2010 FIFA World Cup / South Africa

Το Παγκόσμιο Κύπελλο Ποδοσφαίρου του 2010 (επίσημο όνομα:2010 FIFA World Cup) ήταν το 19ο Παγκόσμιο Κύπελλο και διοργανώθηκε στη Νότια Αφρική. Η διάρκεια του ήταν ένας μήνας, από τις 11 Ιουνίου έως τις 11 Ιουλίου του 2010. Αυτή ήταν η πρώτη φορά που μια χώρα της Αφρικανικής Ομοσπονδίας Ποδοσφαίρου διοργάνωσε Παγκόσμιο Κύπελλο (ΠΚ για συντομία). Νικήτρια της διοργάνωσης ανεδείχθη η Εθνική Ισπανίας, για πρώτη φορά στην ιστορία της. Στην δεύτερη θέση (για τρίτη συνολική φορά) κατετάγη η Εθνική ομάδα της Ολλανδίας. Τρίτη τερμάτισε η Εθνική Γερμανίας, νικώντας την Ουρουγουάη στον μικρό τελικό. Πολυτιμότερος ποδοσφαιριστής της διοργάνωσης (χρυσή μπάλα) ανεδείχθη ο Ντιέγκο Φορλάν από την Ουρουγουάη.


Η τελική κατάταξη είναι η εξής:

1. Ισπανία 2. Ολλανδία 3. Γερμανία 4. Ουρουγουάη 5. Αργεντινή 6. Βραζιλία 7. Γκάνα 8. Παραγουάη

9. Ιαπωνία 10. Χιλή 11. Πορτογαλία 12. ΗΠΑ 13. Αγγλία 14. Μεξικό 15. Νότια Κορέα 16. Σλοβακία

17. Ακτή Ελεφαντοστού 18. Σλοβενία 19. Ελβετία 20. Νότια Αφρική 21. Αυστραλία 22. Νέα Ζηλανδία 23. Σερβία 24. Δανία

25. Ελλάδα 26. Ιταλία 27. Νιγηρία 28. Αλγερία 29. Γαλλία 30. Ονδούρα 31. Καμερούν 32. Βόρεια Κορέα

{http://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%A0%CE%B1%CE%B3%CE%BA%CF%8C%CF%83%CE%BC%CE%B9%CE%BF_%CE%9A%CF%8D%CF%80%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%BF_%CE%A0%CE%BF%CE%B4%CE%BF%CF%83%CF%86%CE%B1%CE%AF%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%85_2010}

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Psycholinguistics

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines with non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain; for example, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right.
Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's ability to learn language.

Linguistics-related areas:

• Phonetics and phonology are concerned with the study of speech sounds. Within psycholinguistics, research focuses on how the brain processes and understands these sounds.
• Morphology is the study of word structures, especially the relationships between related words (such as dog and dogs) and the formation of words based on rules (such as plural formation).
• Syntax is the study of the patterns which dictate how words are combined to form sentences.
• Semantics deals with the meaning of words and sentences. Where syntax is concerned with the formal structure of sentences, semantics deals with the actual meaning of sentences.
• Pragmatics is concerned with the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.

{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics}

Semantics (from Greek: sēmantiká, neuter plural of sēmantikós)^[1][2] is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs, and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata.

Linguistic semantics is the study of meaning that is used to understand human expression through language. Other forms of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics.
The word semantics itself denotes a range of ideas, from the popular to the highly technical. It is often used in ordinary language to denote a problem of understanding that comes down to word selection or connotation. This problem of understanding has been the subject of many formal inquiries, over a long period of time, most notably in the field of formal semantics. In linguistics, it is the study of interpretation of signs or symbols as used by agents or communities within particular circumstances and contexts.^[3] Within this view, sounds, facial expressions, body language, and proxemics have semantic (meaningful) content, and each has several branches of study. In written language, such things as paragraph structure and punctuation have semantic content; in other forms of language, there is other semantic content.^[3]
The formal study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymology and others, although semantics is a well-defined field in its own right, often with synthetic properties.^[4] In philosophy of language, semantics and reference are closely connected. Further related fields include philology, communication, and semiotics. The formal study of semantics is therefore complex.
Semantics contrasts with syntax, the study of the combinatorics of units of a language (without reference to their meaning), and pragmatics, the study of the relationships between the symbols of a language, their meaning, and the users of the language.^[5]
In international scientific vocabulary semantics is also called semasiology.

{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics}


Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics which studies the ways in which context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics encompasses speech act theory, conversational implicature, talk in interaction and other approaches to language behavior in philosophy, sociology, and linguistics.^[1] It studies how the transmission of meaning depends not only on the linguistic knowledge (e.g. grammar, lexicon etc.) of the speaker and listener, but also on the context of the utterance, knowledge about the status of those involved, the inferred intent of the speaker, and so on.^[2] In this respect, pragmatics explains how language users are able to overcome apparent ambiguity, since meaning relies on the manner, place, time etc. of an utterance.^[1] The ability to understand another speaker's intended meaning is called pragmatic competence. Pragmatic awareness is regarded as one of the most challenging aspects of language learning, and, though it can be taught, often comes only through experience.

{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatics}

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Germany Vs. Greece

Photo by:  http://www.newsbomb.gr/sports/story/212840/euro-2012-live-germania---ellada

Η μεγάλη ώρα έφτασε και η Εθνική μας ομάδα αντιμετωπίζει την Γερμανία στον δεύτερο προημιτελικό του EURO 2012. 

Παρακολουθήστε τον αγώνα live στο http://live.onsports.gr/livematch/livematch.php?nMatchID=112358

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Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) is an approach to psychological qualitative research with an idiographic focus, which means that it aims to offer insights into how a given person, in a given context, makes sense of a given phenomenon. Usually these phenomena relate to experiences of some personal significance - such as a major life event, or the development of an important relationship. It has its theoretical origins in phenonemology and hermeneutics, and key ideas from Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty are often cited.^[1] IPA is one of several approaches to qualitative, phenomenological psychology Phenomenology (psychology). It is distinct from other approaches because of its combination of psychological, interpretative, and idiographic components.

 Sometimes IPA studies involve a close examination of the experiences and meaning-making activities of only one participant. Sometimes they may draw on the accounts of a small number of people (not usually more than 15^[2]). In either case, participants are invited to take part precisely because they can offer the researcher some meaningful insight into the topic of the study; this is called purposive sampling [i.e. it is not randomised]. Usually, participants in an IPA study are expected to have certain experiences in common with one another: the small-scale nature of a basic IPA study shows how something is understood in a given context, and from a shared perspective, a method sometimes called homogeneous sampling. More advanced IPA study designs may draw together samples which offer multiple perspectives on a shared experience (husbands and wives, for example, or psychiatrists and patients); or they may collect accounts over a period of time, to develop a longitudinal analysis.

In IPA, a good analysis is one which balances phenomenological description with insightful interpretation, and which anchors these interpretations in the participants' accounts. It is also likely to maintain an idiographic focus (so that particular variations are not lost), and to keep a close focus on meaning (rather than say, causal relations). A degree of transparency (contextual detail about the sample, a clear account of process, adequate commentary on the data, key points illustrated by verbatim quotes) is also crucial to estimating the plausibility and transferability of an IPA study. Engagement with credibility issues (such as cross-validation, cooperative inquiry, independent audit, or triangulation) is also likely to increase the reader's confidence.

IPA has been used very widely in applied psychology (particularly relating to matters of physical and mental wellbeing).

{Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretative_phenomenological_analysis }


Ερμηνευτική Φαινομενολογική Ανάλυση, σύμφωνα με τη Βιωματική/Φαινομενολογική Ανάλυση.

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Conversation Analysis

Conversation analysis (commonly abbreviated as CA) is an approach to the study of social interaction, embracing both verbal and non-verbal conduct, in situations of everyday life. As its name implies, CA began with a focus on casual conversation, but its methods were subsequently adapted to embrace more task- and institution-centered interactions, such as those occurring in doctors' offices, courts, law enforcement, helplines, educational settings, and the mass media. As a consequence, the term 'conversation analysis' has become something of a misnomer, but it has continued as a term for a distinctive and successful approach to the analysis of social interaction.

Inspired by Harold Garfinkel's ethnomethodology^[1] and Erving Goffman's conception of the interaction order,^[2] CA was developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s principally by the sociologist Harvey Sacks and his close associates Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson.^[3] Today CA is an established method used in sociology, anthropology, linguistics, speech-communication and psychology. It is particularly influential in interactional sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and discursive psychology. It is distinct from discourse analysis in focus and method. (i) Its focus is squarely on processes involved in social interaction and does not include written texts or larger sociocultural phenomena (for example, 'discourses' in the Foucauldian sense). (ii) Its method, following Garfinkel and Goffman's initiatives, is aimed at determining the methods and resources that the interactional participants use and rely on to produce interactional contributions and make sense of the contributions of others. Thus CA is neither designed for, nor aimed at, examining the production of interaction from a perspective that is external to the participants' own reasoning and understanding about their circumstances and communication. Rather the aim is to model the resources and methods by which those understandings are produced.

As in all research, conversational analysis begins by setting up a research problem. The data collected for CA is in the form of video or audio recorded conversations. The data is collected without researchers' involvement, often simply by adding a video camera to the room where the conversation takes place (e.g. medical doctors consultation with a patient). From the audio or video recording the researchers construct a detailed transcription (ideally with no details left out). After transcription, the researchers perform inductive data-driven analysis aiming to find recurring patterns of interaction. Based on the analysis, the researchers develop a rule or model to explain the occurrence of the patterns.

 In recent years, CA has been employed by researchers in other fields, such as feminism and feminist linguistics, or used in complement with other theories, such as Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA). Elizabeth Stokoe argues that ethnomethodology's egalitarian creed reflects the egalitarian ethos in feminism. Traditional feminist concerns can be explored from an ethnomethodological standpoint, since oppression is not a once and for all phenomenon but the processes involved in defining social reality produces and reproduces oppression daily. Thus, the gendered properties of social life, routinely taken-for-granted as natural and trans-situational, are best understood as situated accomplishments of local interactions.^[5] MCA was influenced by the work on Harvey Sacks and his work on Membership Categorization Device (MCD). Sacks argues that 'members’ categories comprise part of the central machinery of organization and developed the notion of MCD to explain how categories can be hearably linked together by native speakers of a culture. His example that is taken from a children's storybook (The baby cried. The mommy picked it up.) shows how "mommy" is interpreted as the mother of the baby by speakers of the same culture. In light of this, categories are inference rich – a great deal of knowledge members of a society have about the society is stored in terms of these categories.^[6] Stokoe further contends that members’ practical categorizations form part of ethnomethodology's description of the ongoing production and realization of ‘facts’ about social life and including members’ gendered reality analysis, thus making CA compatible with feminist studies.

{Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis }

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Discursive Psychology

Discursive psychology (DP) is a form of discourse analysis that focuses on psychological themes.
Discursive psychology starts with psychological phenomena as things that are constructed, attended to, and understood in interaction. An evaluation, say, may be constructed using particular phrases and idioms, responded to by the recipient (as a compliment perhaps) and treated as the expression of a strong position. In discursive psychology the focus is not on psychological matters somehow leaking out into interaction; rather interaction is the primary site where psychological issues are live.
It is philosophically opposed to more traditional cognitivist approaches to language. It uses studies of naturally occurring conversation to critique the way that topics have been conceptualised and treated in psychology.

Discursive psychology conducts studies of both naturally occurring and experimentally engineered human interaction that offer new ways of understanding topics in social and cognitive psychology such as memory and attitudes. Although discursive psychology subscribes to a different view of human mentality than is advanced by mainstream psychology, Edwards and Potter's work was originally motivated by their dissatisfaction with how psychology had treated discourse. In many psychological studies, the things people (subjects) say are treated as windows (with varying degrees of opacity) into their minds. Talk is seen as (and in experimental psychology and protocol analysis used as) descriptions of people's mental content. In contrast, discursive psychology treats talk as social action; that is, we say what we do as a means of, and in the course of, doing things in a socially meaningful world. Thus, the questions that it makes sense to ask also change.

In the past few years work in discursive psychology has focused on material from real world situations such as relationship counselling, child protection helplines, neighbour disputes and family mealtimes. It asks questions such as the following: How does a party in relationship counselling construct the problem as something that the other party needs to work on? Or how does a child protection officer working on a child protection helpline manage the possibly competing tasks of soothing a crying caller and simultaneously eliciting evidence sufficient for social services to intervene to help an abused child? What makes a parent's request to a child to eat different from a directive, and different in turn from a threat?

{Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discursive_psychology }

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Discourse Analysis (DA)

Discourse analysis (DA), or discourse studies, is a general term for a number of approaches to analyzing written, spoken, signed language use or any significant semiotic event.

The objects of discourse analysis — discourse, writing, conversation, communicative event, etc. — are variously defined in terms of coherent sequences of sentences, propositions, speech acts or turns-at-talk. Contrary to much of traditional linguistics, discourse analysts not only study language use 'beyond the sentence boundary', but also prefer to analyze 'naturally occurring' language use, and not invented examples. Text linguistics is related. The essential difference between discourse analysis and text linguistics is that it aims at revealing socio-psychological characteristics of a person/persons rather than text structure.^[1]

Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of social science disciplines, including linguistics, sociology, anthropology, social work, cognitive psychology, social psychology, international relations, human geography, communication studies, and translation studies, each of which is subject to its own assumptions, dimensions of analysis, and methodologies.

The following are some of the specific theoretical perspectives and analytical approaches used in linguistic discourse analysis:

• Emergent grammar
• Text grammar (or 'discourse grammar')
• Cohesion and relevance theory
• Functional grammar
• Rhetoric
• Stylistics (linguistics)
• Interactional sociolinguistics
• Ethnography of communication
• Pragmatics, particularly speech act theory
• Conversation analysis
• Variation analysis
• Applied linguistics
• Cognitive psychology, often under the label discourse processing, studying the production and comprehension of discourse.
• Discursive psychology
• Response based therapy (counselling)
• Critical discourse analysis
• Sublanguage analysis
• Genre Analysis & Critical Genre Analysis

{Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_analysis }


Ή ελληνιστί Ανάλυση Λόγου, σύμφωνα με την Κριτική/Κονστρουξιονιστική Προσέγγιση, όπως μάθαμε σ'αυτό το εξάμηνο, στο μάθημα της Κοινωνικής Ψυχολογίας Ι.
Ένα θέμα που πολύ θα μου άρεσε να διερευνήσω παραπάνω.

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How do you keep track of your current place in a book?

 

* I use random scraps of paper

 

  23706 votes, 26.1%

I read ebooks, so it's easy

 

  18243 votes, 20.1%

I use ordinary bookmarks

 

  17326 votes, 19.1%

I use fancy bookmarks

 

  11237 votes, 12.4%

I dog-ear my books

 

  7752 votes, 8.5%

I remember

 

  6359 votes, 7.0%

I use the dust jacket flap

 

  1299 votes, 1.4%

I use goodreads progress updates!

 

  1231 votes, 1.4%

I finish books in a single sitting

 

  810 votes, 0.9%

* My vote!

 90878 total votes

This was a very interesting poll I found in Goodreads.
Check it out, too. There is a selection for write-in answers you can submit yourself.
So awesome!


http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/61677-how-do-you-keep-track-of-your-current-place-in-a-book

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Psychology of Fiction

So, lately I've been very interesting in the subject of Psychology of Fiction.
This research area includes diagnosing the fictional characters you read about.
I would love to actually do this with many of my favorite, or not, characters!
It's so interesting!

Also, it can be very helpful.
According to DeFife "when people find out that someone is a psychologist, the first thing they usually say is: "That's cool." This is followed by: "Uh oh, you're analyzing me right now," (and usually we are), or "You know, I took a college course/got an undergraduate degree in psychology" (worth major academic street cred), or "Hey, I bet you can read my mind," (ESP being one of the required courses in psychology graduate school).  Next, they want to hear how one would diagnose their friend/family member/self/dog.
[...]
Talking about famous figures that almost everybody knows something about is one way that psychologists might try to avoid this conundrum. Unfortunately, it's not ethical for psychologists to diagnose people they've never met or interviewed. It's not polite either, because no one wants to be called things by people they've never met. [...]

Fictional characters, on the other hand, are ideal targets for psychologists to diagnose with mental illnesses or personality defects. Diagnosing fictional characters is fun (because people love good fictional characters), allows the public to learn about mental illnesses which they may or may not have, and offers opportunities for psychologists to feel smart and get public recognition. Everybody wins. Except for the fictional characters who might get a bad reputation, but they don't have their feelings hurt by such discussions."

{Written in PsychologyToday.com with the title Stuff Psychologists Like - Diagnosing Fictional Characters  by Jared DeFife, Ph.D. in The Shrink Tank}

More interesting diagnoses about well-known fictional people can be found at quora.com and specifically at the thread http://www.quora.com/Which-epic-fictional-characters-show-classic-symptoms-of-psychological-disorders with some awesome examples such as

Cornelius Fudge in Harry Potter: Paranoia

Severus Snape in Harry Potter: Schizoid

Another interesting factor that can be discussed is how people subconsciously become their favorite fictional characters, according to http://www.medicaldaily.com/news/20120514/9878/book-reading-experience-taking-psychology-character-fiction.htm
Psychologists have discovered that while reading a book or story, people are prone to subconsciously adopt their behavior, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses to that of fictional characters as if they were their own

There is also a book about Dexter, the famous protagonist of the homonymous popular TV series.
It's called The Psychology of Dexter, and is written by Bella DePaulo.
I totally plan on reading it soon.
After watching the series, of course, because I've noticed by reading the reviews that many spoilers appear on the book.

All in all, I find the whole subject of psychology of fiction very interesting.
I totally plan on researching it more.

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Dream On

So, I found an app that can supposedlyinfluence dreams.
I think it could be possible, although I haven't had the chance to try it yet.

The Science Behind Dream:ON
Not all sleep is the same.
Research has shown that most of our dreams occur during REM Sleep, and also that your mind is particularly alert to other senses during this stage of sleep. Dream:ON plays the 'SoundScape' to your subconscious during REM.

Almost everyone dreams several times each night. However, research suggests that people vary in their ability to incorporate the Soundscapes into their dreams and it may take several nights before Dream:ON is effective.

http://www.dreamonapp.com/ 

Hopefully, I will try it soon myself and will come back with the results it had on me.

And, a song with this title by the legendary Aerosmith...



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The Future?

Welcome to Life: the singularity, ruined by lawyers

 Or: what you see when you die.



The best comment I've read today:

Wauw even in the future people don't read the terms and conditions.
by  nr367

Heh, I guess that's true in every timeline... 
But, I wouldn't like that to happen in the future... Or, ever, for that matter...

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Cheetoh / Ocicat

So, I actually found some breeds that come from wild felines.

Two very beautiful examples are Cheetoh, a cat 8 generations away from Cheetah, and Ocicat, a distant relative of Ocelot.

Both very nice cats, with awesome furs, just like their wild relatives.
Elegant, beautiful, seeming on the hunt often!






For more cat breeds you can also check Cats 101 by Animal Planet!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD901A00C6C741841

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American Shorthair / Egyptian Mau

So, my friend showed me today a dog of the breed Akina Inu.
She wants to buy one.

Anyway, I was searching for cat breeds and decided that I just love the American Shorthair

and the Egyptian Mau.

Ow, so cute, so elegant! I want one of them (or, both)!
My only fear about cats, in general, is about their fur and how harmful it can prove to be.
Especially for kids.

* Note:
I also happened to find some absolutely awesome apps for iPhone, iPad and iTouch.
Take a look at the Cat Piano and the Human-to-Cat Translator.

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