Mohammad Ghazanfari; Atena Attaran; Mohammad Zabetipour
Volume 7, 2 (Special Issue on Iranians Views of Cultural Issues) , September 2019, , Pages 94-106
Abstract
As an Islamo-Arabic utterance,throughout the history of Islam, “Allahu Akbar” has been widely used as one of the most influential religious slogans since the advent of Islam in the 7th century CE. However, during the last four decades, it has gained a fairly global reputation thanks to various ...
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As an Islamo-Arabic utterance,throughout the history of Islam, “Allahu Akbar” has been widely used as one of the most influential religious slogans since the advent of Islam in the 7th century CE. However, during the last four decades, it has gained a fairly global reputation thanks to various functions it has pragmatically come to serve in different social settings. Recently, it has been particularly assigned a world-wide notoriety due to the terrorist acts by extremist Islamist factions. This study aimed at identifying the social, political, and religious contexts in which contemporary Muslims recite “Allahu Akbar” with various pragmatic meanings in mind, making a special distinction between ordinary, peaceful contexts of use and violent contexts, where, in the latter, it is mostly heard from the mouths of extremist factions like ISIS, who, as well, associate themselves with Islam. We have, finally, identified eleven pragmatic functions the utterance serves in today’s Islamic societies, with a special focus on the Iranian context.
Tatyana Anatolievna Spirchagova; Svetlana Evgenevna Nikitina; Maria Nikolaevna Spirchagova
Volume 9, Issue 1 , March 2021, , Pages 94-101
Abstract
Due to its nature and content, the media is related to almost all different economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of societies and can be claimed to be one of the influential variables in today's societies. The formation of a country's image in foreign media is a direct reflection of the ...
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Due to its nature and content, the media is related to almost all different economic, social, cultural, and political dimensions of societies and can be claimed to be one of the influential variables in today's societies. The formation of a country's image in foreign media is a direct reflection of the attitude of the world community to its foreign policy and economic course and the activities of its power structures in terms of coincidence with the political and economic interests of hegemonic states that dictate the conditions for the functioning of states within the framework of world space. The relevance of this work is due to the position of modern Russia on the world stage and the foreign policy and economic factors that have a strong influence on the formation of the image of the Russian state in foreign media. The chronological framework of the study covers the foreign policy of the Russian Federation from 2014 to 2018.
Mostafa Morady Moghaddam; Neil Murray
Volume 7, Issue 1 , March 2019, , Pages 96-105
Abstract
English language teaching (ELT) in Iran has experienced a turbulent history reflecting an often dynamic context and changing attitudes toward English, yet framed within a discourse of tolerance rather than one of embrace, as this study is going to show. The discourse was much brighter before the Islamic ...
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English language teaching (ELT) in Iran has experienced a turbulent history reflecting an often dynamic context and changing attitudes toward English, yet framed within a discourse of tolerance rather than one of embrace, as this study is going to show. The discourse was much brighter before the Islamic Revolution and this study reveals that there were much fewer adverse policies toward the spread of English (mostly because of economic reasons). However, after the Islamic Revolution, the discourse can be seen as a product of a postcolonial perspective and an accompanying unease – even antipathy – concerning Westernisation and Western values that are seen as being at odds with Iran’s identity and aspirations as an Islamic state. It is discussed in this study that at its current status, language policy and planning in the Iranian context is blatantly at odds with the ‘educational’ and ‘social’ needs of the nation.
Taha Rajab
Volume 3, Issue 2 , September 2015, , Pages 97-114
Abstract
This paper reports on an exploratory study that explores the instructional patterns within English as a Foreign Language (EFL) secondary school classrooms in Syria. Recently, the Syrian Ministry of Education (MoE) has introduced a new national curriculum which recommends a shift in EFL teachers’ ...
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This paper reports on an exploratory study that explores the instructional patterns within English as a Foreign Language (EFL) secondary school classrooms in Syria. Recently, the Syrian Ministry of Education (MoE) has introduced a new national curriculum which recommends a shift in EFL teachers’ instructional practices. Despite this costly innovation, there has been no attempt to check whether it was working. Adopting a socio-cultural perspective on learning, the study looks at teacher-student interaction and the discourse taking place during teacher-fronted whole class talk. To help in the identification of teachers’ training needs, teacher beliefs and classroom practices are investigated using a mixed-methods approach comprising classroom observations and interviews. Detailed discourse analysis revealed a traditional teacher-controlled mode of teaching focusing on mechanical practices rather than meaningful interactions. Students were afforded few opportunities to participate meaningfully in classroom interactions, as teachers controlled the topics of academic learning. The study highlights the need to invest in teachers’ professional development, particularly during the critical phase of curriculum innovation, to promote interactive and dialogic teaching in the Syrian educational system.
Mashudi Mashudi; Agung Nurmansyah; Natalya Ryafikovna Saenko; Asep Nurjamin; Svetlana Rafaelyevna Sharifullina
Abstract
The current research examined the impacts of English cultural awareness on Indonesian EFL students’ grammar knowledge. To achieve this objective, 40 advanced participants were chosen according to their performance on the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). Then, the participants were equally divided ...
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The current research examined the impacts of English cultural awareness on Indonesian EFL students’ grammar knowledge. To achieve this objective, 40 advanced participants were chosen according to their performance on the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). Then, the participants were equally divided into two groups of 20; an experimental and a control group. A grammar pre-test was administered to assess their knowledge of grammar prior to applying the instruction. After conducting the pre-test, the researchers taught the grammar points to the experimental group through using English cultural materials. On the other side, the grammar points were taught to the control group by using a traditional method. The instruction was conducted in 9 sessions of 45 minutes, and in the last session, the post-test of grammar was given to both groups in order to measure the impacts of the instruction on the participants’ grammar improvement. The findings revealed that the culture group had better performance than the conventional group after the treatment.
Akinola Odebunmi
Volume 1, Issue 1 , March 2013, , Pages 101-117
Abstract
Doctors and clients sometimes experience interactive clashes during hospital meetings in South-western Nigerian hospitals because of their divergent culture-constrained orientation to politeness cues. The goal of this paper is to unpack the discursive elements that characterize interactive confluence ...
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Doctors and clients sometimes experience interactive clashes during hospital meetings in South-western Nigerian hospitals because of their divergent culture-constrained orientation to politeness cues. The goal of this paper is to unpack the discursive elements that characterize interactive confluence and divergence in selected consultative encounters in the hospitals. The findings indicate that institutional and cultural (dis)alignments occur in respect of adjacency and non-adjacency pair greetings. In both greeting types, face support, threat and stasis are conjointly co-constituted by doctors and Yoruba clients within the affordances of the cultural, institutional and situational context of the Southwestern Nigerian hospital setting. Adjacency pair greetings attract mutual interpretings between the parties; interactive disalignments are differentially pragmatically accommodated by doctors and clients. In non-adjacency pair greeting, doctors’ threats are co-constituted as appropriate by both parties, the institutional power of doctor and shared Western cultural orientation playing significant roles.
Rong Zeng; Xu Wen
Volume 6, Issue 1 , March 2018, , Pages 101-114
Abstract
Categories are not invariant. This paper attempts to explore the dynamic nature of semantic category, in particular, that of fashion language, based on the cognitive theory of Dawkins’ memetics, a new theory of cultural evolution. Semantic attributes of linguistic memes decrease or proliferate ...
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Categories are not invariant. This paper attempts to explore the dynamic nature of semantic category, in particular, that of fashion language, based on the cognitive theory of Dawkins’ memetics, a new theory of cultural evolution. Semantic attributes of linguistic memes decrease or proliferate in replication and spreading, which involves a dynamic development of semantic category. More specifically, it is committed to unveiling the dynamic categorization of semantic category of fashion language through analyses of different lexical memes, sentence memes, and discourse memes. It is found that: (I) the replication and spreading of linguistic memes are closely related to the dynamic categorization of semantics, i.e., the stability of semantic categories is maintained by the replicability of memes, and the dynamic nature of semantic categories is determined by the evolution tendency of memes; (II) the underlying working mechanisms for meme variation and mutation are metaphor and metonymy; (III) how memes replicate and vary plays an important role in dynamic categorization of semantics of fashion language.
Samad Zare
Volume 6, Issue 2 , September 2018, , Pages 102-112
Abstract
This paper focuses on the concept of consciousness and liminality in the Iranian Diaspora and the way Iranians create digital diasporas where they can practise cultural identities outside the homeland. The discussion elaborates on the concept of traditional dowreh (family/social circle) in the fibre ...
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This paper focuses on the concept of consciousness and liminality in the Iranian Diaspora and the way Iranians create digital diasporas where they can practise cultural identities outside the homeland. The discussion elaborates on the concept of traditional dowreh (family/social circle) in the fibre of Persian culture and then illustrates the creation of a virtual dowreh among Persian bloggers in the diaspora and the reasons that might contribute to the formation of such a digital dowreh in the diaspora. By exploring a section of a weblog called “Friday for Living” it demonstrates that weblogs provide a unique opportunity for the Persian diasporic bloggers to revive a dowreh in a virtual way where they can get together and practise cultural identities in the diaspora while living between two cultures. The examination of “Friday for Living” also reveals that the virtual dowreh for this group of Iranian diasporic bloggers acts as a community of practice that assigns the members a domain, membership, and commitment, and members took part in joint activities by sharing their stories and experiences.
Oralsyn Rakymzhan; Berdibai Shalabay; Omirgul Zhumagulova; Gulden Kazhibaeva; Ibagul Кairbekova
Abstract
Existential loneliness is a topic of debate that has been explored over three centuries. Nineteenth-century novelists contributed to cognition-based existentialism in a way that has shaped our contemporary understanding and conceptualization. This study investigates the thematic coverage of existential ...
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Existential loneliness is a topic of debate that has been explored over three centuries. Nineteenth-century novelists contributed to cognition-based existentialism in a way that has shaped our contemporary understanding and conceptualization. This study investigates the thematic coverage of existential loneliness explored by novelists, poets, and writers to make conclusions about the cross-cultural stylometric signature, the underlying conceptual metaphors, and the priming of each linguistic metaphor for the difficult-to-attain definition of existential loneliness. In the compiled literary corpus, loneliness is represented through 11 linguistic metaphors, the most frequent of which are “loneliness is unbearable hell”, “loneliness is harm”, “loneliness is internal trait”, “loneliness is inability to keep company”, and “loneliness is poverty of self”. The retrieved results are computationally compared to the literary works of the most influential existential writers. Thus, the Kazakh writer Nurgali Oraz is very diverse in terms of using loneliness-related conceptual metaphors, which unites him with such internationally recognized authors as Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert, Chekhov, Turgenev, and Proust.
Reza Zabihi; Momene Ghadiri; Abbas Eslami Rasekh
Volume 3, Issue 1 , March 2015, , Pages 105-119
Abstract
Media can be a good representation of dominant ideologies in society. The analysis of such discourse can shed light on the mental and social structures of people in society. Adopting van Dijk’s (1995) layout of discourse ideology and his (2000) practical and general outline of ideological analysis, ...
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Media can be a good representation of dominant ideologies in society. The analysis of such discourse can shed light on the mental and social structures of people in society. Adopting van Dijk’s (1995) layout of discourse ideology and his (2000) practical and general outline of ideological analysis, this study analyzes the Iranian movie A Separation, the winner of the 84th Annual Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film. The data are transcribed, modified and then translated into English. What is of particular interest to the authors is to examine the discourse of the movie based on van Dijk’s (1995) layout of discourse ideology which tries to approach ideology by ensuring the triangulation of society, cognition, and discourse. The authors are more interested in analyzing people’s simple daily ideological behaviors which are rooted in their cognition and dominate their social activities. Having mapped these specific terrains, the authors attempt an examination of the ideologies of the film on levels of meaning, forms, and action and interaction.
Tarek Hermessi
Volume 4, Issue 2 , September 2016, , Pages 105-118
Abstract
This study investigated the cognition of 70 Tunisian teachers on the place of culture in English education. It showed that Tunisian teachers believe that English textbooks and curricular documents are not specific about the cultural dimension of EFL. It also revealed that L2 teachers, whose mother culture ...
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This study investigated the cognition of 70 Tunisian teachers on the place of culture in English education. It showed that Tunisian teachers believe that English textbooks and curricular documents are not specific about the cultural dimension of EFL. It also revealed that L2 teachers, whose mother culture is distant from that associated with L2, hold ambivalent attitudes towards culture. They acknowledge the importance of culture to communicative competence and intercultural competence, but either approach culture with suspicion or prefer to keep it to a minimum in the curriculum. The reasons for the marginalization of culture in English curriculum, according to the participants of the study, are ‘vastness of the concept of culture’, ‘lack of resources’, and ‘problems of procedure’. These reasons are accepted by L2 teachers, worldwide, who seem to share a ‘co-culture’ that determines their cognition on the different aspects of language teaching. As regards the cultural dimension of L2 teaching, the ‘co-culture’ seems to drive teacher cognition more than ‘cultural distance’.
Serap Fiso; Emel Topcu
Abstract
This study aims to provide a personal, reflective look at the experiences of migration, citizenship, and naturalization in Bosnia and Herzegovina, using an autoethnographic investigation. There is limited literature, particularly in relation to individual experiences in the country, so this study seeks ...
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This study aims to provide a personal, reflective look at the experiences of migration, citizenship, and naturalization in Bosnia and Herzegovina, using an autoethnographic investigation. There is limited literature, particularly in relation to individual experiences in the country, so this study seeks to fill that gap and provide insight into the region. The research aims to answer these questions: What prompts a skilled Turkish migrant to pursue citizenship? What difficulties and opportunities arise during the citizenship application process? How does the naturalization and citizenship journey affect the cultural linguacultural concepts, experiences, identities, and aspirations of a Turkish skilled female migrant? The results highlight the cultural aspect and difficulties associated with navigating bureaucratic procedures. It is most notable that the application process for citizenship reinforced patriarchal hierarchies and male dominance at the macro level, as well as linguistic and cultural concepts and male dominance at the micro level for the author.
Amani Lusekelo; Daudi Isaac Kapufi
Volume 2, Issue 1 , March 2014, , Pages 106-118
Abstract
This paper focused on the way names of body parts are artistically used to convey meanings and messages in Kifipa, a Bantu language spoken in Tanzania. Since the body parts metaphors are used by people to portray meanings in their daily conversations (Kovecses, 2004; Vierke, 2012), the paper investigated ...
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This paper focused on the way names of body parts are artistically used to convey meanings and messages in Kifipa, a Bantu language spoken in Tanzania. Since the body parts metaphors are used by people to portray meanings in their daily conversations (Kovecses, 2004; Vierke, 2012), the paper investigated such linguistic richness in the language. Methodologically, the study identified names of body parts expressed in Kifipa and analysed their metaphoric use. Results showed that metaphoric use of names of body parts in Kifipa relies on politeness (Watts, 2003), stylistic, and cognitive hypotheses (Jilala, 2012) as well as helping in word economy. It was argued herein that, before interpreting metaphors related to names of body parts, the context of use must be taken into account so as to arrive at the intended meanings. Thus, meanings and functions of the metaphors originating from names of body parts in Kifipa do not create universal terms that can be applied everywhere, at every time in every socio-cultural group, rather they are context-based.
Karim Sadeghi; Forouhar Mohammadi; Nasrin Sedaghatghoftar
Volume 1, Issue 2 , September 2013, , Pages 117-132
Abstract
The study was conducted with the aim of examining the rate of foreign language anxiety in male and female language learners. FLCAS (Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale) was administered to two groups of male and female learners. The mean scores of FLCAS indicated a significant difference with females ...
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The study was conducted with the aim of examining the rate of foreign language anxiety in male and female language learners. FLCAS (Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale) was administered to two groups of male and female learners. The mean scores of FLCAS indicated a significant difference with females having considerably higher levels of anxiety than males. From 38 female learners, 22 were recognized as experiencing anxiety, 14 of whom were invited to attend interviews as high-anxious learners. In addition to the learners, six language instructors were interviewed. From among the responses, socio-cultural reasons were deduced as being responsible for the noticeable level of females' anxiety. With regard to the findings, this study invites language teachers to be more sensitive and considerate about their female learners' social status, their senses of identity, and their self-perceptions, and take account of all these when judging their language performance, particularly as to the speaking activities and communicative tasks.
Uche Gloria Oboko
Volume 8, Issue 2 , September 2020, , Pages 121-136
Abstract
Language plays major functions in society. The way of life of a people is handed down from generation to generation through language. The Igbo people are known for their rich oral tradition and cultural heritage especially in the use of proverbs. Some studies on Igbo proverbs have focused on the semantic ...
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Language plays major functions in society. The way of life of a people is handed down from generation to generation through language. The Igbo people are known for their rich oral tradition and cultural heritage especially in the use of proverbs. Some studies on Igbo proverbs have focused on the semantic classifications, structures of the proverbs, the relevance of Igbo proverbs in interpersonal relationships and conflict resolutions as well as explored the stance of proverbs in the creation of dichotomy in gender relations in Igbo land. The present study aims at establishing the relationship between Igbo proverbs, their functions in society and their pragmatic force as didactic tools. The proverbs were selected from texts written by Igbo native speakers. Twenty proverbs that teach respect and honour in Igbo land were selected, translated to English and analysed. In Igbo land, proverbs are situated in contexts; hence, the work adopts context, an aspect of Lawal’s 2012 pragmatic theory. The work is analysed in line with the six levels of context identified in the theory in consonance with the Igbo worldview. These levels include cosmological, sociological, social, psychological, situational and linguistic.
Aida Nailevna Nurutdinova; Anastasiya Aleksandrovna Rus; Vera Nikolaevna Argunova
Volume 8, 3 (Special Issue on Russian Culture and Language) , December 2020, , Pages 72-79
Abstract
Welfare is a social category and is rooted in the cultural and social structures of society. Therefore, the improvement of welfare policies requires knowledge of these structures and cultural and social conditions. It should be noted that the culture in the cultural discourse of welfare is no longer ...
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Welfare is a social category and is rooted in the cultural and social structures of society. Therefore, the improvement of welfare policies requires knowledge of these structures and cultural and social conditions. It should be noted that the culture in the cultural discourse of welfare is no longer limited to mental and spiritual values and meanings. It is integrated into all varieties of individual and collective life activity as a natural socio-psychological formation, and manifests itself as a functional unit of social and psychosocial development of the world, and influences current social behavior. Based on the data of the all-Russian sociological survey, the social well-being of the population is diagnosed. The characteristics of social well-being were determined based on a subjective assessment of living conditions. The subjective assessment contains a cognitive (rational) aspect and an affective (emotional) one. In the affective aspect of the subjective assessment, there are more negative emotions in women and people of pre-retirement age.
Zhanar Konyratbayeva; Darikha Satemirova; Bekzhan Abdualyuly; Kuanyshbek Kenzhalin; Almagul Akazhanova
Volume 9, 2 (Themed Issue on Modern Realities of National Languages of CIS Countries) , August 2021, , Pages 85-97
Abstract
Worldview, especially the cultural worldview, is one of the most important aspects in the sphere of intercultural communication. The given research is devoted to considering the linguocultural aspect of the cultural worldview of the East and the West and the creation of the linguocultural map of the ...
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Worldview, especially the cultural worldview, is one of the most important aspects in the sphere of intercultural communication. The given research is devoted to considering the linguocultural aspect of the cultural worldview of the East and the West and the creation of the linguocultural map of the two civilizations through the worldview of students. The worldview can be studied by comparing it with the culture of a foreign language. The study of the ways on which the concept of association is based is one of the most important aspects of comparing the cultural image of different languages. Due to the intensification of the East and West dialogue in the cultural worldview, the creation of a linguocultural map would give more opportunities to study the actual issues of intercultural communication. It is possible to identify cultural and cognitive stereotypes of young people of Kazakhstan, to learn more about worldview and culture, especially national values.
Rawan Emad Al-Sallal; Madani Othman Ahmed
Abstract
This study intends to investigate the role of culture in the acquisition of pragmatic competence by EFL learners. It investigated the refusal of requests and offers used by Bahraini and Indian learners of English compared to those employed by native speakers of English. It also explored the similarities ...
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This study intends to investigate the role of culture in the acquisition of pragmatic competence by EFL learners. It investigated the refusal of requests and offers used by Bahraini and Indian learners of English compared to those employed by native speakers of English. It also explored the similarities and differences between refusal strategies used by Bahraini and Indian L2 learners on the one hand and native speakers of English on the other. The participants included 20 Bahraini and 20 Indian learners of English (ILE) and 12 British and American native speakers of English (NE). Two instruments were used to collect the data: a discourse completion test (DCT) and open-ended Role Plays. The data were classified using widely used refusal strategies classifications and were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The findings indicated that there were differences between the two EFL groups and the NE control group in the frequency and number of pragmatic strategies.
Tatyana Gennadevna Bochina; Anastasiia Alexandrovna Korshunova; Sholpan Kuzarovna Zharkynbekova
Volume 9, Issue 3 , September 2021, , Pages 101-108
Abstract
It is obvious that proverbs have their roots in the cultures of any society. Russian proverbs and sayings show a foreigner the traditions, customs, and way of thinking of the Russian people. In the current study, by monitoring posts on social networks and using passive observations of the speech process ...
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It is obvious that proverbs have their roots in the cultures of any society. Russian proverbs and sayings show a foreigner the traditions, customs, and way of thinking of the Russian people. In the current study, by monitoring posts on social networks and using passive observations of the speech process of native speakers, the communicative situations in which paremias were regularly resorted to were identified. The authors provide a review of the existing research in this area and conclude that it is necessary to conduct an additional experiment in order to obtain the most objective results. The choice of primary material for the questionnaire is explained, and preliminary results of a comparison of various sources of paremias are presented. Examples of formulations of questions proposed to informants are given that make it possible to identify not only the fact of recognition of paremias, but also their understanding. Eventually, further ways of research development are presented.
Marina Borisovna Grolman; Zubayda Albertovna Biktagirova; Olimjon Habibovich Kasimov
Volume 9, Issue 1 , March 2021, , Pages 102-110
Abstract
In India, English has the status of an official language along with Hindi. According to linguists, the English spoken in India is different from the one spoken in other countries, with it being an independent version of the English language. While working on the research, the general trends of differences ...
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In India, English has the status of an official language along with Hindi. According to linguists, the English spoken in India is different from the one spoken in other countries, with it being an independent version of the English language. While working on the research, the general trends of differences between the Indian English pronunciation and the Standard English pronunciation were discovered. In our work, the phonetic peculiarities of Indian English were studied. There is a particular tendency towards assimilation with other indigenous languages of India – softening and reduction of some sounds and the abolition of reduction in others, the appearance of retroflex sounds, the replacement of interdental sounds with dental occlusive sounds, the transposition of stress, etc. Phonetic peculiarities of Indian English are explained by a different structure of the articulation apparatus of people living in India. Despite this, the educated population of India, when using Indian English, strives for a more prestigious pronunciation.
Piotr Kuhiwczak
Volume 2, Issue 2 (Special Issue on Translation, Society and Culture) , September 2014, , Pages 103-111
Abstract
This paper looks at the issues of transculturation as explored in auto and semi-autobiographical accounts of linguistic and cultural transitions. The paper also addresses a number of questions about the structure of these texts, the authors’ linguistic competences, as well as questions about the ...
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This paper looks at the issues of transculturation as explored in auto and semi-autobiographical accounts of linguistic and cultural transitions. The paper also addresses a number of questions about the structure of these texts, the authors’ linguistic competences, as well as questions about the theoretical and conceptual tool which may help us to discuss the issues the writers are reflecting on. Authors such as E. Hoffman (Lost in Translation), A. Makine (Le Testament Francais, A. Dorfman (Heading South, Looking North), A. Kaplan (French Lessons), and X. Guo (A Classical Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers) will be referred to and their thoughts are discussed.
Moses Adebayo Aremu
Volume 4, 1 (Special Issue on African Cultures and Languages) , March 2016, , Pages 103-116
Abstract
Earlier linguistic studies of political discourse revealed that, not many works exist on pragmatic analysis of impoliteness in this genre. Apart from Mullany (2002), who employs relational and face works to analyses impoliteness in political discourse, Taiwo (2007), Adetunji (2009), and Ademilokun (2015), ...
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Earlier linguistic studies of political discourse revealed that, not many works exist on pragmatic analysis of impoliteness in this genre. Apart from Mullany (2002), who employs relational and face works to analyses impoliteness in political discourse, Taiwo (2007), Adetunji (2009), and Ademilokun (2015), who employ discourse analytical tools in analyzing the political speeches, there exist very scanty works on invective songs of Western Nigerian Politicians. The present study, therefore, focused on filling the existing lacuna in pragmatic studies by exploring fourteen randomly selected invective songs of Western Nigerian Politicians (WNPs), utilizing the modified version of Eckert and McConnell-Ginet’s (1992a) community of practice (CofP) as the pragmatic tool for data analysis. Our findings revealed that, invective songs of WNPs were characterized by impolite/belligerent utterances, indirect speech acts, politic confrontational behavior, lexical borrowing, code-mixing, direct speech acts, use of paralanguage, imagery, and symbolism. The paper concluded that, CofP clearly explicates the signification in invective songs of WNPs and shows the participants’ intention in the discourse.
Lin Zhu
Volume 5, Issue 1 , March 2017, , Pages 103-117
Abstract
Language is primarily constituted by action and interaction based on sensorimotor information. This paper demonstrates the nature of subjectivity and intersubjectivity through the neural mechanism and typological evidence of sentence-final particles from East Asian languages and extends to the discussion ...
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Language is primarily constituted by action and interaction based on sensorimotor information. This paper demonstrates the nature of subjectivity and intersubjectivity through the neural mechanism and typological evidence of sentence-final particles from East Asian languages and extends to the discussion of the relationship between them. I propose that intersubjecivity is a kind of embedded or nested interpersonal synergy grounded in mirror neurons. By means of shared motor information and embodied simulation, one’s self models can be generated in which other self-models are embedded. With the process of embedded interpersonal synergies, the relationship between synergies might be concerned to produce mutual shaping of meaning between speaker and hearer. Accordingly, I propose a hypothesis that the more intersubjective markers a language has, the more embedded or nested interpersonal synergies it has. This proposal opens new perspective on the understanding of the nature of language communication and (inter)subjectivity.
Eva Mendieta
Volume 5, Issue 2 , September 2017, , Pages 105-118
Abstract
Linguistic factors played a significant role in the origin and spread of accusations of witchcraft in Early Modern Spain. The preoccupation with witches’ words is at its root a preoccupation about the power of speech and, to a great extent, of female speech. Studies in some Early European countries ...
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Linguistic factors played a significant role in the origin and spread of accusations of witchcraft in Early Modern Spain. The preoccupation with witches’ words is at its root a preoccupation about the power of speech and, to a great extent, of female speech. Studies in some Early European countries have connected aggressive female speech styles with accusations of witchcraft, and this article offers evidence to this effect for Early Modern Spain. The speech of women with ‘ungoverned tongues’ is stigmatized as masculine, and the power it conveys is regarded with suspicion. Rumor, gossip, and reputation also played a key role in accusations of witchcraft in these oral societies. Once the accusation is launched, public reputation was often adduced as ‘proof’ of culpability. Rooted in the specific reality of the northern provinces of Early Modern Spain, this study shows how assumptions about women’s ‘linguistic place’, along with certain forms of linguistic performance played a significant role in transforming a woman into a witch.
Kun Zhang
Volume 7, Issue 1 , March 2019, , Pages 106-117
Abstract
As a former Portuguese colony, Macao is the only region in China where Cantonese, a variety of Chinese, and English, an international language, are enjoying de facto official statuses, with Putonghua being a quasi-official language and Portuguese being another official language. Recently, with an increasing ...
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As a former Portuguese colony, Macao is the only region in China where Cantonese, a variety of Chinese, and English, an international language, are enjoying de facto official statuses, with Putonghua being a quasi-official language and Portuguese being another official language. Recently, with an increasing number of Mainland Chinese students crossing the border to pursue their tertiary studies in Macao, the question as to how they cope with the complex sociolinguistic situation there is of great importance. The present study focuses on how Mainland students perceived Chinese-English code-mixing during their sojourn. It has been found that in the process of their adapting to Macao, the Mainland students’ attitudes towards Chinese-English code-mixing shifted due to the influence of local flexible ideologies about multilingualism. Accordingly, they could strategically resort to Chinese-English code-mixing, a linguistic practice negatively perceived on the Mainland, to socialize with people of different linguistic backgrounds when sojourning in Macao. In this process a flexible cross-border identity was constructed.