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- PublicationAccès libreRecent Changes in the Notion of Grammaticalization and the Rise of Alternative Concepts(2025)This paper deals with the “modern” notion of grammaticalization as it has been developed in the 1980s. It is since the programmatic study by Christian Lehmann that the research on grammaticalization has received increasing interest and resulted in a large body of work. However, for the last two or three decades the interest in research on grammaticalization seems to be rather fading. Even more, the concept of grammaticalization is being gradually ousted by alternative notions such as constructionalization and constructional change. I will focus on the relevant paradigmatic changes which have occurred within the framework of grammaticalization research dating from the 1980s. At least two significant shifts occurred during this time, mainly due to the steadily increasing amount of extensive empirical studies on grammaticalization and due to the shift of interest from formal to functional aspects of diachronic processes. First, a shift occurred from the loss aspect towards the rearrangement aspect. Second, the conceptualization of the locus of change has been widened from single elements to constructions. With respect to the latter aspect, the growing interest in constructionist approaches to language structure has decisively influenced this shift of perspective. In light of these recent changes, the ultimate question will be whether the concept of grammaticalization as it has been originally introduced is still needed or whether it would be better to abandon it altogether and to use instead other concepts proposed in the most recent literature.
- PublicationAccès libreDigital Risks and Family Dynamics: Adolescents’ Perceptions of How Communication Styles Shape Risky Social Media Behavior(Neuchâtel : Université de Neuchâtel, 2025)This thesis examines how family communication styles influence adolescents’ engagement in risky social media behaviours. Draw-ing from Family Communication Patterns Theory (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002), Baumrind’s Parenting Styles Framework (1991), and the Biopsychosocial Model of Adolescent Risk-Taking (Sales & Irwin, 2009), it explores how family dynamics, internalized norms, and external influences shape online behaviour. These frameworks emphasize the importance of communication orienta-tion, parenting responsiveness and control, and the interplay of developmental, social, and individual factors. The study investi-gates how adolescents describe family communication around online risks, whether open communication fosters digital literacy, and the effects of restrictive styles on disclosure and secrecy. It also examines the role of peer norms in digital decision-making. Research questions are operationalized through qualitative focus groups, enabling an exploration of how theoretical constructs are reflected in lived experiences. The analysis attends to how participants describe and attribute meaning to these constructs within family relationships and digital practices. This approach preserves the conceptual integrity of the models while extending them into an adolescent-centred and meaning-focused qualitative exploration.
- PublicationAccès libreAerial legacies of COVID-19(2025)Abstract. Based on examples taken from Switzerland, the paper offers an exploratory analysis of how the fight against COVID affected the societal relevance of the air, in its (1) elemental, (2) embodied, (3) affective, (4) socio-technical and (5) power-related dimensions. Together, these levels highlight the fact that the fight against COVID-19 increased the air's relevance as a focal point of societal concern and judgement and of competition and dispute, which in turn produced novel ways of ordering the air through legally, practically and materially defined geometries, internal structures, and contours. As the paper shows, these geometries of the air were and still are socio-politically produced in highly unequal ways. To date, they remain inherently pluralistic and as such fundamentally conflictual. The aerial legacies of COVID-19 are invested by various power relations that need critical attention. Over 150 years ago, the risks of waterborne diseases such as Cholera were tamed by the public provision of clean water. We argue that similar efforts are warranted to provide clean indoor air for all by removing the threats posed by airborne diseases such as COVID-19, influenza and tuberculosis … Our panel of scientific experts strongly recommends that the clean air needs of offices, schools, theaters, public buildings, and mass transportation systems be assessed and that measures be taken to ensure clean air in all indoor environments. (Expert group “Pandemic-proof buildings”, 2022:3) The preceding quote underscores the centrality of the issue of the air in the legacies of the fight against COVID-19. Aiming to perpetuate the lessons learnt from the respiratory disease, the quoted white paper asks for the development and implementation of a wide range of novel and/or improved air-related technological solutions whilst also suggesting, on a more general level, the establishment in Switzerland of a National Research Programme on “Clean air for pandemic-proof buildings” and the creation of an “Indoor air competence center” (Expert group “Pandemic-proof buildings”, 2022:4). The emerging post-pandemic policy agenda resonates with many other media-reported claims for long-term improvements of the indoor air quality in schools (Direction de la formation et des affaires culturelles, 2022; Eykelbosh, 2022), factories (Wirth, 2021), hospitals (Bourban, 2022) or trains (Monay, 2022). Also think of the ongoing debates about the wearing of face masks on public transport and other spaces of togetherness and micro-movements (Zhang and Zhai, 2022), and consider the discussions about the future usefulness of the materials deployed and lessons learnt from the access-control and social-distancing measures that created a patchwork of more or less hermetically enclosed and internally redesigned “bubbles of shared breathing” through which and in which movement was allowed to happen during the COVID years (Jubin, 2022; Lee and Eom, 2023). These examples reiterate the aerial sensitivity that remains from the fight against COVID-19. Thus if we are to understand and question the legacies of the fight against COVID-19, such is my basic argument, the question of the air must be placed centre stage. More specifically, based on examples taken from Switzerland, the paper offers an exploratory analysis of how the fight against COVID affected the societal relevance of the air, in its (1) elemental, (2) embodied, (3) affective, (4) socio-technical and (5) power-related dimensions. Together, these levels highlight that the fight against COVID-19 increased the air's relevance as a focal point of societal concern and judgement and of competition and dispute, which in turn produced novel ways of ordering the air through legally, practically and materially defined geometries, internal structures, and contours. As the paper shows, these geometries of the air were and still are socio-politically produced in highly unequal ways. To date, they remain inherently pluralistic and as such fundamentally conflictual. The aerial legacies of COVID-19 are invested by various power relations that need critical attention.
- PublicationAccès libreNot my responsibility: The framing of autonomous systems impacts sustainable choices(2025)Autonomous systems, such as autonomous lawnmowers, cars, and drones, are known to reduce users’ sense of responsibility towards the tasks these systems carry out. However, no research to date has examined whether a reduced sense of responsibility may affect the sustainable choices users make when presented with such systems. We seek to investigate whether the framing of autonomous systems, meaning how the key characteristics of such systems are communicated to the user, can affect the user’s sense of responsibility and in turn their sustainable product choices. Across three studies, we show that when autonomous systems are presented with an "autonomy frame”, emphasizing their ability to handle tasks on the user’s behalf, users feel a diminished sense of responsibility for the system’s environmental impact. Crucially, we see that such a reduction in responsibility leads to a preference for less sustainable versions of the system (Studies 1 & 2). Instead, when employing an "energy efficiency frame”, highlighting the system’s ability to optimally manage energy consumption, users still feel a reduced sense of responsibility and yet they make more sustainable product choices, due to the activation of a prosocial focus (Study 3). This mechanism behind the energy efficiency frame’s success offers a solution to counteract the negative effects observed when autonomous systems are given an autonomy frame.