This work aims to describe and analyze a relatively new, puzzling construction that has become very productive in informal registers of English. It is primarily used by younger generations, especially on the web and social-media platforms, but also in spoken language. It appears with the configuration negative marker + subject in the accusative case + gerund (e.g. Not me taking the train at 5 a.m.; meaning: it is ironic and unexpected that I took the train early at 5 a.m.). These constructions, which we dubbed not-ACC-ing constructions, are strictly root phenomena where negation does not reverse the polarity of the sentence. They convey a peculiar ironic, sarcastic, self-deprecating flavor. The existence of the not-ACC-ing construction raises the following questions, which we will address in this article: (i) How come negation does not have its prototypical function of reversing the polarity of the sentence? (ii) How come the subject is in the accusative case, despite not-ACC-ing constructions being invariably root? (iii) How is their peculiar interpretation obtained? We propose an analysis that captures all their structural and interpretive properties by combining some crucial ingredients of Lowe’s (2019) analysis of ACC-ing constructions and Greco’s (2020) analysis of Expletive Negation.

The article critically reviews the main claims in the recent literature on the semantics of English at least, at the least and at the very least, as members of a larger family of scalar markers, and it focuses on the common meaning of at least, at the least and at the very least. This semantic ‘common core’ is described in terms of a scalar component, a positive component and a restrictive component. The context can highlight the latter two components and this is argued to explain the distinction described in the literature in terms of a positive evaluation and a rhetorical retreat. The article also proposes to explain the emphatic character of at the very least in terms of a double scalar comparison.

This article examines Turkey’s position as an aid recipient during the Cold War, benefiting from assistance provided by both the United States and the Soviet Union. Adopting a comparative approach, this study investigates the impact of these investments on the development of two major iron and steel plants: the Ereğli Iron and Steel Plant (ERDEMİR), constructed with American financial and industrial support, and the İskenderun Iron and Steel Plant (İSDEMİR), established with Soviet assistance. Both projects sparked political controversy in Turkey during the 1960s and 1970s, shaped not only by the ideological rivalries of the Cold War but also by material realities on the ground. In terms of the conditions attached to aid, transfer of technology, and ownership structures, there were significant differences between the support offered by the capitalist and socialist countries. These differences were evident in the cases of ERDEMİR and İSDEMİR, where two distinct models were used for practical testing. This article argues that comparing the construction and operation of these plants provides valuable insights into the nature of Cold War aid and contributes to the broader global literature on the subject.

In the late 1930s Viscount Lymington—born Gerard Wallop, and from 1943 the 9th Earl of Portsmouth—emerged as a vocal champion of an “authentically English expression of fascism” rooted in the countryside and agriculture. An aristocrat and Conservative member of Parliament (MP; 1929–1934) turned dissident, Lymington railed against the perceived decline of Britain and the empire from an agrarian vantage point. His most famous work, Famine in England, published in 1938, warned that Britain’s overreliance on imported food and its neglect of the land had pushed the nation to the brink of catastrophe. On the surface, this text was a passionate call for agricultural revival in the face of looming war. Yet at its core, Famine in England was far more than a rural policy manifesto. It was a statement of fascist blood and soil philosophy in which race operated as the grammatical structure ordering ideas of food, land, and national renewal. In Lymington’s vision, the health of the soil and the health of the “British race” were inextricably entwined. Saving one meant the salvation of the other. Race, in other words, was the invisible architecture—the grammar—underlying his prescriptions for Britain’s agrarian crisis.

From its founding in 1938 onwards, the activities of the Confederation of Latin American Workers (CTAL) were rooted in anti-imperialist struggle. Initially, this was in response to the plundering of Latin America in the service of US economic interests, while later anti-imperialist efforts were directed against the hegemony that Europe and the US exerted over markets and territories in Africa and Asia. In the immediate post-war period, the CTAL engaged in a markedly anti-imperialist discourse. The confederation established solidarity alliances and trade union campaigns committed to supporting causes in distant, culturally diverse places, because they were considered part of the same history of dependence, neglect, and exclusion that had to be overcome to build autonomous nations. This article covers meetings between trade union leaders from different continents, as documented in letters, magazine and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, and the records of workers’ organizations. Working through the CTAL and the World Federation of Trade Unions, these individuals disseminated their beliefs and sought to achieve widespread mobilization for their union and political struggles, with the goal of eradicating imperialism from the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

This article investigates the lives of Sufi leaders following the Turkish state’s abolition of Sufism in 1925. Examining the professions and career paths of Sufi shaykhs, it demonstrates that Sufi masters worked primarily in government jobs and institutions, and maintained a relatively high social status in the new nation-state, despite official denunciations of shaykhs as spiritual charlatans and parasites. As such, it argues that the state pursued a policy of inclusion and integration rather than one of persecution or elimination. While acknowledging that some Sufi leaders were victims of state policy, this article casts doubt on the persecution narrative and demonstrates a broad range of experiences and trajectories for Sufis in the early Turkish Republic. It illustrates that the state welcomed many shaykhs into the new institutions of the nation, including the Grand National Assembly, local government, schools, and libraries, as well as academia and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).

This article examines the history of Richard Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, in Central Europe between roughly 1870–1932 as a way to promote new perspectives on the relationship between music and the city during the height of European urbanization. Although Parsifal was conceived as an anti-urban opera, and until 1913 its performance was restricted to provincial Bayreuth, even during this period the work’s performance and reception were affected by urban-based cultural systems. With the end of copyright protection for Parsifal in 1913, the process of Parsifal ‘becoming urban’ began in earnest. While the flood of new productions in Europe’s cities during 1914 marked the work’s urban debut, it was only in the late 1910s and the 1920s that it became more fully integrated into the urban cultural environment. This development was marked by a growing distance from certain Bayreuth performance traditions and participation in early urban radio culture.

This article investigates whether state efforts to combat violence against women (VAW) shape personally held stigmatizing attitudes toward victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and views of the stigma society attributes to them. Drawing on the policy feedback effect and source cues literature, we argue that credible sources delivering messages about anti-VAW laws can reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward IPV victims and persuade people that society is more welcoming to victims, thereby reducing public stigma. Using survey experiments collected from Mexico and Guatemala, we find that credible sources matter in predicting a host of attitudes related to personally held and public stigma toward victims, but these effects are conditional on gender and hostile sexism. This article demonstrates that even in contexts of impunity, state efforts can positively shape social norms on VAW.