Professional and personal caregivers of persons with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) receive little or no training with regards to the nature, course and accompanying communication challenges of this illness (Haak, 2003). The main aim of the research study was to investigate the interaction between nursing home staff and persons with AD with in a nursing home context, before and after attending a communication-orientated educational workshop for the nursing home staff. Research was carried out by using multiple single case studies. A pre-experimental design was used as the research method. The four participants’ communication skills (verbal, nonverbal and paralinguistic) were evaluated by using the Pragmatic Protocol (Prutting and Kirchner, 1987). Their listening skills were observed and scored according to the Checklist of listening behaviours (Hartley, 1995). A questionnaire was designed to measure the participants’ knowledge and perceptions of different AD aspects. Various shortcomings were identified in the interaction process which highlights the importance of training staff to become competent in using communication strategies that facilitate more successful interaction with persons with AD. The communication-orientated educational workshop (event of the study) was designed according to the data that was collected and based on the person-centred approach of Kitwood (1997). The participants’ communication and listening skills, knowledge and perceptions were evaluated again in the posttest (after the workshop) to determine whether or not there had been a change in these areas. A general view of all the participants’ results showed that there was a significant change in their communication and listening skills. The interaction process was more appropriate during the posttest in comparison to the results that were obtained in the pretest. The participants’ interaction were based more on the principles of the person-centred approach to dementia care than the pretest. There had been a noticeable increase after the workshop in the participants’ knowledge and change to a more positive perception towards persons with AD and the illness. The conclusion has been reached that attendance and participation in a communication-orientated educational workshop leads to more positive interaction with persons with AD. This study has motivated the need for dementia care that is based on the principles of the person-centred approach. It is suggested that an increase in the person-centred approach leads to improvement in quality of life of persons with AD as well as the decrease of the effect of institutionalization in a nursing home setting. Suggestions for future research include that attention should be given to educational programmes with regards to communication strategies for persons with AD. It has furthermore been suggested to approach managers of nursing homes regarding future inservice training of their nursing home staff. / Dissertation (M(Communication Pathology))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology / unrestricted

L’essor du « web 2.0 », couramment qualifié de web participatif ou social, a réactivé le vocable de la « communauté » pour désigner le regroupement spontané d’internautes autour de sujets de discussion ou de projets communs. À mesure que se développent les plateformes informatisées d’échange d’information et de contenu, au premier rang desquelles Facebook et Twitter, les annonceurs les investissent massivement de leur présence, sous forme de pages et de comptes de marque, pour tirer profit de l’expressivité des internautes au prisme de la « communauté de marque ». La gestion de ces espaces promotionnels innovants est confiée à une nouvelle catégorie de prestataires de service – les community managers – chargés de promouvoir l’offre des organisations et de répondre à la demande ininterrompue d’informations des consommateurs. C’est ce double mécanisme de la relecture marchande des collectifs en ligne et de la visée stratégique de leur administration qui est questionné ici. Le community management est traité comme un accomplissement pratique, afin de saisir la manière dont une doctrine du marketing s’inscrit dans une activité professionnelle qui se reconfigure au fil de vagues successives de rationalisation de la communication numérique de marque. Ce faisant, cette recherche souhaite contribuer à une sociologie pragmatique qui refuse de réifier le processus de « transformation numérique » de nos sociétés, pour décrire la manière dont celui-ci est performé par une pluralité d’acteurs qui œuvrent à aligner l’expressivité des consommateurs connectés sur les besoins des entreprises. / The rise of “Web 2.0”, commonly referred to as social or participatory Web, has reactivated the terminology of “community” to characterize the spontaneous gathering of individuals around joint discussion topics or projects. As the computerized information and content sharing platforms – such as Facebook and Twitter – develop, companies are heavily investing them by creating brand pages and accounts permitting them to take advantage of the expressivity of Internet users through the prism of the “brand community”. The animation of these innovative promotional spaces is entrusted to a new category of service providers – the community managers – responsible for promoting organizations and responding to the consumers’ ongoing demands for information. This thesis questions the dual mechanism of online collectives’ commercial reinterpretation and of the strategic aim of their management.Considering community management as a practical achievement, the analysis describes how a marketing doctrine is being unfolded in a professional activity that is successively reconfigured through the rationalization of digital brand communication. By doing so, this research wishes to contribute to a pragmatic sociology that refuses to reify the process of “digital transformation” of our societies by describing how the latter is performed by a plurality of actors working to adjust the expressiveness of connected consumers to the companies’ needs.

Syftet med denna studie är att ta reda på hur lågstadielärare ser på den digitaliserade skriftspråksutvecklingen i skolan samt hur pedagoger undervisar skriftspråket. Samhället som vi människor lever i idag har blivit alltmer digitaliserat och skolan har naturligen följt med i denna digitala utveckling. Datorer och surfplattor är ett vanligt förekommande verktyg i skolor, även om tillgången till dessa verktyg ser olika ut i olika skolor.  Studien tar sin utgångspunkt utifrån det sociokulturella och det pragmatiska perspektivet. Undersökningen genomförs med hjälp av enkät som riktas till pedagoger som arbetar i lågstadiet. Resultatet av studien visar att lärarna är positiva till den digitala skriftspråksutvecklingen. Det beror dels på att maskinskriften är ett enkelt verktyg i samband med textbearbetning och dels för att lärarens fokus läggs mer på innehållet än formalia. Resultatet visar även vikten av att bevara handskriften då flera sinnen används vilket underlättar för skrivinlärningen. Lärarna arbetar med skrivinlärning på olika sätt. Några lärare använder en eller flera kända metoder, medan andra har sitt eget sätt att arbeta med skrivinlärningen. / The purpose of this study is to find out how teachers in primary schools perceive the digitized writing development in school and how they teach pupils to write. Our society has been digitized and naturally so has the school. Computers and tablets are a common equipment in schools, even though access to these tools differs in Swedish schools.  The study is based on a socio-cultural and a pragmatic perspective. The study is conducted by using surveys aims at teachers working in the lower secondary school. The result of the study shows that teachers are positive to the digitized writing development. The main reasons are that the computer is a simple tool to edit the text and the teachers´ focus is mainly on the content than the formalities. The result also shows that several parts of the brain are being used in handwriting which simplify the writing acquisition. The teachers are working differently with writing acquisition. Some are using one or many famous methods and some has their own way to teach writing acquisition.

L’étude de l’argumentation dans deux romans de Michel Rio vise à proposer un certain nombre d’instruments permettant de lire le récit romanesque comme un moyen de persuasion. Il s’agit de montrer comment le récit travaille à influencer le lecteur et cherche, tantôt à le faire adhérer à une thèse précise, tantôt à orienter sa façon de percevoir la réalité ambiante. A cet effet, notre travail s’est articulé en quatre chapitres. Dans le premier, nous montrons le caractère pragmatique des récits des Jungles pensives et d’Alizés, qui, en tant que romans philosophiques et encyclopédiques, tentent de faire réfléchir le lecteur et de lui transmettre un savoir sur le monde. L’analyse du processus de persuasion des deux romans s’est fondée sur trois axes correspondant aux trois preuves rhétoriques : l’ethos, le logos et le pathos. L’étude de l’ethos narratif dans le cadre de la situation d’énonciation du récit nous a permis de dégager les moyens par lesquels l’auteur renforce l’ethos des personnages romanesques et celui du narrateur. Le troisième chapitre intitulé « le logos narratif » est consacré à l’étude des moyens par lesquels les récits pragmatiques font appel à la raison du lecteur en combinant les éléments de l’accord préalable (les faits, la doxa, les valeurs, les topiques, etc.) et les raisonnements logiques. Dans le quatrième chapitre intitulé « le pathos narratif », nous nous efforçons de dégager les procédés que l’auteur met en oeuvre pour susciter des émotions chez les lecteurs et les rendre favorables à sa thèse. Enfin, dans notre étude, nous montrons comment la rhétorique s’allie aux techniques de la narratologie, de la sémiotique, de la pragmatique et de l’analyse du discours pour permettre de saisir comment l’auteur peut exercer une influence sur le lecteur / The study of the argumentation in two novels of Michel Rio aims at proposing a certain number of instruments making it possible to read the tale as a tool of persuasion. This work intends to show how the tale influences the reader and seeks sometimes to make him adhere to a specific thesis, sometimes to direct his way of perceiving ambient reality. For this purpose, this work is divided into four chapters. In the first, we show the pragmatic character of the tale of Dreaming Jungles and Alizés, which, as philosophical and encyclopaedic novels, try to make the reader think and to transmit to him a knowledge about the world. The analysis of the process of persuasion of the two novels is based on three axes corresponding to the three main forms of rhetoric: ethos, logos and pathos. The study of the narrative ethos within the framework of the situation of enunciation in the tale enabled us to find out the means by which the author reinforces the ethos of fictional characters and of the narrator. The third chapter: "the narrative logos” examines the means by which the pragmatic tales call upon the reason of the reader by combining the preliminary points of agreement (facts, the doxa, values, topics, … etc.) and the logical reasoning. In chapter 4:“the narrative pathos”, we endeavour to point out the tools that the author uses to generate the emotions at the readers and to make them favourable to his thesis. Finally, in our study, we show how rhetoric can combine with the techniques of narratology, semiotics, pragmatic and speech analytics to allow to the author to influence the reader

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a critical understanding of a Rural Territorial Development (RTD) intervention in a context of conflict dynamics, by looking at the case of the Programme for Development and Peace in Middle Magdalena (PDPMM) - Colombia. To accomplish this task the research process discussed both theoretical and empirical inputs. Firstly, a theoretical framework was developed to understand the dynamics of the development-conflict nexus in rural territories. Secondly, supported by the examination of a case-study, systematic empirical information was collected, incorporating quantitative and qualitative evidence in order to explore the explicit conflict dynamics, namely the practical and theoretical incommensurability between opposite views of rural development taking place in the Middle Magdalena region. Such analysis was further elaborated in three steps: first, the research characterized the main visions of rural development that are being pursued in Middle Magdalena; second, a comparative analysis was carried out in order to identify incommensurabilities and contradictions among those views of development; and third, the study focused on the PDPMM in order to examine how its rural territorial development strategy influences the course of conflict dynamics. On the basis of this methodology, the study shows that rural territorial interventions should focus on building pragmatic articulations among opposite views of development to establish a common development proposal that overcomes conflict and poverty in rural territories.

Les sciences de la performance sportive ont d’abord été sous tutelle de la sphère médicale et du monde de l’éducation physique. Elles se sont autonomisées et impliquent aujourd’hui une pluralité de chercheurs dans des institutions diverses, dont les finalités affichées vont de la production de connaissances théoriques à l’aide aux entraîneurs et aux sportifs. Ces institutions constituent des systèmes de contraintes et de ressources spécifiques, au regard de ces finalités, pour les scientifiques : ceux-ci doivent rendre visible, justifier ce qu’ils font et bénéficient en retour de ressources pour leur travail. L’activité scientifique implique également des acteurs non scientifiques : entraîneurs, sportifs, industriels, etc. Les sciences de la performance sportive sont ainsi à la croisée des intérêts d’acteurs scientifiques et non scientifiques. Elles se caractérisent par des formes de travail et des productions différenciés et typifiables, qui reflètent des modes d’engagement et de coordination particuliers entre les acteurs impliqués. Quatre « régimes scientifiques », structurant ce domaine, ont ainsi été mis en évidence. Chacun d’entre eux peut être caractérisé par des finalités, des modes de fonctionnement et des contraintes spécifiques liées au rapport entretenus entre les acteurs scientifiques et non scientifiques, notamment ceux de la sphère sportive. Par ailleurs, la performance sportive, de par sa complexité, ne se laisse pas toujours enfermer dans les taxonomies disciplinaires officielles et donne ainsi lieu à des modalités particulières de travail interdisciplinaire / Sports performance sciences where first under the control of medicine and scolar physical education. They have empowered themselves, and today they involve a plurality of researchers in several institutions of wich displayed purposes refer to the production of theoric knowledges as well as help for coaches and sportsmen. Institutions can be considered as systems of constraints and resources for the scientists : they must make visible and justify what they do, and they get resources for their work in return. Scientific activity involves non scientific actors to : coaches, athletes, industrial actors, etc. So sports performance sciences crosses interests of scientists and non scientists. They are characterized by various and typifiable forms of work and scientific productions, wich correlate with particular modes of commitment and coordination of implied actors. Four « scientific regimes », wich structure this field, have been brought to light. Each of them can be characterized by specific purposes, functioning modes and constraints that are linked to the connections between scientific and non scientific actors, especially those of the field of sport. Moreover, sports performance, by virtue of its complexity, can’t be contained in official disciplinary taxonomies, and gives rise to particular forms of interdisciplinary work

This study analyzes students' use of the French second-person pronouns tu (T) and vous (V) in small-group (2-3 students) inter-learner online chat sessions. The influence of internal linguistic factors (i.e., turn type and morphosyntactic environment) on learners' appropriate vs. inappropriate use of these pronouns is considered. The study also investigates the influence of Instructional Level on tu-vous use and the extent to which students from different instructional levels provide various types of peer assistance (e.g., lexical, morphosyntactic, and sociolinguistic/pragmatic) . Pronoun use was extremely unstable for learners of all levels, and a Kruskal-Wallis analysis revealed that Instructional Level did not significantly affect appropriate T/V use overall. Instructional Level and Syntax did, however, significantly affect interrogative T/V use, as shown through multivariate analyses. Peer-assisted performance was limited to lexical retrieval. Pedagogical recommendations are presented for teaching and learning second-person pronouns in French.

Let’s imagine a typical word-learning scenario. A toddler sits in her highchair in the kitchen and waits for her lunch. Her mother says: “Use a spoon to eat your meal”. Several objects are placed in front of the child. She can see a dish with her lunch, a spoon, a cup, a sugar bowl, a milk jar, her mother’s plate and a second cup. All these objects, present in the visual array, must be identified by the toddler; she must also parse the auditory stream into segments and determine which words are familiar and which ones are potentially new. If the child does not know the word “spoon”, she will need to use the event of naming of this referent by her mother to adjust her attention to the relevant referent. She also needs to update her representation of this word upon hearing it in different contexts with different speakers and, perhaps, different types of spoons. Efficient attention allocation in this word-learning situation will clearly contribute to the success of mapping; the degree of encoding of the word-form and of its meaning will certainly influence whether this word enters the child’s vocabulary.The complexity of such a typical scenario seems very challenging for a toddler whose cognitive resources are still far from being fully mature. Unsurprisingly, several accounts of how toddlers manage to solve this task are currently on the market. The problem of ambiguity associated with meaning-to-referent mapping (several objects co-presented in the visual scene) and with word form-to-meaning mapping (the correct word is to be singled out among phonological competitors) might be even more challenging for children who present an atypical developmental trajectory.Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and toddlers at risk for the disorder were found to acquire their vocabularies at a slower rate than their typically developing peers. In the contemporary literature, this delay in lexical knowledge acquisition is associated with poor socio-pragmatic understanding that presumably limits children’s capacity to establish referents for words in social contexts. Since impaired understanding of social interaction is a core characteristic of the cognitive profile of individuals with ASD, such an explanation of the delay in language development seems very plausible. However, several other theoretical accounts hold that in typical development socio-pragmatic skills emerge, bottom-up, through more domain-general processing of interactional experiences. In line with the latter views, it can be hypothesized that delays in lexical acquisition in ASD are not directly linked to poor socio-pragmatic understanding but are caused by low-level deficits and atypical attention allocation during word learning.Research programs on lexical learning and processing in ASD thus face the existence of different, contradictory theories of first language acquisition in typical development. Deciding a priori to build one’s experimental study against this or that theoretical background carries the risk of a limited interpretation of experimental results. A more promising way to deal with the variety of available theories of language acquisition is rather to directly confront the existing paradigms and to plan the study design in accordance. This is the approach that I privilege here. In the studies presented within this thesis, I question how social cues are used to resolve ambiguity in meaning during word-learning tasks (chapter 1) and during referential processing in typically developing children (chapter 2) and in children with ASD (chapter 3). Not only do I attempt to compare the use of social cues in word-learning and of perspectival information in referential processing in children with and without ASD, but I also try to link these results with two opposing theoretical views: the one that postulates early reliance on socio-pragmatic understanding and the other that conceives of word-learning as not being necessarily grounded in social understanding. In Chapter 1, I present evidence that children with ASD, children with SLI and typically developing children learn novel words in a flexible way by selectively attending to mappings offered by previously accurate speakers. However, I also show that such learning is likely to be supported by a surface trait attribution mechanism, rather than by genuine socio-pragmatic understanding: children in both clinical groups fail to learn selectively, when learning requires genuinely building a model of the speakers’ epistemic states. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to referential communication. I adopt several analytical and methodological modifications to existing methods, which allows me to compare two different aspects of partner-dependent processing of referential precedents. Typically developing children can be expected to recognize precedents previously established with the same partner faster, because of an automatic priming mechanism. However, potential faster processing of broken precedents with a new partner could not be explained by a low-level memory mechanism and would strongly suggest that lexical processing is influenced by expectations about the child’s partner perspective. I present evidence that children with and without ASD do not spontaneously rely on common ground during referential processing and that partner-specific effects in processing are associated with low-level priming. In chapter 3, I report evidence of impaired ability to switch between different conceptual perspectives in children with ASD, which may lead to maladaptive behavior in communication. In the last chapter of this thesis, I explore how word form-to-meaning ambiguity is resolved in children with ASD and whether these children exhibit difficulty in correctly mapping similar-sounding novel words. The results of this study suggest that lexical activation in children with ASD may be impaired and they display deficits in suppressing phonological competitors. Taken together, the results presented in this doctoral dissertation suggest that delays in word acquisition in ASD are likely to be driven by deficits in domain-general cognitive development. Even though impaired socio-cognitive understanding may lead to difficulties in discourse and pragmatics in older children, delayed access to lexical meaning in young children with ASD is likely to be associated with disruptions in domain-general mechanisms of perception, attention and memory. / Doctorat en Langues, lettres et traductologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

[pt] O Método Pragmalingüístico é um instrumento de leitura bíblica cujos fundamentos encontram-se na semiótica, ciência articulada e dividida em três estágios: sintática, semântica e pragmática. A singularidade da pragmalingüística está na análise do texto como estratégia comunicativa do autor, que procura conduzir e provocar os sucessivos leitores para uma ação. A aplicação do Método Pragmalingüístico para a leitura de Os 10,1-8 evidencia que o próprio texto contem em si mesmo, explícita ou implicitamente, os elementos para sua compreensão. Permite detectar elementos relevantes para a reflexão metodológica, sobretudo a relação entre análise sincrônica e diacrônica. Se a interpretação dos textos bíblicos não depende exclusivamente dos conhecimentos que se tem das condições históricas da origem dos mesmos, não significa que estas devem ser ignoradas ou descartadas. A singularidade da pragmalingüística não está na oposição sincrônico e diacrônico. Mesmo admitindo o estudo diacrônico como indispensável para interpretação da Bíblia, a inclusão no método histórico crítico de uma análise sincrônica dos textos constitui uma operação legítima, pois é o texto em seu estado final, e não uma redação anterior, que é expressão da Palavra de Deus. O método pragmalingüístico não seria um método alternativo, mas é uma metodologia que possibilita uma visão totalizante, procurando integrar os resultados já adquiridos, potenciando-os a partir de uma concepção do texto como processo comunicativo. / [en] The Pragmalinguistic Method is an instrument of biblical reading of which fundamentals are found in semiotics, articulated science and divided in three stages: syntactic, semantics and pragmatics. The uniqueness of Pragmalinguistics lies in the text analysis as an author's communicative strategy that seeks to lead and incite to action the consecutive reader. The Pragmalinguistic Method application to the reading of Hos 10,1-8 makes evident that the text itself encloses within, explicitly or implicitly, the necessary elements to achieve its understanding. It makes possible to relevant elements for the methodological reflection, above all the relation between sycchronistic and diachronistic analysis. If the interpretation of biblical texts does not depend exclusively on the knowledge acquired through historical conditions of their origin, it does not mean that these very same should be ignored or dismissed. The uniqueness of Pragmalinguistics does not reside in the opposition synchronistic and diachronistic. Even admitting the diachronistic study as being essential for the interpretation of the Bible, the inclusion into the historic critical method of a synchronistic analysis of the texts establishes a genuine operation, since it regards the text final outcome, not a former draft, the expresses the Word of God. The Pragmalinguistic Method wouldn't be an alternative method, but a methodology which enables an absolute view attempting to integrate the results already acquired, involving them from the basis of a text conception as communicative process.

Cette thèse porte sur un art martial, l’aikibudo, « fondé » au début des années 1980 par le Français Alain Floquet. Âgé de presque 80 ans, celui-ci tente, depuis quelques années, de transmettre progressivement la responsabilité technique de son école. Cette transmission intensifie des tensions entre les successeurs potentiels – ceux que nous avons appelés les maîtres. Ainsi, l’organisation de la discipline doit-elle se moderniser ou garder un caractère « traditionnel » ? Avec une forme technique plus éthérée ou plus réaliste ? Et quelle devrait-elle la place de chacun dans la future organisation ? De leur point de vue, les maîtres considèrent le plus souvent ces tensions comme des luttes d’ego ou encore des luttes de pouvoir. Il semble pourtant qu’elles ne relèvent pas que de la seule rationalité instrumentale. Telle est l’hypothèse générale de cette recherche. Pour mener à bien cette recherche, deux cadres théoriques jusqu’ici peu articulés ont été croisés : la sociologie pragmatique de Boltanski et Thévenot (1991) qui permet d’appréhender les arrière-plans axiologiques de ces tensions ; le programme dispositionnaliste proposé par Lahire (2012) qui s’attache aux dispositions des individus observés et aux contextes (macro et micro sociaux) dans lesquels ils agissent. L’enquête menée repose sur un volet qualitatif (observation participante, entretiens semi-directifs) et un volet quantitatif (analyse sociodémographique des pratiquants et questionnaire en ligne). Elle conduit à deux résultats principaux. Il en ressort d’abord que derrière l’apparente unité du discours des maîtres sur l’aikibudo, on peut distinguer trois modes d’engagement dans la discipline : l’engagement militaire, l’engagement artistique et l’engagement sportif. Chacun de ces modes d’engagement se traduit par des forme spécifiques de pratique, un attachement plus ou moins fort à la tradition, et un type de rapport de l’individu au groupe. De la sorte, on met en évidence la dimension morale des tensions dont l’enjeu est une reconfiguration et une redéfinition de la discipline au moment où le fondateur délègue progressivement la direction de son école. Par ailleurs, l’aikibudo n’est pas, pour ceux qui s’y engagent fortement, qu’un espace trivial de loisir. Il constitue le lieu central et symbolique d’une quête soi d’autant plus dense que l’individu a subi, préalablement, des expériences douloureuses, des formes d’humiliation ou de violence. Ainsi, les tensions apparaissent sous un autre jour. Leur virulence s’explique par le sens que les individus trouvent dans leur engagement dans l’aikibudo : une parabole de leur lutte pour la verticalité entendue comme un redressement et une élévation de soi. L’accès au statut de maître marque la reconnaissance de cette lutte que les haut-gradés mènent depuis plusieurs décennies. Mettre en doute leur qualité ou leur compétence de maître, c’est comme affecter ce qui fonde l’identité qu’ils ont pu construire, dans et au-delà de l’espace clos du dojo / This PhD thesis deals with a martial art – aikibudo – "founded" in the early 1980’s by the Frenchman Alain Floquet. Today, he is indeed 80 years old and has been passing on the technical charge of his "school" for a few years. But some tensions have grown between his successors – called "the masters" – who disagree on the future of aikibudo: should it become a traditional or a modern school? With an artistic or a realistic form? And what should the place of each one be in the future organization of the group? From their own point of view, the masters consider these tensions are caused by warring egos or power struggles. The general hypothesis of this work consists in showing that these tensions are not due to instrumental rationality alone. It is based on the crossing of two theoretical frameworks, namely the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thevenot (1991) which enables to understand the axiological backgrounds of these tensions and the dispositionalist program of Lahire (2012) which focuses on the dispositions of some observed individuals and on the macro and micro-social contexts in which they interact. The study contains a qualitative part (participant observation and semi-leading interviews) and a quantitative one (practitioners’ sociodemographic analysis and an online questionnaire). There are two main results. Firstly, behind the visible unity of the Masters’ speeches on aikibudo, we can notice three types of commitment: a military commitment, an artistic commitment and an individualist (or athletic) commitment. Each of them implies specific practices, more or less powerful links to traditions and different forms of attachment of the individual to the group. This way, the moral dimension of the tensions becomes obvious. Their major issue is the redefinition and reconfiguration of the martial art as its founder is little by little delegating the running of his school. Secondly, aikibudo is not only a trivial space of leisure for those who are strongly engaged in it. It is also a central and symbolic quest of one’s self, all the more important that the individual has previously lived painful, humiliating or even violent experiences. Thus the tensions appear in a different way. Their virulence can be explained by the sense the individuals give to their commitment to aikibudo: a parable of their struggle for verticality in the sense of a recovery, an elevation of their selves. Accessing the rank of Master is like a gratitude for those at the top who have been struggling for decades. Doubting their skills as Masters affects the identity they have been building inside and outside the confined space of the dojo