Journal articles on the topic 'Language and languages – Political aspects – Case studies'

In 2019, a new law regulating the use of languages other than Macedonian entered into force in North Macedonia. Language issues have always been a hot topic in North Macedonia and one capable of stirring controversial debate, especially between the Albanian- and the Macedonian- speaking population. This is also the case for this most recent piece of legislation. The present article discusses initially the constitutional and political background to the adoption of the law. It then analyses some of the most disputed aspects of the law. Most of them relate to the broader issues of democracy and rule of law as well as the balance with other human rights.

The article analyzes the role of English in the language policy of the Asian continent countries in the system of world globalization processes from the viewpoint accepted in modern sociolinguistic literature on the connection between the language aspect of globalization and the spread of English as the global language, the universal second language. The authors note the historical component of the popularity of English in the modern world in general and in the countries under consideration in particular. It includes the influence of the British Empire and the strengthening of the US position in the international arena. There are also provided estimates of the number of people speaking English both as the first and the second language in everyday life. The authors analyze large multinational states of South Asia and the Middle East such as Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan. The situation with the English language is presented in these countries against the background of the state and national languages functioning. The authors made an attempt to show both the general aspects of the use of English, including through the prism of the legislative acts that are in force there, above all the constitutions, and the peculiarities of its functioning in each of these countries, including under the influence of the language policy pursued by their leadership. There is also noted the growing interest of the authorities in Russian in Iran and Chinese in Pakistan as the languages that may seriously compete with English in the future and break its monopoly.

The review of existing approaches to the study of the problem of language planning is carried out. The features of the implementation of its main aspects are studied. The definitions of the term “language planning” in domestic and foreign sociolinguistics are compared. The activity of actors is studied at the macrolevel and microlevel of language planning. Attention is paid to the goals of language planning, which include not only work on changes in the areas of language use, but also counteraction to the speech shift, which can ultimately lead to the death of the language. Language planning is viewed as a combination of three main areas: status planning, corpus planning and planned language acquisition. The article presents the results of a comparative analysis of these components in relation to some of the title languages of the Russian Federation: Tuvan, Kalmyk and Karelian. It is argued that prestigious planning is the foundation for successful language fore-casting. The importance of considering both social and political components in language forecasting is emphasized. The relevance of the study is due to the need to create a base for the subsequent linguistic forecast, which is impossible without an analytical assessment of the existing linguistic situation.

The paper deals with a comparative and contrastive analysis of the experience Azerbaijani and Turkish languages have gained in the transition to the Latin script. The methods of rendering personal names from European languages which, similarly to Azerbaijani and Turkish, use the Latin alphabet into the specified Turkic languages and vice versa are considered. The author presumes that the way a problem of rendering personal names as a special category of proper names is solved provides the grounds for giving an opinion on how successful the integration of a language that has switched to a Latin-based alphabet into a family of languages and cultures sharing the similar Latin alphabets has been or is going to be. In this respect, the study is topical since it enables one, by considering similar experiences of the languages involved, to forecast the trajectory the Kazakh language, intending to switch to the Latin-based alphabet in the near future, is going to follow. The novelty of the study consists in the linguistic forecasting method applied, which implies solely the study of the real experience of the languages subject to study and therefore provides the forecast with one hundred percent verifiability to be achieved once Kazakhstan has entirely transitioned to the Latin script. The theoretical value of the research consists in a contribution it makes to the methodological basis of the comparative and contrastive studies of related languages, including the creation of alphabets for them, as well as in a possibility of making use of the results achieved herein in further studies aimed at theoretical comprehending the peculiarities of a language functioning in the translation aspect after its transition to a new alphabet. The study has made it possible to identify the methods of rendering personal names from/to European languages, used nowadays in Turkish (absolute and relatively complete transfer) and Azerbaijani (transcription and transliteration) languages. Through the prism of practical experience of these languages, an objective forecast is made with respect to the Kazakh language in case of its complete transition to the Latin-based alphabet. The paper concludes that the Kazakh language has reasons to follow either the way of Turkish, as the language of the state, which to a certain extent has managed to successfully integrate into Europe in cultural, economic and political terms, and what Kazakhstan certainly strives for, or the way of Azerbaijani, to which the Kazakh language is connected with ties of a shared cultural and historical past.

This essay aims to contribute to current studies of language and empire by considering arabic and persian in the ninth and tenth centuries. Following the lead of Edward Said on colonial empires and translation, I focus on the political aspects of language and translation in “premodern” trans-Asian societies, which have not received the nuanced attention they deserve. Accentuating the act of adopting and supporting a language as political, I argue that the wax and wane of imperial languages were predicated on two usually simultaneous dynamics: intra-imperial interests and, to use Laura Doyle's term, inter-imperial competition. Imperial patronage aimed, on the one hand, to consolidate power, exercise control, stabilize administration, and order lived reality for imperial subjects and, on the other hand, to create a discourse to fashion and project an image of rule capable of competing with rival claims in Afro-Eurasia. On both fronts, the promotion of one vernacular as “high language” entailed resisting another one in an already filled political, sociocultural, and linguistic space. The new language thus proceeded in an intrusive and even disruptive way since it involved a construction of new meanings to conform to alternative sociopolitical and cultural norms and priorities and to tame the multiplicity of language. Yet, such a political engagement or competition with existing language(s) and discourse(s) also led to new forms of hybridity of language and discourse, as was the case for Persian when the Samanids (819-999) adopted the script of the Arabic language and much of its vocabulary and idioms to express their thoughts.

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an effective method of the discourse analysis. It is aimed at analyzing the special relationship between power and the traditional ideology in implied discourse. Traditional discourse analysis always analyzes the structure and composition of discourse in terms of linguistic features, CDA makes language analysis more creative. It deeply explores the inherent potential of language and systematically interprets the deep meaning of discourse. This paper will take the specific corpus, namely Trump's TV speech, as the language material, Halliday's systematic functional grammar as the theoretical basis, and physicality, modality and personal pronoun as the framework. This paper studies how speakers in political speech use language to shorten the distance between people and win people's affirmation and support from the aspects of transitivity analysis, modality analysis and personal pronoun.

Abstract This topical section brings together five essays that cover different aspects in the intersection of language and society in contemporary Taiwan. Briefly outlining the contents of each essay, this introduction focuses on the question how the essays complement each other in terms of level of analysis, empirical basis, and interdisciplinary approach. It shows how research on language planning on the national level and its underlying ideology ties in with analyses of the language choice behaviour of individual speakers at the receiving end of language planning. Claims derived from individual case studies in turn require quantitative data to allow for generalisability. Finally, interdisciplinary research in the intersection of language and media studies helps us to understand how language standards and dominant language ideologies are disseminated, reproduced, and challenged.

Metaphor and other figurative uses of language play a central role in political dialogue on account of their semantic, pragmatic and textual ‘added value’ effects: they provide an opportunity to introduce new thematic aspects, increase the textual coherence of the dialogue contributions and provide warrants for (analogical) conclusions. One of the oldest examples of metaphor use in political dialogue is the so-called fable of the belly, which tells the story of a dispute between the seemingly ‘lazy’ stomach/ruler and the more ‘active’ body members/citizens over the right to receive food. One of its most famous renditions can be found in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, where it is embedded in a debate between the character of the senator Menenius and rebellious citizens. This dialogic frame and the dispute ‘within’ the fable establish a multi-layered inter-dialogic pattern. Whilst the literary construction of this dialogue system in Shakespeare’s play is unique, it underlines the more general aspect of metaphor’s dialogic role, which is discussed further with regard to the present-day use of body-based metaphor in political discourse. These case studies are interpreted as evidence for the necessity to integrate this dialogic function as a central aspect in cognitive metaphor analysis.

In recent years, studies on social networks have begun to become more and more numerous in the literature, with scientists showing a real interest in an influential analysis that they have on societies. Social networks are tools through which political candidates have the opportunity to distribute their political message during election campaigns, as well as outside them, to a growing audience. A very strong connection has been made between technology and communication, outside of which we, as individuals, can no longer exist, the virtual space managing to exploit communication in all its aspects. Online political communication, an easily accessible form of manifestation that attracts disinterested political groups, offers the possibility of avoiding information bottlenecks for citizens by changing content in real time, with low information costs, which means a real advantage for politicians.The importance of social networks in political communication is even greater as its role is the main channel of communication and occupies a special place in election campaign strategies. The present study aimes to analyze the phenomenon of social networks in terms of the benefits it offers to politics, through an online political communication with content transmitted in real time, without time limit and with low costs.

The language choice at institutions of the European Union has been investigated in numerous studies examining such aspects as the European language constellation, institutional multilingualism and its possible reforms, linguistic capital and symbolic domination, and European identity related to the EU enlargement. In addition to these, studies researching the (language) practices at a specific EU institution, like the European Parliament, or analyzing EU organizational discursive practices have also been carried out. These studies, however, offer no insight into the way actors in EU institutions deal with multilingualism in their work place while producing texts for these institutions. It is for this reason that I decided to conduct a case study at the European Parliament to examine how advisers belonging to various political groups, despite their different national culture and distinct mother tongues, together succeed in producing what they call “panacea texts”. Finally, a possible new language constellation for the EU is discussed.

Taking measures against the coronavirus pandemic in 2020-2021 many universities all over the world had to transform their formal classes into distance or online courses. The article deals with the issues of online EFL and ESP teaching and the learning process in distance format under an instructor’s supervision. The research is based on the feedback data of the survey conducted for the Political Science students who were taking up the English language university course online in the 2020-2021 curriculum instead of formal classes. The aim of the research was to reveal the technical, psychological and behavioural aspects of English language distance learning in a virtual MS Teams classroom as well as to analyse the students’ self-assessment of the efficiency and results of the distance EFL course. Applying quantitative and qualitative data analyses together with the method of involved observation, the authors arrive at conclusions concerning the still existing technical problems preventing students from working effectively, the disruptive character of certain psychological and behavioural patterns in a virtual classroom, as well as discrepancies between the amount of effort students put into their work and their academic achievements. Study results show both the drawbacks of the distance online format compared to the traditional formal classroom and the possibilities of effective implementation of distance forms of education at some stages of the English language educational process or within particular modules of the curriculum.

AbstractThe article surveys the cultural relations in Egypt between Christians and Muslims before the Ottomans by means of a selection of churches in Old Cairo and of mosques in the growing city of al-Qāhira. It examines these buildings and aspects of them in the light of the changing status of the Christian population from majority to minority, categorising them into four key phases, from the rise of Islam to the coming of the Ottomans. It discusses shared features of architectural decoration and style, and notes that while some of these are used neutrally and interchangeably between monuments of the two faiths, others which are sited at key locations, such as on a façade or in a main sanctuary, arguably function as political or religious statements. Such features suggest that cultural identity was expressed by the two faiths within a common frame of visual reference.

At the English court of Queen consort Henrietta Maria (1625-1642), translation was used as a political tool, partly to impose the queen’s linguistic, cultural and Catholic heritage on Calvinist England. The queen played a pivotal role as a patron of the arts and an agent of Anglo-French cultural relations, and many translators dedicated texts to her in the hopes of winning her favour. This article focuses on “translating agents” (Buzelin, 2005), i.e. translators, printers and patrons, operating in the political, religious and literary networks in and around the Queen’s court. My research draws on scholarship on the cultural and ideological aspects of translation in Stuart Court culture and builds on recent studies on the intersection between translation and print in early modern Europe. I study patterns of patronage, literary production, and text circulation; and I probe the political, social, religious, and print networks involved in the production of translations associated with the Queen’s court, and extending well beyond its social or geographical boundaries. I examine translations using digital catalogues (Early English Books Online,Renaissance Cultural Crossroads,Cultural Crosscurrents in Stuart and Commonwealth Britain), and conduct paratextual analyses of translations dedicated to Henrietta Maria. In this article, I study translator Thomas Hawkins by using data fromSix Degrees of Francis Baconand theOxford Dictionary of National Biography. Hawkins was a key translating agent who operated in transnational Catholic print networks and whose translations of Jesuit Nicolas Caussin’sLa Cour Saintefound their way into social and literary networks around the Queen’s court. I situate Hawkins in the political and ideological contexts of the time and show how he promoted Catholic devotional literature in his capacity as agent of translation, culture and ideology. Hawkins’s case illustrates how agency, patronage and power come together in early modern England’s culture of printed translations.

The article analyzes the instruments of political communication used by Russian authorities and other groups of interests in the fight for the abolition of the most severe punishments in the Emirate of Bukhara as an element of its political-legal and social-economic modernization. On a base of legal acts, notes of contemporaries and periodicals of the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries the author analyzes using of different communication tools, groups of interests which used them, effectiveness of communicative means. In particular, diplomatic demarches of imperial diplomats and “own example” of the Russian settlements on the territory of the Emirate of Bukhara are examined as well as direct political consultations of frontier Russian administration (of the Turkestan Governor-Generalship) with Bukharan emirs and high officials and campaign in periodical at the beginning of the 20th century launched by Russian business circles and political parties. The study clarifies the reasons why the goal was not reached despite the active position of Russian actors: some instruments could be effective in relations with Western states but were not relevant in case of the Central Asian country, besides that, the conflicts between Russian authorities (Military Ministry form one side and Ministry of Foreign Affairs from another) on the “Bukharan question” graded effect of political communication executed by regional authorities and Russian actors immediately in the Emirate.

The original Javanese culture of the communities in Java has been running for decades, meaning that this culture has been very rich in elements of universal culture such as the system of social organization, knowledge, arts, religion, and language. Ngayogyakarta Hadiningrat Palace plays an essential role as the center and cultural resource owned by the city of Yogyakarta; one of the areas that are still famous for its cultural guardians, traditions, and behaviors of an ancestor. This research used qualitative methods to obtain data through literature reviews and interviews. Literature review and interview results then became analytical material and adapted to the existing frame of thought as a result of the library studies conducted at the beginning. Then after the analysis process was completed, the results were obtained. This research revealed that the Javanese culture in the people of Yogyakarta affected the political ideology because when speaking about Javanese culture, three aspects cannot be separated in the Javanese community, especially Yogyakarta, Javanese culture, Belief, and religion. A contest will always be syncretism, cannot be constantly intact on assimilation, and acculturation is even alienated (to be drawn). As long as the Javanese people still exist, the Javanese culture will remain alive and develop when the relics of letters, dialectics, and cultures still exist.

Female rappers in the Arab world have increased in both number and prominence in recent years. Yet, while there is extensive bibliography on female rap in the Western world, few studies have examined female rap in the Arab world. This paper represents a preliminary approach to this phenomenon, offering a general overview of the fe- male rappers in various Arab countries and the different issues they address. The paper then goes on to analyze a corpus consisting of the texts of the young Egyptian rapper Mayam Mahmoud, who has become internationally famous, highlighting linguistic aspects as well as the themes. The topics preferred by female Arab rappers include political problems in their country and social themes such as the situation of women, their day-to-day reality, the struggle against sexism and solidarity among women. The language used is direct, straightforward and free of social conventions. These aspects are in line with “conscious” rap created by women around the world. Rap music has become a vehicle through which women seek to secure a share of the power, affirm their choices and build alternative visions of their identity.

While macro-level language policy and planning (LPP) that is done mainly by governments still dominates thinking in the field, limitations of this focus have been demonstrated by recent broader and more focused conceptualizations of LPP. For instance, global LPP, particularly for languages of wider communication such as English, has received considerable attention. Similarly, studies of meso- and micro-level planning has shown that many LPP decisions have to be taken at sub-national institutional, communal and familial levels, particularly in contexts where macro-level policies do not exist, where non-interventionist policies of benign neglect are deemed appropriate from a political point of view, or where a problem is too small to attract national attention. These recent developments have led to additions to the macro-level LPP framework, providing more appropriate and contextually relevant tools to understand LPP efforts carried out by LPP “actors” both within and beyond individual polities. However, this diversification of LPP frames and contexts can also be seen as going through a process of simultaneous unification and taking a macro-like character, as illustrated by the distinctions being drawn between the public and the private sector LPP. Taking Bangladesh as a case and drawing on LPP issues pertaining to public and private universities as well as pre-tertiary educational institutions with a particular focus on medium of instruction and the private tutoring industry, we argue for the relevance of this macro-like distinction for a better understanding of complex LPP issues in the country. We maintain that the public-private domain distinction may complement existing variables by adding a dimension that is increasingly becoming important in a globalized world dominated by neoliberalism.

AbstractThe nature of what has been termed "tolerance" and "intolerance" in the historiography of medieval Iberia has, while rarely defined, continued to provide much-employed organizing categories for the field. This paper reviews one focus of that historiography from the nineteenth into the twenty-first century: the relations among Muslims, Jews, and Christians, with respect to tolerance/intolerance and related categories (notably, convivencia). It analyzes, among other factors, the impact on this historiography of the intellectual, cultural, and political movements which have affected historians of medieval Iberia. It makes a case for the importance for specialists in the field to be keenly aware of these aspects of historiography at a time when medieval Spain is seen as offering a unique opportunity for testing theories of interfaith relations and social interaction

The paper presents an overview of the freelance practice in the Ukrainian translation industry through the lens of the role of Associate Translation Fellow at “Association4U” EU-funded technical aid project (Phase I) aimed at supporting approximation of Ukrainian laws to EU legislation. To meet the challenges of the ever-changing political world, translators should be able to build specific capacities. Under the microscope of the observations made is the range of competences which a contemporary translator should have to maintain a competitive profile in institutional translation domain. An institutional translator’s portrait has been drawn up based on the A4U case, which became possible due to feedbacks given to junior fellows and stylistic analysis of the translated texts. The studies of acquis communautaire provide insights into the stylistic peculiarities of translation of the EU acts in the context of the Ukrainian language. Key attention is given to cognitive, stylistic, and discursive aspects of translation process. The paper deals with a complex of the general philological background and specific skills of translation experts, which is a pre-requisite of accurate translation in the framework of academic, industrial, and institutional realms.

Abstract In the Soviet Union, logics of evolutionism undergirded the Communist party-state's interventions into many aspects of Soviet life, including the realm of “folk music.” In this article, I draw on the example of the Soviet institutionalization of a Crimean Tatar folk orchestra to demonstrate how Soviet musical evolutionism ordered and constrained vernacular musical practices in ways that have had long-term political consequences, especially concerning the politics of post-Soviet indigeneity. I argue that to delink teleology from musical evolution—akin to how evolution is understood in the physical sciences—would take a fundamental step toward decolonizing music studies. I conclude by comparing the Soviet case to contemporary discourses of musical evolutionism, observing how it risks exiling some musics to a present that is “less evolved.” Crimean Tatar language, translated by Adel Khairutdinova, Muslim Umerov, and Ayla Bakkalli

Abstract Studies have covered a variety of aspects related to the translation of political texts and propaganda. However, little has been written about the role that heterolingualism and translation can play in the original versions of these very texts. This article investigates a case in which multilingualism in propaganda was employed to reflect and comment on multilingualism and diversity in the political reality. It analyzes two highly controversial televised election advertisements from the Israeli 2013 campaign and their use of both Hebrew and Arabic in speech and in interlingual and intralingual subtitles. The analysis shows that code-switching and subtitles can play a role in conveying the political message and in masking it at the same time. It also suggests that the political use of heterolingualism and translation in the propaganda itself should be more profoundly explored.

This paper examines aspects of political ideology as realised through translation in the context of a case study, the translations of the Roadmap Plan. The Roadmap is one of several peace plans or initiatives that have been launched in the last decades to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Originally drafted in English in 2003 by the Quartet, the plan was subsequently translated into Arabic and Hebrew by different institutions and news media. This paper begins by examining the textual profiles of the different Arabic and Hebrew versions, focusing on their functions and principles of audience design. This study then moves on to establish how ideological factors inform translational choices as well as the interpretation of translated texts by readers. The main body of the analysis, informed by concepts and methods of descriptive translation studies and critical discourse analysis, focuses on the translator’s mediation of proper names (including protagonists of the conflict and toponyms); instances of deliberately ambiguous or vague drafting; and politically sensitive terms (e.g. ‘normalisation’ or ‘curfew’). The concluding section accounts for the findings of the analysis in terms of the social, political, and ideological constraints shaping the different language versions of the document under scrutiny.

AbstractThis paper proposes to use the phrase ‘culture of communication’ to unravel the relationship between language and culture that cannot be understood as merely unexplained mental signposts without constitutive enmeshed ideas. It engages with relevant core ideas and combines theoretical and empirical evidence to put forward the proposition that a culture of communication exists in every culture. The key constituents of a culture of communication, as an analysis of online images used by the Palestinian Islamic movement Hamas will show, are diverse verbal, written and visual forms of communication, which relate to each other in intricate ways and which require orderly discursive interpretation. To make my argument, I highlight the concept of culture of communication and the discourses and issues that follow from it. Then, I address the landmark literature on language and culture before considering the case study. My objective is to attempt to discern the relational aspects that underpin socio-political understanding and practices in terms of communication.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to assess what an overview of theoretical literature and case study material can tell us about the different ways crime has been organised in the past in different cultures and whether this has any impact on the ways in which crime may be organised in the present and the future. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis is based on an examination of Mcintyre’s work on how crime is organised and later political, economic and civil society views of criminality. Brief discussion of case studies involving the UK, The Netherlands, the Arab world, Ethiopia and Russia is used to see how crime was organised there in the past. Findings – There is a greater variety of variables in the way crime was organised historically than McIntyre suggests, and an examination of civil society might pay greater dividends than even looking at politics or economic aspects of organised crime. Research limitations/implications – The study is preliminary. More historical case study material needs to be accessed. Originality/value – There are many research case studies, particularly at PhD level and in subjects other than criminology, such as history, language studies and cultural studies generally, which have not been brought together to present an overall picture. This paper is a first step in that direction.

The article provides evidences about mechanisms and practices that undermine the effectiveness of investigative journalism through the analysis of selected case studies of corruptive phenomena in Italy, Hungary, Romania and Latvia. In particular, the article shows that the idea of watchdog journalism does not work actually in the observed countries. Indeed, investigative journalism requires certain socio-economic conditions, such as a low degree of influence of the political and economic spheres and a high level of journalistic professionalism, which are not (always) present in the aforementioned countries. More specifically, the article focuses on three aspects that may distort investigative journalists’ work: a certain proximity (sometimes overlapping) of publishers (often rich oligarchs or prominent businessmen) and politicians, the ‘blackmail’ exercised through advertising investments and the interferences of secret services, which may dissuade newsrooms from performing their role as the watchdog.

The political discourse of protesting which comprises carrying signs for clarifying demands and expressing feelings constitutes a significant area of study in the signs of online platforms within the linguistic landscape field. Taking as a case in point the Jordanian protest on May 30, 2018, a few examples of the signs of protest are analyzed using some aspects of visual semiotics, particularly the code choice. The study is grounded on both quantitative and qualitative data culled from online sources. The analysis of the data finds a variety of linguistic codes used in attaining different readerships: the standard form of Arabic as the official language in the country and in other Arab countries; Jordanian Arabic investigated as the device of speaking out the voice of the local audience; English viewed as the language of addressing the global audience; and the multilingualism occurrence as a significant feature in the corpus for achieving further readerships. These codes are largely motivated by other significant semiotic resources, including multimodality, font size, color relevance, and materiality practices. The study further views the signs of protest as a new trend of mobility, often considered a challenging notion to the territoriality of fixed signs in most linguistic landscape studies.

The article examines monumental memorialization of political violence in the period of communism in Bulgaria. The text reviews contemporary research presenting the topic of transitional justice, formation of victim’s identities and as part of post-communist cultural memory. A research is made of three theoretical approaches to understanding monumental memorialization – through traumatization, contestation or dangerization of memory and the social functions and meanings stemming from them. The analytical part represents a case study from Bulgaria, using ample empirical material – interviews, archive materials and other sources, part of a larger research by the author. Comparative analysis is used for description of national idiosyncrasies which is used as a basis to present their variants, temporal and spatial aspects. Social functions, political uses, interpretations, their use for reconstruction of national past and formation of national identity. A separate part of the text examines the initiators of these memorial signs – social actors, nongovernmental organizations and political parties, on which the degree of institutionalization and politization of this memory depends, as well as their use for far right radicalization. The text tracks the change of memorial landscapes and the major spatial trajectories (logics) of this post-communist topography of terror, as well as the symbolism embodied in it, combining political, traditional and religious meanings.

Comparative studies pose special problems for historians, given their long tradition of being wed to the political history of individual countries and given the limitations of their methods, which lend themselves to (at most) middlerange generalizations. Sociology and anthropology have always seemed better poised to deal with the big questions across cultures. The rise of social history, however, provides new opportunities for comparative studies, insofar as such social entities and processes as cities, social classes, crowds, and women lend themselves better to comparison than do micropolitics within the framework of a single country's history. Despite these new possibilities, most historians demand intense contextualization and mistrust secondary sources, making it difficult for one scholar to master the relevant languages and archives in more than one culture, or to pose a broad enough question for comparative analysis. Much social history, even by the most sociologically minded historian, is likely to be based on archives and concerned largely with a single country or culture. Social historians can, however, legitimately inject a comparative element into their writing by paying special attention to the international aspects of their subject and by considering their works about particular social groups in individual countries as case studies in related phenomena.

Although the nature poems of the Jamaican writer Una Marson are usually set against her transnational projects, they are inextricable from the cosmopolitan vision described in her radio broadcasts and journalism. Studies of transnational modernism have brought to the fore Marson's participation in pan- Africanist political and literary networks, her poems' mediation of the black West Indian woman's experience, and her work promoting West Indian literature in the metropolitan institution of the BBC. Analyses of Marson as a transnational igure, however, have obscured aspects of her literary production—speciically, her nature poetry. Placing Marson's West Indian nature poetry that was broadcast by the BBC in the context of the original programs reveals the efects of moving from print publication to radio broadcast. And, along with her editorials for the Jamaican literary magazine The Cosmopolitan (1928–31), Marson's BBC broadcasts (1939–45) make the case for the ongoing relevance of the pastoral tradition to public life.

Abstract The subject of unification is as vibrant as national movement even after 58 years of a fractured verdict. More than to achieve a physical conjugation it was an attempt for cultural fusion. The aspiration for linguistic unification was a part of the national discourse. The movement, which began with mystic originations, later on turned out to become communal. Political changes during 1799 A.D. and 1857 A.D. changed the fortunes of Mysore state and ultimately led to its disintegration and became the reason for this movement. The concept of unification is akin to the spirit of nationalism, against the background of colonial regime assigning parts of land to different administrative units without taking into consideration the historical or cultural aspects of that place. Kannadigas marooned in multi lingual states experient an orphaned situation got aroused with the turn of nineteenth century. The problem precipitated by the company was diluted by British when they introduced English education. Though the positive aspect like emergence of middle class is pragmatic, rise of communalism on the other hand is not idealistic. This research paper is designed to examine the polarization of castes during unification movement of Mysore State (Presently called as State of Karnataka, since 1973, which was termed Mysore when integrated) which came into being in 1956 A.D. Most of the previous studies concentrate on two aspects viz ideological discourse and organizational strategies adopted to gain Unification. The course of the unifi cation movement and role of Congress party dominates such studies while some of them concentrate on the leaders of the movement. Other studies are ethnographical in nature. ‘Community Dominance and Political Modernisation: The Lingayats’ written by Shankaragouda Hanamantagouda Patil is a classic example. Mention may be made here of an recent attempt by Harish Ramaswamy in his ‘Karnataka Government and Politics’ which has covered almost all aspects of emergence of Karnataka as a state but communal politics during unification movement has found no place. ‘Rethinking State Politics in India: Regions within Regions’ is an edited book by Ashutosh Kumar which has articles on ‘Castes and Politics of Marginality’ where a reference is made to caste associations and identity politics of Lingayats, but the area of study is neighboring Maharashtra and not Karnataka. Though it contains two articles on Karnataka its subject matter doesn’t pertain to this topic. One more important effort is by ‘Imagining Unimaginable Communities: Political and Social Discourse in Modern Karnataka’ where the author Raghavendra Rao thinks Karnataka and India as two unimaginable communities and discuss primarily the founding moments of negotiation between the discourses of Indian nationalism and Kannada linguistic nationalism. It is more an intellectual history and throws light on nationalism in a colonial context. Mostly studies concentrate on either the course or the leaders of the movement. Invariably congress as an organization finds place in all studies. But the blemish of such studies is a lesser concentration on activities of major socio cultural groups. The role of socio cultural groups assumes importance because of the milieu at the beginning of 20th century which annunciated a wave of social changes in the state. It is a known fact that the movement for linguistic state was successful in bringing a political integration of five separate sub regions but failed to unite people culturally. This concept of unification which is akin to the spirit of nationalism got expressed at the regional level in the sense of respect for once own culture, language and people. In case of Karnataka this expression had political overtones too which is expressed by some who fought for it (Srinivas & Narayan, 1946 ). Most of the early leaders of unification movement (and for that matter even movement for independence too can be cited here) belonged to one particular caste, and with passing of time has led to the notion of domination of that caste over the movement. This paper tries to give justice in a limited way by giving legitimate and adequate recognition for those castes which deserves it and do away with misconceptions. Two concepts political modernization and social mobility are used. The later derives its existence from the former in this case. The data used here is primarily gained from news papers and secondary sources like books and interviews given by participants. No hypothesis is tested nor any theory is developed in this attempt but historical materials are examined in the light of modernity. The key problem discussed here is emergence of communal politics and the role of social groups in unification. Biases of regionalism, caste and class have been overcome by rational thinking.

AbstractThis article looks beyond the dichotomy between silence (mo 默) and speech (yan 言) and discusses the functions of and attitudes toward silence in the Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋 as a case representing the variety of ideas of silence in early China. In the West, silence has been widely explored in fields such as religion and theology, linguistic studies, and communication and literary studies. The consensus has moved away from viewing silence as abstaining from speech and utterance—and therefore absence of meaning and intention, toward seeing it as a culturally dependent and significant aspect of communication. However, beyond a number of studies discussing unspoken teachings in relation to early Daoism, silence has received little attention in early China studies. This article approaches the functions of silence by pursuing questions regarding its rhetorical, emotive, political, and ethical aspects. Instead of searching for the nature of silence and asking what silence is, this article poses alternative questions: How do ancient Chinese thinkers understand the act of silence? What are the attitudes toward silence in early China? How does silence foster morality? How does silence function as performative remonstrance? How is it used for political persuasion? How does silence draw the attention of and communicate with readers and audiences? How does silence allow time for contemplation, reflection, and agreement among participants? How is silence related to various intense emotional states? These questions lead us to reflect on previous scholarship which regarded silence in early China as the most spontaneous and natural way to grasp the highest truth, which is unpresentable and inexpressible through articulated speech and artificial language. In this sense, the notion of the unspoken teaching is not only understood in opposition to speech, but also as a means to reveal the deficiency of language and the limits of speech. However, through a survey of dialogues, stories, and arguments in Yanzi chunqiu, I show that silence is explicitly marked and explained within the text, and is used actively, purposefully, and meaningfully, to persuade, inform, and motivate audiences. In other words, silence is anything but natural and spontaneous. Rather, it is intentionally adopted, carefully crafted, and publicly performed to communicate, remonstrate, criticize, reveal, and target certain ideas. That is to say, silence is as argumentative as speech and as arbitrary as language. Finally, an awareness of and sensitivity to silence provides a new perspective to engage with other early Chinese texts.

AbstractThis paper makes a case for exploring the cultural facets of Mughal rule as well as for a stronger engagement with sources in vernacular languages for the writing of Mughal history. Bengal's regional tradition of goddess worship is used to explore the cultural dimensions of Mughal rule in that region as well as the idioms in which Bengali regional perceptions of Mughal rule were articulated. Mangalkavya narratives—a quintessentially Bengali literary genre—are studied to highlight shifting perceptions of the Mughals from the late sixteenth century to the eighteenth century. During the period of the Mughal conquest of Bengal, the imperial military machine was represented as a monster whom the goddess Chandi, symbolizing Bengal's regional culture, had to vanquish. By the eighteenth century, when their rule had become much more regularized, the Mughals were depicted as recognizing aspects of Bengal's regional culture by capitulating in the end to the goddess and becoming her devotees. This paper also studies the relationship of the Mughal regime with Bengal's popular cultural celebration—the annual Durga puja—and explores its implications for the public performance of religion and for community formation during the early modern period.

When serious official political statements are not enough to get people’s votes, politicians often turn to attention-grabbing and emotion-triggering self-presentation. They give the public access to their “normal, everyday” lives through personalisation and use other tools of “new” politics to create a favourable image of themselves. They can also show the unexpected, backstage aspects of their lives, such as their interactions with their pets. The paper analyses four case studies from different countries (Belarus, Estonia, Slovakia and Spain) in which politicians’ references to their pets became a prominent topic in internet communication and provoked numerous humorous reactions in the form of memes. By looking at various degrees of politicians’ personalisation strategies, we show that “new” and “old” politics should be regarded as the poles of a continuum rather than a binary opposition. We also discuss the content, form and stance of the humorous internet memes posted in reaction to the appearance of politicians’ pets in the news. Our research indicates that such memes function to provoke a discussion and, as a result, form a polyvocal commentary on events; the politicians, however, must take risks accompanying unconventional, revealing political communication and hope that “there's no such thing as bad publicity”.

This article deals with reassessing Venetian Cinquecento painting in France in the 1820s. This research is a series of case studies related to this problem and providing various types of historical analysis. It examines particular artworks, artistic, social, political contexts, and the influence of Venetian art on the formation of a new artistic language in France in the 1820s. Using an analysis of a wide range of both visual and verbal primary sources, I explore theoretical and practical aspects of the reassessment of Venetian Cinquecento painting in early nineteenth-century France. The paper presents a detailed examination of various French publications of that time regarding Venetian art, as well as a comparative analysis of artworks by Venetian and French artists, namely, Jacopo Robusti, Paolo Veronese, Andrea Schiavone, Eugène Delacroix, Xavier Sigalon, and Eugène Devéria. In this article, I address the following questions. What was the knowledge about Italian Renaissance art in France in the early 19th century? What place did the Venetian school take among the Italian schools of painting in the French consciousness at that time? How was Venetian painting perceived, revisited and presented? How did it influence the formation of a new artistic language in the 1820s? This study reveals the causes, specifics, aspects, and far-reaching consequences of the reconsideration of Venetian Cinquecento painting in the 1820s and its significance for the understanding of the patterns of art development in 19th-century France.

В статье рассмотрены новые направления социально-политической трансформации современного общества и их отражение в мультипликации. Показана взаимосвязь изменения социальных норм и базовых сюжетных линий мультипликационных фильмов. Особое внимание уделяется возрастающей роли горизонтальных социальных связей и повышению ценности институтов семьи и репутации, вызванному высочайшей степенью транспарентности информационного общества. При этом ценность индивидуализма отходит на второй план, уступая место взаимопомощи для достижения общего блага. Кроме того, отмечено изменение представлений о романтической любви и отношениях поколений. Проведен анализ иллюстраций создания и разрушения авторитарных политических моделей в современных мультфильмах. Показана актуальность в мультипликационных фильмах тем борьбы с тиранией и гражданской самоорганизации. Popular culture reflects not only events, but also the nature of the modern era and problematic aspects that require the attention of the state and society. The article examines new vectors of socio-political transformation of modern society and their reflection in animation. The study of modern cartoons shows that they have replaced traditional myths and began to broadcast social norms and their transformation. Special attention is paid to the growing role of horizontal ties and the increase in the value of the family and the institution of reputation, caused by the highest degree of transparency of the modern information society. This is clearly emphasized in the plots of such cartoons as Frozen, Moana, Brave, Inside Out, Finding Nemo, and Coco. All cartoons show the hero’s rebellion, which results in an understanding of family ties’ value. In addition, the article notes a change in ideas about romantic love. At the same time, the value of individualism fades into the background, giving way to mutual assistance to achieve the common good. The article emphasizes that atomization and individualism were characteristic of human culture for a fairly short period of time. They appeared after the collapse of traditional society, urbanization and the next industrial revolution. However, later urbanization was replaced by hypeurbanization along with information transparency, which, relying on new technical means, revived many features of the traditional society. Moana’s plot demonstrates the reduction of the atomization of modern society, the negative side of the high level of individualism, which is increasingly difficult to demonstrate today due to the rapidly increasing role of social connections. The conflict of civilizations described by Huntington is not reflected in modern multiplication. Anyone who seemed to be the enemy and the embodiment of evil, upon closer examination, turns out to be either a victim in need of help, or a potential ally. In this specific, often repeated plot, it is not difficult to see the influence of postcolonialism as a direction of modern thought and public discourse. Illustrations of the formation, functioning and destruction of authoritarian political models in modern cartoons are analyzed. The relevance of the theme of the fight against tyranny in animated films is shown. Examples include Toy Story 3, A Bug’s Life and the animated series Watership Down. In the first case, the dictator imposes on society the ideology of a hostile external world, which forms the authoritarian political model’s ideological basis. Its organizational basis is represented by a repressive mechanism consisting of security, surveillance and a closed perimeter. This brings the presented model closer to totalitarian political regimes, because modern autocracies do not hinder the intention of those who disagree with leaving the country. This helps them maintain their power for as long as possible. In order to maintain this regime, a privileged caste is created, represented by the power apparatus (guards who are allowed gambling and additional consumption). In addition, the security apparatus has the right to carry out violence against all other members of society. The plot of A Bug’s Life also shows society’s struggle against tyranny, which is carried out through a combination of the direct threat of violence and propaganda. The method of intimidating the tyrant Hopper shows that he does not perceive himself as a legitimate bearer of power and recipient of resources. Internal recognition of its own illegitimacy provokes a reluctance to make concessions, reach a mutually acceptable compromise and negotiate, as the legitimate government usually does. Direct political content is also found in Watership Down. Within the framework of the narrative for children, the main attributes of the classic fascist dictatorship are politically realistic. The authors draw attention to the fact that the basis for the alternative to dictatorship is not atomization and chaotic violence, but civic organization and mutual assistance.

From the 1990s onwards, many Latin American states have adopted constitutional reforms that recognise indigenous peoples’ rights. In this article, we address a much less studied aspect, the emergence of new language rights. Based on field research and process tracing, we study the case of Peru where indigenous language rights were created in the absence of ethnic parties and with a relatively weak indigenous movement. We argue that the country moved slowly away from a monolingual language regime towards the recognition of indigenous languages as official languages and the creation of language rights. We identify key moments of state transformation in the 1970s, the 1990s, and the 2000s as linked to successive building blocks in the creation of a multi-lingual language regime. In particular, the decentralisation reforms of the 2000s created new opportunities for subnational actors to further develop these rights in different regions of the country. We exemplify these dynamics by looking into the adoption of language rights in the regions of Cuzco and Ayacucho.

The Routledge Handbook of language and culture represents a comprehensive study on the inextricable relationship between language and culture. It is structured into seven parts and 33 chapters. Part 1, Overview and historical background, by Farzad Sharifian, starts with an outline of the book and a synopsis of research on language and culture. The second chapter, John Leavitt’s Linguistic relativity: precursors and transformations discusses further the historical development of the concept of linguistic relativity, identifying different schools’ of thought views on the relation between language and culture. He also tries to demystify some misrepresentations held towards Boas, Sapir, and Whorf’ theories (pp. 24-26). Chapter 3, Ethnosyntax, by Anna Gladkova provides an overview of research on ethnosyntax, starting from the theoretical basis laid by Sapir and Whorf and investigates the differences between a narrow sense of ethnosyntax, which focuses on cultural meanings of various grammatical structures and a broader sense, which emphasises the pragmatic and cultural norms’ impact on the choice of grammatical structures. John Leavitt presents in the fourth chapter, titled Ethnosemantics, a historical account of research on meaning across cultures, introducing three traditions, i.e. ‘classical’ ethnosemantics (also referred to as ethnoscience or cognitive anthropology), Boasian cultural semantics (linguistically inspired anthropology) and Neohumboldtian comparative semantics (word-field theory, or content-oriented Linguistics). In Chapter 5, Goddard underlines the fact that ethnopragmatics investigates emic (or culture-internal) approaches to the use of different speech practices across various world languages, which accounts for the fact that there exists a connection between the cultural values or norms and the speech practices peculiar to a speech community. One of the key objectives of ethnopragmatics is to investigate ‘cultural key words’, i.e. words that encapsulate culturally construed concepts. The concept of ‘linguaculture’ (or languaculture) is tackled in Risager’s Chapter 6, Linguaculture: the language–culture nexus in transnational perspective. The author makes reference to American scholars that first introduced this notion, Paul Friedrich, who looks at language and culture as a single domain in which verbal aspects of culture are mingled with semantic meanings, and Michael Agar, for whom culture resides in language while language is loaded with culture. Risager himself brought forth a new global and transnational perspective on the concept of linguaculture, i.e. the use of language (linguistic practice) is seen as flows in people’s social networks and speech communities. These flows enhance as people migrate or learn new languages, in permanent dynamics. Lidia Tanaka’s Chapter 7, Language, gender, and culture deals with research on language, gender, and culture. According to her, the language-gender relationship has been studied by researchers from various fields, including psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, who mainly consider gender as a construct that preserves inequalities in society, with the help of language, too. Tanaka lists diachronically different approaches to language and gender, focusing on three specific ones: gender stereotyped linguistic resources, semantically, pragmatically or lexically designated language features (including register) and gender-based spoken discourse strategies (talking-time imbalances or interruptions). In Chapter 8, Language, culture, and context, Istvan Kecskes delves into the relationship between language, culture, and context from a socio-cognitive perspective. The author considers culture to be a set of shared knowledge structures that encapsulate the values, norms, and customs that the members of a society have in common. According to him, both language and context are rooted in culture and carriers of it, though reflecting culture in a different way. Language encodes past experience with different contexts, whereas context reflects present experience. The author also provides relevant examples of formulaic language that demonstrate the functioning of both types of context, within the larger interplay between language, culture, and context. Sara Miller’s Chapter 9, Language, culture, and politeness reviews traditional approaches to politeness research, with particular attention given to ‘discursive approach’ to politeness. Much along the lines of the previous chapter, Miller stresses the role of context in judgements of (im)polite language, maintaining that individuals represent active agents who challenge and negotiate cultural as well as linguistic norms in actual communicative contexts. Chapter 10, Language, culture, and interaction, by Peter Eglin focuses on language, culture and interaction from the perspective of the correspondence theory of meaning. According to him, abstracting language and culture from their current uses, as if they were not interdependent would not lead to an understanding of words’ true meaning. David Kronenfeld introduces in Chapter 11, Culture and kinship language, a review of research on culture and kinship language, starting with linguistic anthropology. He explains two formal analytic definitional systems of kinship terms: the semantic (distinctions between kin categories, i.e. father vs mother) and pragmatic (interrelations between referents of kin terms, i.e. ‘nephew’ = ‘child of a sibling’). Chapter 12, Cultural semiotics, by Peeter Torop deals with the field of ‘semiotics of culture’, which may refer either to methodological instrument, to a whole array of methods or to a sub-discipline of general semiotics. In this last respect, it investigates cultures as a form of human symbolic activity, as well as a system of cultural languages (i.e. sign systems). Language, as “the preserver of the culture’s collective experience and the reflector of its creativity” represents an essential component of cultural semiotics, being a major sign system. Nigel Armstrong, in Chapter 13, Culture and translation, tackles the interrelation between language, culture, and translation, with an emphasis on the complexities entailed by translation of culturally laden aspects. In his opinion, culture has a double-sided dimension: the anthropological sense (referring to practices and traditions which characterise a community) and a narrower sense, related to artistic endeavours. However, both sides of culture permeate language at all levels. Chapter 14, Language, culture, and identity, by Sandra Schecter tackles several approaches to research on language, culture, and identity: social anthropological (the limits at play in the social construction of differences between various groups of people), sociocultural (the interplay between an individual’s various identities, which can be both externally and internally construed, in sociocultural contexts), participatory-relational (the manner in which individuals create their social–linguistic identities). Patrick McConvell, in Chapter 15, Language and culture history: the contribution of linguistic prehistory reviews research in this field where historical linguistic evidence is exploited in the reconstruction and understanding of prehistoric cultures. He makes an account of research in linguistic prehistory, with a focus on proto- and early Indo-European cultures, on several North American language families, on Africa, Australian, and Austronesian Aboriginal languages. McConvell also underlines the importance of interdisciplinary research in this area, which greatly benefits from studies in other disciplines, such as archaeology, palaeobiology, or biological genetics. Part four starts with Ning Yu’s Chapter 16, Embodiment, culture, and language, which gives an account of theory and research on the interplay between language, culture, and body, as seen from the standpoint of Cultural Linguistics. Yu presents a survey of embodiment (in embodied cognition research) from a multidisciplinary perspective, starting with the rather universalistic Conceptual Metaphor Theory. On the other hand, Cultural Linguistics has concentrated on the role played by culture in shaping embodied language, as various cultures conceptualise body and bodily experience in different ways. Chapter 17, Culture and language processing, by Crystal Robinson and Jeanette Altarriba deals with research in the field of how culture influence language processing, in particular in the case of bilingualism and emotion, alongside language and memory. Clearly, the linguistic and cultural character of each individual’s background has to be considered as a variable in research on cognition and cognitive processing. Frank Polzenhagen and Xiaoyan Xia, in Chapter 18, Language, culture, and prototypicality bring forth a survey of prototypicality across different disciplines, including cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology. According to them, linguistic prototypes play a critical part in social (re-)cognition, as they are socially diagnostic and function as linguistic identity markers. Moreover, individuals may develop ‘culturally blended concepts’ as a result of exposure to several systems of conceptual categorisation, especially in the case of L2 learning (language-contact or culture-contact situations). In Chapter 19, Colour language, thought, and culture, Don Dedrick investigates the issue of the colour words in different languages and how these influence cognition, a question that has been addressed by researchers from various disciplines, such as anthropology, linguistics, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience. He cannot but observe the constant debate in this respect, and he argues that it is indeed difficult to reach consensus, as colour language occasionally reveals effects of language on thought and, at other times, it is impervious to such effects. Chapter 20, Language, culture, and spatial cognition, by Penelope Brown concentrates on conceptualisations of space, providing a framework for thinking about and referring to objects and events, along with more abstract notions such as time, number, or kinship. She lists three frames of reference used by languages in order to refer to spatial relations, i.e. a) an ‘absolute’ coordinate system, like north, south, east, west; b) a ‘relative’ coordinate system envisaged from the body’s standpoint; and c) an intrinsic, object-centred coordinate system. Chris Sinha and Enrique Bernárdez focus on, in Chapter 21, Space, time, and space–time: metaphors, maps, and fusions, research on linguistic and cultural concepts of time and space, starting with the seminal Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), which they denounce for failing to situate space–time mapping within the broader patterns of culture and world perspective. Sinha and Bernárdez further argue that although it is possible in all cultures for individuals to experience and discuss about events in terms of their duration and succession, the specific words and concepts they use to refer to temporal landmarks temporal and duration are most of the time language and culture specific. Chapter 22, Culture and language development, by Laura Sterponi and Paul Lai provides an account of research on the interplay between culture and language acquisition. They refer to two widely accepted perspectives in this respect: a developmental mechanism inherent in human beings and a set of particular social contexts in which children are ‘initiated’ into the cultural meaning systems. Both perspectives define culture as “both related to the psychological make-up of the individual and to the socio-historical contexts in which s/he is born and develops”. Anna Wierzbicka presents, in Chapter 23, Language and cultural scripts discusses representations of cultural norms which are encoded in language. She contends that the system of meaning interpretation developed by herself and her colleagues, i.e. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), may easily be used to capture and convey cultural scripts. Through NSM cross-cultural experiences can be captured in a thorough manner by using a reduced number of conceptual primes which seem to exist in all languages. Chapter 24, Culture and emotional language, by Jean-Marc Dewaele brings forth the issue of the relationship between language, culture, and emotion, which has been researched by cultural and cognitive psychologists and applied linguists alike, although with some differences in focus. He considers that within this context, it is important to see differences between emotion contexts in bilinguals, since these may lead to different perceptions of the self. He infers that generally, culture revolves around the experience and communication of emotions, conveyed through linguistic expression. The fifth part starts with Chapter 25, Language and culture in sociolinguistics, by Meredith Marra, who underlines that culture is a central concept in Interactional Sociolinguistics, where language is considered as social interaction. In linguistic interaction, culture, and especially cultural differences are deemed as a cause of potential miscommunication. Mara also remarks that the paradigm change in sociolinguistics, from Interactional Sociolinguistics to social constructionism reshaped ‘culture’ into a more dynamic as well as less rigid concept. Claudia Strauss’ Chapter 26, Language and culture in cognitive anthropology deals with the relationship between human society and human thought/thinking. The author contends that cognitive anthropologists may be subdivided into two groups, i.e. ones that are concerned with the process of thinking (cognition-in-practice scholars), and the others focusing on the product of thinking or thoughts (concerned with shared cultural understandings). She goes on to explore how different approaches to cognitive anthropology have counted on units of language, i.e. lexical items and their meanings, along with larger chunks of discourse, as information, which may represent learned cultural schemata. Part VI starts with Chapter 27, Language and culture in second language learning, by Claire Kramsch, in which she makes a survey of the definition of ‘culture’ in foreign language learning and its evolution from a component of literature and the arts to a more comprehensive purport, that of culturally appropriate use of language, along with an appropriate use of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic norms. According to her, in the postmodern era, communication is not only mere transmission of information, it represents construal and positioning of the self and of self-identity. Chapter 28, Writing across cultures: ‘culture’ in second language writing studies, by Dwight Atkinson focuses on the usefulness of culture in second-language writing (SLW). He reviews several approaches to the issue: contrastive rhetoric (dealing with the impact of first-language patterns of text organisation on writers in a second language), or even alternate notions, like‘ cosmopolitanism’, ‘critical multiculturalism’, and hybridity, as of late native culture is becoming irrelevant or at best far less significant. Ian Malcolm tackles, in Chapter 29, Language and culture in second dialect learning, the issue of ‘standard’ Englishes (e.g., Standard American English, Standard Australian English) versus minority ‘non-standard’ speakers of English. He deplores the fact that in US specialist literature, speaking the ‘non-standard’ variety of English was associated with cognitive, cultural, and linguistic insufficiency. He further refers to other specialists who have demonstrated that ‘non-standard’ varieties can be just as systematic and highly structured as the standard variety. Chapter 30, Language and culture in intercultural communication, by Hans-Georg Wolf gives an account of research in intercultural education, focusing on several paradigms, i.e. the dominant one, investigating successful functioning in intercultural encounters, the minor one, exploring intercultural understanding and the ‘deconstructionist, and or postmodernist’. He further examines different interpretations of the concepts associated with intercultural communication, including the functionalist school, the intercultural understanding approach and a third one, the most removed from culture, focusing on socio-political inequalities, fluidity, situationality, and negotiability. Andy Kirkpatrick’s Chapter 31, World Englishes and local cultures gives a synopsis of research paradigm from applied linguistics which investigates the development of Englishes around the world, through processes like indigenisation or nativisation of the language. Kirkpatrick discusses the ways in which new Englishes accommodate the culture of the very speech community which develops them, e.g. adopting lexical items to express to express culture-specific concepts. Speakers of new varieties could use pragmatic norms rooted in cultural values and norms of the specific new speech community which have not previously been associated with English. Moreover, they can use these new Englishes to write local literatures, often exploiting culturally preferred rhetorical norms. Part seven starts with Chapter 32, Cultural Linguistics, by Farzad Sharifian gives an account of the recent multidisciplinary research field of Cultural Linguistics, which explores the relationship between language and cultural cognition, particularly in the case of cultural conceptualisations. Sharifian also brings forth illustrations of how cultural conceptualisations may be linguistically encoded. The last chapter, A future agenda for research on language and culture, by Roslyn Frank provides an appraisal of Cultural Linguistics as a prospective path for research in the field of language and culture. She states that ‘Cultural Linguistics could potentially create a paradigm that “successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’.” She further asserts that Cultural Linguistics has the potential to function as “a bridge that brings together researchers from a variety of fields, allowing them to focus on problems of mutual concern from a new perspective” and most likely unveil new issues (as well as solutions) which have not been evident so far. In conclusion, the Handbook will most certainly serve as clear and coherent guidelines for scholarly thinking and further research on language and culture, and also open up new investigative vistas in each of the areas tackled.

With the application of post-colonial theoretical approaches in the last decades of the twentieth century CE, the study of archaic Greek overseas settlement has arrived at something of a terminological and methodological impasse. Scholars continue to debate whether Mediterranean and Black sea settlement can legitimately be termed ‘colonisation’ yet attempts to modify this language of imperialism have thus far failed to achieve significant alteration of the overarching paradigms. This paper will suggest a new approach to these problems using contemporary migration theory to conceptualise archaic Greek mobility and settlement, through the case studies of Milesian migration to Naukratis in Egypt and Abydos in the Troad during the 7th century BCE. Drawing on aspects of structuration and practice theory, it will seek to describe and explain the multi-faceted structures, practices and agency involved in the migration of Milesian Greeks to these areas. The two chosen case studies will be compared to understand how spatial, social, cultural and political factors may have impacted upon the characteristics of Naukratis and Abydos and the multitude of stimuli surrounding their settlement. This will provide ways to re-envisage an important period of Mediterranean history, offering a flexible methodological approach to be utilised in other contexts.

Abstract This article attempts to illuminate one of the most elusive aspects of the study of translation: the translator’s ethic. With the exception of Lawrence Venuti’s The Scandals of Translation (1998), few scholars have ventured in-depth studies of the subject. The study I propose is two-fold, with individual focuses on the theory and practice of translation, each analysed from three distinct perspectives: the translator’s visibility, culpability and conscience. This dual focus combined with its varying angles of analysis will lead to relatively well-defined conclusions. The theoretical element of this study is based upon scholarly opinion regarding existing constraints on the translator’s task (Lefevere; Bassnett; Lambert), and the direct influence of those constraints upon the literary translator’s process and final result. With the purpose of illustrating these theoretical suppositions, this essay analyses a recent translation (2013) of a political essay originally written in English and later published in translation in a Spanish newspaper. The detailed theoretical and practical analyses of this text will reveal the translator’s performance in the case of study as well as answer the following questions: Is the translator visible? If so, why did she choose to be? Is the translator culpable or innocent in the final results of the translation? Lastly, did the translator make the decisions in question consciously or unconsciously? The ultimate objective of this essay is to provide answers to these questions, thus not only clarifying the translator’s performance in this specific case but also demonstrating a translator’s ethic in more general terms. And, perhaps, it can also begin the elaboration of a much-needed ethical code for translators.

Pierre Bourdieu famously dismissed phenomenology as offering anything useful to a critical science of society – even as he drew heavily upon its themes in his own work. This paper makes a case for why Bourdieu’s judgement should not be the last word on phenomenology. To do so it first reanimates phenomenology’s evocative language and concepts to illustrate their continuing centrality to social scientists’ ambitions to apprehend human engagement with the world. Part II shows how two crucial insights of phenomenology, its discovery of both the natural attitude and of the phenomenological epoche, allow an account of perception properly responsive to its intertwined personal and collective aspects. Contra Bourdieu, the paper’s third section asserts that phenomenology’s substantive socio-cultural analysis simultaneously entails methodological consequences for the social scientist, reversing their suspension of disbelief vis-à-vis the life-worlds of interlocutors and inaugurating the suspension of belief vis-à-vis their own natural attitudes.

Popular culture is widely understood to intersect with and shape our understanding of world politics. Numerous studies have highlighted the way language and imagery from literature, drama, film, television and other sites of cultural production make their way into political discourses on geopolitics, terrorism, immigration, globalisation and arms control, to name a few. Conversely, world events, especially international crises, provide rich materials for popular culture across mediums and genres. This interchange has often been understood through the theory of intertextuality, which highlights the way the meaning and authority of any text is established by drawing on, or positioning against, other texts from the surrounding culture. This article develops an account of intertextuality that takes seriously the embodied dimensions of popular culture and political discourse. Revisiting the work of Julia Kristeva, I argue that a framework binding together bodies, discourses and social practices offers a promising avenue for International Relations scholars grappling with the embodied aspects of intertextuality. The article explores the implications and potential of this conceptualisation through a case analysis of the sport–war intertext and spectacular war. In doing so, it demonstrates that the legitimising effects ordinarily understood to accompany intertextuality are intensified when bodily drives, impulses and affect are taken into account.

Abstract This article explores how scholarship can be put to work by specialists penning evidence-based policies seeking peaceful resolutions to long-standing, complex, and so-far intractable conflict in the Malay-Muslim dominated provinces of South Thailand. I contend that more is required than mere empirical data, and that the existing analysis of this conflict often lacks theoretical ballast and overlooks the wider historical context in which Bangkok pursued policies impacting its ethnolinguistically, and ethnoreligiously diverse citizens. I demonstrate the utility of both interacting with what social theorists have written about what “religion” and language do—and do not—have in common, and the relative importance of both in sub-national conflicts, and comparative historical analysis. The case studies that this article critically introduces compare chapters of ethnolinguistic and ethnoreligious chauvinism against a range of minorities, including Malay-Muslim citizens concentrated in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. These include Buddhist ethnolinguistic minorities in Thailand’s Northeast, and Catholic communities during the second world war widely referred to as the high tide of Thai ethno-nationalism. I argue that these revealing aspects of the southern Malay experience need to be contextualized—even de-exceptionalized.

The Thirty-second Annual AMSS Conference, cosponsored this year byIndiana University's Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program and thedepartment of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, analyzed "EastMeets West: Understanding the Muslim Presence in Europe and NorthAmerica." Katherine Bullock (program committee chair, University ofToronto), Nazif Shahrani (professor of anthropology, director of MiddleEastern and Islamic studies program, Indiana University), PatrickO'Meara (dean, International Programs, Indiana University), and LouaySafi (president, AMSS) welcomed attendees and made introductoryremarks.Since the passing of Edward Said coincided with the beginning of theconference, in his welcoming remarks Shahrani referred to this greatscholar's lasting legacy. In fact, many panelists during the course of theconference talked about the importance of Said's research to their ownwork.Regular AMSS attendees such as myself would tell you that this conferencewas a tightly organized orchestra of excellent sessions, one after theother. The number of sessions was smaller than usual, and there were fewerparallel sessions, probably because far more academic rigor had been exercisedin selectiong papers than had been the case in previous conferences.A special delight on the first day was the lunch and jumu'ah prayer atthe Bloomington Islamic Center, catered and served by BloomingtonMuslim community volunteers. After these events, the conference beganin earnest. The opening panel, "A Political Philosophical Perspective onIslam and Democracy," featured M. A. Muqtedar Khan (Adrian College),who addressed the theoretical aspects of this debate, and Nazia Khandwalla(University of Texas), who looked at the debate in an empiricalstudy of slum-dwelling women in Karachi ...

Newly arrived refugees and asylum seekers constitute a vulnerable population in terms of health and social conditions due to lived trauma and experiences of loss, as well as factors in the host country such as not speaking the language, not having employment and social exclusion. Studies have shown that many newly arrived refugees find it difficult to establish a sustainable position in the host country’s labour market due to a lack of connections, low levels of education and political, social and cultural barriers. The Swedish Public Employment Service runs an establishment programme aimed at helping newly arrived refugees to find employment quickly and manage their own livelihoods. In this study, we analyse the administrator support document used by Swedish Public Employment Service case workers in their work with the programme to explore whether and how it considers the participants’ mental health and conditions for social participation. The results show that despite newly arrived refugees being especially vulnerable in terms of mental health, little attention is paid to these aspects, the possible effects they may have on the programme, the participants’ integration into the labour market and Swedish society as a whole.

This article explores how refugee advocates, and refugees themselves, manage social hostility towards refugees and migrants through their talk, specifically how this hostility is managed through orientation to the category ‘victim’. Case studies from the publicity materials of four advocacy organisations, as well as the ‘internal’ talk of their staff, volunteers and beneficiaries collected via Narrative Biographical Interviews, are analysed using discourse analytic methods, specifically Membership Categorisation Analysis. This allows insight into the differing aspects of the organisation’s talk and allows analysis of how orientation to the victim category is distributed and managed across the ‘dialogical network’. This discourse analytic approach, sensitive to how members of the ‘dialogical network’ make hostile and sympathetic voices relevant features of their local talk and manage categorisations of refugees in often tacit ways, highlights a pattern of category change, where a reworking of the dominant modes of refugee representation performed by the organisations in their publicity materials is achieved by their members and beneficiaries. The category work negotiated by advocate and refugee informants rearranges the components of the helping relationship, centring the experience, voice and strength of asylum seekers/refugees, and de-centres the objectives of the helping organisations – offering insights into new ways forward for refugee advocacy as a practice of solidarity beyond charity.

The study of the Holodomor should be integrated into a broader understanding of genocide as a whole, given that a consensus that has evolved among a substantial group of scholars that the Ukrainian Famine of 1932–33 fits the general template of genocide. Raphael Lemkin, who introduced this concept into the legal structure of the international system, was clearly aware of the famine of 1932–33 and developed a notion of the “Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine” as a multi-pronged genocidal assault on the Ukrainian people. The events of the Holodomor remained largely unknown to the general Western public until the publication of Robert Conquest’s <em>Harvest of Sorrow</em> in 1986. Presently, the links between the study of the Holodomor and genocide studies in North America are relatively underdeveloped. As such, there are many aspects of genocide studies that could be illuminated by an understanding of the Holodomor. These include its examination as a “Communist genocide” as per Mao’s 1950s famine or Cambodia, but perhaps more specifically within the context of Stalin’s actions in the 1930s. Another important aspect is the problem of isolating ethnic from social and political categories: the Holodomor saw a concomitant attack on the Ukrainian intelligentsia and Ukrainian language and culture. The question of the numbers of victims remains controversial, although the figure of 3–5 million Ukrainians who died in Ukraine and the Kuban seems to withstand scrutiny. Finally, there is the question of intentionality. Here, in light of recent interpretations of international law, it seems quite clear that Stalin was responsible for genocide in the case of the Holodomor.

Combining evocative and analytic autoethnography, I explore the ambiguous and ambivalent relationship between conversion, “going native,” and socialization through a case study of my own experience. I examine fieldnotes written during my two-year marriage to a Zanzibari man and audio recordings from my linguistic ethnographic fieldwork among Zanzibari women during the same period, not only revealing my own previously concealed secrets but also arguing for the value of such revelations. I demonstrate how I was lured into “becoming Swahili” because of the relationships “Swahiliness” enabled me to build with my interlocutors in the field and thus the access to ethnographic secrets it gave me. Paradoxically, doing so socialized me into a culture of secrecy that not only restricted my research but also endangered me. I conclude by drawing parallels to a culture of secrecy in academia, where norms about what is appropriate to include in scholarship prevented me, until recently, from sharing the negative aspects of “going native” through marriage and conversion.

It is known from previous studies that in many cases (though not all) the prosodic properties of a spoken utterance reflect aspects of its syntactic structure, and also that in many cases (though not all) listeners can benefit from these prosodic cues. A novel contribution to this literature is the Rational Speaker Hypothesis (RSH), proposed by Clifton, Carlson and Frazier. The RSH maintains that listeners are sensitive to possible reasons for why a speaker might introduce a prosodic break: “listeners treat a prosodic boundary as more informative about the syntax when it flanks short constituents than when it flanks longer constituents,” because in the latter case the speaker might have been motivated solely by consideration of optimal phrase lengths. This would effectively reduce the cue value of an appropriately placed prosodic boundary. We present additional evidence for the RSH from Turkish, a language typologically different from English. In addition, our study shows for the first time that the RSH also applies to a prosodic break which conflicts with the syntactic structure, reducing its perceived cue strength if it might have been motivated by length considerations. In this case, the RSH effect is beneficial. Finally, the Turkish data show that prosody-based explanations for parsing preferences such as the RSH do not take the place of traditional syntax-sensitive parsing strategies such as Late Closure. The two sources of guidance co-exist; both are used when available.

During the past several decades, historians have investigated various aspects of the Chicano movement. In most of these studies, the important role that moderate liberal activists have played in promoting significant social change during the same period has been slighted. By moderate liberal activists, I mean those who depended on the federal government to help solve the problems facing the Mexican-American community, trusted mainstream institutions and political leaders to eliminate discrimination, and, most importantly, rejected the politics of protest. Little is known about these individuals. Who were these men and women, and how did they contribute to the struggle for social justice and educational equality? The following study examines the role that some moderate liberal educators played in promoting school reform during the height of the Chicano movement. It focuses on the drafting of the May 25, 1970 memorandum and the role played by Mexican Americans in shaping its development. This memorandum was the first major policy developed by the Office for Civil Rights to deal with the issue of discrimination against linguistically distinct children in the public schools. It clarified the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s (HEW) position on the responsibility of local school districts to “provide equal educational opportunity to national origin minority group children deficient in English language skills.” I argue that while Mexican- American moderates did not play a direct role in the formulation of this policy due to their exclusion from federal agencies prior to the 1960s, they did play a crucial role in its enforcement. Their involvement in the implementation of the memorandum was the origins of meaningful Mexican-American participation in the shaping of educational policies at the national level.

A notion of a film text is currently an object of scientific research, which is caused by a rapid development of cinematic art within the last century and an increasing attention of scientists to a linguistic constituent of this phenomenon. The film text is one of the most important displays of a media text. In a film text, two semiotic systems are present, linguistic and non-linguistic ones, which operate signs of different kinds. The linguistic system of the film text is serviced by sign-symbols, created from an establishment of a connection between something, which is being explained, and something, which is explained based on a conditional agreement. It is represented by two components: written one (credits, captions which constitute a part of a movie universe) and oral one (an actor’s speech, a voice-over, a song, etc.), which are expressed with the help of symbolic signs – words of a natural everyday language. An investigation of a political fiction movie text belongs to modern explorations of text stylistics in the direction of description and standardization of the system of speech genres in the field of linguistics and literature studies. Also, this investigation describes stylistic and translation aspects of a linguistic part of a political fiction movie text. The article considers stylistic indications of a political fiction movie text and ways of their translation. A political fiction movie communicates to the audience a political stance and a worldview, or makes it aware of political problems. During the translation of a political fiction movie, the author of the translation takes into consideration the stylistic tonality of the text, which, contrary to the phonetic one, represents in itself the concentrate of expressive means of the original text. In the case of a political movie, this is about stylistic dramatic-epic tonality. The main task for the translator of a political movie is to skillfully carry out translation transformations, for the translation text to convey all the information contained in the original text with the maximum possible accuracy. The most effective transformations in the Ukrainian translation of the analyzed fiction movie are: contextual lexical-semantic substitution, concretization, word-for-word translation, synonymic translation, syntactic omission of a part of a sentence, syntactic replacement in a word combination structure, grammatical replacement.