Search Results

This chapter describes two experiments that test the felicity-conditions hypothesis that people learn best if a task is taught one subprocedure per lesson. In these experiments, children were taught multiplication skills by a human tutor. Although there was a slight trend that presenting one topic per lesson led to fewer errors than presenting two topics, the more important finding is that there is better transfer to new problems when teaching two subprocedures per lesson: about one-third fewer errors at test. These results suggest that it is crucial to learn when to apply a particular element of knowledge. Lessons that deliberately change the element of knowledge needed from problem to problem are more difficult for learners but can enhance the learner's ability to apply different types of knowledge and to transfer their learning. This effect also suggests why textbooks have evolved to use one disjunct per lesson and is also consistent with good practice in system documentation. The study further suggests not only that teaching multiple items per lesson is safer if there is someone to help remove any confusion but also that some small amount of reordering by a teacher can help the learner to compensate for poor orders.

With the development of the Internet, “virtual” forms of communication have emerged, be they e-mails or social networks. Now if we follow J. L. Austin’s idea that to say something or communicate is always already to perform speech acts, we can ask whether the Internet is a new space wherein it is possible to accomplish speech acts and even new kinds of speech acts (we can for instance wonder what “to poke” on Facebook consists in). This hypothesis relies on two presuppositions. First, it presupposes that “virtual” communication can equally be a space wherein one can use language as one does in ordinary natural communication. Second and therefore, it presupposes that virtual speech acts have “felicity conditions” that parallel those identified by Austin. In this chapter, we examine whether there are “virtual” speech acts and which feature(s) they might have compared to those of natural language.

Chapter 7 investigates the multiple ways arguers can question the legitimacy of an interpretation, thereby entering the stasis of jurisdiction. There are two main points of contention in this stasis: whether the person issuing the interpretation has the right to do so, and whether the interpreted text has any authority on the issue at hand. Other concerns involve the place, time, style, and delivery of an interpretation, as well as the hermeneutic method behind an interpretation. This chapter’s extended analysis examines the lines of argument fifteenth-century Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla employed to discredit the forged Donation of Constantine, an imperial decree allegedly written by Constantine the Great that ceded power over the Western Roman Empire to the pope. Studying the types of arguments people use in the stasis of jurisdiction reveals the specific ways that communities manage, control, and coordinate acts of textual interpretation in alignment with their values.