This volume presents the first full-scale biography of Daniel Jones, a preeminent scholar and leading British phonetician of the early twentieth century, and the first linguist to hold a chair at a British university. This book, richly illustrated with partly unpublished material traces Jones's life and career, including his contacts with other linguists, and with figures outside the linguistic world notably Robert Bridges and George Bernard Shaw.
The present book offers a brief historical overview of the main scholars, hence the real Professors Higgins[1], who played an important role in the development and study of the pronunciation of the English language. The aim of the book is not to give a comprehensive account of the subject, but rather to stimulate and help students of English linguistics deepen their knowledge by reading about the life and thought of some of the greatest thinkers in the field. In particular, the main idea of the work is that it may serve as a stimulus for students to learn something about the actual human beings who are behind the topics they have to study when attending a course of English Phonetics and Phonology at university; especially considering that these are the people who determined, although unconsciously, such topics. For this reason, the selection of scholars illustrated here was slightly constrained by the content of the university program, which means that some important linguists and also some thoughts and works of those included were left out. In terms of content, this work is divided into four main parts: the first Section, Professor Henry Higgins, briefly introduces the character whose name inspired the title of the present book, namely, the famous Professor of Phonetics who was created by the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw for his Pygmalion (1912), who also inspired the movies Pygmalion (1938) and My Fair Lady (1964), inter alia[2]. The second and third Sections, instead, illustrate some of the most important real (i.e. not fictional) scholars who, like the fictional Mr. Higgins, were interested in the sounds of the English language and largely contributed to the development of the discipline. More specifically, the second Section, The Pioneers, after offering a brief and more general introduction to the origins of the study of language sounds, focuses on the pioneers of the field, whereas the third, XXI Century Scholars, concentrates on two important linguists who played an important role in our century. Finally, the fourth Section, Playing Mr. Higgins, has been conceived as an opportunity for students to learn how to analyze sounds, as Mr. Higgins did, through modern software programs used in acoustic phonetics such as Praat, which Mr. Higgins did not have. Indeed, despite the fact that the book cannot be exhaustive in the least, it is envisaged that within this limit it could, however, give those few students who might become passionate about the topic a good reason for continuing to explore it further, or to become the new real professor Higgins of the future. From the Introduction
The Good Life of Teaching extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development. Makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of teaching and also offers new insights into virtue theory and professional ethics Offers fresh and detailed readings of major figures in ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams and the practical philosophies of Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Hans-Georg Gadamer Provides illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing major points, and integrates sources such as film, literature, and teaching memoirs to exemplify arguments in an engaging and accessible way Presents a compelling vision of teaching as a reflective practice showing how this requires us to prepare teachers differently
What does it mean to be human? Why do we feel and behave in the ways that we do? The classic answer is that we have a special kind of intelligence. But to understand what we are as humans, we also need to know what we are like motivationally. And what is central to this story, what is special about human motivation, is that humans want to share with others their inner experiences about the world--share how they feel, what they believe, and what they want to happen in the future. They want to create a shared reality with others. People have a shared reality together when they experience having in common a feeling about something, a belief about something, or a concern about something. They feel connected to another person or group by knowing that this person or group sees the world the same way that they do--they share what is real about the world. In this work, Dr. Higgins describes how our human motivation for shared reality evolved in our species, and how it develops in our children as shared feelings, shared practices, and shared goals and roles. Shared reality is crucial to what we believe--sharing is believing. It is central to our sense of self, what we strive for and how we strive. It is basic to how we get along with others. It brings us together in fellowship and companionship, but it also tears us apart by creating in-group "bubbles" that conflict with one another. Our shared realities are the best of us, and the worst of us.
Most environmental statutes passed since 1970 have endorsed a pragmatic or 'precautionary' principle under which the existence of a significant risk is enough to trigger regulation. At the same time, targets of such regulation have often argued on grounds of inefficiency that the associated costs outweigh any potential benefits. In this work, Jason Johnston unpacks and critiques the legal, economic, and scientific basis for precautionary climate policies pursued in the United States and in doing so sheds light on why the global warming policy debate has become increasingly bitter and disconnected from both climate science and economics. Johnston analyzes the most influential international climate science assessment organizations, the US electric power industry, and land management and renewable energy policies. Bridging sound economics and climate science, this pathbreaking book shows how the United States can efficiently adapt to a changing climate while radically reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Based on her research of 800 biotechnology companies and 3,200 biotechnology executives, Harvard Business School professor Monica Higgins discovered that one firm–Baxter–was the breeding ground for today’s most successful biotechnology ventures. This phenomena of one organization spawning an industry has also been seen in the high-tech (Hewlett-Packard) and semiconductor industries (Fairchild). However, until now there has been no suitable explanation of why and how these organizations were able to create the next generation of industry leaders. Career Imprints shows why Baxter was so successful in spawning senior executives and offers an understanding of what it takes for an organization to produce leaders that will dominate an industry for years to come. In this important book, Higgins shows that an organization’s "career imprint"3⁄4the result of company systems, structure, strategy, and culture3⁄4that employees take with them throughout their careers is the key to creating great leaders. By understanding these factors, staff, human resource executives, and CEOs can analyze their own organization’s career imprint and develop leaders.
A captivating tale of one man's mission to groom his ideal mate. Thomas Day, an 18th-century British writer and radical, knew exactly the sort of woman he wanted to marry. Pure and virginal, yet tough and hardy, and completely subervient to his whims. But after being rejected by a number of spirited young women, Day concluded that the perfect partner he envisioned simply did not exist in frivolous, fashion-obsessed Georgian society. Rather than conceding defeat and giving up on his search for the woman of his dreams, however, Day set out to create her. So begins the extraordinary true story at the heart of How to Create the Perfect Wife. A few days after he turned twenty-one and inherited a large fortune, Day adopted two young orphans from the Founding Hospital and, guided by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the principles of the Enlightenment, attempted to teach them to be model wives. Day's peculiar experiment inevitably backfired -- though not before he had taken his theories about marriage, education, and femininity to shocking extremes. Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism -- and deep contradictions -- at the heart of the enlightenment.
"Reverse colonization narratives are stories like H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds (where technologically superior Martians invade and colonize England) that ask Western audiences to imagine what it's like to be the colonized rather than the colonizers. In this book, David M. Higgins argues that although some reverse colonization stories are thoughtful and provocative (because they ask us to think critically about what empire feels like from the receiving end), reverse colonization fantasy has also led to the prevalence of a very dangerous kind of science fictional thinking in our current political culture. Everyone, now (including anti-feminists, white supremacists, and far-right reactionaries) likes to imagine themselves as the Rebel Alliance fighting against the Empire (or Neo trying to escape the Matrix, or Katniss Everdeen waging war against the Capitol). Reverse colonization fantasy, in other words, has a dangerous tendency to enable white men (and other subjects of privilege) to appropriate a sense of victimhood for their own social and political advantage"--