Docta Complutense
Open Access Institutional Repository of the Complutense University of Madrid, that compiles scientific production to promote the visibility and impact of Complutense research.
With the collaboration of the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación and the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT).
Recent Submissions
Exploring sexual dimorphism of human occipital and temporal bones through geometric morphometrics in an identified Western-European sample
(American Journal of Biological Anthropology, 2022) Boucherie, Alexandra; Chapman, Tara; García Martínez, Daniel; Polet, Caroline; Vercauteren, Martine
Sex estimation is a paramount step of bioprofiling in both forensic anthropology and osteoarchaeology. When the pelvis is not optimally preserved, anthropologists commonly rely on the cranium to accurately estimate sex. Over the last decades, the geometric morphometric (GM) approach has been used to determine sexual dimorphism of the crania, in size and shape, overcoming some difficulties of traditional visual and metric methods. This article aims to investigate sexual dimorphism of the occipital and temporal region through GM analysis in a metapopulation of 50 Western-European identified individuals. Statistical analyses were performed to compare centroid size and shape data between sexes through the examination of distinct functional modules. Regression and Procrustes ANOVA were used to examine allometric and asymmetrical implications. Discriminant functions, combining size and shape data, were established. Significant dimorphism in size was found, with males having larger crania, confirming the major influence size has on cranial morphology. Allometric relationships were found to be statistically significant in both right and left temporal bones while shape differences between sexes were only significant on the right temporal bone. The visualization of the mean consensus demonstrated that males displayed a larger mastoid process associated with a reduced mastoid triangle and less projected occipital condyles. This exploratory study confirms that GM analysis represents an effective way to quantitatively capture shape of dimorphic structures, even on complex rounded ones such as the mastoid region. Further examination in a larger sample would be valuable to design objective visualization tools that can improve morphoscopic sex estimation methods.
“Blowing our own trumpet” : Self-praise in Peninsular Spanish face-to-face communication
(Journal of Pragmatics, 2021) Maíz Arévalo, Carmen
ABSTRACT: Self-praise can be defined as a speech act involving an implicit or explicit positive evaluation of the speaker by the speaker (Dayter, 2014). Given that self-praise runs against the modesty maxim, its use tends to be regarded as a pragmatically hazardous act. Contrary to other speech acts, self-praise in face-to-face communication has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, with the scarce results appearing to be somewhat contradictory (Dayter, 2018). Furthermore, most of this research has focused on English (cf. Wu, 2011). The aim of the present paper is twofold. On the one hand, it intends to contribute to the further understanding of self-praise. On the other, it aims to redress the imbalance in favor of a language other than English, focusing on face-to-face communication in Peninsular Spanish. To this purpose, a mixed-method approach combining three data collection methods has been used, namely: field observation, online surveys, and interviews. Results show that self-praise in Peninsular Spanish is often pre-modified by formulaic expressions although explicit self-praise without any modification is more frequent than expected.
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