Suranaree Journal of Social Science

Are You “Sick”?: Exploring the Polysemy of “Sick” and Perceptions of ELF Speakers

2026-03-12T16:26:58+07:00

Background and Objectives: This study posits the continued emergence of polysemy, the phenomenon where a single word carries multiple meanings. It is a fundamental characteristic of languages that reflects semantic evolution and improvement. Among several polysemous words in English, “sick” stands out given its various interpretations, ranging from its prototypical sense of "physical illness" to such extended meanings as "disgust" and even "superbness.” While native speakers rely on contextual cues to distinguish these meanings, English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) speakers, who engage in cross-cultural communication, may interpret them differently. This study investigates the gap between its contemporary digital distribution and its reception among ELF speakers. Rather than claiming these senses are novel, this research aims to quantify the prevalence of the prototypical sense of "physical illness" alongside established extended meanings, namely "disgust," "boredom," and "superbness,” in modern social media discourse. By applying the Principled Polysemy Approach by Tyler and Evans (2003), the study unveils how these senses are retained or filtered by ELF users in intercultural communication.

Methodology: To analyze the extended meanings of “sick,” the researcher manually collected all the data from social media posts and reel captions on Facebook, X, and Instagram. The obtained instances were investigated to verify the word’s prototypical meaning and its extended meanings. To reveal ELF speakers' perceptions, on the other hand, an online survey was conducted, with ELF participants being reached online and identified as non-native speakers of English. The survey contained questions that purposively assessed their familiarity with and usage of “sick” in various contexts.

Main Results: The results confirmed that “sick” maintains its prototypical meaning of physical illness while obtaining three non-prototypical meanings throughout the analysis: "to feel disgusted," "to feel bored," and "to be superb." It was moreover noted that ELF speakers predominantly associated sick with its prototypical meaning, and they also recognized and employed its extended meanings to some extent simultaneously.

Discussions: Even if polysemous words can have extended meanings over time, like “sick” does, their adherence to the prototypical meaning is always explicit, as aligning with the prototype theory as well. In addition, it was found that the perceptions of the word “sick” among ELF speakers were not distant from prototypical association with physical illness. The speakers’ non-literal senses of the word on digital content indicated their interpretation of “sick” over its foundational meaning, which is often in health-related situations. Besides, in ELF settings, communication effectiveness is prioritized over stylistic novelty, reasoning why the word sick can be interpreted differently despite being in the same context, remarking an important role of intelligibility in interactions.

Conclusions: The study highlights how polysemy is perceived in ELF communication, providing insights for lexicography, English language teaching, and international communication. The rise of three new, non-prototypical meanings of this only single word “sick” strenuously confirms possibilities that words can keep evolving both semantically and morphologically, in line with the constant creativity of speakers of languages, whose needs for lexical innovation in response to various purposes seem to know no bounds.

Symbolic Capital and Women’s Leadership in Village Tourism: Evidence from Poncokusumo and Gubugklakah, Indonesia

2025-12-17T10:17:04+07:00

Background and Objectives: Women's participation in village tourism governance is part of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically SDG 5 (Gender Equality), but remains unequally distributed across rural tourism institutions. This study examines how women's participation and division of labor are structured, how their symbolic capital is formed, and the extent to which this symbolic capital can be converted into leadership within Ladesta (the Indonesian term for Village Tourism Institutions) in Poncokusumo and Gubugklakah, Malang Regency, Indonesia.

Methodology: This research applied a constructivist paradigm with a qualitative case study design. Data were generated through in-depth interviews with eight informants from Poncokusumo and Gubugklakah. To validate interpretations and map convergences and tensions between cases, focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted with the same eight informants. Documentation was used to trace Ladesta's organizational structure and records of activities related to women's participation. Data were analyzed using interactive field analysis (data condensation, data display, and drawing/verifying conclusions) and interpreted through Bourdieu's modalities.

Main Results: The findings indicate that women are formally included in Ladesta, but their roles vary across villages and across organizational arenas. Women's involvement in core management depends on their structural position and whether they have regular access to meetings, agenda-setting, and decision-making forums. Sources of symbolic capital also vary. In Gubugklakah, legitimacy is generally associated with family status and proximity to village elites; in Poncokusumo, it is more often based on education and organizational experience. In both cases, symbolic capital helps women acquire normative roles, but it does not necessarily translate into leadership. Conversion to leadership is constrained by unequal communication and gendered expectations that treat leadership and public decision-making as male domains, preventing women from asserting competence and authority.

Discussions: Symbolic capital mainly opens the door to organisational membership, but it does not automatically produce women’s leadership. According to Bourdieu and Wacquant (2013), it only matters when it can be converted into authority within the Ladesta Organization, where recognition is still shaped by patriarchal norms. In Poncokusumo, women’s education and organisational experience provide cultural and social capital that is more easily read as competence, so women gain a stronger voice in meetings and decision-making. In Gubugklakah, legitimacy based on family status often leads to formal roles without real influence. Strengthening leadership requires both confidence building and more inclusive rules for decision-making and supportive organisational communication.

Conclusions: Symbolic capital can open access to organisational roles, but leadership requires supportive social networks, an inclusive organisational culture, and women’s confidence to mobilise capital. Strengthening women’s leadership therefore needs leadership training, expanded access to education, and organisational reforms that support SDG 5 on equal opportunities for leadership and decision-making.

The Moderating Role of Anti-Corruption in the Link Between Cash Holdings and Firm Performance in Thai Listed Firms

2026-02-05T15:35:50+07:00

Background and Objectives: The anti-corruption campaign in Thailand promotes transparency and accountability. Although firm participation is voluntary, those who join can receive official certification confirming they are unlikely to engage in corrupt activities in any form. This participation may serve as an indicator of a strong corporate governance mechanism within a firm. However, prior research has largely overlooked the role and implications of anti-corruption efforts in the Thai private sector. Thailand provides a unique institutional setting in which anti-corruption certification is formally announced and monitored by the market regulator. This study explores the moderating effect of anti-corruption on the relationship between cash holdings and firm performance in the Thai context. The objective of this study is to gain insights into cash holdings and anti-corruption performance in emerging market countries.

Methodology: The analysis is twofold. First, it investigates the role of anti-corruption in firm value. Second, it examines anti-corruption information from a capital market perspective. This study uses a direct measurement of firms’ anti-corruption performance based on regulator-recognized certification, enhancing measurement reliability. This study employs the Generalized Method of Moments estimator for robust standard errors in a two-stage least squares estimation.

Main Results: Both cash holdings and anti-corruption performance have a significant positive influence on firm performance. This indicates that firms retaining financial flexibility through adequate cash reserves, combined with a commitment to strong ethical practices, are more likely to achieve superior operational and financial outcomes. The results show that anti-corruption enhances the positive impact of cash holdings on firm performance, highlighting its role as a governance mechanism that shapes the value of liquidity. This suggests that the benefits of holding cash are greater in firms that demonstrate robust anti-corruption practices.

Discussions: An anti-corruption strategy can serve as a mechanism to mitigate the principal-agent conflict of interest. Additionally, anti-corruption can reduce information asymmetry within the firm. Firms with strong ethical governance derive greater value from their cash reserves, possibly because effective governance reduces the risk of misuse of funds. This interaction suggests that the combination of financial resources and ethical governance improves overall firm value beyond the individual contributions of each factor. The results can be applied not only to Thailand but also to other countries, as anti-corruption activities must be promoted among businesses around the world. This should help businesses in each country to operate more smoothly and improve its performance.

Conclusions: Effective governance enhances the productive use of cash by reducing risks like mismanagement or agency conflicts. This study advances the existing literature in that it empirically investigates the moderating effect of anti-corruption on the cash management of the firm. This study provides novel evidence on how formal governance mechanisms interact with corporate liquidity decisions. Although this study uses anti-corruption scores from the stock market authority, these may not fully reflect actual anti-corruption performance. Future research may explore more accurate measurement methods and examine the impact of anti-corruption on outcomes like bankruptcy, debt covenants, and optimal cash holdings within broader corporate governance frameworks.

Chat Topic Classification for Student Counseling using Text Mining

2024-09-30T16:48:54+07:00

Background and Objectives: Alongside their standard duties, providing guidance and support to students is a crucial responsibility for teachers. The effective counseling of students is enhanced by technology, which improves communication between teachers and students. This study employs text-mining techniques to analyze and categorize chat messages exchanged on social media between teachers and students, demonstrating how technology can facilitate this communication effectively.

Methodology: This research implements a text-mining technique involving natural language processing (NLP) to create a classification model for chat topics. Chat messages used in text mining are collected from 20 students and 10 teachers using the Line and Facebook Messenger apps. Messages from both platforms had similar characteristics and were combined for analysis. The 4,500 chat messages were gathered, and after the cleaning process, 2,610 messages remained. The classification model is accomplished with Term Frequency–Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) and three machine learning methods: random forest (RF), support vector machines (SVM), and logistic regression (LR) to build text classifiers. The model will be used to predict the counseling objectives of students.

Main Results: The evaluation of model performance utilized a 10-fold cross-validation technique due to the small size of the dataset, which helps prevent overfitting. The experimental results showed that the model using the RF technique achieved the highest accuracy among all techniques, with an overall F1 score of 89.55 percent. This was followed by the SVM at 88.68 percent and LR at 88.06 percent. When analyzing the models based on chat topics, the highest F1 score was recorded for the topic titled "Leave," followed by "Urgency," "Score," and "Homework."

Discussions: The RF technique consistently yielded the highest values in all chat topics. These results indicate that the RF technique is the most effective at accurately classifying chats compared to other techniques. Moreover, the evaluation of the technique's performance in this study found that the model's errors were caused by the model identifying many duplicate words across all chat topics. These words are not typically used in data analysis to identify relationships. Thus, future analyses may involve using language experts to eliminate these words.

Conclusions: The research findings can be used to categorize chats and predict their topic for student counseling. These findings can also be used to develop automated communication tools, such as integrated chatbots with e-learning. In addition, the model helps to resolve issues and streamline communication, reducing student wait times. However, the designed system has some limitations. It requires an extensive vocabulary corpus for each type of chat topic to improve the model's accuracy using text-mining techniques. Creating a vocabulary corpus for each type of chat topic necessitates linguistic experts and consumes significant time. Furthermore, the data being analyzed is collected from social media, which includes emerging vocabulary, such as chat language, that presents challenges for the model. Several improvements can be made shortly. For instance, the developed model can be improved using deep learning techniques and engaging linguistic experts to understand word characteristics and chat language better.

Making It Local: Teachers’ Sociomaterial Practices in Localising Global Curricula

2026-03-30T09:09:39+07:00

Background and Objectives: Curriculum borrowing in Southeast Asia (SEA) is a prevalent strategy to align educational practices with global standards, foster economic advancement, and support development of local curricula. However, this process requires localisation to ensure that borrowed content aligns with local pedagogical and cultural contexts. While past research has documented the borrowing trend, few studies have illuminated how localisation is enacted by educators in diverse SEA settings. This gap is addressed in the current study by exploring the sociomaterial dynamics of localising borrowed curricula. It specifically seeks to: (1) describe how localisation unfolds in particular SEA contexts, and (2) examine the process of localisation through the lens of Actor-Network Theory (ANT).

Methodology: This qualitative study employed semi-structured interviews with six participants: two school administrators, two teacher educators, and two teachers from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos. Participants were selected via convenience sampling and interviewed via online platforms or email. Data were analysed using ANT, focusing on three dimensions: sociality, textuality, and materiality. This was to examine the interplay of human and non-human elements in shaping the localisation process. Member-checking was conducted to ensure transcription accuracy and interpretive validity.

Main Results: Findings suggest that localisation is often confined to the classroom level and shouldered by teachers with little institutional support. Administrators and teacher educators viewed localisation as the responsibility of teachers, albeit influenced by top-down discourses on globalisation and curriculum legitimacy. From the findings, three key themes emerged:

a. Sociality revealed who was involved or excluded from the localisation process, with teachers operating with limited systemic backing.

b. Textuality examined discourses surrounding localisation, showing how global legitimacy pressures coexisted with expectations for local cultural responsiveness.

c. Materiality referred to actual pedagogical actions, such as modifying materials, incorporating local examples, or using students’ home languages.

Discussions: The study shows that localisation is both a pedagogical and political act, which is shaped by sociocultural values and institutional priorities. Borrowed curricula serve symbolic and practical functions, such as enhancing legitimacy, expanding networks, and demonstrating modernisation; however, localisation is rarely collaborative as it tends to be reactive, fragmented, and emotionally challenging for teachers navigating between institutional mandates and students’ realities. Teachers’ efforts to reconcile global standards with local needs illustrate their professional adaptability and sociomaterial engagement. Yet, this also reveals systemic neglect, as these individualised efforts are often unrecognised and unsupported.

Conclusions: Localisation of borrowed curricula in SEA occurs within complex sociomaterial ecologies where teachers, often acting in isolation, draw upon contextual knowledge and pedagogical creativity to enact culturally relevant instruction. While administrators recognise the need for localisation, structural systems rarely provide the necessary resources or authority to facilitate it. Future research should include voices of students and community members and adopt longitudinal and ethnographic approaches to capture the evolving and situated nature of localisation. Institutional support, participatory curriculum development, and pedagogical autonomy are critical for sustainable and inclusive localisation practices.

Phitsanulok’s Readiness for Development along the Luang Prabang–Indochina–Mawlamyine Economic Corridor (LIMEC)

2026-03-13T14:37:55+07:00

Background and Objectives: The Luang Prabang–Indochina–Mawlamyine Economic Corridor (LIMEC) seeks to enhance regional integration across Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar through multidimensional collaboration in economic, political, and sociocultural domains. Established in 2015, LIMEC has prioritized trade, investment, tourism, education, healthcare, and logistics, supported by cooperation between governments, private enterprises, and cross-border networks. Phitsanulok Province, located in lower northern Thailand, is increasingly recognized as a pivotal hub within LIMEC and the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS). Its location at the intersection of key regional corridors provides strategic advantages for connectivity, logistics, and trade. However, unlike other cooperative frameworks such as Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS) or Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), LIMEC lacks an institutionalized governance structure or systematic mechanisms for coordination. This absence of institutional frameworks hinders policy alignment between national and local levels, constrains investment flows, and restricts long-term collaboration. Accordingly, this study evaluates Phitsanulok’s readiness to align with LIMEC’s strategies by employing border studies theory, focusing on governance practices, interdependence mechanisms, and cross-border initiatives to foster sustainable regional development.

Methodology: A qualitative design was adopted, combining documentary analysis with in-depth, semi-structured interviews involving provincial administrators, policy planners, and development officials in Phitsanulok. Content analysis was used to interpret data, examining three critical areas: governance and institutional capacity, regional interdependence, and the province’s strategic fit within LIMEC’s developmental framework.

Main Results: The findings highlight three dimensions of readiness. In the political dimension, although governance structures exist, interviewees unanimously identified persistent challenges: policy fragmentation, inconsistency, and discontinuity. Economically, Phitsanulok’s location and infrastructure offer robust advantages for logistics, trade, and tourism. Nevertheless, the modernization of logistics systems, fiscal continuity, and investment coordination remain incomplete. Socio-culturally, the province possesses rich cultural assets and entrepreneurial potential that could support tourism and creative industries; however, these resources are not yet systematically integrated into sustainable development plans. Collectively, these dimensions reveal both substantial opportunities and enduring constraints that must be addressed through targeted reforms and institutional innovation.

Discussions: Phitsanulok’s role within LIMEC rests on three interconnected pillars. First, cross-border collaboration and infrastructure development are crucial for enhancing trade flows and achieving integration. Second, consistent policies and long-term strategic leadership are essential for sustaining growth, especially in addressing implementation gaps across political transitions. Third, mobilizing local cultural heritage through tourism promotion and product innovation can significantly expand economic opportunities for communities. Yet, challenges persist due to limited funding, institutional fragmentation, and policy discontinuity. These highlight the necessity of coordinated action among central government, provincial authorities, private enterprises, and local communities to ensure synergy in development.

Conclusions: The study determines that Phitsanulok is strategically positioned to emerge as a regional hub within LIMEC. Realizing this promise necessitates enhanced governance, more precise budget allocation, and sustained policy coherence. The enhancement of political, economic, and cultural capabilities relies on multi-tiered governance that integrates the state, market, and community. Through entrenched autonomy, robust institutions, and transnational collaboration, Phitsanulok may advance towards more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient regional development.

Determinants of Behavioral Intention to Use Mobile Applications in Thailand

2025-08-15T16:08:02+07:00

Background and Objectives: The objective of this study is to pinpoint and examine the major factors impacting intention to use mobile apps in Thailand by integrating insights from the Technology Acceptance Model 2 (TAM2), the Technology Acceptance Model 3 (TAM3), the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), and its extension UTAUT2. The key causes of Behavioral Intention (BI) to use mobile applications in Thailand are realized, focusing on Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Social Influence (SI), Facilitating Conditions (FC), Trust (TR), Hedonic Motivation (HM), Price Value (PV), and Habit (HB) as critical factors. The goal is to deliver actionable perceptions for developers and businesses to enhance their applications, thereby improving adoption rates and overall user satisfaction in the Thai market.

Methodology: This research used a quantitative methodology to assess the behavioral desire to utilize mobile apps in Thailand. Data were collected from 655 participants within Thailand’s tech-savvy community. Using a 5-point Likert scale to measure responses allowed for a thorough statistical analysis using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). While the sample was concentrated in urban and tech-centric regions such as Bangkok and Chiang Mai, it also included participants from diverse geographic and demographic backgrounds, offering comparative insights into digital adoption across Thailand.

Main Results: The findings indicate that PE (β = 0.35), HM (β = 0.31), and FC (β = 0.28) were the best predictors of BI, while EE, TR, PV, SI, and HB also had statistically significant positive impacts. Additionally, the research confirms the significant effect of socio-demographic control variables—including gender, age, income, and education—with mobile app usage frequency exhibiting the highest coefficient (β = 0.32). The need for a multidimensional approach to mobile strategy is highlighted by these findings. The study contributes empirical evidence guiding developers and marketers to create targeted, intuitive, and secure applications that resonate with diverse user needs, thereby sustaining long-term engagement and strengthening adoption in Thailand's digital market.

Discussions: Thai users specifically favor applications that improve productivity, are user-friendly, and are influenced by social recommendations, highlighting the importance of peer influence and word-of-mouth. Trust in the app’s security and the availability of necessary resources also emerged as critical factors, particularly for mobile banking and e-commerce. Demographic analysis indicates that younger, more affluent users and students are more inclined to use mobile apps, with regular app engagement being strongly linked to the type of application (e.g., social media and e-commerce).

Conclusions: The inferences drawn from this research help to improve our understanding of mobile apps and their patterns of use in a fast-changing digital world, offering useful advice for companies and developers who want to improve user interaction and app design for Thai market. This research expands on the findings of earlier studies by highlighting the TR component of the UTAUT2 framework as a crucial factor, emphasizing its contextual significance in Thailand’s mobile application environment, which is constantly changing in response to worries about privacy and security.

Integrating Computational Thinking into Science Instruction: A Design-based Approach to Learning Protein Synthesis

2026-03-13T10:42:15+07:00

Introduction: Many countries consider the expansion of the workforce in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) a key strategy for economic growth and social development. This belief applies in Thailand, with integration of STEM education at the K–12 level promoted in the most recent version of the national science curriculum standards. Engineering design and computational thinking have been introduced to the curriculum in addition to the canonical sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and geology). Although design-based learning has been proposed nationally as an integrated approach to STEM education, these new strands present challenges to science teachers. Many of these teachers struggle to envision how engineering design and computational thinking can be meaningfully integrated into science instruction, highlighting a clear need for concrete examples.

Content: This academic article presents an example of how engineering design and computational thinking can be incorporated into science instruction, illustrating an integrated approach to STEM education. Using the 6E Learning byDeSIGN^TM model of design-based learning developed by the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association (Burke, 2014), the article describes a pedagogical activity on the topic of protein synthesis, which is often considered difficult for students to learn and for science teachers to teach. In this activity, designed for the high school level, students are challenged to design computer software that identifies a series of amino acids forming a protein based on a given strand of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). This activity involves six steps: Engage, Explore, Explain, Engineer, Enrich, and Evaluate. Specifically, students learn what proteins are, what they do in the body, and what they are made of. Once students understand that each protein consists of amino acids arranged in a unique sequence, they explore and explain how proteins are synthesized from DNA using a computer simulation. With this understanding of the process through which a protein is synthesized, students are introduced to the Python programming language and learn the necessary concepts of computational science (e.g., variables, loops, conditionals, and algorithms). Students are then tasked with applying these computational concepts to develop the computer software. Finally, they discuss and reflect on what they have learned. Through this activity, students learn the key process of protein synthesis (e.g., transcription and translation) and discover how computational concepts are used to model biological processes effectively.

Conclusion: The 6E Learning byDeSIGN^TM model of design-based learning is similar to the 5E model of inquiry-based learning—Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate—which has long been promoted in Thailand and elsewhere. Science teachers are already familiar with the 5E inquiry-based model, so they can easily understand and adopt the 6E Learning byDeSIGN^TM model. As such, the activity presented in this article serves as a practical example for science teachers to develop lessons that integrate engineering design and computational thinking into the teaching of other science topics. Yet, further research is needed to investigate its potential impact on students’ learning and science teachers’ professional development.