MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W1873557226 · doi:10.22230/cjc.2004v29n2a1432

Dispelling the Alphabet Effect

2004· article· en· W1873557226 on OpenAlexvenueaboutno aff
Paul Grosswiler

Bibliographic record

VenueCanadian Journal of Communication · 2004
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicMedia, Communication, and Education
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsAlphabetRedressLiteracyCivilizationContext (archaeology)Western cultureSociologyEpistemologyLinguisticsLiteratureHistoryPolitical scienceLawArtPhilosophyPedagogy

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Canadian communication theory has accepted as one of its major tenets the superiority of Western civilization brought about by the phonetic alphabet. Challenges to the theory either have not been incorporated into the research literature or have been represented as working theories rather than conclusive evidence. This article seeks to help redress this imbalance by detailing the main claims of the alphabetic literacy arguments in the context of arguments advanced in several disciplines, suggesting that the alphabet effect theory should be dispelled. The article argues that a writing effect unites Western alphabetic and Eastern non-alphabetic cultures in a common heritage, and that historical periods of social advancement of the West and East have alternated in pendulum fashion. The article also introduces alternative views of the relationship between Eastern communication technologies, culture, and history to support the writing effect and pendulum model of the impact of communication technology in the East.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.008
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.038
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.062
Threshold uncertainty score0.123

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0080.038
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0050.022
Scholarly communication0.0050.010
Open science0.0020.006
Research integrity0.0030.005
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0130.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.022
GPT teacher head0.310
Teacher spread0.288 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations6
Published2004
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueCanadian Journal of CommunicationSame topicMedia, Communication, and EducationFrench-language works237,207