According to politeness theory (P. Brown & S. Levinson, 1987), politeness serves to both reflect and regulate social distance. On the basis of this notion and on construal level theory (N. Liberman & Y. Trope, 2008; N. Liberman, Y. Trope, & E. Stephan, 2007), it was predicted that politeness would be related to abstract construal, temporal distance, and spatial distance. Eight studies supported...

The importance of the labyrinth as a trope in the Western tradition can hardly be overstated. Far from being a metaphor that describes just anything, it is a sign whose meaning appears in specific contexts. This article argues how the labyrinth’s triple function as visual, verbal and spatial sign—as well as its paradoxical function as unicursal and multicursal structure—makes it flexible enough...

With reference to electronic literature translation projects in which we have been involved as translators or as authors of the source work, we argue that the process of translation can expose how language and computation interrelate in electronic literature. (Prepared for the Translating E-Literature Conference, Université Paris 8 VincennesSaint-Denis, June 12-14, 2012) A technical report from...

Tibetans in Lhasa negotiate development, as a hegemonic project, through idioms animated by situated practices and historically sedimented memories. Two related idioms through which development is experienced are a pervasive trope of Tibetan indolence and one that describes Tibetans as being spoiled. A Gramscian analysis of contradictory consciousness is critical to understanding the trope of i...

This paper introduces the Icehotel, the world’s first and largest hotel to be constructed entirely of ice and snow, as a unique and generative organizational trope. As a trope, it both supplements and complements Morgan’s seminal book “The Images of Organization” and generates unique insights with regard to surprise, unifinality, purity, eco-coreness, and rebirth. The Icehotel also serves as a ...

In this research, we examine the relationship between power and three characteristics of construal—abstraction, valence, and certainty—in individuals’ verbatim reactions to the events of September 11, 2001 and during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks. We conceptualize power as a form of social distance and find that position power (but not expert power) was positively associated ...

Feyza Burak Adli Thesis under the direction of Mary DeShazer, Ph.D., Professor of English THE TROPE OF PASSING AND THE RACIAL IDENTITY CRISIS IN NELLA LARSEN’S PASSING AND JESSIE REDMON FAUSET’S PLUM BUN This study compares Nella Larsen’s Passing and Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun in terms of their treatments of the trope of passing and racial identity. This comparison demonstrates that Fauset...

Construal Level Theory (CLT; Trope & Liberman, 2003) proposes that pro-arguments (pros) constitute high-level construals and counter-arguments (cons) low-level construals. Therefore, pros are more salient for distant-future actions than are cons and the reverse holds for near-future actions (Eyal, Liberman, Trope, & Walther, 2004). We further predicted and results from one experiment show that ...