. â€Å"Every day millions of ordinary people are subject to a variety of technologies that invade their privacy† (Regan 1). Even in ...

My name is Iago Essay

I suppose I could be called the villain if this were a story. My hate of the Moor, both for that of Cassio, his lieutenant and that of himself, the ‘superior Moor’ have driven me to take my revenge. The ‘valiant moor’, as he is now known, in his worst decision that shall surely become his downfall, has passed me over for the role of his lieutenant and bestowed it instead upon Cassio, â€Å"that never set a squadron in the field† and made me â€Å"of whom his eyes had seen the proof†, his ancient, his sword-bearer. So instantly angered was I by this news that revenge was soon in the planning, and it was late last night when I began. Accompanied as I was by Roderigo, I began to plant in his mind the seedlings of my hate towards Othello, with first the new role of the ‘great arithmetician’ Michael Cassio and then the doomed affair between Othello and Desdemona. The poor fool Roderigo, intensely in love with Desdemona was very eager to inform her father of the sordid affair. Brabantio, needed no time to think, he awoke the house and guards and immediately after Othello. While my good Roderigo was unknowingly following my pre-ordained plan, I was with the Moor, attempting to inflame that black heart. Does the man (or lesser) have no honour? To find that his host of many times has turned against him and is insulting his honour would inflame any sane reasonable man, but Othello did not react. Even when the livid Brabantio appeared, Othello would not rise and be killed like he should have been. That Moor, he managed to win both Brabantio and then the Duke, when he should have been dead, and his trustworthy ancient in his position. It is all because of the Duke, and his worship of Othello that the Moor managed to escape from Brabantio’s fair accusation. If a man steals or uses drams or conjuration to steal away from her father a young maiden, it should be the father’s right to hunt down the dishonourable man and with all faith in the integrity of the court. I thought all was lost until the most ‘valiant moor’; Othello entrusted to me his dearest prize; Desdemona, to bear with me to Cyprus, where we once again shall have to fight those damned Ottomites. Roderigo, the pitiable man; ‘I will incontinently drown myself’ indeed. The poor fool, so madly in love with Desdemona, couldn’t see a way out of his condition, and if he had taken Death’s prescription, then I, Iago would be severely reduced, for without Roderigo’s finances, I would surely lose any sight of the task I have ahead. I have to excuse myself, for expending time with such a pitiable sight, even if for profit, is wasteful. Now I am glad that my first plan was foiled, for even if Othello had been struck down in a duel, Cassio would have been left, as an adversary. Now, in Cyprus, with both of these fools, it should be simple to take down both of them. â€Å"Cassio’s a proper man† so it will be harder to strike him down, the best way would be to continue as I am; to first shed doubt on his reputation with Othello, plant small things of uncertain credibility in the path of Cassio, who will, with his unshakeable loyalty take it immediately to the Moor who will, when the seeds of doubt have grown in his mind will surely begin to believe my small tale of falsification. Then, if I take every opportunity that passes, Othello will believe and be plagued by the tale till it is ever present in his mind, and acts, ending in death and the downfall of both the Moor and Michael Cassio.

Measurement For Skin Absorption Health And Social Care Essay

Risk appraisal after cuticular exposure to chemical merchandises requires transdermal soaking up information in order to correlate the external exposure to systemic toxicity. High quality informations on transdermal soaking up are accomplished from human voluntary surveies. Although the usage of in vivo surveies is strongly demotivated for ethical constrains. The behavior of these surveies is non imaginable for a immense figure of chemicals and other merchandises. As a consequence there was a turning demand for in vitro checks to find transdermal soaking up. The OECD in vitro TG for finding of cuticular soaking up accepts the usage of tegument of many mammalian species, and human tegument. Due to its higher handiness, excised carnal tegument has been used widely for appraisal of transdermal soaking up of chemicals merchandises in homo. The usage of animate being tegument for soaking up measuring is more meaningful when a permeableness coefficient can be used for comparing with human informations. Thus one of the cardinal undertakings is the hunt for a nexus between in vitro carnal tegument soaking up proving and human surveies for anticipation of transdermal soaking up in worlds. Hence such a method can optimise the development of drugs and cut down the figure of human surveies needed. However due to the big figure of different animate being species reported, comparing is complex. Small alterations in methodological analysis used with a specific tegument theoretical account, skin phonograph record temperature, receiving system media, application dosage and diffusion country can hold a serious impact on the cuticular soaking up. Furthermore no formal proof method has been performed.In vitro and in vivo OECD compliant surveiesTransdermal soaking up can be measured utilizing in vivo or in vitro methods with worlds or animate beings. These soaking up trials need to be executed under conditions imitating those expected to happen during the exposures to be investigated for hazard appraisal. The intent of vitro surveies is that they can foretell in vivo soaking up when the appropriate methodological analysis for both methods is used ( WHO, 2006, p.79 ) . During in vivo experiments the microcirculation system ( blood and lymph vass ) may transport substances from the corium into the cardinal compartment ( reabsorption ) . In contrast to in vivo reabsorption of a substance can non be sufficient evaluated in vitro ( SCCS, 2010, p.6 ) .In vivoThe rat is the most recognized species used in in vivo transdermal soaking up measuring ( OECD, 2004b, p.2 ) . The OECD 427 in vivo method defines the finding of the incursion of the trial compound ( or metabolites ) through the tegument into the systemic compartment. One or multiple doses of the trial substance, sooner radioactive-labeled sample, are applied to the clipped tegumen t of the trial animate being for a described period. The expected human exposure defines the applied dosage and clip. The animate beings are later evaluated at periodic intervals for marks of toxicity, and day-to-day piss and fecal matters ( and sometimes expired air ) are sampled for the trial compound. Blood samples are compiled at regular intervals and when the animate being is killed. Distribution of the trial compound may be determined in tissue samples from the application site and the organic structure. The result of the measuring can be expressed as the rate, sum, or per centum of transdermal soaking up. Advantages of the OECD 427 TG are the coevals of kinetic information in a metabolically undamaged system ( OECD, 2004b, P.1 ) .In vitroIn vitro or ex in vivo experiments, have realized a important decrease in usage of trial animate beings. The in vitro trial is developed for the measuring of the permeableness of a trial substance across excised tegument. Distinct types of ho mo or animate being skin readyings can be applied. The excised tegument phonograph record is mounted in a inactive or flow-through ( dynamic ) diffusion chamber and the trial compound that penetrates the tegument is collected in a fluid reservoir. Ex in vivo human- and pig tegument are today the most often applied tegument types ( Sh & A ; auml ; fer et Al, 2008, p.161 ) . As illustrated in fig.1, beside the usage of in vitro informations as a standalone attack, and due to the extended usage of the rat in other toxicity surveies, a combination of three surveies ( in vivo rat/in vitro rat/in vitro human tegument ) increases truth of human cuticular soaking up appraisal ( OECD,2010, p.13.15 ) .2.2.1 Validation of in vitro diffusion cellsIt is normally recognized that most types of diffusion cells provide consistent measurings of skin soaking up rates for a scope of penetrants ( Chilcott et al, 2005, p. 633 ) . In a global survey at different research labs the fluctuation in transdermal soaking up was investigated in in-vitro diffusion cell utilizing a mention silicone gum elastic membrane, there was no differences between inactive and flow-through cells in skin permeableness ( Jakasa, Kezic, 2008, p. 283 ) . In vitro measurings have been applied for many old ages for appraisal of transdermal soaking up, in malice of the absence of official proof surveies on the OECD 428 TG. Furthermore the OECD guidelines for in-vitro checks approved the use of assorted protocols ( Jakasa, Kezic, 2008, p.286 ) .Histological and permeableness differences between human and carnal theoretical accountsHuman tegument consists of three basic beds, that is, the cuticle corium and hypodermis. Above all the skin barrier map is provided by the cuticle. Dermal soaking up quantifies the incursion of compounds through this skin barrier into the tegument. The quality of the outer bed of the cuticle the stratum horny layer controls the velocity of cuticular soaking up. Human cuticle is comprised of 3-5 beds, and no blood capillaries are present. The cuticle of the rat shows a higher denseness of hair follicles associated with greasy secretory organs, this difference in coat denseness obvious consequences in higher permeableness in in vitro tegument soaking up surveies ( Chilcott, 2008, p.13 ) . More in peculiar the histology of the porc ear tegument was compared to clamber of worlds. In general the consequences for stratum horny layer thickness and follicular denseness were similar for both skin theoretical accounts ( Jacobi et al, 2007, p.22 ) . The entire lipid content measured in hog cuticular pieces resembles better to the human as for the rat ( Gray, Yardley, 1975, p.434 ) . From histological position the hog is the most relevant species for foretelling in vitro human soaking up, in comparing to human tegument. On the other manus the rat is the most often used species in systemic toxicity testing, particularly due to the low cost, and handiness of historical informations ( Ross, Dong, Krieger, 2000, p.53 ) .Intra-species correlativity between in vitro and in vivo measuring for skin soaking upThe correlativity between in vivo and in vitro transdermal soaking up ( IVIV ) is illustrated for human and rat. In human fundamentally the permeableness features of excised stratum horny layer are consistent with those from in vivo. A more in depth probe was carried-out utilizing literature informations for skin soaking up following in vitro and in vivo trial protocols. In entire 92 measurings in vitro/in vivo were compiled out of 30 publications chiefly from toxicological- and drug developmental countries. The IVIV correlativity or ratio between in vitro/in vivo soaking up was examined by a mathematic theoretical account, utilizing the entire soaking up as the cardinal parametric quantity for comparing. The mean correlativity IVIV for the complete used information set was 1.6. Nevertheless fluctuation between an single illustration could lift up to ratios of 20 crease. On the other manus less than 3 fold difference was observed in 85 % of the informations ( Lehman, Raney, Franz, 2011, p. 225 ) . Another illustration is given for the rat. For all examined compounds in vitro rat skin soaking up was superior to in vivo consequences. From a regulative point of position this may be of usage for a first tier rating ( van Ravenzwaay, Leibold, 2004, p.421 ) .Inter-species correlativity between in vitro and in vivo measuring for skin soaking upDue to fluctuation in composing and construction of the stratum horny layer, cuticular thickness ( table 2 ) , and denseness of hair follicles in the tegument, there are significant differentiations among the assorted animate beings and compared to human ( Jakasa, Kezic, 2008, p.284 ) . A considerable correlativity between animate being and human tegument soaking up can be studied by measuring of permeableness coefficients. Inter-species differences in cuticular soaking up are known since long. Brandau and Lippon reported in 1982 that inter-species permeableness followed the following ranking from higher to lower soaking up: coney & A ; gt ; rat & A ; gt ; guinea-pig & A ; gt ; mini-pig & A ; gt ; Rhesus monkey & A ; gt ; adult male ( EU, 2004, P.4-5 ) . From a quantitative point of position rat tegument is 10 times more permeable as human tegument. This was concluded from in vivo informations. ( van Ravenzwaay, Leibold, 2004, p.421 ) . Several surveies have ranked skin incursion rates for different species and concluded that a similar relation ranking is applicable for other compounds. This decision is non good founded because the original probe encompasses merely a limited figure of substances ( Vecchia, Bunge, 2005, p.327 ) .6 Conclusion and recommendationsThe re levancy of in vitro surveies for foretelling in vivo skin soaking up can non be underestimated. Dermal toxicity testing is carried out to determine local and or systemic effects of a chemical due to topical exposure. It may supply a suggestion that the compound penetrates the tegument if it leads to systemic toxicity, but the measure of chemical absorbed is non quantified by this cuticular toxicity survey ( ECVAM, 2002 ) . As a effect more exact in vitro anticipation of in vivo tegument soaking up is a turning aspect of regulative surveies. In instances where no transdermal soaking up informations is obtained for a compound, it is accepted that 100 % of the chemical topical applied is systemically available. This is a extremist and conservative policy, and more precise information on transdermal soaking up will take to more comprehensive hazard direction for chemicals ( Jakasa, Kezic, 2008, p.281 ) . In vitro surveies present a figure of benefits compared to volunteer homo or animate being surveies, among which time- and cost nest eggs, improved duplicability for transdermal soaking up, and lower fluctuation due to less restricted parametric quantity ( WHO, 2006, p.38 ) . Important advancement is made in standardisation of in vitro transdermal soaking up, but betterment in correlativity between in vivo informations, has non yet been realized ( Jakasa, kezic, 2008, p. 282 ) . Still variableness is a cardinal job in in vitro transdermal soaking up measuring ( Chilcott et al, 2005, p.633 ) . Cuticular soaking up experiments following the OECD TG 428 and TG 427 have been accepted by the EU governments, although they are widely applied without go throughing an detailed proof procedure as it is common pattern today ( SCCS, 2010, p.8 ) . It is known that fluctuation in in vitro permeableness measuring may be caused by the possible usage of different tegument theoretical accounts ( WHO, 2006, p.17 ) , but the OECD 428 TG still allows the usage of these different theoretical accounts ( OECD, 2004a, p.3 ) . Therefore it is recommended that for hazard appraisal one criterion tegument beginning should be internationally accepted ( WHO, 2006, p.124 ) . Human tegument is a valuable option, nevertheless it is non easy to acquire all the clip. Further human tegument samples from venters, human leg, or chest and in add-on full thickness ( 500-1000 µm ) human tegument samples are recommend ( OECD, 2010, p.10 ) in order to minimise fluctuation. Today in pattern rat and hog tegument ar e the most favourable in in vitro transdermal soaking up experiments. An in vitro survey in rat tegument in isolation of other information is most likely of restricted regulative significance due to overestimate of skin soaking up. Pig skin tissue is a good option but particular competency is urging ( OECD, 2010, p.9 ) . This fluctuation in skin barrier map among different species finds its beginning in morphological differences particularly fluctuations in the denseness of hair follicles and histological differences in degrees of free fatty acids and triglycerides that appear to be important factors for fluctuation ( Netzlaff et al, 2006, p.499 ) . Beside the acknowledgment of one gold criterion tegument type for both in vitro and in vivo soaking up. Extra probe is indispensable to heighten and standardise methodological analysis to cut down variableness in in vitro transdermal soaking up experiments. Additional internal and external quality controls such as: validated analytical methods, cross-check made with a high quality criterion substance, cogent evidence of skin barrier public presentation and appropriate tegument readying are needed. Besides the usage of a mention membrane and standard substance as an secondary control is urging ( WHO, 2006, p.124 ) . Reconstructed human cuticle ( RHE ) may function as high-quality mention membrane ( Sch & A ; auml ; fer et Al, 2008, p.183 ) . Testosterone, caffeine, or benzoic acids are proposed as standard substance for proof during the executing of soaking up checks. Unfortunately the OECD TG 428 does non demand this standard substances/membrane to be measured together with the surve y under reappraisal ( OECD, 2010, p11 ) . Therefore a reappraisal of the OECD guideline from 2004 is recommended. Alternatively important correlativity between animate being and human theoretical account based on permeableness coefficients can supply grounds of unity of the usage theoretical account ( Vecchia, Bunge, 2005, p.306 ) . For some systems a correlativity is found between in vitro/in vivo informations obtained in animate being and in worlds. However there are besides many instances turn outing low correlativities. Today merely a little sum of validated correlativities have been published ( Godin, Touitou, 2007, p.8 ) . More attending should be paid to correlate in vitro and in vivo informations ( WHO, 2006, p.125 ) . Particularly for specific classs of chemicals such as pesticides, cosmetics and industrial chemicals where extra probe may ensue in development of a more altered and – elaborate counsel paperss ( Jakasa, Kezic, 2008, p.286 ) .Appendix: TablesTable 1: Appraisal of skin soaking up utilizing combination of surveies.Animalin vivoHumanin vivoAnimalin vitroHumanin vitroTa ble 2: Cuticular thickness in different groups Skin scours Thickness in  µm Mentions Hog ear 72 Jacobi et Al, 2007, p.22 Human shoulder 70 Jacobi et Al, 2007, p.22 Rat 32 Godin, Touitou,2007, p.3 Rabbit norm 10-29 Parchami, Dehkordi,2010, p.610

Hidalgo Resturant, Inc: Succeeding As An Entrepreneur Essay

I. VISION A. Vision Statement â€Å"For everyone who works with us to discover in themselves their talent and their potential and to build relationship with each other† B. Comments Vision statements should answer the question â€Å"What do we want to become.† But Hidalgo’s vision statement does not answer that question. It doesn’t even mention what kind of business they are into. C. Proposed Vision Statement To be the preferred restaurant of Filipinos and expatriates, providing total customer satisfaction through quality, service, cleanliness, and value. II. MISSION A. Mission Statement Hidalgo Restaurant, Inc. doesn’t have specific mission statement B. Comments A Mission Statement reflects the company’s core purpose, identity, values and principle business aims. A Mission is defined as ‘Purpose, reason for being’. Defined simply â€Å"Who we are and what we do.† Mission statements should possess nine (9) components which are (1) customers, (2) products or services (3) markets, (4) technology, (5) Concern for survival, growth, and profitability, (6) philosophy, (7) self – concept, (8) concern for public image, and (9) concern for employees. C. Proposed Mission Statement We are committed to provide total customer satisfaction and exceed customer’s expectations through setting the trend in raising the bar, to be the change agents contributing directly to the country’s development, creating standards of excellence which every Filipino may aspire, to be in the business of building relationships and partnerships, among which one partner is the customer, in order to maximize earnings that will benefit our supplier, employees, and investors. III. EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS The restaurant sub-sector includes places that serve food and drinks, be it self-service or full-service. This covers a range of services including fine dining specialty restaurants, fast food outlets, canteens, and food courts. In terms of its contribution to the national economy, the hotel and restaurant industry accounted for 1.35% of Philippines’ 1998 gross domestic product (PHP12 billion in GVA compared to the Philippine’s PHP889 billion GDP during the period) and 1.28% of its national product (PHP12 billion in GVA compared to the PHP931 billion GNP). Moreover, the hotel and restaurant industry employed about 1% (282,142) of the country’s 31,278,000 labor force during the same period. Meanwhile, the National Statistics Office (NSO) in 1994, classified 46,930 firms as belonging to the hotel and restaurant industry, employing a total of 221,954 people. At the time, each peso investment in labor contributed PHP4.40 to the industry’s total output while ea ch peso investment yielded a PHP1.27 contribution to the same. A. Economic Forces Restaurant patrons cross all economic groups. Fast foods and food courts cater to all income classes. Specialty fine dining restaurants, generally target the A, B, and C crowd. The proliferation of one-stop shopping malls that offer various recreational facilities and amenities is also an important growth factor. The heavy pedestrian traffic that the malls attract means big business for the restaurant industry, particularly the fast food sub-sector. Moreover, these malls spare the restaurant industry from spending extensive business development studies for their outlets; mall magnates Henry Sy and John Gokongwei Jr. have established formidable track records in building malls. Finally, Filipino communities abroad are strong basis for the export of local restaurants and fast food technology. The presence of Goldilocks, Jollibee, Max, Red Ribbon, and Barrio Fiesta, among others, in the US, for example, is a result of demand from Filipino migrants longing for a taste for home. B. Social, Cultural, and Demographic Forces The urban population to which restaurants cater is largely made up of young people who have higher disposable incomes and who are more likely to experiment with different cuisine. Brand loyalty is particularly strong in the fast food sub-sector of the restaurant industry. Jollibee patrons, for example, generally stay loyal to the franchise regardless of price increases. Demand for dining out is associated with both the ever-expanding options available, and also with the number one reason most consumers use restaurants: they provide a convenient, reasonably priced experience that offers better flavors and taste sensations than consumers can get at home. This has become particularly critical at a time when more and more women are entering the workforce and consequently have less time to prepare meals at home. Moreover, the Philippine population is youth-oriented. Almost half of the estimated 75 million Filipinos are below 18. And since a large proportion of fast food consumers is betwe en the ages of 16-24, the annual 2.3% population growth rate guarantees market growth for the sub-sector. C. Political, Legal, and Governmental Forces Strong support of industry associations and trade unions (i.e., Hotel and Restaurant Association of the Philippines and the NWHUAI) enable the hotel industry, among other things, to undertake programs and projects that upgrade and professionalize the sector and to influence government regulatory policies/laws/rules affecting the industry. D. Technological Forces International food chains and franchises facilitate transfer of technology in the local restaurant sub-sector. They provide training of potential employees and employ strict quality control systems. In terms of availability of technology, the Philippine market is highly competitive with numerous products and brands offered at reasonable prices, and, therefore, allowing restaurant owners the luxury of choosing the type of technology that best suit their operations. Equipment purchasing decisions depend on the type of end-user. For instance, local single-unit restaurants need inexpensive equipment, so price is the main guiding factor. On the other hand, fine dining restaurants are willing to pay a premium for high quality, durability, after-sales service, cost effectiveness, reputable supplier and fast delivery. Restaurant owners regularly participate in local and international equipment trade fairs, allowing them access to the latest hotel equipment technology. E. Competitive Forces There are about 45,220 restaurant establishments in the domestic economy and about 80% of them belong to the fast food sub-sector. Food franchising is extremely popular. There are 1,057 franchised quick serve restaurants, 14 casual dining and theme restaurants, and 507 coffee shops, bakeries, and confectioneries. The industry in which the restaurant and fast food firms operate has increasing consumer demand for every improving product. The growth is proven by the rapid expansion of food outlets in key areas in Metro Manila and the provinces. The popularity of fast food establishments came in the 1980’s, and over the last years, the industry has consistently posted double-digit growth rates. Competition is fierce in the restaurant industry, particularly the fast food sub-sector. The market is large but consumers are price conscious and exhibit brand loyalty. With a wide range of restaurants and fast food establishments to choose from, pricing schemes and marketing strategies determine market shares. Market strategies of industry players, therefore, aim to achieve two primary objectives: 1) hammer in â€Å"value-for-money† concepts; and 2) create brand consciousness and loyalty. Market shares in the restaurants are won or lost in pricing. Industry players regularly offer price cuts and discounts to lure in new customers. Moreover, major players invest heavily in advertising to create brand consciousness and loyalty. Marketing strategies include raffle draws, free gift items and specially prized meal combinations, discounted toys and school items for every certain minimum food purchase. Celebrity endorsements are used in the hopes that the market will identify with the endorser. Likewise, intense competition urges players to come up with new products to capture bigger market shares. Restauranteurs have to be keen at finding the latest food and wine concoctions here and abroad and adapting them to local taste. Targeting the Filipino’s tastebuds, several fastfood chains that usually serve only western food have introduced items that appeal to the local market’s palate. Raising quality standards and improving service have also been focal points of competition, particularly in the fast food sub-sector. Players give incentives and compensations to motivate employees to be efficient on their jobs and thus help maintain the fast food outlet’s high standards of quality service and cleanliness. Also, a major importance in a fast food and restaurant is courteous and friendly personnel. Not surprisingly, speedy service is among the more salient attributes people would highly expect from a fast food restaurant.

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Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 www. elsevier. com/locate/pragma On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers Daniel Dor* Department of Communications, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel Abstract This paper suggests an explanatory functional characterization of newspaper headlines. Couched within Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory, the paper makes the claim that headlines are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers: Headlines provide the readers with the optimal ratio between contextual e? ect and processing e? ort, and direct readers to construct the optimal context for interpretation.The paper presents the results of an empirical study conducted in the news-desk of one daily newspaper. It shows that the set of intuitive professional imperatives, shared by news-editors and copy-editors, which dictates the choice of headlines for speci? c stories, can naturally be reduced to the notion of relevance optimization. The a nalysis explains why the construction of a successful headline requires an understanding of the readers—their state-of-knowledge, their beliefs and expectations and their cognitive styles—no less than it requires an understanding of the story.It also explains the fact that skilled newspaper readers spend most of their reading time scanning the headlines—rather than reading the stories. # 2002 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Headlines; Relevance theory; Pragmatics; News value; News framing; Media, communication 1. Introduction This paper is an attempt to suggest an explicit and generalized answer to a very fundamental question in the study of the mass media, i. e. , the question of the communicative function of newspaper headlines.The importance of the role of headlines in the communicative act performed by newspapers can hardly be exaggerated, yet the nature of this role has virtually never been explicated in the literature. As we shall see below, the regular strategy adopted in the literature has been to make ? negrained descriptive distinctions between di? erent types of headlines—news headlines in ‘quality newspapers’; news headlines in ‘tabloid newspapers’; ‘summarizing * Tel. : +972-3–6406521; fax: +972-3-6406032. E-mail address: [email  protected] tau. ac. il (D. Dor). 0378-2166/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0378-2166(02)00134-0 696 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 headlines’; ‘localizing headlines’, ‘quotation headlines’, etc. —and assign them different types of communicative functions. In this paper, I will suggest an explanatory functional de? nition of newspaper headlines which attempts to transcend the above distinctions in type and explain the very fact that newspapers—all types of newspapers—have headlines in them. The functio nal de? nition to be developed in this paper relies very heavily on Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) technical notion of relevance.Newspaper headlines will be functionally de? ned as relevance optimizers: Newspaper headlines are relevance optimizers: They are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers. This functional de? nition positions the headline in its appropriate role as a textual negotiator between the story and its readers. It explains why the construction of a successful headline requires an understanding of the readers—their state-of-knowledge, their beliefs and expectations and their cognitive styles—no less than it requires an understanding of the story. It reduces the di? rences between the di? erent subtypes of headlines mentioned above to a matter of tactical choice: As we shall see, all the di? erent subtypes target the same functional goal, that of relevance optimization, although they do it in di? erent ways. The literatu re on newspaper headlines covers a wide range of theoretical and empirical topics, all the way from the grammar of English headlines to the e? ects of headlines on news comprehension and recall. 1 Surprisingly, however, the literature dealing directly with the communicative function of headlines is rather sparse.I will review it in the next section. In Section 3, I will brie? y introduce Sperber and Wilson’s theory, and then develop the notion of relevance optimization. In Section 4, I will apply the notion of relevance optimization to newspaper headlines. In Section 5, I will present the results of an empirical study conducted in the news-desk of the Israeli national newspaper Ma’ariv, where I followed the process of headline production from close range. 2 I will show that the set of intuitive professional imperatives, shared by news-editors and copy-editors, which dictates the choice of headlines for speci? stories, can naturally be reduced to one meta-imperative: Ma ke the headline such that it renders the story optimally-relevant for the readers. In Section 6, I will apply the relevance-based conception to the analysis of tabloid headlines. In Section 7, I will deal with the role of the reader in this framework, and show that my relevance-based theory explains some of the more intriguing behavioral patterns manifested by newspaper readers—especially the fact that many skilled readers On headline reading, interpretation and recall, see Henley et al. 1995), Leon (1997), Lindemann (1989), Perfetti et al. (1987), Pfau (1995) and van Dijk (1988 and references therein); on headline production, see Bell (1984, 1991), Fasold (1987) and Chang et al. (1992); on the grammar of headlines, see Bell (1984), Jenkins (1990) and Mardh (1980); on metaphors in headlines, see de Knop (1985); on headlines from a cross-linguistic perspective, see Dierick (1987) and Sidiropoulou (1995). 2 Between 1996 and 1998, I worked as a senior news-editor and head of the news-desk in Ma’ariv.This was a period of very intensive participant observation: I was involved in the decision-making process concerning the formulation of thousands of headlines. The e-mail exchanges which were analyzed for this paper were randomly collected throughout this period—from other senior editors. 1 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 697 spend most of their reading time scanning the headlines rather than reading the stories. In the concluding section, I will sketch some of the larger-scale implications of my theory, and suggest some directions for further research. . Multiple types, multiple functions Traditionally, newspaper headlines have been functionally characterized as short, telegram-like summaries of their news items. This is especially true with respect to news headlines. Van Dijk (1988) couches this traditional insight within his discourseanalytic framework: ‘‘Each news item in the press has a Headline . . . and many have a Lead, whether marked o? by special printing type or not. We also have an elementary rule for them: Headline precedes Lead, and together they precede the rest of the news item.Their structural function is also clear: Together they express the major topics of the text. That is, they function as an initial summary. Hence, as in natural stories, we may also introduce the category Summary, dominating Headline and Lead. The semantic constraint is obvious: Headline+Lead summarize the news text and express the semantic macrostructure. ’’ Obviously, some newspaper headlines do provide what seems to be a summary (or abstract) of their stories, but the general theoretical conception which takes this to be the essential function of the headline seems to be too narrow, for at least three complementary reasons.First, even the most prototypical news headlines, those which appear in what is sometimes called ‘quality newspapers’, do not always summarize their s tories. Some headlines highlight a single detail extracted out of the story, and others contain a quotation which the editor decided should be promoted to the foreground. As we shall see below, some headlines even contain material which does not appear in the news item itself. The fact that headlines do not always summarize, but sometimes highlight or quote, has been noted by di? erent writers.Bell (1991), for example, makes a distinction between headlines which ‘‘abstract the main event of the story’’, and headlines which ‘‘focus on a secondary event or a detail’’ (p. 188–9). Nir (1993) distinguishes between headlines which function as ‘‘a summary of the story’’ and ‘‘headlines which, rather than summarize the story, promote one of the details of the story’’ (p. 25). 3 Second, the traditional notion of headlines-as-summaries de? nitely does not capture the function of head lines in more popular newspapers, and especially in tabloids. This point has been made by di? rent writers, most notably by Lindemann (1990). As Lindemann shows, tabloid headlines rarely summarize their stories, are not always telegram-like, and in many cases are not even informative. Lindemann discusses the 3 Note that none of the above writers goes beyond the descriptive labeling of the di? erent types of headlines to suggest explicit theoretical de? nitions and explanations. This fact is most clearly demonstrated by Bernstein and Garst (1982), quoted in Lindemann (1990), who claim that ‘‘†¦ the headline contains the main highlight of the story. Since it is the most conspicuous part and the part that is read ? st, the copy editor must present the essence of the news before he goes further’’. In this short quotation, Bernstein and Garst seem to equate the essence of the story with its highlight, thus equating the function of summarizing with that of h ighlighting. 698 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 function of tabloid headlines in poetic terms: They present the reader with a ‘‘fairly complex riddle’’, which, ? rst, triggers frames and belief systems in the reader’s mind, and, then, gets resolved in the ensuing text. Thus, the following headline, (1) NO-LA-LA! The Frogs Get Bored with Bed raps the reader ‘‘in the treadmill of well-established cliches and prejudice’’, through the use of such expressions as frogs, no-la-la and bed, and is then informationally resolved in the intro: ‘‘The days of the great French lovers are over—froggies just don’t fancy it any more. A third of women and a quarter of men told a nationwide survey they found bedtime one big yawn’’. Implicit in Lindemann’s analysis is the assumption, that the function of tabloid headlines is so radically di? erent from their function in qual ity newspapers, that the two cannot be theoretically uni? ed.As I will show below, the relevance-based analysis will allow exactly for that—to my mind, a very welcome theoretical result. The third reason to reject the traditional conception is the simple fact that headlines seem to have an additional, pragmatic function, beyond the semanticallyoriented function which is supposed to be captured by the headline-as-summary analysis. Bell (1991) says that headlines are a ‘‘part of news rhetoric whose function is to attract the reader’’ (p. 189). Nir (1993) claims that the headline has ‘‘to attract the attention of the reader and provoke the reader to read the whole story’’.In a sophisticated analysis of the semiotics of headlines, Iarovici and Amel (1989) explicitly contend that the headline has a ‘‘double function’’: ‘‘The implicit convention between author and reader regarding the intentio n of correlating a text to another text as a headline, and regarding the formal marking of this quality by a privileged position, concerns the double function of the headline: a semantic function, regarding the referential text, and a pragmatic function, regarding the reader (the receiver) to whom the text is addressed.The two functions are simultaneous, the semantic function being included in and justi? ed by the pragmatic function. †¦ The main function of the headline †¦ is to alert the reader (receiver) to the nature or the content of the text. This is the pragmatic function of the headline, and it includes the semantic one. The headline enables the reader to grasp the meaning of the text. The headline functions as a plurality of speech acts (urging, warning, and informing)’’ (p. 441–443). The challenge posed by the above assertions is that of theoretical uni? cation.At least two questions are involved: First, can we functionally de? ne the headline in a way which would transcend the above distinctions between the di? erent semantically-oriented functions? In other words, is there a generalized function which summarizing headlines, localizing headlines and quotation headlines have in common? Second, can we de? ne the headline in a way which would transcend the distinction between the above semantic function and the parallel pragmatic function which D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 699 headlines ful? ll?I would like to claim that this theoretical move becomes possible once we couch the functional analysis of headlines within the framework of Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) theory of relevance. 4 3. Relevance theory and relevance optimization Sperber and Wilson’s theory is an attempt to reduce a very complex set of phenomena having to do with communication and interpretation to a very constrained set of explanatory, cognitive notions. In its essence, the theory is one of cognitive cost-e? ectiven ess: It claims that human cognitive processes are geared to achieving the greatest possible cognitive e? ct for the smallest processing e? ort. This metaprinciple is incarnated in Sperber and Wilson’s technical notion of relevance. Let us take a look at the fundamental tenets of this framework: Our starting point is the individual mind: Every individual mentally represents in his or her mind a huge set of assumptions. Assumptions are propositional entitiesthey are the type of entities that can be believed to be true. Our assumptions may include, among other things, information on the immediate physical environment, expectations about the future, scienti? hypotheses, religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general cultural assumptions, beliefs about the personal lives of our acquaintances, knowledge about politics and history, beliefs about our own emotions, fears and hopes, and so on. Each of the assumptions represented by the individual has a ‘‘strength’â⠂¬â„¢ for that individual. The strength of the assumption for the individual is the level of con? dence with which the individual holds to the belief that the assumption is true. The strength of the assumption is a function of its cognitive processing history.Thus, for example, ‘‘assumptions based on a clear perceptual experience tend to be very strong; assumptions based on the acceptance of somebody’s word have a strength commensurate with one’s con? dence in the speaker; the strength of assumptions arrived at by deduction depends on the strength of the premises from which they were derived’’ (p. 77) Note that the strength of an assumption for the individual has nothing to do with its objective validity—individuals may have a very strong belief in assumptions which are totally false, and vice versa.When an individual hears, or reads, a novel assumption, he or she always interprets it in a context. The notion of context is used here as a psychological construct: It is a subset of the assumptions which the hearer already represents in his or her long-term memory. Informally, what the mind of the individual does in the process of interpretation may be thought of as a comparison of the new assumption with the subset of assumptions represented in the individual’s memory. Sperber and Wilson name the cognitive apparatus responsible for this process of comparison- ‘‘the deductive device’’.The comparison of the novel assumption with the existing 4 The general notion of pragmatic relevance, which is not to be equated with Sperber and Wilson’s technical one, plays some role in van Dijk’s (1988) analysis of news selection. However, van Dijk does not make the connection between his notion of relevance and the function of headlines, which he takes to be summaries of their texts. 700 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 assumptions may have di? erent types of out puts: It may turn out, for example, that the novel assumption already exists in the individual’s long term-memory, in which case it is not new for the individual.Or it may be new, in which case it may either be in line, or in contradiction with some of the already existing assumptions. If, for example, the novel assumption contradicts existing assumptions, and if it is strong enough, the process of comparison will end up with the weakening of the existing assumptions. In some cases, it may even end up with the erasure of those assumptions. If the new information is in line with some existing assumptions, it may serve to strengthen them some more. Moreover, the union of the new assumption with some existing assumptions may lead to the deduction of additional assumptions.Thus, for example, if the individual already represents the assumption that ‘‘whenever Peter goes to a party, it becomes a success’’, and he or she now learns that ‘‘Peter came to Bill’s party’’, then the deductive device deduces an additional assumption, namely that ‘‘Bill’s party was a success’’. To the extent that the comparison of the new assumption with the old ones results in a change to the individual’s set of prior assumptions (if it either adds new assumptions, or weakens or strengthens existing ones), we say that the new information has a contextual e? ect for the individual.Now, the following point is crucial: The deductive device does not compare every novel assumption to the entire set of assumptions represented in the individual’s longterm memory. Doing this would be cognitively impossible. This means that the comparison is done with some subset of existing assumptions. This, in turn, raises a very important question: How does the deductive device choose this subset? Traditionally, pragmaticists have assumed that the context for the interpretation of an utterance is simp ly given: It consists of the immediate environment and the information explicitly mentioned in the conversation prior to the utterance.Sperber and Wilson ? ip this assumption on its head and suggest a radical alternative: They show that the deductive device has to update the context for the interpretation for each new assumption, and that the speci? c subset of existing assumptions which is chosen for the context is determined, at least partially, by the content of the new assumption. In cognitive terms, this means that the order of events in comprehension is reversed: It is not that the deductive device ? rst sets the context, and then interprets the new assumption.On the contrary, the deductive device has to partially ? gure out the meaning of the new assumption, retrieve a speci? c subset of assumptions from long-term memory, store them in its own short-term memory, and then make the comparison. An example should make this radical conception rather intuitive. Take a look at the f ollowing exchanges: (2) A: How are you? B: Not so good, Mary has that ear-infection again, I’m worried. (3) A: How are you? B: Great, I just bought the tickets. We’re ? ying to Beijing in exactly four weeks.In order to interpret B’s answer in each of these exchanges, A has to compare them to a subset of existing assumptions. The proper context in (2) should include assumptions about the identity of Mary, her relation to B, her medical history, ear- D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 701 infections, and so on and so forth. The proper context in (3) should include assumptions about B’s travel plans, the identity of her companion, or companions, whatever assumptions A has about Beijing, and so on and so forth. Obviously, these assumptions are not stored in A’s short-term memory on a permanent basis.A’s deductive device has to retrieve these assumptions from long-term memory, and only then make the comparison and deduce the contextual e? ects. We may now make two parallel cognitive assumptions regarding the process I have described. First, we may assume that in its appropriate context, a new piece of information has a certain number of contextual e? ects, which, at least theoretically, can be counted. Practically speaking, when we deal with interpretations of actual utterances by real people, we do not know exactly how to make the measurement, but the dea itself is intuitive enough for us to accept. We may be pretty certain that in di? erent contexts, the same piece of information may yield di? erent amounts of contextual e? ects, and that in the same context, some pieces of information would yield more contextual e? ects than others. Second, we may assume that the work of the deductive device involves some mental e? ort, which—theoretically speaking, again- may be measured. 5 Other things being equal, for example, the computation of a more complex piece of information will take more e? ort than the computation of a simpler one.Moreover, the construction of a new context for interpretation also involves some mental e? ort: To the extent that the interpretation of the novel piece of information necessitates the retrieval of a larger set of assumptions from long-term memory, the mental e? ort involved in the interpretation process would be greater. The measurements of contextual e? ect and mental e? ort constitute the basis of Sperber and Wilson’s notion of relevance: (4) Relevance for an individual (p. 145): a. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the contextual e? cts achieved when it is optimally processed are large. b. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the e? ort required to process it optimally is small. It is crucial to understand that this is not a de? nition of relevance in some objective sense, but a claim concerning the way our minds make relevance judgments about new assumptions: We consider new assumptio ns to be relevant if they carry a contextual e? ect at a reasonable cognitive price. We judge new assumptions to be irrelevant if they do not carry a contextual e? ect, or if the computation of the contextual e? ct entails too much of a mental e? ort. Note that this is a comparative, gradual conception of relevance, rather than a binary one: New assumptions are not either relevant or not; they are more or less relevant than others, in di? erent contexts, for di? erent people. Thus, for example, a regular newspaper reader will prob5 Sperber and Wilson (1986, p. 130) conceptualize about the measurement of contextual e? ects and cognitive e? ort in terms of physico-chemical changes which occur in the brain as a result of the processing of the contextual e? ects. 702 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 bly judge a piece of local news to be more relevant than a piece of foreign news because (i) the potential contextual e? ect derivable from the local news would probab ly be larger; and (ii) the e? ort needed to interpret the foreign news (especially in terms of the retrieval of the appropriate set of assumptions from long-term memory) would probably be larger. This judgment need not be made consciously; the reader may simply skip the foreign-news page, or note that ‘foreign news is boring’. Note, however, that the very same reader may take the trouble to read the foreign news to the extent that their contextual e? cts would be worth his or her processing e? ort. This may be the case, for example, if the story is about a country which the reader intends to visit; if some people which the reader knows are there; if there is a local angle to the foreign story; if the foreign story has a global consequence which is felt locally, and so on. Finally, note that this technical notion of relevance should not be equated with relevance in the ordinary sense of the word. Relevance in this ordinary sense may be thought of as the measurement of th e association, or congruence, between some content and its context of interpretation.Thus, a news story will be relevant in this sense to the extent that it is about those issues which are directly related to the readers’ lives and interests. Indeed, relevance in this sense may play a role in news value judgments. Note, however, that a story may be relevant in this ordinary sense but very low on relevance in the technical sense (if it is long and complicated to read, for example, or if it does not carry a lot of new information); and it may be irrelevant in the ordinary sense, but high on relevance in the technical sense- if its potential contextual e? cts justify the construction of a new context for interpretation. Now, our technical de? nition of relevance is addressee-oriented, but it may actually tell us something of importance about the role of speakers in communicative contexts. Think about a speaker, Ann, who is trying to tell her addressee, John, a story. Being a coo perative communicator, Ann would like to make the story as relevant for John as possible. How should she go about achieving this goal? According to relevance theory, she has three principled strategies which she can try to dopt: (i) First, Ann can try to compress the largest possible number of new assumptions (those which are new for John) into her story: Other things being equal, the more new assumptions the story contains, the more contextual e? ects it may have for John. In the worst-case scenario, the story will not contain any assumptions which are new for John, in which case he is going to ? nd it totally irrelevant. Ann de? nitely needs to ? nd a way to do better than that. In the best-case scenario, on the other hand, the story will contain a very large number of new assumptions.As we shall see below, this is not always going to be possible. (ii) Second, Ann can try to minimize John’s processing e? ort: Other things being equal, the smaller the e? ort he has to put in , the greater the relevance of the story is going to be for him. In the worst-case scenario, the story is going to be too long and complicated, and John is going to lose interest. Ann de? nitely has to avoid that. In the best-case scenario, on the other hand, the D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 703 story will take a very minimal e? ort to process. Again, this is not always going to be possible. iii) Third, Ann can try to manipulate the context in which John is going to interpret her story. Other things being equal, the closer the context of interpretation is to the optimal one, the more contextual e? ects the story is going to carry for John. (Note that in regular conversation we regularly take the trouble to manipulate our addressee’s context of interpretation, especially when we wish to ‘‘change the topic of conversation’’: We say things like ‘Oh, I wanted to tell you something about Bill’, or ‘talking abo ut school, did you hear about Bill’s exam? ’).In the worst-case scenario, John is going to try to interpret Ann’s story in the wrong context, and the interpretation is going to yield no contextual e? ects. In the best-case scenario, the story is going to be interpreted in the most appropriate context, yielding the maximal amount of contextual e? ects. This, again, is not always going to be possible. Now, it is very important to realize that the three strategies mentioned above are not only completely intertwined, but are also in direct competition with each other. This is why achieving the maximal results associated with each of the strategies is not always possible.This is so for the following reasons: (i) First, every new assumption which the speaker adds to the story does not only contribute to the overall number of contextual e? ects- it also adds to the overall processing e? ort. Thus, the new assumption adds to the overall relevance of the story only to th e extent that it clearly adds more contextual e? ect than processing e? ort. To the extent that the new assumption adds more to the processing e? ort than to the contextual e? ect, it actually reduces the overall relevance of the story. In this case, more information results in less relevance.So, the attempt to maximize relevance simply by maximizing the amount of new information is bound to end up in failure. The speaker has to ? gure out the optimal amount of information which would not result in relevance reduction due to processing e? ort. (ii) Second, Ann may de? nitely try to maximally reduce John’s processing e? ort by making her story short, simple and clear, but this reduction will not necessarily result in maximal relevance: This is so, because the reduction in the story’s complexity characteristically reduces the number of its potential contextual e? ects. The reduction of processing e? rt will enhance the relevance of Ann’s story only to the extent t hat the amount of e? ort saved is larger than the amount of contextual e? ects lost. So, again, Ann cannot simply reduce John’s processing e? ort to the minimum. She has to ? gure out the optimal amount of e? ort which would not result in relevance reduction due to loss of contextual e? ects. (iii) Third, the number of contextual e? ects which John may deduce from Ann’s story is not just a function of the sheer number of new assumptions in the story, but a function of the interaction between these new assumptions and the context of interpretation.This means that Ann should not just provide 704 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 John with the optimal number of new assumptions, but also take care to provide him with those speci? c assumptions which would yield the maximal amount of contextual e? ects in the appropriate context, and at the very same time direct John to construct that speci? c context. This complicates our relevance considerations to a considerable extent, because the construction of the appropriate context entails a signi? cant amount of processing e? ort.Consequently, in principle, the construction of the appropriate context may eventually result in relevance reduction due to the increase in processing e? ort. Thus, the construction of a partial context for interpretation may sometimes be the optimal strategy. As we have seen, Ann’s role as the story-teller is going to be that of relevance optimization: She will need to provide John with the optimal ratio of contextual e? ect and processing e? ort. This, I would like to claim, is exactly the generalized communicative function which newspaper headlines are supposed to ful? l: They are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers. 4. Newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers Consider the following story, from the Israeli national newspaper Ma’ariv: (5) The bodies of John Kennedy Jr. , his wife Caroline and his sister-in-la w Lorraine were discovered yesterday in the ocean, at a depth of 30 meters, 10 kilometers away from Martha’s Vineyard Island, where they were headed on Saturday. Senator Edward Kennedy, John’s uncle, arrived at the site where the bodies were found, in order to identify them. Kennedy Jr. ill be buried in NY in the coming days. This news item requires a certain amount of mental e? ort to interpret. To begin with, the paragraph requires some e? ort to read: It consists of about 70 words, and is grammatically fairly complex. Moreover, the news item requires the construction of a context for interpretation- one which includes whatever the reader knows about John Kennedy Jr. , his family, their disappearance two days before, the relevant geography, and probably at least something about the Kennedys’ history. As we have said before, the construction of this context takes an additional e? rt. Let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, that the interpretation of the enti re story will require the ordinary reader to invest a certain amount of e? ort, let us dub it E(story). Now, to the extent that the reader manages to construct the appropriate context and read the passage, the story carries a certain amount of contextual e? ects: It changes a lot of factual assumptions the reader represented in his or her long-term memory (e. g. , the assumption ‘John Kennedy Jr. is alive and well’ is replaced by ‘John Kennedy Jr. died in an irplane accident’), and it changes, weakens or strengthens a great many related assumptions having to do with, for example, the inescapable tragedies of the Kennedy family, the life-styles of the rich and D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 705 famous, the blindness of fate, the risks involved in ? ying your own plane, and so on and so forth. Obviously, di? erent readers will probably deduce di? erent sets of contextual e? ects from the story, but for the sake of simplicity, let us a ssume that the ordinary reader will deduce a certain amount of contextual e? cts, let us dub it C(story). The relevance of the story for the ordinary reader will thus be: R(story)=C(story)/E(story). Now, let us take a look at the headline the newspaper gave to the story: (6) John Kennedy Jr. ’s body found How much e? ort does the reader have to invest in interpreting the headline? Obviously, much less than E(story): The headline is a single, short and simple sentence, comprising ? ve words, and the e? ort needed to read it is insubstantial. The e? ort needed to construct the context for the interpretation of the headline is also signi? antly smaller—the reader does not need to retrieve the sets of assumptions having to do with the geography of the story, with Senator Ed Kennedy, and so on. For the sake of simplicity, let us make the arbitrary assumption that E(headline) equals 10% of E(story). Now, how many contextual e? ects can the reader deduce from the headline? Su rprisingly, when the headline is interpreted in its reduced context, a signi? cantly large subset of the contextual e? ects of the entire story survive. Obviously, some things are missing—for example, the fact that Kennedy’s wife and his sister-in-law were found too—but Kennedy’s death, its signi? ance within the tragic history of the Kennedy family, and the more general implications of the story are clear contextual e? ects of the headline. Let us adopt a conservative estimate: For the ordinary reader, C(headline) equals 50% of C(story). As a simple calculation clearly shows, our estimates entail that the headline multiplies the relevance of the story by ? ve (! ). It saves much more on the processing e? ort than it loses on the contextual e? ects. This is exactly what a headline should do. A short and simple text, it optimizes the relevance of the story by minimizing processing e? ort while making sure that a suf? ient amount of contextual e? ects are d educible within the most appropriate context possible. Just like Ann, our story-teller, the headline does not adopt an all-ornone strategy of either reducing processing e? ort to zero, or maximizing new information, or constructing the most appropriate context for interpretation. Rather, it attempts to optimize the ratio between processing e? ort and contextual e? ects- and thus optimally negotiate between the story and the ordinary reader. Note that for the optimization of relevance to be successful, the right material should be chosen for the headline.Consider, for example, the following three clauses as alternative headlines for the Kennedy story: (7) a. Caroline Kennedy’s body found b. Sen. Edward Kennedy arrived at the crash site. 706 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 c. The bodies of John Kennedy Jr. and his wife Caroline were discovered yesterday in the ocean, near Martha’s Vineyard Island. The ? rst two alternative headlines (7a and 7b) ar e probably as easy to read as the actual one, and we may assume that they require the construction of a very similar context for interpretation. However, they do not carry the same amount of contextual e? cts as the original. The third alternative (7c) carries a slightly larger number of contextual e? ects than the original, but it very obviously requires much more processing e? ort. Thus, all three alternative fall short of providing optimal relevance. Is the original headline in (6) a summarizing or a highlighting headline? It is hard to tell. The important point, however, is that from our theoretical point-of-view the summarizing-highlighting distinction is simply not that crucial: Summarizing the story is just one tactical approach to relevance optimization.Highlighting the most intriguing aspect of the story, or reproducing the most interesting statement quoted in the story, may have the very same result. It may turn out, for example, that the quotation or the highlighted aspec t carry more contextual e? ects than the summary of the whole narrative. In this case, the rational thing to do would be to promote them to the headline- and thus optimize the relevance of the story for the readers. The choice between these di? erent tactical approaches is in part a matter of the editorial style of the newspaper, and to a very large extent a matter of the experience and creativity of its editors.For every given story, some headline options are going to suggest themselves. The editor may opt for a summarizing headline, a highlighting headline or a quotation headline- depending on which type of headline will provide optimal relevance. 6 Moreover, the editor may manipulate the length and complexity of the headline, and its speci? c contents. And again, these manipulations, to a very large extent, are going to be relevance-oriented. 7 In the following section, I will present the results of an empirical study conducted in the years 1996–1998 in the news-desk of th e Israeli national newspaper Ma’ariv. In the study, I followed the decision-making process leading to the choice of headline for a large number of news items. As the results of the study clearly indicate, the set of professional intuitions shared by the editors, concerning the properties of the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ headline, are theoretically reduced to our notion of releI will discuss the choice of tabloid-type headlines later on. An anonymous referee notes that some text manipulations may not be relevance-oriented. Thus, for example, some manipulations may have to do with spacing on the page, and others with political considerations. I agree with the ? st point. In Dor (2001), however, I show that relevance-oriented manipulations play an extremely important role in processes of political framing. 8 There are currently three national newspapers in Israel: Yediot Ahronot and Ma’ariv are considered to be the popular newspapers, whereas Haâ €™aretz is considered to be the quality, high-brow one. Yediot Ahronot and Ma’ariv, however, are not tabloids in the regular, American-European sense. They contain a variety of ‘‘serious’’ news items which is not that di? erent from that of Ha’aretz, and are distinct from it especially in writing style and graphic design.In all three newspapers, headline formulation is considered part of the editorial process, and reporters do not formulate headlines for their stories. 7 6 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 707 vance: The most appropriate headline for a news item is the one which optimizes the relevance of the story for the readers of the newspaper. 5. The notion of relevance and the art of headline writing In general, news editors do not work with a very explicit de? nition of what headlines are, or of their communicative functions.What they do work with is a cluster of professional intuitions—gradually develop ed ‘in the ? eld’, and never seriously explicated—concerning the properties of what we might call, rather informally, the ‘right’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘good’ headline. When asked to provide an explicit de? nition of what a headline is, senior newspaper editors usually give an answer of the type: ‘I don’t know what headlines are, but I can tell a good one when I see it’. This answer is actually a pretty accurate rendition of a very fundamental sentiment: Professional knowledge is practical, not theoretical.However, when presented with a news-item, and asked to choose a headline out of a set of alternatives, experienced news editors do so with extreme ease and e? ciency. Moreover, senior editors in the same newspaper have a very high rate of agreement on the preferred headline. This means that experienced news editors know a great deal more about the functional properties of headlines than they ever explicate . In this sense, headline production is more similar to an artistic activity than, say, to the practice of an exact science. This a? ity with the arts is very clearly re? ected in the trial-and-error process which beginning copy-editors go through as part of their on-the-job training procedure. Rather than receive their professional education in the form of explicit lecturing, beginning copy-editors in Ma’ariv simply start out working: They are assigned a new-item, and are asked to rewrite it and suggest a headline for it. The result is then reviewed by the senior editor in charge, who, in most cases, rejects the suggested headline and writes a di? erent one, which eventually gets published.Sometimes, the copy-editor is asked to suggest the alternative headline, which is, again, reviewed by the editor in charge. Deadline pressure usually does not allow for long explanations: When the process is over, the copy-editor gets another story, suggests a headline, which usually gets rejected, and so on and so forth. This process goes on for years, and in a real sense never ends: In Ma’ariv, each and every suggested headline is sent to the senior editor in chief, in the form of an electronic message, to be approved or rejected, even if the copy-editors have years of experience behind them.Obviously, the rate of rejected headlines goes down with time, when the trained editor internalizes the set of implicit intuitions shared by the other, more experienced editors, but even very experienced editors get some of their headlines rejected some of the time: Sometimes, for example, the editor in chief knows something about the wider context of the story which the copy-editor was not aware of. The fact that these real-time negotiations about the headlines are done in writing, by e-mail messages, allowed me to follow the process of headline formulation from very close range.I collected 134 e-mail exchanges, concerning 134 news-items, and analyzed the semantic-pragm atic di? erences between the rejected and approved headlines. In some cases, I asked the editor in charge to reconstruct the reasons for 708 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 the rejection of the suggested headline. I then extracted a list of ten properties, which I shall call the properties of the appropriate headline. I submit that this list is an accurate rendition of the set of implicit intuitions shared by experienced news editors in Ma’ariv.In the following section, I will present the ten properties, each with its representative example, and show that the list is actually reducible to one professional meta-imperative: Make the headline such that it renders the story optimally-relevant. Three notes should be made at this point: First, the following discussion should not be thought of as an attempt to construct a theoretical framework, but as a description of a set of professional intuitions, shared by news editors, concerning the properties of the à ¢â‚¬ËœÃ¢â‚¬Ëœappropriate headline’’. In other words, I do not intend to make any signi? ant claim concerning the theoretical status of the ten properties to be discussed below. Quite obviously, some of the properties seem to bear close resemblance to some principles discussed in the literature under the rubric of news value (e. g. , in Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Bell, 1991); other properties may remind the reader of Grice’s conversational maxims. I will leave the elaboration of these resemblances for further research, and concentrate on the possibility of reducing the entire set of properties to the relevance-based meta-intuition mentioned above. Second, the properties are to be thought of as default conditions, rather than obligatory ones. It is not the case that every headline should have all 10 properties. It is the case that a headline which meets any of these conditions is better than a headline which does not, and a headline which meets a larger number of the conditions is better than a headline which meets a smaller number of them. Thus, for example, the ? rst property—‘headlines should be as short as possible’—should be read as saying: ‘other things being equal, a shorter headline is better than a longer one’.Finally, The headlines presented in the next section are translated from the Hebrew original. I chose to keep the translation as literally accurate as possible, and avoided translating the headlines into ‘‘headlinese’’, because Hebrew headlines do not usually have the telegraphic syntax characteristic of English headlines. 5. 1. The properties of the ‘‘appropriate headline’’ [1] ‘‘Headlines should be as short as possible’’. Newspaper headlines are, quite obviously, very short clauses.The actual length of each particular headline, however, is a matter of considerable debate and negotiation between senior editors an d copy editors: Copy-editors, especially the beginners, suggest longer headlines, attempting to ‘capture’ as much of the story as possible. The senior editors shorten the headlines to a considerable extent- leaving out whole chunks of information. One of the expertises mastered by experienced editors is the ability to decide which parts of the story should be left out of the headline. The following exchange is a very typical example. The I thank an anonymous referee for his/her discussion of this point.The referee also wondered whether any of the ten properties may be reducible to another. Thus, for example, the referee felt that properties [6] and [7] are mirror-images of each other, and should thus be put together. I assume that this can indeed be done. For me, however, the more important point was that the editors I talked to felt these were two separate, although obviously related, principles. As I am interested here in the description of intuitions, rather than in the construction of a theoretical framework, I will discuss the two principles separately. 9 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 709 tory is about a youth gang which was caught red-handed mutilating gravestones in a military cemetery in Haifa. The copy-editor suggested the following headline: (8) Haifa: A youth gang was caught mutilating gravestones in the city’s military cemetery The head of the news-desk ordered the copy-editor to shorten the headline, in the following way: (9) Haifa: A youth gang was caught mutilating gravestones Note that the decision to shorten the headline is not without its price: We have lost a piece of information, i. e. , that the gravestones were mutilated in a military cemetery, which means we have lost some contextual e? ects.We have, however, gained in reading e? ort. The shorter headline is simply easier to read. This is a very clear example of relevance optimization by e? ort reduction. The editor in charge decided that the loss in contextual e? ects is smaller than the gain in reading e? ort. [2] ‘‘Headlines should be clear, easy to understand, and unambiguous’’. Formulating a headline to a complex story is not an easy task. Copy-editors sometimes suggest headlines which come out unclear, di? cult to understand, or unintentionally ambiguous. Such headlines are rejected, and the copy-editor is asked to formulate a clearer, simpler, unambiguous headline.In the following example, the article tells the story of a police drama in the city of Ramat-Gan, where a single arsonist threatened the city for weeks, burning down vehicles every night. On that speci? c night, the police caught a suspect, but had to release him after the ‘real’ arsonist took out to the streets again, burning down more vehicles to prove that he was not caught. The copy-editor suggested the following headline: (10) The ‘real arsonist’ from Ramat-Gan proves: You Haven’t caught me The headline was rejected because it was considered unclear and unnecessarily ambiguous.It raises more questions and vaguenesses than it actually answers: Who is the ‘real arsonist’? Is there an ‘unreal arsonist’? How has the ‘real arsonist’ proven that he wasn’t caught? By whom? The copy-editor was ordered to formulate a clearer headline. This was his second attempt: (11) The arsonist ‘was caught’- and the vehicles in Ramat-Gan went on burning This version is much clearer: It makes clear that a claim was made that the arsonist was caught, which turned out to be false, and it makes clear that, on that day, 710 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 fter the capture incident ended, some vehicles in Ramat-Gan were still burning. There is, however, a potential ambiguity here: The headline can be read as making the claim that the arsonist set the vehicles on ? re before the police made the false claim, and that they went on burning after the incident. The headline was rejected again, and the copy-editor suggested the third version, in (12), which was ? nally accepted and published as it is. Note that the only di? erence between (11), the rejected headline, and (12), the approved one, is in the tense of the verb in the second clause. 12) The arsonist ‘was caught’- and the vehicles in Ramat-Gan go on burning This headline makes it clear that the arsonist is still on the loose, and is still in the habit of setting vehicles on ? re. Finally, the story is captured in a clear, simple and unambiguous fashion. This reduces processing e? ort to the necessary minimum— and optimizes the relevance of the story. [3] ‘‘Headlines should be interesting’’. This quality plays a central role in the negotiations between copy-editors and senior editors. Many suggested headlines are rejected on the grounds that they are ‘not interesting’.What is usuall y meant by this rather obscure phrase is that the editor imagines that the readers of the paper will not ? nd the headline interesting enough. In terms of our relevance-based theory, this means that the editor estimates that the amount of contextual e? ects carried by the headline will not justify the amount of reading e? ort. The copy-editor is then asked to read the article again, and look for a ‘more interesting’ piece of information to foreground to the headline. In the following example, the story includes an interview with Uri Lubrani, IDF’s Chief of Military Operations in Southern Lebanon.General Antoin Lahed, who is mentioned in the rejected headline, is the Commander in Chief of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Christian Militia which has traditionally been IDF’s ally in Lebanon. The context of the story is a wave of rumors, according to which the IDF plans to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, thus leaving General Lahed and his people on their own ag ainst their Islamic rivals: This is the headline which the copy-editor suggested: (13) Lubrani: ‘There was no secret meeting with General Lahed’ Whether or not there was a secret meeting between IDF o? ials and General Lahed on the previous day is hardly an interesting question. After all, IDF o? cials and General Lahed meet on a regular basis, and their meetings are usually kept secret. In our terms, the headline does not carry a substantial amount of contextual e? ects. The headline was rejected, and the copy-editor came up with the following alternative: (14) Lubrani: ‘There is no plan to evacuate SLA seniors to Europe’ Whether or not there is a secret plan to evacuate SLA seniors to Europe is very obviously much more interesting.If there was such a plan, this would be a pretty D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 711 remarkable sign that the IDF is on its way out of Lebanon. Lubrani’s ? at denial can be interpreted in more than one way: We can take him for his word, or assume that he chose to deny the existence of the plan for tactical reasons- at any rate the denial has interesting implications. It is de? nitely more interesting than just another meeting- in our terms, it carries more contextual e? ects for the same amount of processing e? ort. Note that this is a very good example of the signi? ant role of headline writing in the workings of a newspaper. The two headlines, the rejected one and the suggested one, make it quite obvious that the Lubrani interview did not contain any remarkable scoops, and that the editor had to dig in to ? nd something which was worth promoting to the headline. As the senior editor’s decision makes clear, even negative statements, ? at denials of the type that Lubrani suggested as answers to the reporter’s questions, have di? erent amounts of relevance, and the one which was more relevant than the other was promoted. 4] ‘‘Headlines should contain new information’’. A major topic for negotiations between copy-editors and senior-editors has to do with the question of whether the readers already know what the copy-editor decided to promote to the headline. Obviously, editors do not really know what their readers know, but their estimates of their readers’ state of knowledge play a central role in the decision-making process. This makes perfect sense within our relevance-based framework: A headline which does not contain novel assumptions cannot bring about contextual e? ects, and is thus irrelevant.In Ma’ariv, as in any other daily newspaper, estimates of the readers’ state of knowledge are based primarily on what has already been communicated by the other mass-media, especially the evening news on TV. If the content of the proposed headline for the next morning has already appeared in the news the night before, most chances are it will be rejected. The following headline, for example, was rej ected on these grounds: (15) The Austrian Chancellor Arrived for a visit; will meet Netanyahu today The copy-editor had a hard time ? nding an alternative headline. This is what he came up with: (16) O? ials in Jerusalem hope for the Austrian Chancellor’s visit to run smoothly This headline was accepted, for two reasons: First, it carries the implication that o? cials in Jerusalem are worried that the visit might not run smoothly—an angle on the visit which was new. Second, it connects the story to prior events and expectations: The visit of the British foreign minister had just ended the day before, and that visit was full of political hurdles and diplomatic embarrassments. As we shall see below, connecting a story to its wider context is another important property of good headlines. 712 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 5] ‘‘Headlines should not presuppose information unknown to the readers’’. This principle, in a sense , is the mirror-image of the previous one: The information in the headline should de? nitely be new—but it cannot be ‘overly new’. Headlines should only presuppose information which is already part of the mutual knowledge established between the newspaper and its readers. In terms of our relevance-based framework, every presupposition in the headline should already be available within the readers’ context of interpretation. Otherwise, the computation of the headline will result in zero contextual e? cts. Consider, then, the following headline: (17) Advanced negotiations on the establishment of the second Israeli-owned casino in Jericho This headline presupposes the existence, or at least the potential existence, of the ? rst Israeli-owned casino in Jericho. The ? rst news concerning the plans to build this casino, the ? rst one, were published only a few days before the above headline was suggested. According to the editor in chief, the readers had not yet registered the future existence of the ? rst casino in their long-term memory—it was premature to treat it as a presupposition.The copy-editor was asked to change the headline, and came up with the following alternative: (18) The ? rst casino in Jericho will be operational in February In this headline, the establishment of the ? rst casino in Jericho is not presupposed, but reported as part of the news. This is much better. But the editor in chief asked the copy-editor to rephrase the headline again, this time for a di? erent reason: The proposed headline forces the reader to calculate the amount of time it will take till the casino will be operational. This adds to the processing e? ort. The alternative, which was eventually published, reduces this e? rt, thus optimizing the relevance of the story: (19) The ? rst casino in Jericho will be operational in a year [6] ‘‘Headlines should include names and concepts with high ‘news value’ for the readersâ €™â€™. 10 Experienced editors develop a sense of the ‘news value’ of names and 10 This property, and the next one, reminded one anonymous referee of Ariel’s (1988, 1991) accessibility theory (see also Kronrod and Engel 2000). The resemblance, however, is rather super? cial. Ariel is not interested in the speci? c contents of the referring expressions, but in their general cognitive and structural properties.Thus, for example, referring expressions which function as high accessibility markers (e. g. , personal pronouns, ? rst names) are used by speakers when they assume that the referents are highly accessible for their addressees; lower accessibility markers (e. g. , long de? nite descriptions, full names etc. ) are used when the speaker assumes low mental accessibility for their addressees. The point I am making here, however, is not that newspaper editors prefer certain types of referring expression (e. g. , full names) to others (e. g. , last names), but that they prefer certain referents (e. g. , famous ? gures) to others. D.Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 713 concepts: They very easily identify names and concepts which should appear in headlines- and those which do not. In terms of our relevance-based theory, experienced editors know, or at least believe they know, which names and concepts will carry a large number of contextual e? ects for their readers. The following example demonstrates this very clearly. Some background: Two days before the following story was to be published, a story in one of the national newspapers revealed that the popular musicians contracted to perform in Israel’s 50th Jubilee were paid high sums of money- at the ax-payers’ expense. In our story, some other popular musicians reacted to the revelation and angrily declared that they were willing to perform in the Jubilee for free. This was the headline suggested by the copy-editor: (20) A group of artists suggests an alternative for the Jubilee: ‘‘we are willing to perform for free’’ This headline, a classic summarizing headline, was rejected in favor of the following, which replaces the expression ‘a group of artists’ with the names of two celebrity musicians, Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsan’ani: (21) Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsan’ani: ‘‘we are willing to perform in the jubilee for free’’Note, ? rst, that the replacement headline in (21) actually loses some of the information we had in (20): The group of artists included many more musicians than just the two mentioned in (21). The point, however, is that the two are the most famous members of the group, and names of well-known popular musicians always carry a lot of contextual e? ects: This is so, because their names direct the readers to construct a much wider context for interpretation, which includes whatever we know about them, their personalities, their views, t heir social background, their wealth, their life styles, and so on. 20) is a headline suited for a regular news story about the 50th Jubilee; (21), on the other hand, is a headline for what is basically a gossip story about Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsan’ani. [7] ‘‘Headlines should not contain names and concepts with low ‘news value’ for the readers’’. This is the mirror-image of the last property: Some names and concepts do not have ‘‘news value’’ for the readers, and experienced editors avoid promoting them to the headline. In our terms, these names and concepts do not help the reader construct the optimal context for the interpretation of the headline.In the following example, the copy-editor attempted to promote such a name to the headline, and was intercepted by the editor in charge. Some background: The story has to do with an accident in which two military helicopters collided in the air on their way to I srael’s northern border, an accident in which more than 70 soldiers were killed. New immigrants to Israel receive an immigration grant from the Jewish agency, and it turned out that the agency asked the parents of one of the soldiers killed in the accident, a newly-arrived immigrant, to pay back his grant.The copy editor suggested the following headline: 714 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 (22) The Michaelov family was ordered to return the immigration grant given to their son- who was killed in the Galilee The editor in charge rejected the headline, and ordered the copy-editor to produce another one, which would not contain the name. This was the alternative headline, which was ? nally published: (23) The Jewish agency refused to let a family, whose son was killed in the helicopter accident, keep his immigration grantNote that the move from the de? nite ‘the Michaelov family’ to the inde? nite ‘a family’ made it di? cult for the copy-editor to keep it in subject position, and dictated an overall grammatical change from passive to active voice. [8] ‘‘Headlines should ‘connect’ the story to previously known facts and events’’. Just like the last two principles, this one has to do with the construction of the appropriate context for interpretation. A story interpreted on its own, as an isolated event, will carry a certain amount of contextual e? ects.The same story can carry more contextual e? ects to the extent that the readers interprets it within a wider context, which includes previously known facts and events. Consider the following example, which is a report on a violent taxi robbery in the city of Haifa: (24) The driver was beaten and thrown out- and the stolen taxi was later found stuck in the mud The editor in charge, who rejected this headline, asked the copy-editor to connect the incident in Haifa to the rising trend of taxi robbery throughout Israel. The f ol