social interaction Archives

What constitutes optimal leisure?

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Professor Robert Stebbins has developed a framework that synthesises the science of leisure activities which can be used by policymakers to inform their decisions of organising leisure activities so that people can pursue their optimal lifestyles.

Large sections of our society have had an increasing amount of time on their hands outside of work since the inception of the industrial age. People have developed multiple ways of occupying this time through varied and multifaceted leisure activities. These activities have been extensively researched and documented in recent decades, and Professor Robert Stebbins at the University of Calgary […]

Couples bickering: Disaffiliation and discord in Chinese conversation

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In “Couples Bickering”, Guodong Yu, Yaxin Wu and Paul Drew use conversation analysis on candid, everyday conversations in Mandarin from China in order to understand communication and social action. Using the relationships in interaction of arguments and conflicts found in conversations between couples, they show how there are many linguistic and grammatical ways that conflict can be limited to bickering, […]