Recent Submissions

  • Child maltreatment and metabolic syndrome: a systematic review

    Osode, Eno; Cook, Erica Jane; Tomlin, Ali; University of Bedfordshire (Dove Press, 2024-08-26)
    Evidence suggests that child maltreatment (CM) is associated with an elevated risk of adult diseases in later life. Emerging evidence shows that CM in childhood is associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS) in adulthood. However, no study has systematically examined the evidence. Hence, this review aims to synthesise the evidence on the association between forms of CM and MetS in adulthood. Electronic databases of CINAHL, Medline, PsychInfo, SOCINDEX, and Scopus were systematically searched using predefined key terms to identify relevant published studies on the association between CM and MetS from the beginning of indexing to 1st January 2024. Studies were included if they met the selection criteria. The quality of studies was appraised using suitable criteria for cross-sectional and prospective studies. The search revealed a total of 2411 studies. Five studies met the inclusion criteria and were included in the review. The findings revealed that there was an association between physical abuse and MetS in women across two studies and one study in men. In addition, one study reported an association between emotional abuse and the risk of MetS in men, while two studies revealed increased odds with CM. However, no significant associations were reported between MetS and childhood sexual abuse and neglect, respectively. These findings suggest that some forms of CM may increase a person's risk of having MetS. However, there is a need for methodological improvements due to heterogeneity in studies, mainly on the assessment and definition of CM. Further research is needed on forms of CM and MetS to understand the underlying mechanisms of the associations found and to identify targeted strategies to prevent the impact of CM on MetS and subsequent future health.
  • Enhancing Pragmatic Language skills for Young children with Social communication difficulties (E-PLAYS-2) trial: study protocol for a cluster-randomised controlled trial evaluating a computerised intervention to promote communicative development and collaborative skills in young children

    Murphy, Suzanne; Bell, Kerry; Cook, Erica Jane; Crafter, Sarah; Davidson, Rosemary; Fairhurst, Caroline; Hicks, Kate; Joffe, Victoria; Messer, David; Robinson-Smith, Lyn; et al. (BMC, 2024-05-13)
    A number of children experience difficulties with social communication and this has long-term deleterious effects on their mental health, social development and education. The E-PLAYS-2 study will test an intervention ('E-PLAYS') aimed at supporting such children. E-PLAYS uses a dyadic computer game to develop collaborative and communication skills. Preliminary studies by the authors show that E-PLAYS can produce improvements in children with social communication difficulties on communication test scores and observed collaborative behaviours. The study described here is a definitive trial to test the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of E-PLAYS delivered by teaching assistants in schools. The aim of the E-PLAYS-2 trial is to establish the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of care as usual plus the E-PLAYS programme, delivered in primary schools, compared to care as usual. Cluster-randomisation will take place at school level to avoid contamination. The E-PLAYS intervention will be delivered by schools' teaching assistants. Teachers will select suitable children (ages 5-7 years old) from their schools using guidelines provided by the research team. Assessments will include blinded language measures and observations (conducted by the research team), non-blinded teacher-reported measures of peer relations and classroom behaviour and parent-reported use of resources and quality of life. A process evaluation will also include interviews with parents, children and teaching assistants, observations of intervention delivery and a survey of care as usual. The primary analysis will compare pragmatic language scores for children who received the E-PLAYS intervention versus those who did not at 40 weeks post-randomisation. Secondary analyses will assess cost-effectiveness and a mixed methods process evaluation will provide richer data on the delivery of E-PLAYS. The aim of this study is to undertake a final, definitive test of the effectiveness of E-PLAYS when delivered by teaching assistants within schools. The use of technology in game form is a novel approach in an area where there are currently few available interventions. Should E-PLAYS prove to be effective at the end of this trial, we believe it is likely to be welcomed by schools, parents and children. ISRCTN 17561417, registration date 19th December 2022. v1.1 19th June 2023.
  • Person reference and a preference for association in emergency calls

    Tennent, Emma; Weatherall, Ann; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Bedfordshire (Routledge, 2024-04-25)
    Person reference is pervasive in talk. Conversation analytic work has identified preferences in person reference relating to recognitional reference. However, the principles shaping nonrecognitional reference are less well understood. We propose a preference for association in an institutional setting in which recognition is not relevant. Our data are calls to the New Zealand police emergency line that were institutionally classified as family harm. Using a collection methodology, we found that nonrecognitional person reference typically takes the form my x which directly associates speaker and referent, for example, “my partner,” “my ex-partner,” “my dad.” Initial references that suggest no association (e.g. “someone” or “an abusive guy”) were subsequently revised by callers using self-repair or targeted by call takers through questions that seek clarification about association. The shifts from nonassociative to associative references demonstrate participants’ orientations to the relevance of association and are evidence of a preference for association in the setting under examination. Data are in English.
  • Discourse and Gender

    Weatherall, Ann; Naples, Nancy A; Ryan, J Michael; Hoogland, Renée C; Wickramsing, Maithree; Wong, Wai Ching Angela; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Connecticut; Nazarbayev University; Wayne State University; et al. (Wiley, 2016-04-21)
    Discursive approaches typically draw upon constructionist and poststructural theories of meaning. Poststructural theories of meaning highlight the pervasive relationships between knowledge and power. According to poststructuralist theories, knowledge about sex and gender is part and parcel of the ways sexualized and gendered identities are normalized and regulated. For example, gender discourses produce a binary classification of sex as male and female – a system that ignores or marginalizes people who are intersex such as hermaphrodites. Biological discourses such as the male sex drive are used to justify and legitimate the sexual exploitation of women through rape and prostitution. Multiple meanings are highlighted through studies of discourse. For example, research has shown that many versions of masculinity exist and that they are changing. Nowadays traditional gender stereotypes persist alongside new ones such as metrosexual men.
  • Language and Gender

    Weatherall, Ann; Naples, Nancy A; Ryan, J Michael; Hoogland, Renée C; Wickramsing, Maithree; Wong, Wai Ching Angela; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Connecticut; Nazarbayev University; Wayne State University; et al. (Wiley, 2016-04-21)
    The relationships between language and gender are complex. Feminist researchers have importantly documented the ways language reflects, maintains, and even produces gender. This entry describes two issues that have dominated the research. The first is the matter of gender differences in language use. Despite widely held beliefs to the contrary, there is a lack of evidence that women and men use language differently. The second issue is sexism in language. It is now widely accepted that gender in language can reflect sexism. More recently constructionist theories expand the role of language to consider the ways discourse, conceptualized as broader meaning systems, produces beliefs about gender and sexuality.
  • Non-Sexist Language Use

    Weatherall, Ann; Naples, Nancy A; Ryan, J Michael; Hoogland, Renée C; Wickramsing, Maithree; Wong, Wai Ching Angela; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Connecticut; Nazarbayev University; Wayne State University; et al. (Wiley, 2016-04-21)
    Non-sexist language use is about changing and raising awareness about the unequal ways language represents women and men. There is a lot of variability in the ways that gender is encoded across different languages. As a result the strategies to promote non-sexist language differ. Linguistic activists have employed a range of creative strategies to highlight gender issues. For example, feminists coined herstory to highlight male dominance in historical accounts and queer activists have promoted terms such as female bodied as a way of challenging a dominant assumption that gender identity matches biological sex.
  • Turn design and giving assistance in calls to a social support service

    Weatherall, Ann; Victoria University of Wellington (2018-07-15)
  • Sexism in Language

    Weatherall, Ann; Naples, Nancy A; Ryan, J Michael; Hoogland, Renée C; Wickramsing, Maithree; Wong, Wai Ching Angela; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Connecticut; Nazarbayev University; Wayne State University; et al. (Wiley, 2016-04-21)
    A broad array of language practices have been considered sexist, including terms of address that indicate the marital status of women (i.e., Miss versus Mrs.) but not men and the trivialization women's speech by the words used to describe it (e.g., as nagging or gossiping). An important debate has been whether sexism in language just reflects social beliefs and attitudes toward women or if it also helps to support and maintain sexism in society. Scientific studies have shown that language use does shape thinking and behavior in important ways. The negative impact of sexist language on women has led to non-sexist language policies in education and publishing. An ongoing issue that feminist language researchers highlight is the underrepresentation or misrepresentation of women on television and in social media.
  • Language planning (gender and sexuality issues)

    Weatherall, Ann; Whelehan, Patricia; Bolin, Anne; Victoria University of Wellington; SUNY‐Potsdam; Elon University (Wiley, 2015-04-20)
    There are important gender and sexuality issues in language planning. Feminists have long documented sexism in language including that it ignores and narrowly defines women. Various strategies have been used to promote gender fair language. There are theoretical debates about the relationships between gender and language—does sexist language perpetuate sexism in society or just reflect it? Regardless, marginalized social groups such as gay and lesbians change language by coining new terms or reclaiming old ones in order to better represent themselves in language.
  • Gender in Interaction

    Weatherall, Ann; Tracy, Karen; Ilie, Cornelia; Sandel, Todd; Victoria University of Wellington (Wiley, 2015-04-27)
    Gender in interaction is a subject area broadly concerned with the ways language in use encodes, performs, and organizes gender and sexuality. The manifestation and realization of gender and sexual identities in language are studied in order to better understand the pervasive ways they organize social life and how they structure patterns of advantage and disadvantage. The field has undergone significant changes since its emergence in the 1970s, most notably away from investigating generalized gender differences.
  • Exploring a teaching/research nexus as a possible site for feminist methodological innovation in psychology

    Weatherall, Ann; Kimmel, Ellen B.; Crawford, Mary; Victoria University of Wellington; University of South Florida; University of Connecticut (Cambridge University Press, 2000-08-01)
  • Using Discursive Psychology and Conversation Analysis to Study “Obedience” and “Defiance” in Milgram’s Experiments

    Weatherall, Ann; Hollander, Matthew M; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Wisconsin–Madison (Sage, 2018-01-03)
    This case study revisits one of social psychology’s most well-known research projects. It takes a discursive approach to the famed Stanley Milgram “obedience to authority” experiments. Drawing on Discursive Psychology and using Conversation Analysis, it discusses transcribed extracts from an audio recording of one of Milgram’s original experimental sessions with a participant who was categorized as “disobedient.” The behavior of all the parties in the experiment is examined. The social interactions between the experimenter, the “teacher,” and the “learner” are treated as objects for analysis in their own right. Conversation analysis is used to describe some of the sequentially organized practices that occurred within Milgram’s laboratory. One pervasive pattern was a three-turn sequence that is characteristic of learning in classroom interactions. Also shown are some of the ways the research participant challenged the experimental situation, for example, by questioning its reality and by resisting delivering the shocks with explanations of the harm it was causing the learner. Using Conversation Analysis to examine transcripts of Milgram’s research, fresh insights into the experiment are possible. Discursive Psychology using Conversation Analysis is an approach that further develops understanding of Milgram’s outcome categories of “obedience” and “defiance” by analyzing how they were produced in social interaction.
  • Inter-generational relationships in the Chinese community

    Ng, Sik Hung; Liu, James H.; Weatherall, Ann; Loong, Cynthia; Victoria University of Wellington (Victoria University Press, 1998-01-01)
  • Gender and Discourse

    Weatherall, Ann; Donsbach, Wolfgang; Victoria University of Wellington; Dresden University of Technology (Wiley, 2015-02-06)
  • Conversation Analysis and Intergroup Communication

    Weatherall, Ann; Powers, Matthew; Victoria University of Wellington; University of Washington in Seattle (Oxford University Press, 2017-09-26)
    Conversation analysis is a distinctive approach to research on language and communication that originated with Emanuel Schegloff, Harvey Sacks, and Gail Jefferson. It assumes a systematic order in the minute details of talk as it is used in situ. That orderliness is understood to be the result of shared ways of reasoning and means of doing things. Conversation analytic studies aim to identify and describe how people produce and interpret social interaction. For example, the interpretation and response to the question, “How are you” differs depending on whether it is asked by a doctor in a medical consultation or a friend during a casual conversation. Overwhelmingly, data are naturalistic audio (for telephone-mediated talk) or video recordings (for copresent interactions). The recordings are transcribed using conventions first established by Gail Jefferson. They have been further developed since to better capture features such as crying and multimodality. Specialized notations are used to highlight features of talk such as breathiness, intonation, short silences, and simultaneous speech. Analyses typically examine how everyday actions are done over sequences of two or more turns of talk. Greetings, requests, and complaints are actions that have names; others don’t. Studies may examine a range of linguistic, embodied, and environmental phenomena used in coordinated action. Research has been conducted in a broad range of mundane and institutional settings. Medical interaction is one area where conversation analysis has been most applied, but others include psychotherapy and classroom interaction. A conversation analytic perspective on identity is also distinctive. Typically, approaches to intergroup communication presuppose a priori the importance of social identities such as age, gender, and ethnicity. They are theorized as independent variables that impact language behaviors in predictable and measurable ways. This view strongly resonates with common sense and underpins popular questions about gender-, race- or age-based differences in language use. In contrast, a conversation analytic approach examines social identities only when they are observably and demonstrably relevant to what participants are doing and saying. The relevance of an identity category rests on it being clearly consequential for what is happening in a particular stretch of talk. Conversation analysis approaches identity as a type of membership categorization. The term “member” has ethnomethodological roots that recognizes a person is a member from a cultural group. Categories can be invoked, used and negotiated in the flow of interaction. Membership categorization analysis shows there is a systematic organization to category work in talk. Using conversation analysis and membership categorization analysis, discursive psychology studies how social identity categorizations have relevance to the business at hand. For example, referring to your wife as a “girl” or a “married woman” invokes different inferences about socially acceptable behavior.
  • Special Issue: Constituting and responding to domestic and sexual violence

    Weatherall, Ann; Victoria University of Wellington (Equinox, 2019-07-31)
  • Annual profile of contributors and decisions made

    Weatherall, Ann; Stokoe, Elizabeth; Victoria University of Wellington; Loughborough University (Equinox, 2013-02-15)
  • Achieving joint understanding of victimisation in calls for help

    Tennent, Emma; Weatherall, Ann; Victoria University of Wellington (2018-07-15)
  • Feminist Conversation Analysis: Examining violence against women

    Weatherall, Ann; Tennent, Emma; Victoria University of Wellington (2018-09-21)
  • Displays of pain in medical encounters. A video turn in linguistics

    La, Jessica; Weatherall, Ann; Victoria University of Wellington (2018-06-08)

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