• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.8
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• pp.11-38
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• 2006

Laotzu's view of language is well expressed at the beginning stanza of "道可道 非常道" of Tao De Ching, the interpretation of which is pivotal for the proper interpretation of the entire text. Two lines of interpretation of this stanza have been proposed; The first view regards the letter "道" in "非常道" as representing that which is signified by a sign. The other takes the posture that the letter "道" is itself the signifier of the sign. I argue in this article that the second posture should be taken to interpret Tao De Ching properly, contrary to the traditional interpretation of this stanza, by pointing out the verses which inevitably contradict each other when interpreted according to the first view. The second view leads to the conclusion that everyday language is not sufficient enough to describe the supernatural beings, including Tao, accurately, and seeks a way to augment ordinary language for appropriate description of such supernatural beings. The strategy Laotzu adopts in Tao De Ching is to expand the expressive power of ordinary language by extensive use of metaphors. This paper discerns 4 conceptual metaphors in the sense of Johnson and Lakoff(1980) which underlie the metaphors used in Tao De Ching: (1) Tao is Void; (2) Tao is Mother; (3) Tao is Valley; and (4) Tao is Untrimmed Log.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.10 no.1 s.19
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• pp.15-28
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• 2007

From a social constructivists' perspective, knowledge is not transmitted by language but it is constructed by social interactions with others. That is, it is viewed in social constructivism that learning is a process in which knowledge is constructed by communicative interactions with more capable others. In this vein, a class might be analyzed and characterized in terms of interactional patterns of teacher-student and student-student in class. For this, a primary math class was selected and observed and it was analyzed by the Flanders category system to investigate the effects of the math teaching based on verbal interactions on the learning of math. The class was taught in a teacher-centered and direct way but in the class math knowledge was taught through univocal communications in the form of question-answer. The results of this study appeared to suggest that verbal interactional patterns should take place frequently in math teaching in the sequence of a teacher's questions$\to$students' extensive responses $\to$ positive feedback for the students' responses by the teacher $\to$ the acceptance of the students' responses $\to$ the teacher's explanation or students' questions. In other words, math might be taught more effectively through the verbal discourse patterns proposed in this study.