Connotation

Abstract: This article constructs a leader–follower architecture by introducing intermittent-influence opinion leaders to the DeGroot model and analyzes the influence of this type of leaders on the evolution of opinions. Different from the existing studies where the leaders can convey their opinions to the followers uninterruptedly, the leaders in this article can only convey its opinion by broadcasting at some intermittent moments. First, we analyze the relationship between the leaders’ broadcast moments and the consensus opinion of followers and explain that the marginal revenue of the broadcasts is diminishing. Second, we describe the connotation of assimilation and calculate the minimum number of broadcasts required for the leaders to assimilate the followers’ opinions. Finally, aiming to make the consensus opinion of the followers and the leaders’ as close as possible, we give an optimal strategy on how to select followers to broadcast. The correctness of theoretical results is verified by numerical simulations.

Abstract: The coded message songs of slavery are a mysterious and fascinating entity. Within the lyrics of these seemingly innocuous plantation songs are coded messages for escape, messages that provided secret information to enslaved workers on Antebellum plantations. Over the course of more than 250 years of slavery on American soil, countless enslaved Africans found freedom through the use of coded message songs and the Underground Railroad. What are these songs? Which lyrics provided this secret information? How can a study of this music provide a better musical experience for conductors, singers, and listeners? This disquisition offers answers to these important questions, as well as a presentation of this body of repertoire from the choral conductor’s perspective. First, I provide a brief historical context for the music of slavery. I analyze and interpret important historical collections of spirituals and examine them through the lens of their text. Period accounts (from newly freed slaves and by song collectors) as well as information from modern conductors and scholars provide insight into and support for my method. A discussion of textual interpretation and musical representation follows, including a valuable list of common themes used in coded message songs. In the main body of the document, I present nine spirituals that contain coded message. I focus on the lyrics of the coded songs, introducing the connotations of the messages within the music. I also offer insight to choral conductors considering this repertoire and some interpretive choices that may be made when performing this music. Finally, this study contributes appendices with concrete pedagogical resources to assist conductors in their teaching and presentation of coded message songs to their singers. Successful choral conductors are dynamic storytellers. As a conductor preparing, rehearsing, and performing this choral music, it is critical to both communicate the context and history of coded message songs during the learning process, and also make appropriate stylistic choices in the music. Revealing the historical context and rich textual interpretation of this body of repertoire allows conductors to tell this story more effectively through their informed pedagogy, ultimately enriching and inspiring both singers and listeners.

Abstract: Two major concerns of recent Beowulf criticism have been (1) to establish the extent to which the poet used his pagan heroic narrative to shadow forth Christian meaning and (2) to establish the exact attitude of the poet towards his hero and towards the social institutions and mores of his hero's day – which, as we know, was several centuries before the poet's own. A nexus of such considerations has been the last word of the poem, lofgeornost : in the concluding lines the poet reports that the mourning Geats said that …he waere wyruldcyning[a] manna mildust ond mon(ðw)aerust, leodum liðost ond lofgeornost. (3180–2) There have been arguments on the basis of other contextual uses of lofgeorn that this word for ‘most eager for praise’ must have an unfavourable connotation here in Beowulf and hence carry the implication of a moral flaw in the hero, though these arguments have not, in my opinion, been convincing. But even if we accept a favourable connotation in this instance, since Beowulf's warriors would hardly be speaking ill of their fallen chieftain during his funeral rites, we still have the problem of deciding whether the poet himself was being sympathetic towards the warriors' view, or whether he was taking an ironic stance or attitude towards that praise from his undeniably Christian outlook.