Ambiguities have long intrigued design and new product development (NPD) researchers: The fascination seems rooted in an endeavor to understand how design outcomes may be created despite the ambiguous nature of such work. There are several classic contributions on how to categorize, avoid and approach ambiguities. Some of the newer theories have also pointed to benefits arising from temporarily sustaining ambiguity. Little research has considered how ambiguities emerge, how ambiguities are sensed by practitioners, and the actions the practitioners take, either to harness or to reduce the generative and transformative power of ambiguity, however. This is unfortunate, since ambiguities are at the heart of such knowing-work. If one does not know how to sense the emergence of ambiguities and act to reduce or harness their generative and transformative power, i.e. negotiate ambiguity, the work might become unproductive, confused, uncreative, and might require more energy and attention. The purpose of this research is to portray how ambiguities emerge and are negotiated in knowing-work. This is achieved by drawing on two cases of design and NPD work, from practice epistemology. The results indicated that the emerging ambiguities changed in the ongoing work, some being reduced, others becoming obsolete or persisting. The results also included five generalized actions to negotiate ambiguity: (1) constructing points of references, (2) mediating between perspectives, (3) anchoring in expertise, (4) disarming future resistance, and (5) creating shared visions. This research has concluded that the very essence of design work concerns the emergence and fading away of ambiguity. The actions taken to negotiate ambiguity mediates the emergence of the design outcome. This research makes two contributions: first, it illustrates how ambiguities open up design work by creating a space for action; second, it illustrates how actions to negotiate ambiguity maneuver in this space for action. / Den typ av arbete som tar sig an utvecklandet av nya produkter och tjänster omges ofta av oklarhet kring vad som skall skapas, hur den framtida marknaden ser ut samt vilka utmaningar som kommer att framträda under arbetets gång. Sådana oklarheter har studerats i design- och produktutvecklingsforskning, ofta under antagandet att oklarheterna bör undvikas och minimeras. Dock finns det även nyare forskning som pekar mot att oklarheter kan vara fördelaktiga i arbetet. Forskningen är dock begränsad vad gäller hur oklarheterna framträder i arbetet, hur praktiker förnimmer dessa oklarheter, samt hur en kan ta sig an dessa oklara situationer för att söka reducera eller dra nytta av potentialen i oklara situationer. Detta är olyckligt, då oklarhet ligger i skapandearbetets kärna. En sådan begränsad kunskapsbildning leder till förenklade antaganden kring oklarhetens roll i design- och produktutvecklingsarbete. Därtill får det rent praktiska konsekvenser då designkonsulternas praktik och yrkeskunnande delvis är höljd i dunkel, genom att deras förmåga att förnimma och förhandla oklarhet tidigare förbisetts. Syftet med denna forskning är således att studera hur oklarheter framträder samt förhandlas i skapandearbete, genom att stödja sig på empiriska studier av arbetet i två designkonsultföretag, utifrån ett praktikperspektiv. Resultaten visar både att oklarheter uppkommer och försvinner kontinuerligt i arbetet, samt beskriver fem förhandlingsaktiviteter: (1) skapa referenspunkter; (2) medla mellan perspektiv; (3) förankra i expertis; (4) avväpna framtida motstånd; och (5) skapa gemensamma visioner. Slutsatserna visar på att oklarheter skapar tolkningsutrymme i arbetet: i tvetydighetens många tolkningar öppnas ett utrymme för skapande och möjlighet till omtolkning. Därtill framkommer att förhandlingsaktiviteterna manövrerar i detta tolkningsutrymme, genom att nyttja eller minska oklarhetens många tolkningar. / <p>QC 20170508</p>

O presente trabalho procura descrever e avaliar possibilidades de reconhecimento de ambiguidades rítmicas a partir da perspectiva do ouvinte musical. Adota como principais referenciais: a análise de cenário auditivo, de Bregman (1990); a percepção por categorias, de Clarke (1987); o conceito de relógio interno, de Povel e Essens (1985) e a indução do tempo musical, de Povel e Okkerman (1981); o modelo de regras de preferência, de Lerdahl e Jackendoff (1983), depois desenvolvido por Temperley (2001); os critérios de padrões inerentes e o padrão da linha do tempo, de Kubik (1962); conceitos da psicologia da expectativa, de Huron (2007) e a aplicação de princípios gestálticos a processos cognitivos de percepção do ritmo. Com base neste referencial teórico, propõe parâmetros organizados como fatores endógenos e exógenos para a verificação de aspectos relacionados à maneira como ouvintes médios percebem as articulações rítmicas propostas nos exemplos musicais propostos. Por considerar que os compassos iniciais de uma obra constituem uma fase onde ocorre o processo de indução da percepção métrica, os exemplos musicais são constituídos de análises de trechos iniciais de obras musicais potencialmente ambíguos nomeadamente, Sinfonia n. 5, op. 67 (I), Sonata para piano, op. 14, n. 2 (I), Sonata para piano, op. 109 (I), de Beethoven; Quarteto de cordas, op. 51 n. 1 (I), de Brahms; Sinfonia n. 5, op. 64 (III), de Tchaikovsky. Traz, ainda, um exemplo de ambiguidade entre Ijexá e Drum n´Bass. Na conclusão, defende a ideia de que alguns modelos cognitivos atuais são capazes de justificar percepções auditivas ambíguas. / This study describes and evaluates the recognition of possibilities of rhythmic ambiguity from the perspective of the musical listener. Adopts as main references: the Auditory Scene Analysis, by Bregman (1990); the Categorical Rhythm Perception, by Clarke (1987); internal clock concept, by Povel and Essens (1985), and induction of musical time, by Povel and Okkerman (1981); the preference rule model, by Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983), later developed by Temperley (2001); Inherent patterns and Timeline pattern criteria, by Kubik (1962); Psychology of Expectation concepts, by Huron (2007), and application of Gestalt principles to cognitive processes of rhythm perception. Based on this theoretical framework it proposes parameters organized as endogenous and exogenous factors to verify aspects related to the perception of proposed articulations by averages listeners, in the proposed rhythmic musical examples. Considering that the initial measures of a work constitute a stage where the induction process of meter perception occurs, the musical examples are made up of initial excerpts analysis from musical works potentially ambiguous namely, Symphony no. 5, op. 67 (I), Piano Sonata, op. 14, no. 2 (I), Piano Sonata, op. 109 (I), by Beethoven; String Quartet, op. 51 no. 1 (I), by Brahms; Symphony no. 5, op. 64 (III), Tchaikovsky. This paper also provides an example of ambiguity between Ijexá pattern and Drum n\'bass pattern. In the conclusion, defends the idea that some current cognitive models are able to justify ambiguous auditory perceptions.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:45:33Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Jose Alexandre.pdf: 660834 bytes, checksum: 22f9bdd2ba59bccb76530d93f1b6b4bc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007-03-08 / The studies about humor are uncountable and so are that about what make people laugh. Although, most of them presents general questions and few presents the linguistic aspects that humor evolves. The best way to establish the difference between the linguistic treatment of humor and other any approach of the same texts may be the use of terms in wich linguistic explains the way , not the reason of humor. In here there is no intention of explaining what humor texts mean, specially the ambiguous ones, but how they can work. It is intended so, to describe the linguistic keys wich are the way to unleash people s laugh. The Textual Linguistic , by Ducrot, woks with a particular object of investigation, not the word or the sentence any more, but the text itself. It can be used to analyze the different types of language manifestation, yet, eventually, some areas of this science can supply instruments to clear certain aspects of humor language, so, this labor has as objective to analyze specifically the ambiguity on the humor production in advertising texts once it is crucial information. Also it has some advantages: it can be found in large amount and probably, in all cultures; they are pieces of information permanently enunciated by (the) speakers; it is not necessary to create ad hoc to limit-experiments; in addition most of them can be funny. Then, Abaurre, Bakhtin, Bateson, Becker, Bergson, Bigal, Brait, Carvalho, Carrascoza, Chiaro, Chomsky, Dascal, Dias da Silva, Fernandes, Freud, Huizinga, Jameson, Mennucci, Perelman, Piatelli-Palmarini, Raskin, Salmon, Sant Ana and Ullmann will be the theoreticals bases. / São incontáveis os estudos sobre o humor e sobre aquilo que faz as pessoas rirem; no entanto, enquanto a maioria deles versa sobre questões gerais, muito poucas referem-se aos aspectos lingüísticos envolvidos no humor. A melhor maneira de estabelecer a diferença entre um tratamento lingüístico do humor e outra abordagem qualquer dos mesmos textos talvez seja utilizar os termos segundo os quais a lingüística explica o como e não o porquê do humor. Ou, não se tentará aqui explicar o que os textos de humor, em especial os ambíguos, significam, mas como podem funcionar. Pretende-se aqui, pois, descrever as chaves lingüísticas que são o meio que pode desencadear nosso riso. A Lingüística Textual, por Ducrot, trabalha, com objeto particular de investigação, não mais a palavra ou a frase, mas sim o texto. Ela pode servir para análise de diversos tipos de manifestação da linguagem, e, eventualmente, algumas áreas dessa ciência podem fornecer instrumentos melhores para clarear determinados aspectos da linguagem do humor. Então, este trabalho tem por objetivo analisar especificamente a ambigüidade na produção do humor em textos de propaganda, já que são dados de tipo crucial, com algumas vantagens: encontram-se em grande quantidade e provavelmente em todas as culturas, são dados efetivamente enunciados pelos falantes, não necessitam ser criados ad hoc para experimentos-limite e a maior parte desses textos podem ser divertidos. Para tanto, terá como bases teóricas textos de Abaurre, Bakhtin, Bateson, Becker, Bergson, Bigal, Brait, Carvalho, Carrascoza, Chiaro, Chomsky, Dascal, Dias da Silva, Fernandes, Freud, Huizinga, Jameson, Mennucci, Perelman, Piatelli-Palmarini, Raskin, Salmon, Sant Ana e Ullmann.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:46:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sonia Dias de Sousa.pdf: 524701 bytes, checksum: 423a9a18607e3440813aee29541aade4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-12-11 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / This work aims at presenting some perspectives on the fantastic fiction, taking as its starting point the analysis of three short stories by the German writer Hoffmann, namely: The Sandman , Haimatocare and Automata . So as to built up the research on the fantastic fiction, we resorted to the theoretical perspectives developed by Furtado (1980) and Todorov (2004), favouring an array of narrative circumstances that foster the rising of hesitation and ambiguity. In such a way, we examined how strategies employed along the narrative flow build themselves and sustain ambiguity, which is responsible for the maintenance of hesitation, shown not only within the short stories but also in their relationship with the actual reader. Finally, we have made some considerations on the fantastic fiction, which can be understood as a possibility of interpreting human relations, rather contradictory and, exactly because of that, intrinsically similar to the contradictions that characterize the core of the fantastic literature. Thus, the course outlined in the short stories analysed in this work allows for an inquiry about the represented subjects world understanding, which demonstrates that ambiguity can be a way towards the comprehension of a reality so many times disconcerting, no matter how coherent it may seem. / Este trabalho tem por objetivo apresentar as perspectivas do fantástico a partir da análise de três contos do escritor alemão Hoffmann: O Homem da Areia , Haimatocare e Os Autômatos . Para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa sobre o fantástico, utilizamos as perspectivas teóricas desenvolvidas por Furtado (1980) e Todorov (2004), privilegiando um conjunto de circunstâncias narrativas que incitam o surgimento da hesitação e a ambigüidade nos contos. Desse modo, examinamos como as estratégias distribuídas no percurso narrativo se constroem e mantêm a ambigüidade, responsável pela sustentação da hesitação que transparece tanto no interior dos contos quanto em sua relação com o leitor real. Por fim, tecemos algumas considerações sobre o fantástico, entendendo-o como uma possibilidade de interpretação das relações humanas, tantas vezes contraditórias, e, por isso mesmo, intrinsecamente, semelhantes às contradições que caracterizam o cerne da literatura fantástica. Nesse sentido, a trajetória delineada nos contos estudados permite um questionamento a respeito do entendimento de mundo dos diferentes sujeitos representados, demonstrando que a ambigüidade pode ser um caminho para a compreensão de uma realidade tantas vezes desconcertante, ainda que marcada por uma aparente coerência.

Paul Celan's translations of Emily Dickinson's poems Because I could not stop for Death and Let down the Bars, Oh Death illuminate the global metaphor inherent in both poems' exploration of death. Celan's The Meridian speech, coupled with Dickinson's poems I saw no way and Tell all the truth, suggest that language can move in different directions across a globe at the same time. When these different lines meet, they reach a meridian of the spiritual and the material. As Celan translates Dickinson's two poems, he uses this global metaphor to place more emphasis on death and to further illuminate how ambiguity is used in the poems to represent what death is, thus highlighting Dickinson's original project in her death poems.

I examined what brand new Ph.D.s in Communication experience when they start their first, entry-level, tenure-track assistant professor position at a new university. Through the lens of scocial construction, I review vocational and organizational socialization, individual agency by newcomers, academic socialization processes, and the concept of the academic career in the current climate of university change and transformation. Then, I present the method of research, including the population and sampling method, and rationales for utilizing a narrative approach, interactive interviewing, and autoethnographic writing. After presenting the participants' narratives, I revisit both within- and between-case issues, beginning with socialization from the "bottom-up" lived experiences of the new faculty. The universities socialized these new professors through individual socialization processes. To lessen their uncertainty in their new place of work, the faculty members utilized seven individualized tactics to lessen ambiguity. Collectively, the new assistant professors saw the organizationally provided orientations and mentoring processes as inadequate. The loss of graduate school cohort necessitates the development of a new cohort with peers for new faculty development, despite the modern isolationist definition of the academic "subject." The new communication faculty generally found teaching to be an activity of stabilization within the new equivocal university environment, despite the supposed unpreparedness of new faculty. I discuss the interrelated use of strategically ambiguous communication, power, and the disciplining of the self and how they relate to the tenure process. I examine how the discourses of academic capitalism impact the daily lives and decision-making of new faculty, including compromised research agendas and publication production. I interrogate the pursuit of prestige by higher educational institutions and the manner in which this pursuit adds additional pressure and stressors on new professors. Finally, I consider how the short-term narrative of "getting tenure" truncates the canonical narrative of the academic career, and legitimizes the outsider-within category of the new faculty members.

When stigmatized or oppressed groups are able to protect their self-esteem by attributing a negative outcome to prejudice and/or discrimination, this has been titled "attributional ambiguity". Whereas it has been proven in many studies that attributional ambiguity does exist among the stigmatized and oppressed groups the methodological approach of these studies were bias. In these studies the evaluator(s) has always been white and/or physically able. The goal of this study was to investigate whether attributional ambiguity is utilized by any individual (stigmatized/oppressed or non-stigmatized/non-oppressed) who feels that their outcome is the result of prejudice and/or discrimination. Our methodological approach allowed participants to be evaluated by same-race, or cross-race evaluators of the same sex. It is believed that this did address the issue of stigmatized/oppressed being evaluators themselves. However, the lack of reported prejudice made it difficult to test the construct validity of attributional ambiguity. In addition this study yielded results that revealed that subtle differences such as skin color is not enough to imply prejudice even when paired with negative feedback.

In all natural languages, ambiguity is a universal phenomenon. When a word has multiple meaning depending on its contexts it is called an ambiguous word. The process of determining the correct meaning of a word (formally named word sense) in a given context is word sense disambiguation(WSD). WSD is one of the most fundamental problems in natural language processing. If properly addressed, it could lead to revolutionary advancement in many other technologies such as text search engine technology, automatic text summarization and classification, automatic lexicon construction, machine translation and automatic learning agent technology. One difficulty that has always confronted WSD researchers is the lack of high quality sense specific information. For example, if the word "power" Immediately preceds the word "plant", it would strongly constrain the meaning of "plant" to be "an industrial facility". If "power" is replaced by the phrase "root of a", then the sense of "plant" is dictated to be "an organism" of the kingdom Planate. It is obvious that manually building a comprehensive sense specific information base for each sense of each word is impractical. Researchers also tried to extract such information from large dictionaries as well as manually sense tagged corpora. Most of the dictionaries used for WSD are not built for this purpose and have a lot of inherited peculiarities. While manual tagging is slow and costly, automatic tagging is not successful in providing a reliable performance. Furthermore, it is often the case that for a randomly chosen word (to be disambiguated), the sense specific context corpora that can be collected from dictionaries are not large enough. Therefore, manually building sense specific information bases or extraction of such information from dictionaries are not effective approaches to obtain sense specific information. A web text, due to its vast quantity and wide diversity, becomes an ideal source for extraction of large quantity of sense specific information. In this thesis, the impacts of Web texts on various aspects of WSD has been investigated. New measures and models are proposed to tame enormous amount of Web texts for the purpose of WSD. They are formally evaluated by experimenting their disambiguation performance on about 70 ambiguous nouns. The results are very encouraging and have helped revealing the great potential of using Web texts for WSD. The results are published in three papers at Australia national and international level (Wang&Hoffmann,2004,2005,2006)[42][43][44].

This research documentation explores representations of the Holocaust in the visual arts in relation to the post-Holocaust ??ripple effect????the impact of the Holocaust on the world today, in both the wider arena of global political conflicts and in the lives of individuals. In the following chapters, I address the complex ethical and political aspects of representations of the Holocaust in the context of the evolution of Holocaust awareness and memorialisation. I also investigate recent developments in art and theory that challenge prevailing conventions governing Holocaust representation, especially how the relationship between the perceived political exploitation of the Holocaust and the intergenerational effects of Holocaust trauma is addressed. Given these are sensitive and contentious issues I discuss my studio work in terms of how trauma affects the political rather than as an overt polemically/politically motivated art. I examine my attempts to bypass controversy (maintaining respect for victims and survivors), yet maintain engagement with these issues in my art. In doing this I aim to liberate both my art and the viewer from habits of perception in regard to the subject. From this principle I propose a ??strategic?? form of self-censorship that paradoxically gives me the freedom to do this. This strategy enables me to create an art of ambiguity, which exists in an amoral zone. The art evokes reflective thought, uncertainty and ambivalence, where references to the Holocaust or political content are often not explicit, leaving room for lateral and open readings. My work, which incorporates interdisciplinary methods, is often based on photographs from a variety of sources. I also create three dimensional constructions. The sourced images and the constructions are disguised, decontextualised, cropped, erased or digitally altered, and also experiment with optical illusion. Through transformative processes these images are changed into drawings, paintings, photographs. This research documentation acknowledges the gap between the gravitas of the subject with its ethical and geo-political complexities and my idiosyncratic, subjective, introverted approach to making art. I conclude that there is potential in the exploration of an ??anxiety of representation?? in relation to the Holocaust in the contemporary context.

<p>The thesis consists of three self-contained essays on public policy in the macroeconomy.</p><p>“Government Policy in the Formal and Informal Sectors” quantitatively investigates the interaction between the firms' choice to operate in the formal or the informal sector and government policy on taxation and enforcement. Taxes, enforcement, and regulation are incorporated in a general equilibrium model of firms differing in their productivities. The model quantitatively accounts for the keys aspects in the data and allows me to back out country-specific enforcement levels. Some policy reforms are analyzed and the welfare gains can be fairly large.</p><p>“Determinants of Capital Intensive and R&D Intensive Foreign Direct Investment” studies the determinants of capital intensity and technology content of FDI. Using industry data on U.S. FDI abroad and data on many different host countries' institutional characteristics, we show that there is a differential response of FDI flows to investment climate according to the capital intensity of the industries receiving the investments. We find that better protection of property rights has a significant positive effect on R&D intensive capital flows. We find evidence that an increase in workers' bargaining power results in a reduction of both kinds of FDI. </p><p>“Ambiguity Aversion, the Equity Premium, and the Welfare Costs of Business Cycles” examines the relevance of consumers’ ambiguity aversion for asset prices and how consumption fluctuations influence consumer welfare. First, in a Mehra-Prescott-style endowment economy, we calibrate ambiguity aversion so that asset prices are consistent with data: a high return on equity and a low return on risk-free bonds. We then use this calibration to investigate how much consumers would be willing to pay to reduce endowment fluctuations to zero, thus delivering a Lucas-style welfare cost of fluctuations. These costs turn out to be very large: consumers are willing to pay over 10% of consumption in permanent terms.</p>