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The Four Key Factors That Drive Successful Decisions, Joseph Yeager, Linda Sommer Sep 2010

The Four Key Factors That Drive Successful Decisions, Joseph Yeager, Linda Sommer

The Qualitative Report

The mechanisms of language operate as the vehicles for motivation, thinking and deciding. Language is a replica, a model, a representational map of reality. In the same way that a flawed roadmap will misrepresent reality and mislead a traveler, a flawed linguistic rationale will mislead a decision maker in any situation. In high-stakes situations that occur in globalized organizations, such as the current economic meltdown, the importance and consequences of flawed linguistic rationales are obvious. Simple suggestions for self examination of linguistic rationales are offered.


Redefining Nairobi's Streets: Study Of Slang, Marginalization, And Identity, Mungai Mutonya Jun 2010

Redefining Nairobi's Streets: Study Of Slang, Marginalization, And Identity, Mungai Mutonya

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

This study attempts an analysis of a restructured Swahili variety spoken by Nairobi's street community: Kinoki. Adapting tools of sociolinguistic inquiry and focusing on Kinoki's divergence from the dominant urban slang, Sheng, the study discusses attitudes toward divergent terms referencing the street community, street activities, and law enforcement officials. Results indicate that street children, unlike their school-going peers living in the city's low-income neighborhoods, redefine pejoratives that devalue and stigmatize street people and their lifestyle. Instead, Kinoki empowers the marginalized community to construct a positive identity, to ameliorate representations of street lifestyle, and to redefine neologisms that reference in-group ( …