Despite the many potential benefits to its users, social networking appears to provide a rich setting for criminal activities and other misdeeds. In this paper we consider whether the risks of social networking are unique and novel to this context. Having considered the nature and range of applications to which social networks may be applied, we conclude that there are no exploits or fundamenta...

The article offers a comparative description of typological mechanisms used in political communicative practice and methods of verbal explication of its axiological and symbolic constituents determining universal mental features of individual/collective consciousness. The research position based on a systemic multilevel analysis of the component structure of discourse facilitates the identifica...

OBJECTIVE Implantable brain-computer interface (BCI) research promises improvements in human health and enhancements in quality of life. Informed consent of subjects is a central tenet of this research. Rapid advances in neuroscience, and the intimate connection between functioning of the brain and conceptions of the self, make informed consent particularly challenging in BCI research. Identifi...

There is a tendency to think of World Englishes in the noun form; as products rather than as processes (implying that one receives both ready-made, controlling the development of neither). Conceptualising World Englishes as processes in which one can participate as an agent raises the question of what skills are needed in their active construction. The author will argue that since culture resid...

This paper explores the risks and reward of ironic communication. We argue that irony can not be characterized simply as having positive or negative social impact, but can serve multiple communicative purposes, depending on the social context and aims of the conversational participants. Irony may either distance, or bond, speakers and listeners. Contrary to the standard view, understanding iron...

this paper highlights the folk perception of impoliteness among ghanaians in view of watts’ (2003) notion of first order impoliteness. the study showed that impoliteness is not just an opposite of politeness, but the manifestation of non-cooperation, disapproval, and mutual antipathy through certain communicative behaviours that signal disrespect. these communicative behaviours include ‘interru...