Chase Wesley Raymond
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 167313 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Chase Wesley Raymond |
| PRENOMES | Chase Wesley |
| SOBRENOME | Raymond |
| ASSINATURA | RAYMOND C W |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Colorado Boulder |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4353-7345 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 46 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 343 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 46 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2012 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 11 |
Institutional “lingualism” as an interactional achievement
This paper seeks to expand our understanding of mono-, bi-, and multi-lingualism through a comparative analysis across social institutions. First, we explore some of the concrete interactional practices used by institutions to enact and promote—or resist and impede—the use of different languages with members of the public. Examining data from three distinct organizations in the southwestern USA, here we ask: What does it take—interactionally—to b…
The Mandarin rising-intoned Éi (诶) particle in third position
This paper offers an analysis of rising-intoned éi in Mandarin conversation, specifically as it is produced in the wake of question-answer sequences. Examining the particle’s use both as a stand-alone unit implementing its own action, and as a preface to additional turn components and the actions thereby implemented, we argue that éi in third position is best conceived of as a change-of-state token marking an epistemic discrepancy. Paralleling wh…
On the “next-turn proof procedure” in the analysis of social interaction
Recipients’ understanding of speakers’ actions typically becomes publicly available through their responses, making the next-turn proof procedure central for the analysis of social interaction. However, little is known about how to methodologically warrant the analysis of actions with minimal or no response. This is particularly evident in case of trouble formulations. We examine trouble formulations in the context of practical activities, produc…
Achieving Informed Preferences
The American Society of Breast Surgeons urges surgeons to advocate for breast conservation and discourage contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) when consulting with early-stage breast cancer patients who are not at high risk for developing contralateral cancer. At the same time, surgeons are advised to respect the preferences and values of such early-stage patients, many of whom have been shown to exhibit a preference for CPM, choosing it o…
The Case for Open Conversation Analysis Data
As part of the growing “open science” movement, this article advocates integrating open data approaches into CA practices, drawing lessons from successful large-scale “big team” collaborations. The discussion begins by examining the history of data sharing in CA and its connection to evolving ideas and practices of open data. We explore software tools to support open CA data formats and share insights from developing an open CA data repository, t…
Apologies in Mandarin Chinese conversation
Grammar in time
In this paper, we draw upon dimensions of syntax, prosody and pragmatics to address a lacuna in current understandings of the non-restrictive (‘appositive’/‘supplementary’) relative which -clause. Contrary to its portrayal in descriptive grammars, naturally occurring data shows that this clause is commonly produced after a main clause has come to prosodic completion, that is, as a grammatical increment. Its usage therefore raises the interactiona…
Pre-emptive Repair of Potential Misunderstandings
In social interaction, participants face a pervasive problem: recipients might not only misinterpret what speakers are saying and doing, but they might act on those misinterpretations. A practical challenge for speakers is thus how to prevent misunderstandings that may lead to inapposite conduct. In this study, we bring prior interactional research together with new data from a range of social settings, to focus on the pre-emptive repair of poten…
Language policy as interactional practice in everyday public space
This article introduces the Corpus of Language Discrimination in Interaction (CLDI)-an open-access corpus of transcribed video data, capturing moments where individuals are policed in some way for the language they are speaking or otherwise endorsing while sharing public space (e.g. in stores, restaurants, parking lots, and parks). Despite having thus far largely evaded systematic inquiry, such interactions are illustrative of a particular genre …
The DIG Mandarin Conversations (DMC) Corpus
This paper introduces the DMC Corpus – a newly collected dataset of 150 mundane cell phone calls from Mainland China in Mandarin Chinese (audio and detailed transcripts) – which is now publicly available for use in research and teaching. In this report, we first describe the constitution and current contents of the DMC Corpus, as well as instructions for access. Additional calls will be added periodically to the Corpus, and so the quantitative ov…
A multimodal approach to grammatical aspect
This paper offers a multimodal approach to grammatical aspect, traditionally seen in linguistics as a verbal-morphological category. Using conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, we take as our object of study turn completions done with bodily movements and non-lexical vocalizations, focusing on the aspectual information they construct, and how this information is oriented to as relevant to the trajectory of action underway. We argue…
Morphology in action
While scholars have long been interested in the formation, meaning, and uses of diminutive morphology across languages, the present study illustrates a novel approach to their examination. Drawing upon a corpus of recordings of Brazilian obstetric and gynecological consultations conducted in Portuguese, our analytic points of departure are action and the sequential progression of interaction. We address these by investigating moments where diminu…
Análisis de la Conversación
Análisis de la Conversación: fundamentos, metodología y alcances ofrece la primera introducción comprehensiva al Análisis de la Conversación (AC) en español y con datos conversacionales disponibles en línea. El libro está organizado en nueve capítulos. En los capítulos iniciales, se presenta el AC como una disciplina y método analítico para el estudio del habla y otras formas de conducta humana en la interacción social, se hace un breve recuento …
Suffixation and sequentiality
This paper offers some reflections on the study of morphology – broadly speaking, ‘word formation’ – as a participants’ resource in social interaction. I begin by calling attention to morphology as a comparatively underexamined component of linguistic structure by conversation analysts and interactional linguists, in that it has yet to receive the same dedicated consideration as have, e.g., phonetics and syntax. I then present an ongoing study of…
On the recognitionality of references to time in social interaction
This article explores the recognitionality of references to time as a participants’ category and resource in social interaction. In short, we ask: How does referring to time in more vs. less recognitional ways contribute to the formation and ascription of action in context, and how can analysts of social interaction approach this dimension of reference in ways that remain grounded in the details of participant joint-conduct? After considering som…
The Grammar of Obviousness
This paper investigates the body’s role in grammar in argument sequences. Drawing from a database of public disputes on language use, we document the work of the palm-up gesture in action formation. Using conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, we show how this gesture is an interactional resource that indexes a particular epistemic stance—namely to cast the proposition being advanced as obvious. In this report, we focus on instances…
Pivots revisited
The term “pivot” usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routi…
An Adjunct to Repair
The English-language particle you know is frequently associated with speech production and understanding difficulties. The present study combines sequential and distributional analyses to explicate the particle’s relationship to the conversational repair system. It demonstrates that you know functions as an adjunct to repair, addressing secondary difficulties associated with implementing self-repair in practice, while also promoting the avoidance…
Preference and Polarity
This article considers the use of negative polarization in polar (yes/no) questions. It argues that question polarity is used to take an epistemic stance toward the probability or improbability of the state of affairs referenced in the question and that taking such a stance is effectively unavoidable. Focusing on negatively polarized questions (NPQs), four main kinds of evidence are adduced that NPQs are associated with the questioner’s stance th…
Probability and Valence
This study expands and refines the argument presented by Heritage and Raymond by demonstrating that the orientation to probability in question design can intersect with a second orientation toward the positive or negative desirability—or valence—of the state of affairs inquired into. In most cases, the orientations to probability and to positively valenced information can be satisfied simultaneously: In a context where negatively valenced informa…
The grammar of proposals for joint activities
The action of proposing has been studied from various perspectives in research on talk-in-interaction, both in mundane as well as in institutional talk. Aiming to exemplify Interactional Linguistics as a drawing together of insights from Linguistics and Conversation Analysis, we explore the grammar of proposals and the stances displayed by participants in making proposals in the context of joint activities, where a future or hypothetical activity…
Reference without anaphora
In this article, we investigate a puzzle for standard accounts of reference in natural language processing, psycholinguistics and pragmatics: occasions where, following an initial reference (e.g.,the ice), a subsequent reference is achieved using the same noun phrase (i.e.,the ice), as opposed to an anaphoric form (i.e.,it). We argue that such non-anaphoric reference can be understood as motivated by a central principle: the expression of agency …
You know as invoking alignment
Modulating action through minimization
This study uses data from a shoe-repair shop, supplemented by data from medical and mundane contexts, to analyze three progressively minimal grammatical formats used to implement offers and requests in interaction (i.e.do you want...?,you want...?, andwant...?). We argue that this cline of minimality reflects a cline of the action-initiator's stance, from relatively weak to strong (respectively), regarding their expectation that the action will b…
Intersubjectivity, Normativity, and Grammar
Interactants depend on background knowledge and commonsense inferences to establish and maintain intersubjectivity. This study investigates how the resources of language—or more specifically, of grammar—can be mobilized to address moments when such inferences might risk jeopardizing understanding in lieu of promoting it. While such moments may initially seem to undermine the normative commonsensicality of the particular inference(s) in question, …
Preference and Polarity
This article considers the use of negative polarization in polar (yes/no) questions. It argues that question polarity is used to take an epistemic stance toward the probability or improbability of the state of affairs referenced in the question and that taking such a stance is effectively unavoidable. Focusing on negatively polarized questions (NPQs), four main kinds of evidence are adduced that NPQs are associated with the questioner’s stance th…
Actions in practice
Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foun…
Polar answers
How do people answer polar questions? In this fourteen-language study of answers to questions in conversation, we compare the two main strategies; first, interjection-type answers such as uh-huh (or equivalents yes , mm , head nods, etc.), and second, repetition-type answers that repeat some or all of the question. We find that all languages offer both options, but that there is a strong asymmetry in their frequency of use, with a global preferen…
You know as invoking alignment
Time Reference in the Service of Social Action
The present study investigates the ways that members of society refer to time. Concrete methods for communicating about points in time and locating events in relation to them make relevant and thereby ground abstract time-reckoning in the lives of interactants. Through a taxonomy of references to time—termed absolute and event-relative, each with subcategories—we describe the intrinsic affordances that different designs provide coparticipants eng…
Linguistic reference in the negotiation of identity and action
The present study uses naturally occurring conversational data from various dialects of Spanish to examine the role of second-person (T/V) reference forms in the accomplishment of social action in interaction. I illustrate how the turn-by-turn progression of talk can occasion shifts in the linguistic means through which speakers refer to their hearers, an interactional commonality between dialects (and possibly languages) that are otherwise prono…
Category accounts
This study investigates the sequentially occasioned provision of what I termcategory accountsin interaction. Category accounts tap into and make use of normative assumptions about identities and membership categories in order to explain away moments of what the participants view as category deviance. To introduce this concept, I focus on sequences in which speakers' initiations of repair (e.g.Huh?) are oriented to as indicative of a problem of un…
Constructing apologies
Epistemic Brokering in the Interpreter-Mediated Medical Visit
A significant dilemma involved in communication in medical care is the interactional negotiation of “doctor’s side” versus “patient’s side” knowledge—two divergent, yet indispensible, understandings of sickness. The present study examines the ways in which language interpreters, as active coparticipants in the clinical encounter, can engage with these emergent territories of knowledge by reformulating how information is presented in the ongoing t…
Intersubjectivity, Normativity, and Grammar
Interactants depend on background knowledge and commonsense inferences to establish and maintain intersubjectivity. This study investigates how the resources of language—or more specifically, of grammar—can be mobilized to address moments when such inferences might risk jeopardizing understanding in lieu of promoting it. While such moments may initially seem to undermine the normative commonsensicality of the particular inference(s) in question, …
Are Explicit Apologies Proportional to the Offenses They Address
We consider here Goffman's proposal of proportionality between virtual offenses and remedial actions, based on the examination of 102 cases of explicit apologies. To this end, we offer a typology of the primary apology formats within the dataset, together with a broad categorization of the types of virtual offenses to which these apologies are addressed. We find a broad proportionality between apologies and the offenses they remediate when the of…
Probability and Valence
This study expands and refines the argument presented by Heritage and Raymond by demonstrating that the orientation to probability in question design can intersect with a second orientation toward the positive or negative desirability—or valence—of the state of affairs inquired into. In most cases, the orientations to probability and to positively valenced information can be satisfied simultaneously: In a context where negatively valenced informa…
Negotiating entitlement to language
When individuals in the United States dial the emergency service telephone number, they immediately encounter some version of the English-language institutional opening "Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?". What happens, though, when the one placing the call is not a speaker of English? How do callers and call-takers adapt to overcome this added communicative barrier so that they are able to effectively assess the emergency situation at hand? …
On the relevance and accountability of dialect
The present study seeks to illustrate how the theory and method of conversation analysis (CA) can be used to begin to unpack the notion of 'contact' in contact linguistics research. After reviewing language and dialect contact as they are traditionally conceptualized, we describe an additional set of questions inspired byCA's fundamental concern withrelevanceandaccountability. It is argued that, by analyzing the structure and design of turn-by-tu…
Modular Pivots
This article investigates a type of turn constructional pivot structurally different from and more common than those previously analyzed within the literature. Modular pivots are comprised of items of talk that (a) are linguistic adjuncts and hence syntactically optional, (b) routinely appear in both turn-initial and turn-final positions, and (c) are deployed to forge an overlapping or pivotal transition between otherwise discrete TCUs. In additi…
Modulating action through minimization
This study uses data from a shoe-repair shop, supplemented by data from medical and mundane contexts, to analyze three progressively minimal grammatical formats used to implement offers and requests in interaction (i.e.do you want...?,you want...?, andwant...?). We argue that this cline of minimality reflects a cline of the action-initiator's stance, from relatively weak to strong (respectively), regarding their expectation that the action will b…
Reference without anaphora
In this article, we investigate a puzzle for standard accounts of reference in natural language processing, psycholinguistics and pragmatics: occasions where, following an initial reference (e.g.,the ice), a subsequent reference is achieved using the same noun phrase (i.e.,the ice), as opposed to an anaphoric form (i.e.,it). We argue that such non-anaphoric reference can be understood as motivated by a central principle: the expression of agency …
Questions and responses in Spanish monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual conversation
An Adjunct to Repair
The English-language particle you know is frequently associated with speech production and understanding difficulties. The present study combines sequential and distributional analyses to explicate the particle’s relationship to the conversational repair system. It demonstrates that you know functions as an adjunct to repair, addressing secondary difficulties associated with implementing self-repair in practice, while also promoting the avoidance…
Turn-taking and the structural legitimization of bias
Reallocation of pronouns through contact
This study uses natural, everyday social interaction within Salvadoran families living in Southern California to examine the use of the 2nd-person singular pronounstúandvos(and their corresponding morphologies) in this contact variety of Spanish. An in-depth, qualitative analysis reveals that the employment and significance of these forms of address do not conform entirely to Salvadoran norms, nor to those of the surrounding Mexican-based Spanish…
Suffixation and sequentiality
This paper offers some reflections on the study of morphology – broadly speaking, ‘word formation’ – as a participants’ resource in social interaction. I begin by calling attention to morphology as a comparatively underexamined component of linguistic structure by conversation analysts and interactional linguists, in that it has yet to receive the same dedicated consideration as have, e.g., phonetics and syntax. I then present an ongoing study of…
The grammar of proposals for joint activities
The action of proposing has been studied from various perspectives in research on talk-in-interaction, both in mundane as well as in institutional talk. Aiming to exemplify Interactional Linguistics as a drawing together of insights from Linguistics and Conversation Analysis, we explore the grammar of proposals and the stances displayed by participants in making proposals in the context of joint activities, where a future or hypothetical activity…
On the recognitionality of references to time in social interaction
This article explores the recognitionality of references to time as a participants’ category and resource in social interaction. In short, we ask: How does referring to time in more vs. less recognitional ways contribute to the formation and ascription of action in context, and how can analysts of social interaction approach this dimension of reference in ways that remain grounded in the details of participant joint-conduct? After considering som…
Making gender relevant in Spanish-language sports broadcast discourse
Using the US Spanish-language television broadcasts of the FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer (football) tournament, the present study offers an analysis of the crucial role that language plays in the gendering of sport. Despite the framing of the coverage as a celebration of women’s participation in sports, this was undermined by the sometimes covert, sometimes overt, objectification, trivialization and patronizing of the players and their sport duri…
Generational Divisions
Parodi (2003; 2004; 2009a; 2009b; 2011) has proposed and evidenced the existence of a Los Angeles, California dialect of Spanish called Los Angeles Vernacular Spanish (LAVS). This ‘rur-urbana koiné’ is argued to be based on rural Mexican Spanish dialects but with its own unique characteristics as well. The author affirms that Latin American immigrants to the region (not only Mexicans but also Salvadorans, Hondurans, etc.) accommodate their speech…
Reallocation of pronouns through contact
This study uses natural, everyday social interaction within Salvadoran families living in Southern California to examine the use of the 2nd-person singular pronounstúandvos(and their corresponding morphologies) in this contact variety of Spanish. An in-depth, qualitative analysis reveals that the employment and significance of these forms of address do not conform entirely to Salvadoran norms, nor to those of the surrounding Mexican-based Spanish…
Making gender relevant in Spanish-language sports broadcast discourse
Using the US Spanish-language television broadcasts of the FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer (football) tournament, the present study offers an analysis of the crucial role that language plays in the gendering of sport. Despite the framing of the coverage as a celebration of women’s participation in sports, this was undermined by the sometimes covert, sometimes overt, objectification, trivialization and patronizing of the players and their sport duri…
Epistemic Brokering in the Interpreter-Mediated Medical Visit
A significant dilemma involved in communication in medical care is the interactional negotiation of “doctor’s side” versus “patient’s side” knowledge—two divergent, yet indispensible, understandings of sickness. The present study examines the ways in which language interpreters, as active coparticipants in the clinical encounter, can engage with these emergent territories of knowledge by reformulating how information is presented in the ongoing t…
Negotiating entitlement to language
When individuals in the United States dial the emergency service telephone number, they immediately encounter some version of the English-language institutional opening "Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?". What happens, though, when the one placing the call is not a speaker of English? How do callers and call-takers adapt to overcome this added communicative barrier so that they are able to effectively assess the emergency situation at hand? …
From the field, to the Web, and back again
Researchers from a variety of academic disciplines have begun to incorporate Web-based methodologies in their research agendas. Nonetheless, many of those interested in language ideologies – i.e. speakers’ beliefs about language, as well as their rationalisation of those beliefs – vehemently stand by site-specific ethnographic approaches. Rather than arguing for a replacement of one method by another, the present methodological analysis explores …
Modular Pivots
This article investigates a type of turn constructional pivot structurally different from and more common than those previously analyzed within the literature. Modular pivots are comprised of items of talk that (a) are linguistic adjuncts and hence syntactically optional, (b) routinely appear in both turn-initial and turn-final positions, and (c) are deployed to forge an overlapping or pivotal transition between otherwise discrete TCUs. In additi…
Questions and responses in Spanish monolingual and Spanish–English bilingual conversation
In Memoriam Claudia Parodi Qepd Nov. 2015
Review Article| February 01 2016 In Memoriam Claudia Parodi QEPD Nov. 2015 Chase Wesley Raymond, Chase Wesley Raymond University of California, Los Angeles Chase Wesley Raymond (PhD 2014, UCLA) is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles where he is pursing a second doctoral degree in Sociology. His research interests lie at the intersection of language and (different facets of) social identity…
Are Explicit Apologies Proportional to the Offenses They Address
We consider here Goffman's proposal of proportionality between virtual offenses and remedial actions, based on the examination of 102 cases of explicit apologies. To this end, we offer a typology of the primary apology formats within the dataset, together with a broad categorization of the types of virtual offenses to which these apologies are addressed. We find a broad proportionality between apologies and the offenses they remediate when the of…
Linguistic reference in the negotiation of identity and action
The present study uses naturally occurring conversational data from various dialects of Spanish to examine the role of second-person (T/V) reference forms in the accomplishment of social action in interaction. I illustrate how the turn-by-turn progression of talk can occasion shifts in the linguistic means through which speakers refer to their hearers, an interactional commonality between dialects (and possibly languages) that are otherwise prono…
Indexing a contrast
Time Reference in the Service of Social Action
The present study investigates the ways that members of society refer to time. Concrete methods for communicating about points in time and locating events in relation to them make relevant and thereby ground abstract time-reckoning in the lives of interactants. Through a taxonomy of references to time—termed absolute and event-relative, each with subcategories—we describe the intrinsic affordances that different designs provide coparticipants eng…
Actions in practice
Several of the contributions to the Lynch et al. Special issue make the claim that conversation-analytic research into epistemics is ‘routinely crafted at the expense of actual, produced and constitutive detail, and what that detail may show us’. Here, we seek to address the inappositeness of this critique by tracing precisely how it is that recognizable actions emerge from distinct practices of interaction. We begin by reviewing some of the foun…
Polar answers
How do people answer polar questions? In this fourteen-language study of answers to questions in conversation, we compare the two main strategies; first, interjection-type answers such as uh-huh (or equivalents yes , mm , head nods, etc.), and second, repetition-type answers that repeat some or all of the question. We find that all languages offer both options, but that there is a strong asymmetry in their frequency of use, with a global preferen…
On the relevance and accountability of dialect
The present study seeks to illustrate how the theory and method of conversation analysis (CA) can be used to begin to unpack the notion of 'contact' in contact linguistics research. After reviewing language and dialect contact as they are traditionally conceptualized, we describe an additional set of questions inspired byCA's fundamental concern withrelevanceandaccountability. It is argued that, by analyzing the structure and design of turn-by-tu…
Intersubjectivity, Normativity, and Grammar
Interactants depend on background knowledge and commonsense inferences to establish and maintain intersubjectivity. This study investigates how the resources of language—or more specifically, of grammar—can be mobilized to address moments when such inferences might risk jeopardizing understanding in lieu of promoting it. While such moments may initially seem to undermine the normative commonsensicality of the particular inference(s) in question, …
Scaffolding Embodied Access for Categorization in Interactions between a Blind Child and Her Mother
During language acquisition, sighted children have immediate and temporally stable access to the 'gestalt' of an object, including particular features that suggest its categorization as part of a class of objects. Blind children, however, must effectively and productively constitute the whole object from its constitutive parts in order to categorize them. While prior studies have suggested that varied experience and appropriate sensory access can…
Turn-taking and the structural legitimization of bias
Conversation analysis at the 'middle region' of public life
Constructing apologies
Category accounts
This study investigates the sequentially occasioned provision of what I termcategory accountsin interaction. Category accounts tap into and make use of normative assumptions about identities and membership categories in order to explain away moments of what the participants view as category deviance. To introduce this concept, I focus on sequences in which speakers' initiations of repair (e.g.Huh?) are oriented to as indicative of a problem of un…
The Grammar of Obviousness
This paper investigates the body’s role in grammar in argument sequences. Drawing from a database of public disputes on language use, we document the work of the palm-up gesture in action formation. Using conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, we show how this gesture is an interactional resource that indexes a particular epistemic stance—namely to cast the proposition being advanced as obvious. In this report, we focus on instances…
Pivots revisited
The term “pivot” usually refers to two overlapping syntactic units such that the completion of the first unit simultaneously launches the second. In addition, pivots are generally said to be characterized by the smooth prosodic integration of their syntactic parts. This prosodic integration is typically achieved by prosodic-phonetic matching of the pivot components. As research on such turns in a range of languages has illustrated, speakers routi…
An Adjunct to Repair
The English-language particle you know is frequently associated with speech production and understanding difficulties. The present study combines sequential and distributional analyses to explicate the particle’s relationship to the conversational repair system. It demonstrates that you know functions as an adjunct to repair, addressing secondary difficulties associated with implementing self-repair in practice, while also promoting the avoidance…
Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (40 obras) · Linguistics (30 obras) · Psychology (30 obras) · Sociology (27 obras) · Computer Science (26 obras) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (21 obras) · Philosophy (18 obras) · Conversation (16 obras) · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies (16 obras) · Conversation analysis (13 obras)