RC 25 Language & Society Program
First World Forum, ISA
September 5-8, 2008
RC 25 Language & Society Program
First World Forum, ISA
September 5-8, 2008
Organizers: Celine-Marie Pascale, American University, United States,
pascale@american.edu and Isabella Paoletti, Social Research and Intervention
Centre, Italy, paoletti@crisaps.org
Session 1 Classrooms and the Struggle for Equality
Chair: Antonia Randolph, University of Delaware, United States, arandolp@udel.edu
Discussant:
Antonia Randolph, University of Delaware, United States,
arandolp@udel.edu
Presenters:
Carola Mick, Universitè du Luxembourg, Luxembourg, carola.mick@uni.lu
Discourse Structures and Social Inequalities in Education: Promotion of Critical
Discursive Competence
School as a social institution cannot be separated from its context; it is part of and
influencing social
reality. In Luxembourg, the education system has to deal with the multilingual and
multicultural contexts
due to migration processes, and it contributes at the same time to the structuring of this
reality: Inherent
selection mechanisms of the so-called “school of integration” construct social inequality
between pupils
from families with and without migration background.
Enriching Applied Linguistics with the reflections of the French Discourse Theory and
Critical Discourse
Analysis, this project aims at reconstructing ideological macrostructures and the
individual discourse
strategies of pupils and teachers in dealing with them. Language plays an important role
in this process,
because
- language and discourse are closely related;
- multilinguism is one of the most striking characteristics of Luxembourg’s society;
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RC 25 Language & Society Program
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September 5-8, 2008
- membership categorization processes – and so do ideologies – often work through
simplified
conceptions of linguistic or stylistic characteristics;
- multilinguism is an important resource for the promotion of critical discursive
competence;
- all research activity works through language.
The final aim of the project is to develop didactic concepts that promote pupils’ critical
discursive
competence, allow them to reflect critically their social reality and to be aware of the
performative potential
and the influence capability of their own discourses.
Nieema Galloway, Independent Scholar, United States, ng597@nyu.edu
Acts of Resistance: The Language and Literacy of Urban Youth
The interconnectedness of language and literacy poses a immense problem for linguistic
minorities who are socially and economically marginalized from the mainstream speech
community. Urban youth, as speakers of a non-standard language: African American
Vernacular English (AAVE), often fall disproportionately behind in terms of literacy rate.
Illiteracy of Standard American English (SAE) not only limits the attainment of technical
skills and favorable employment options for these youth, but also perpetuates a system of
oppression that negates one's ability to emancipate his/herself from a condition of
disenfranchisement. Failure to achieve higher levels of SAE literacy in the African
American community has been blamed on a number of factors including poverty,
intellectual inferiority, and lack of interest in academic pursuits. However, I argue that
these notions are ahistoric , and do not properly acknowledge the complex social,
cultural, or political struggles that have shaped the course of literacy for AAVE speakers.
Thus, it is imperative that we contextualize how literacy for linguistic minorities has been
and continues to be informed by acts of domination and contestation. In this paper, I will
explore how literacy development is compromised as a result the cultural-historical
location of African-Americans within a hegemonic culture; how the misuse of
[language] as a form of resistance can serve as barrier literacy and liberation; and how
developing emancipatory knowledge through critical pedagogy can transform acts of
[self-defeating] resistance into acts of counter-hegemony.
LaVada
Taylor
Brandon,
Purdue
University,
United
States
brandonl@calumet.purdue.edu, Denis Taliaferro Baszile, Miami University of Ohio,
United States, taliafda@muohio.edu and Theadora Berry, Independent Scholar, United
States, crfscholar1913@gmail.com
Race Language and Schooling
Reflecting on a dilemma that is neither new nor resolved, two decades ago political
essayist June Jordan (1985) asked the question: “When will a legitimately American
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September 5-8, 2008
language, a language including Nebraska, Harlem, New Mexico, Oregon, Puerto Rico,
Alabama, and working class life and freeways and Pac-man become the language studied
and written and glorified in the classroom” (p. 30). Since the advent of compulsory
education in U.S. society, the question of cultural and linguistic pluralism has been a
source of controversy. In the late 19th century, a major impetus for the common school
movement was a need to Americanize Eastern European immigrant children, which in
part meant replacing their native tongues with English (Tyack, 1974). Today American
schooling continues its quest of Americanization, albeit focused on different populations
of students, including African American, Native American and Latino students among
others.
Taught to romanticize or silence the experiences of marginalized groups in the
United States, many diversity courses that prepare pre-service teachers do not address the
political significance or the educational impact of linguisim on linguistically and racially
diverse learners. Situated in a highly racialized context where understanding difference is
created through black/white binary oppositions (Omi& Winant, 1994). Race becomes the
illusion used to normalize a whiteousness [emphasis my add] of Standard English through
a denormalized juxtaposition of a black/otherness.
Navigating the following questions: 1) In what ways can an awareness of
language as an evolving dynamic dialogical process help to facilitate an understanding of
language diversity as an opportunity to create new linguistic communities? 2) How does
this understanding help educator re-imagine language barriers as educative experiences
for both themselves and their bilingual and bidialectical students? 3) What is the role of
teacher education programs in shaping this perception?
This paper highlights three linguistic moments to reveal the necessity of teacher
education courses to embrace the socio-linguistic needs of bilingual and bi-dialectical
learners.
Nirmali Goswami, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India, nirmalig@iitk.ac.in
School and language identity: Legitimating of School Hindi and resistance of local
variety in the schools of Banaras
In the discourse of the nation state, school can be seen as an important site of production,
reproduction and legitimating of the official language. State controlled system of
schooling plays an important role in legitimizing the use of the official language in post
colonial societies like India with a strong tradition of multilingualism.
The three language formula was incorporated in the education policy of India to strike a
balance between the multilingual social reality and the demands of the modern nation
state. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, a standard version of Hindi is taught in the schools as
the regional language of the state. But there are several other varieties of Hindi widely
used in the region which have been termed as dialects or variations of Hindi. Banarasi, is
one such variety, specific to the city of Banaras.
The paper seeks to examine the processes through which official language is
legitimizedand other varieties are marginalized in the school setting. It is based on the
data gathered through interviews and observations from a Hindi medium school in
Banaras.
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September 5-8, 2008
Teachers, school management, students, and their parents were interviewed in an attempt
to understand their views on the practice of Banarasi and other local varieties, in and
outside the school. It was found that the practice of such local varieties is controlled in
the school setting and is devalued against the school Hindi. The school Hindi, in some
cases, has also succeeded in making inroads into the families. But then the local varieties
also had their own space for expression within the school in informal situations. These
varieties continue to survive in the popular culture of the city of Banaras.
Therefore, while one can see the important role of school in actively promoting the use of
official version of Hindi and marginalization of the other varieties but at the same time it
has not completely succeeded in altering the linguistic practices of the school community
in all the domains. The discussion brings to light the conflict of the centralizing
tendencies of the project of the nation state with the local identities in post colonial
societies.
Session 2 Media Representation and Social Justice
Chair: William Housley Cardiff University, Wales, UK, housleyw@Cardiff.ac.uk
Presenters
William Housley Cardiff University, Wales, UK, housleyw@Cardiff.ac.uk and Richard
Fitzgerald, University of Queensland, Australia r.fitzgerald@uq.edu.au
Media, Interaction, Policy and Debate
Broadcast news and related media formats not only report 'facts' but are also used as a
resource for the breaking of government initiatives and policy to the wider voting public
(Boorstin, 1973). Furthermore, the media is seen to represent an area, a visible field if
you like, where ‘accountability’ and other forms of democratic checks and balances are
performed (Fairclough, 1995). Contemporary notions of the ‘mediatized public sphere’
in relation to the pursuit of ‘deliberative’ and ‘communicative’ democracy suggest that
we need to look more broadly at our media institutions in order to find new sites for
citizen engagement (Thomas, Cushion and Jewell, 2004). Historically, letters to the editor
have been among the most popular forums for citizen participation in public debate
(Wahl-Jorgensen, 2001). They have provided opportunities for public deliberation on
matters of common concern in societies where political communication is
overwhelmingly channelled through mass media.
Letters to the editor is only one of a number of participatory forums in contemporary
mass media where ‘regular’ citizens can participate in public debate. For example, talk
radio, the ‘radio phone in’, e-mails and ‘blogs’ have become an important venue for
‘populist deliberation’, through which citizens can bypass mainstream news formats to
make their opinions heard (Loviglio, 2004). During the course of this article the themes
of public accountability, government policy and interaction in media settings is
examined. In particular, we examine empirical instances of media discourse as a means
of exploring the use of identity categories, predicates and configurations as a means of
accomplishing policy debate in participatory frameworks such as radio phone-ins and
other formats that include selected panels of politicians taking questions from members
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September 5-8, 2008
of the public. This paper respecifies and explores the situated character of media settings
through the use of the reconsidered model of membership categorization analysis
(Housley and Fitzgerald, 2002) as a means of documenting, describing and illustrating
the
interactional
methods
associated
with
policy
debate,
public
participation/representation and democracy-in-action.
Peshkova Vera Mikhailovna, Centre for Analyses of Social-Political Processes, Institute
of Sociology, Moscow, Russia, pever@mail.ru
Producing of “Visible” Minorities and the “Otherness”: a Discursive Analysis of
Representing of Ethno-cultural Diversity in the Russian Press
National, regional, ethnic, cultural and other expression of diversity has grown
dramatically since the collapse of Soviet system. How ethno-cultural diversity is
produced, reproduced and perceived in the Russian society of post-soviet time? The Mass
media, in particularity the Press, play the essential role in defining of the public discourse
about ethno-cultural diversity. It should be underlined representation ethno-cultural
diversity is often correlated with representation “the Otherness”.
The Russian Press problematizes ethno-cultural diversity of the society in Russia
in several stereotypical ways, mainly using categorizations and evaluations.
Categorizations can be analyzed through the use of specific linguistic/discursive devices
in out-group categorizations and labeling. Also, there are some speech and cognitive
strategies, which greatly influence on people perception of the information about ethnocultural diversity represented in the Press.
The topic-matters of ethno-cultural diversity representing in the press bring to
constructing and then to producing the some stereotypical images of immigrants and
ethnic minorities granted as entities. For example, the main tendency of the representing
of Azerbaijanians in Russia in the Press is to reproduce the typified and stereotyped
categories which describe and represent Azeri community like “criminal, trade minority”.
The underlining of their mainly immigration status and cultural difference’ features
create image of ethnic minority which doesn’t look like “We”, which brings mainly
cultural and demographic treats, that are explained in terms of assumed cultural
properties, consequently, doesn’t assist to positive attitudes to them among auditorium of
the mass media.
В свою очередь, On other side, immigrants are represented in the Russian Press
according to their anthropological, cultural and social characteristics (appearance,
clothes, language, and behavior). The representation in the Press cultural differences of
immigrants combined with the social-economical problems is often accompanied by the
description of how fears and solidarity of “Us” against “aliens” are formed. The essence
of the problem of consequences of the immigration for “Us” is formulated like “they
don’t want to live by our laws” and “they infringe upon our interests”. Using ethnic
categories in describing of the immigration is served for political discourse to justify the
socio-economic and the political exclusion of immigrants.
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RC 25 Language & Society Program
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September 5-8, 2008
Vincent
Daoxun
Zhang,
National
Chengchi
University,
Taiwan,
vthchang@ms32.hinet.net
Doing rhetoric in presidential speech: form and function in political discourse
This paper aims to propose a linguistic pragmatic and rhetorical study along with a
critical analysis of the inaugural speech of the U.S. President George W. Bush (January
2005). Data for analysis are chosen on the grounds that, first, it adopts various forms of
linguistic repertoire and rhetorical strategies of repetition, parallelism, metaphor and
hedging within narratives to attract the audience’s attention via social network,
shortening their social distance through adaptation or dominance, and performing diverse
communicative functions. Secondly, as a leading role of democratic progress in ensuring
the world order, the U.S. speech is ideologically significant for displaying the dominant
appeals and universal values of globalisation, localisation, group interests, ethnic identity
and cultural diversity. Thirdly, being a crucial forum in mass/popular media, political
discourse and public address not merely serve an arena witnessing the symbolic power
reified within language, but invite the audience to recognise those prominent values and
furthermore to shape social cognition and construct the identity of cultural pluralism.
With the transition, transformation, and commodification of media ecology, mass
media frequently tend to amplify news events to fulfil the audience’s needs and to evoke,
stir, and trigger the emotional states of the public through provocative wordings and
linguistic strategies. President’s speech nevertheless plays a vital role in maintaining the
social security and stability and is indicative of multifaceted concerns. While terrorism
expanding throughout the world and having been the focus of global media, President
Bush, receiving though inter-/national criticisms on anti-terrorism, did not specifically
mention any Iraqi attacks, neither he named Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein in his
inaugural address. Instead, he tactically employed the frames of freedom/liberty
overwhelmingly as the core element to convey the messages of conquering tyranny,
ending hatred and keeping justice with the strongest weapon — “the force of human
freedom” to the peace-loving American citizens and the people of the world.
The audience’s mental processing and interpretation in media communication are
approached in relevance-theoretic account (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995; see also
Noveck & Sperber 2006, Forceville 2005) by looking into the address delivered in 2005.
The analyses were examined from larger units of text and macrostructure viewpoint, a
level of global organisation (Blakemore 1992: 165-6, macrostructure, van Dijk 1977:
130), to see the cognitive contextual effects reached by the audience. The sociocultural
aspect of language use is further explored to see the inseparable relationship between
language and social meaning. This functional and critical linguistic study reveals that the
stronger claims/actions could well be melted and/or hidden through such a stylistic
pattern and communicative strategy due to its implicitness, indirectness and vagueness.
The dialogic relations between form and function in political discourse reflect the social
cohesion/interaction and cultural dynamics of communicator and audience, thus
maintaining the dialectical relationship between social structures and social practice
(Fairclough 1995).
Blakemore, Diane. (1992). Understanding Utterances: An Introduction to Pragmatics.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
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September 5-8, 2008
Fairclough, Norman. (1995). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
Forceville, Charles J. (2005). Multimodal metaphors in commercials. “The pragmatics of
multimodal representations” panel at the 9th International Pragmatics Association
(IPrA) Conference, July 10-15, Riva del Garda, Italy.
Gibbs, Raymond W. Jr. (1993). Process and Products in Making Sense of Tropes. In
Andrew Ortony (ed.), Metaphor and Thought. 2nd ed. 252-276. New York:
Cambridge.
Lull, James. (1995). Media, Communication, Culture: A Global Approach. Cambridge:
Polity.
Noveck, Ira A. and Dan Sperber (eds.). (2006). Experimental Pragmatics. (Palgrave
Studies in Pragmatics, Languages and Cognition). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pilkington, Adrian. (1992). Poetic effects. Lingua 87: 29-51.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition.
2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
van Dijk, Teun A. (1994). Discourse and Cognition in Society. In David Crowley and
David Mitchell (eds.), Communication Theory Today, 107-126. Cambridge: Polity.
Melissa Steyn, University of Capetown, South Africa, Melissa.Steyn@uct.ac.za
The De la Rey Phenomenon Amongst Afrikaner Youth in South Africa: A Fantasy Theme
Analysis
This paper aims to propose a linguistic pragmatic and rhetorical study along with a
critical analysis of the inaugural speech of the U.S. President George W. Bush (January
2005). Data for analysis are chosen on the grounds that, first, it adopts various forms of
linguistic repertoire and rhetorical strategies of repetition, parallelism, metaphor and
hedging within narratives to attract the audience’s attention via social network,
shortening their social distance through adaptation or dominance, and performing diverse
communicative functions. Secondly, as a leading role of democratic progress in ensuring
the world order, the U.S. speech is ideologically significant for displaying the dominant
appeals and universal values of globalisation, localisation, group interests, ethnic identity
and cultural diversity. Thirdly, being a crucial forum in mass/popular media, political
discourse and public address not merely serve an arena witnessing the symbolic power
reified within language, but invite the audience to recognise those prominent values and
furthermore to shape social cognition and construct the identity of cultural pluralism.
With the transition, transformation, and commodification of media ecology, mass
media frequently tend to amplify news events to fulfil the audience’s needs and to evoke,
stir, and trigger the emotional states of the public through provocative wordings and
linguistic strategies. President’s speech nevertheless plays a vital role in maintaining the
social security and stability and is indicative of multifaceted concerns. While terrorism
expanding throughout the world and having been the focus of global media, President
Bush, receiving though inter-/national criticisms on anti-terrorism, did not specifically
mention any Iraqi attacks, neither he named Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein in his
inaugural address. Instead, he tactically employed the frames of freedom/liberty
overwhelmingly as the core element to convey the messages of conquering tyranny,
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RC 25 Language & Society Program
First World Forum, ISA
September 5-8, 2008
ending hatred and keeping justice with the strongest weapon — “the force of human
freedom” to the peace-loving American citizens and the people of the world.
The audience’s mental processing and interpretation in media communication are
approached in relevance-theoretic account (Sperber & Wilson 1986/1995; see also
Noveck & Sperber 2006, Forceville 2005) by looking into the address delivered in 2005.
The analyses were examined from larger units of text and macrostructure viewpoint, a
level of global organisation (Blakemore 1992: 165-6, macrostructure, van Dijk 1977:
130), to see the cognitive contextual effects reached by the audience. The sociocultural
aspect of language use is further explored to see the inseparable relationship between
language and social meaning. This functional and critical linguistic study reveals that the
stronger claims/actions could well be melted and/or hidden through such a stylistic
pattern and communicative strategy due to its implicitness, indirectness and vagueness.
The dialogic relations between form and function in political discourse reflect the social
cohesion/interaction and cultural dynamics of communicator and audience, thus
maintaining the dialectical relationship between social structures and social practice
(Fairclough 1995).
Session 3 Critical Analysis of Discourses of Stereotyping and Commonplaces
Chair: Erzsébet Barát, University of Szeged, Hungary, b_zsazsa@freemail.hu
Discussant: Erzsébet Barát, University of Szeged, Hungary, b_zsazsa@freemail.hu
Presenters:
Nicole
Butterfield,
Central
European
University,
Budapest,
butterfield_nicole@phd.ceu.hu
Resistance to Hegemonic Sexuality: Alternative Perspectives on Same-Sex Marriage and
Mainstream LGBT Activist Organizations in the United States
This paper is an analysis of the discourse produced on the issue of same-sex marriage
within Western academia and LGBT activist organizations in the United States. From the
perspective of the stereotype of “coupledom”, I analyze the discourses of coupledom
produced by the organizations GLAD and The Freedom to Marry Coalition from the New
England region of the U.S. I argue that a different approach than the ones used by these
organizations, which see same-sex marriage as the central issue, is necessary for
achieving recognition, civil rights, and financial security for LGBT collectives in the
United States. In order to explore the potentials of such an alternative approach, I turn to
the text “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage”. The authors of the text have developed a more
effective approach in that they have avoided a normative understanding of how families
and domestic relationships have been and continue to be developed. Meanings produced
by such commonplace terms as “straight”, “gay”, and “lesbian” take for granted the
founding framework of relationships as long-term, monogamous, and between two
individuals; whereas many within the so-called LGBT community practice different
forms of relationships and family that are not included in such stereotypical notions.
Therefore, more should be done on the part of LGBT organizations to problematize the
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fixity of identities on which they base their movements and to develop strategies that
reflect such a problematization.
Danica Minic, Central European University, Budapest, tihuanah@hotmail.com
The Notion of Stereotype in Feminist Media Advocacy in Croatia and Serbia
This paper aims to explore different meanings and uses of the concept of stereotype in
feminist media advocacy in Croatia and Serbia. Despite different feminist criticisms of
the uses of this concept within liberal feminist media scholarship and movement, this
notion still occupies an important place in women’s NGOs’ explanations of what is
wrong with the media. Therefore the position requires more scholarly attention. To
investigate the feminist investments of stereotypes, I shall analyze particular women’s
NGOs’ publications from the two countries; their own media production in this area
(documentaries on the topic of ‘women and the media’); and interviews with NGO
representatives. I shall explore whether and in what ways feminist criticisms of liberal
feminist uses of the notion of stereotype may apply in accordance with the particular
positions represented in the diversity of the data of feminist media advocacy in Serbia
and Croatia.
Marie Nordberg, Center for Gender Research, Faculty of Arts and Education, Karlstad
University, Sweden, Marie.Nordberg@kau.se
“If we only could enlighten and modernise them…”– Masculinity, heterosexuality, class,
metronormativity, modernity and other intersections in the Swedish debate on boys and
achievement
Although most boys in Sweden do rather well in school, a discourse constituting boys as
uninterested in schoolwork, lazy and illiterate have become hegemonic in the Swedish
discussions on boys, girls and schooling. In a report, grounded on available international
and national statistics the author, inspired by Paul Willis discussion of “the lads” and
masculinity theory, suggested that the gender difference highlighted by PISA, TIMSS
and in Swedish education statistics might be an effect of masculinity and a male antiachievement culture. Theoretical inspired by critical masculinity studies, feminist
poststructuralism and queer theory and by taking its point of departure in an analyse of
the discourses and stereotype descriptions of boys and girls repeated in this report, in
policy discussions and presented at a conference this paper deals with how gender, class,
heteronormatvity and metronormativity intersect in the construction of “the problematic
boy”, “the ideal pupil” and “knowledge” in the Swedish context. One effect of
contemporary policy focus on boys and their achievement and the repeated stereotype of
the problematic underachieving boy, grounded in sociological studies and theories, is that
a large group of well achieving boys as well as a group of low achieving girls – which
can be considered as more problematic – have been neglected and made invisible in the
debate. In the paper it is argued that the statistics as well as the description of the
problematic boy, relays on and repeat a normalisation of a certain classed,
metronormative and heterosexualised life story. Further it is argued that when a
heteronormative and polarised gender concept based on Parsons complementary sex role
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September 5-8, 2008
manuscript and Connell’s concept of “hegemonic masculinity” is articulated together
with a metronormative and colonial discourse, female teachers is given a mission to
modernise rural, labour classed boys by changing their preferences and masculine
practices, while male teachers are expected to increase boys achievements by making
their education more masculine. In the paper the discourse of the problematic
underachieving boy is also problematied by a study of boys in four primary school
classes and in four vocational educations.
Klára Sándor, Associate professor, University of Szeged, Hungary:
sandor.klara@hung.u-szeged.hu
Modern Pygmalion – How to create a “quota woman”?
Since stereotypes and common places are supposed to present „public wisdom” and so
the normative societal opinions, they have always been essential tools in political
communication in the public space. The role of stereotypes has even increased in the age
of mediatized politics, when the „message” is dramatically constrained to sound bites.
Due to pre-packaging, messages are able to recall large units of cultural knowledge with
some words, and are expected to be comprehensible to a wide audience. Stereotypes are
appropriate not only to simplify messages to an audience as wide as possible but also to
invest argumentation for stigmatization. Both characteristics urge politicians to try to
produce new stereotypes.
In this paper, I study how stereotypes and common places were applied in the political
debate which took place in Hungary in 2007 about a proposal to change the electory law
in order to implement a 50% gender quota on party lists. Surprisingly in a way, there was
only one traditional gender stereotype applied in the debate as a pro argument. It states
that women are more co-operating, peaceful and gentle than men and these characteristics
cannot be missing from political life. Neither the pejorative implication, i.e. that women
are too sensitive and too emotional, nor the point of reference informing this binary, i.e.
that men are more rational and concentrated, were explicitly referred to in the debate.
Most probably not because there would not be at least some MPs and journalists holding
these views but because even for them these opinions seemed inappropriate to mention.
However, the very same stereotype was criticized by those who argued against the
proposal as one that discriminates against men.
On the other hand, there were remarkable efforts to develop new stereotypes to be used as
part of the arguments by the opposing position, constructing the concept of „quota
woman” which should mean a politician who gained her seat from a party list on the
grounds of her biological sex and having done so she is – so goes the argument – most
probably not competent to perform her duties in Parliament. However false the
argumentation informing this definition is, it sounds perfectly ‘logical’ and can therefore
‘convincingly’ stigmatize women altogether, and „frighten” potential candidates and
supporters away from insisting on the quota. I shall argue therefore that the lack of an
applicable negative stereotype in the quota-debate was quickly compensated by
developing a new one in order to secure strong enough rhetorical weapons to fight against
non-stigmatizing rational argumentation.
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September 5-8, 2008
Session 4 Youth Identities and Social Justice
Chair:
Meredith
Izon,
maizon@postoffice.utas.edu.au
University
of
Tasmania,
Australia,
Presenters:
Meredith Izon, University of Tasmania, Australia, maizon@postoffice.utas.edu.au
Youth, language and identity in a new African diasporic community in Australia:
A sociolinguistic account
This paper examines the way in which a group of young people, some Australian born
and some newly arrived migrants, living in a small metropolitan centre in Tasmania in
southern Australia use the various linguistic resources available to them to construct
identities in interaction. Building on the work of Rampton (1995, 2006, 2007), Jørgensen
(2005), Heller (1999), Zentella (1997), Eckert (1989) and other sociolinguists examining
language use by young people, this study adopts a linguistic ethnographic approach
following 22 young women taking part in a 12 month mentoring programme offered to
assist young people from refugee backgrounds to settle in the local community.
Participants in the programme are aged between 15 and 21, and comprise 11 young
women, predominantly from African backgrounds arriving in Tasmania as humanitarian
entrants, and 11 young women from the local Tasmanian community.
The interactions occurring between young people are examined in the context of
prominent macro discourses about how best the increasing linguistic, cultural and
religious diversity within the national population might be reconciled with an ‘imagined’
national community (Andersen, 1983). It is argued that the often passionate public
debate played out primarily in the Australian media contests or reinforces a prevailing
‘dogma of homogeneism’ (Blommaert & Verscheuren, 1998), in which intergroup
differences are seen as problematic and in which African migrants have been explicitly
positioned by some powerful sectors of society as failing to conform to dominant cultural
norms. The discussion will explore the complex ways in which young people, be they
mono- or multilingual, make strategic use of language and language varieties to negotiate
a range of identities and examine how this may occur in response to the wider public
discourses impacting upon them.
References:
Andersen, B. (1983). Imagined Communities. London: Verso.
Blommaert, J. & Verscheuren, J. (1998). Debating Diversity: Analysing the discourse of
tolerance. London, UK: Routledge
Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and Burnouts: Social categories and Identity in the High School.
New York and London: Teachers College Press.
Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography.
New York: Longman.
Jørgensen, J. (2004). Plurilingual conversations among bilingual adolescents. Journal of
Pragmatics, Vol. 37, 391-402
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Rampton, B. (1995). Crossing: Language and ethnicity among adolescents.
Language
series. Harlow, UK: Longman.
Real
Rampton, B. (2006). Language in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Rampton, B. (2007). Linguistic ethnography and the study of identities. Working Papers
in Urban Language and Literacies. Kings College, University of London.
Zentella, A.C. (1997). Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York.
London: Blackwell Publishers.
Tom Stritikus University of Washington, United States, tstrit@u.washington.edu and
Diem Nguyen,University of Washington, United States, diem9@u.washington.edu
Strategic Transformation: Racial and Gender Identity Negotiation of First Generation of
Vietnamese Immigrant Youth
Brett Elizabeth Blake St. John’s University, United States , blakeb@stjohns.edu
and Robert W. Blake, SUNY at Brockport, United States, bobbillydumpling@aol.com
Social Justice Through Critical Literacy: Examining Language and Literacy Acquisition
Patterns of Urban Adolescent Students in the U.S.A.
The focus of this presentation is on the language and literacy acquisition patterns of
adolescents in urban American classrooms; a group of students who Ayers (1997) has
called, “multiply-marginalized.” Poor, of color, often second language learning and
labeled learning and/or behaviorally challenged, these adolescents experience academic
failure en masse—“failure” that has become most pronounced on language and literacy
related tasks and assessments that have proliferated in today’s schools.
Street has proposed (2001) that the notion of literacy and language acquisition has not
been problematized sufficiently, so that in general only one model of literacy and
language is acknowledged and accepted. This “schooled” language and literacy model is
framed, he asserts, from within, “the particular textual interpretative processes currently
being canonized” and “disguises cultural and ideological assumptions and perceptions”
(Kell, 1997) from most students in today’s urban American classrooms. Literacy and
language as they are traditionally defined, therefore, asserts Street (2001), excludes large
numbers of students whose cultural and ideological assumptions may be very different
from white, middle-class perspectives and culture from participating in schooled literacy
and language-related events. This exclusion at the school level predicts academic failure,
delinquency, dropout rates, and even incarceration (Ayers, 1997; Blake, 2004).
Street (2001), Blake & Blake (2003) and others, however, have proposed a model of
“local” literacy and language acquisition; a perspective that carries with it a strong,
critical theoretical base. Because the processes of language and literacy acquisition are
ideological in nature, they have the potential to become critical practices—practices that
are embedded in the everyday social and cultural lives of people—practices that, through
language, often reveal the social justice issues of their particular lives.
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In this presentation, the researchers will review the above theoretical frameworks as well
as present a snapshot of work they have done with adolescents in the U.S. including
incarcerated youth and urban public school students as they highlight how using a critical
model of literacy and language acquisition worked toward addressing social justice issues
in the classroom, the community, and beyond.
Maya Miskovic, National-Louis University, United States, maja.miskovic@nl.edu and
Debra S. Hooks, National-Louis University and Exceptional Children Have Opportunities
(ECHO), United States, d.hooks@echoja.org
Race and ‘Race:’ What is in the Name, What is in the Classroom?
Jeanine L. Williams, University of Maryland Baltimore County, United States,
jlw0704@comcast.net
Identity Conversations: An Analysis of Discourse on Race, Class and Education among
First-Year College Students
This paper explores how first-year college students conceptualize the relationship
between race, class and education. Using a critical pedagogical approach, students were
guided through a series of readings that explored issues of identity—including racial
identity development, white privilege, and social class—and how they play out within the
context of schooling. In addition to in-class discussions, the students in this study
discussed these issues through online discussion boards and reflective journals that
connected the readings with their personal experiences. The purpose of this study is to
examine how these identity conversations shape and are shaped by the students’
perceptions of the American achievement ideology and their social identities.
Session 5 Social Research for Social Justice
Chair:
Celine-Marie
pascale@american.edu
Pascale,
American
University,
United
States,
Presenters:
Carlos A. M. Gouveia University of Lisbon & Institute for Theoretical and
Computational Linguistics, Portugal, carlos.gouveia@fl.ul.pt and Marta Filipe Alexandre,
University of Lisbon & Institute for Theoretical and Computational Linguistics, Portugal,
martafilipealexandre@gmail.com
“The arrogant scientist” and “the ignorant citizen”: A critical discourse analysis of the
discourse of scientists
Horejes, Thomas, Arizona State University, United States, horejes@asu.edu
A Circular Journey to Kafkaesque Social Justice: A Focus on the Disability Experience
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People with disabilities, like Joseph K in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, are obscured in the
complexity of social justice where they find themselves being traduced and imposed to
accept their status in a Kafkaesque society. People with disabilities and Joseph K. have
been ontologically researched, framed, defined, and re-defined by state agencies through
their ability to regulate, normalize, and objectify the law through a socio-legal and
medical language in order to maintain hegemony over their victims with no immediate or
comprehensible agenda of resolving their tribulations. In the end, the journey for people
with disabilities, like Joseph K., to seek social justice in their burdened lives remains
circular. This paper has three parts: 1) a prelude to the journey that will introduce
important thematic correlations between Joseph K and people with disabilities including
hegemonic processes, social control, and a labyrinth of justice under a formal rational law
society. Part II will briefly foreshadow the tale between Joseph K and people with
disabilities and then delve deeply to an analysis of disability. Part II will suggest that the
current research methodology on disability continue to be based on an ontological and
narrow framework of research on the problem/solution of the politics of disability in
which further perpetuates disablism. Part III emphasizes a revisit to the current
hegemonic paradigm and offer research strategies that would promote a positive and
diverse approach and discipline of human understanding towards people with disabilities
in America.
Celine-Marie Pascale, American University, United States, pascale@american.edu
Theory Method and the Politics of Evidence
If we accept that all knowledge is socially constructed and historically situated,
sociologists must refuse to reify the analytical constructs of social research and instead
carefully, and consistently, examine methodologies as historically produced social
formations. This paper is a theoretical investigation of the underlying philosophical
foundations of qualitative tools for studying language and their ability to apprehend
routinized relations of privilege. The epistemic foundation of any methodology directs
our attention to certain ‘realities’ and not to others and thereby determines the horizon of
possibilities for any research project—what can and cannot be seen as well as what can
and cannot legitimately be argued. In this paper, I argue that without a grasp of the
ontological and epistemological underpinnings of research methodology, we lose an
important basis for understanding the fundamental concepts of reality and intelligibility
that are central to the production of knowledge. This is especially relevant to our ability
to develop research strategies that are congruent with contemporary concerns for human
rights and social justice.
Gaile S. Cannella, Tulane University, United States, gcannell@tulane.edu and
Yvonna S. Lincoln, Texas A&M University, United States, ysl@tamu.edu
Social Justice and the Language(s)/Conceptualization(s) of Social Science
Research: Power in Critical Inquiry
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Diverse qualitative and critical perspectives have acknowledged the roles of language and
the research “construct” itself in the generation and perpetuation of power in the various
social sciences. Any attempt to attain social justice through research is unavoidably
embedded within the patriarchal forms of reason, enlightened logic, and male domination
from which the practice has emerged. Some promise has been held out for critical
theorist work, suggesting that such work answered most of the criticisms of conventional
research, and thus would bypass its flaws, and provide for greater historical realism.
Twenty years ago, however, in her famous Harvard Educational Review paper, Elizabeth
Ellsworth questioned the expectation that even critical perspectives were either
empowering or transformative. However, even though we recognize this research/power
complicity, as academic cultural workers we are expected to conduct research (and know
that we must because of the influence that it holds within dominant discourses). Further,
we understand that if we are concerned about inequitable power distribution and
oppression in society as well as in our research, such inquiry cannot be conceptualized or
practiced using traditional research language like models, predetermined linear methods,
or any form of unquestioned methodology as practice. Finally, there are contemporary
researchers who claim to use critical qualitative research methods (and we may be among
those); yet, a critical lens can easily create an illusion of justice that actually reinscribes
old forms of power with a new face. This critical work has not always resulted in any
form of increased social justice. This presentation will, therefore, be designed to discuss
the use of critical qualitative research scholarship asking the questions: How do we filter
research through a critical lens? How do we deploy qualitative methods for critical
historical and social purposes?
How can we be more explicit about critical
methodologies? Is it possible to construct critical research that does not create new forms
of oppressive power for itself? What does a critical perspective mean for research
issues/questions, frames that construct data collection and analysis, and forms of
interpretation and dissemination?
Session 6 The Discourses of Ageism and Anti-Ageism (Joint session RC25 &TG03)
Chairs: Elisabet Cedersund, Jönköping University, Sweden, ceel@hhj.hj.se
John Macnicol, London School of Economics, UK, J.Macnicol@lse.ac.uk
This session takes up some key issues concerning age discrimination, ageism and some
other related questions. It will focus on how these kinds of issues are dealt with in
society, from a discursive perspective. The papers will address a range of themes: how
ageism and age discrimination are produced through discourses and social practices in
working life, politics and public debates, in particular, how ageism may be a part of
institutional professional practices, decision making, policies, etc.
This session will present an interdisciplinary array of research and discussion on the
concepts and practices of ageism and age discrimination. Researchers presenting papers
come from different locations (Canada, Italy, Sweden and U.K.); they work from
different combinations of disciplines (critical discourse analysis, conversational analysis,
narrative analysis, etc.) and they study different settings (e.g. policy making, media,
health and social services). They will present research on a variety of situations, focusing
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e.g. on communicative practices, historical changes and ethical dimensions. Respondents
in the session, too, come from different locations, and disciplines, which should provide
the basis for wide-ranging discussion. The audience of the session will be invited to
respond to the papers and offer their perspectives as well. Together, the speakers and the
audience will investigate some recent trends of the study of age discrimination,
considering different discursive approaches.
Presenters TG 03:
John Macnicol, London School of Economics, UK, J.Macnicol@lse.ac.uk
The Uses and Abuses of Anti-Ageism
Since its beginning, the discipline of gerontology has campaigned on behalf of older
people. Included in this campaigning has been activism against ageism in social relations
and attitudes (particularly since Robert Butler coined the term ageism in the late 1960s)
and age discrimination in employment (which, as a concept, has a much longer history,
having been discussed since at least the 1920s). The ideal of an ‘ageless’ society is often
held up as essential to liberal-democratic notions of equality of opportunity.
The New Labour government in Britain has taken liberationist, anti-discrimination
arguments applying to gender, race, disability and age disadvantage and has used them to
justify an increasingly proactive workfare programme based upon supply-side remedies.
Expansion of labour supply has been presented in the language of empowerment: for
example, the ‘social’ model of disability is being used to justify a much stricter
administration of incapacity benefits. The aim is to remove the ‘discriminatory’ barriers
that prevent people from working, and one New Labour target is to get a million more
people aged 50+ into work. However, much job growth in Britain is through poorly-paid,
menial jobs, raising difficult moral questions about whether people should be forced into
such jobs in the name of fighting discrimination. There are also major structural and
demand-side obstacles to raising the employment rates of older people. This paper will
explore this problem with regard to age discrimination in employment, raising the
question of whether using anti-ageism arguments in this way is in the best interests of
older people.
Clary Krekula, Karlstad University, Sweden. Clary.Krekula@kau.se
‘Doing gendered age’ by discourses of ageism: When old women negotiate identities
It has frequently been argued that old women’s scope of acting is limited by intersections
of ageism and sexism. Less attention has so far been paid to how discourses of age and
gender are used by old women in their everyday lives. In this presentation I will address
how discourses of ageism are produced in women’s narratives. Departing from
interviews, both individual and in focus groups, with women in ages 75 + I will illustrate
how discourses of age and gender are used to “do gendered age”, and how they draw
attention to context and ambivalent norms. Further, I will raise questions about what we
actually study in interviews when “–isms”, such as ageism and sexism, are under
scrutiny.
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Larry Anderson, Kwantlen University College, Canada, Larry.Anderson@kwantlen.ca
Ageism in Canada: A brief Report
This short paper examines the prevalence of ageism in Canada using Palmore’s Ageism
Survey, (2001). Palmore (2004) gathered information in partnership with the Canadian
Association of Retired Persons, CARP news Letter (Step 1). Our research (Step 2) was,
conducted in 2006 using senior’s recreation centres in suburban British Columbia. In the
spring of 2007 (step 3), we expanded our scope to cover the rest of British Columbia.
This included survey publication in The Senior Connector that is a newspaper distributed
throughout British Columbia, survey distribution by the Council of Senior Citizen
Organizations (COSCO), participation by a large seniors trailer park and by some
senior’s organizations outside the Lower Mainland. Combined responses from the three
sources were rank ordered and patterns of correlations found in Step 3, the BC wide
study, are discussed. One major pattern involving six items appears to reflect attacks on
relational self-esteem. Lesser correlations were found involving employment, humour,
and victimization. This study is a step toward understanding the prevalence of ageist
experiences
in
Canada.
Fredrik Snellman, Umeå University, Sweden, fredrik.snellman@socw.umu.se
Retired peoples perceptions of age-biased birthday cards
Researchers have studied jokes about aging expressed in birthday cards and have come to
the conclusion that most of this humour reflects or supports negative attitudes toward
aging. The preliminary aim in this paper is to attain better understanding of elderly
people’s perceptions of ageism by using birthday cards representing different ‘aging
messages’ as topics for discussion in focus group interviews. Research questions
connected to the aim: What are the direct responses to the birthday cards? In what ways
are the responses communicated? What is and what is not communicated during the
interview? What evidence of internalised ageism can focus group interviews provide and
in what ways may ageism be supported by elderly peoples themselves?
Data consists of approximately six focus group interviews collected in Sweden (3) and
Finland (3) in autumn 2007 and spring 2008. The groups are comprised based on the
criterion to maximize the types of voices being heard. The data is analysed using
computer-assisted software in order to facilitate the uncovering of socially constructed
discourses, and how messages in the birthday cards may contradict the ways in which
these are perceived.
Preliminary results from the analysis of the first interview indicate that elderly people
perceive double meanings in the birthday cards discussed, both in positive and negative
ways. In this interview discussion included the following question; “Would I send this
card to anyone?” which is seemingly a way of creating distance to the topic in question.
Generally the participants seem to define and talk about themselves as “we”, including all
participants in the focus group. Participants perceived messages in the cards as
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discrimination and as labelling elderly people in certain ways. Discussion was also
characterized by overt discriminatory practice against one participant, having taken a
standpoint concerning cosmetic surgery not considered suitable “for an individual of that
age”. One of the six cards relates to sex and sexuality, a card that participants in the first
interview choose to put aside and not discuss at all.
Presenters RC25:
Håkan Jönson, Lund University, Sweden, hakan.jonson@soch.lu.se and
Magnus Nilsson, Linköping University, Sweden, Magnus.nilsson@isv.liu.se
Ageism – misunderstanding or conflict of interest
Is ageism the result of misunderstandings based on outdated knowledge and fear of ones
own frailty? In this presentation we will highlight the tendency to use such explanations
and argue that a focus on conflict of interest may provide additional and competing
understanding for the phenomenon of ageism. Our study belongs to a social
constructionist tradition, and the discourse analysis we use as method aims at revealing
present as well as absent aspects of the phenomenon, as it is constructed in aging policies.
Our presentation is based on a study of text: official Swedish government reports and in
particular the comprehensive government investigation Senior 20005 (the Parliamentary
Committee on the Elderly), that was appointed to outline the future aging policies of
Sweden. Following an international trend developed in gerontology, this investigation
devoted much interest to images of aging and social attitudes towards elderly people of
Sweden. In its main reports from 2002 and 2003, the Committee identified devaluing
images of older people as a social problem and suggested the introduction of a more
flexible and individualized life-course as a primary solution. A review of Senior 2005
reveals a lack of focus on conflict of interest and the subsequent aim to suggest
immaterial improvement that does not affect the national economy or threaten the interest
of other groups. In our presentation we will conclude that comparisons and borrowing of
analytical tools from studies of other forms of discrimination (relating to class, gender,
ethnicity and disability) reveals a functionalist and individualized approach within the
government investigation studied. This approach results in the absence of demands for
“justice” and “equality” and may for this reason be regarded as an aspect of ageism itself.
Monika Wilinska, Jönköping University, Sweden, Monika.wilinska@hhj.hj.se
Discourse of aging in the Polish media: a critical discourse analysis of opinion weekly
newsmagazines
The aging process is an inevitable part of the human life course and has gained the same
significance at the societal level that is expressed by the emergence of the debate around
‘the aging of population’ or ‘aging societies’. Although, in biological terms, the aging
process always has the same implications for all people, its societal and individual
dimension occurs to be extremely diversified. Due to the number of factors, various
societies experience differently the aging process and so do individuals within each
society. To certain extent, a personal experience of aging is affected by the societal
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discourse on the growing population of older people. Therefore, it appears to be
immensely interesting to explore the ways in which aging is discussed at the societal
level. One of the countries that relatively late joined the international debate on the aging
societies is Poland and as a ‘newcomer’ in that field it becomes an intriguing case to
explore. The aim of this study is to investigate a discourse on aging present in the Polish
media, specifically in the magazines devoted to socio-political and economical issues that
both express the public opinion but simultaneously shape it as well. The data that have
been collected include articles that appeared in three leading opinion weekly
newsmagazines during the period of last four years. Critical discourse analysis is
employed here in order to identify ‘thematic clusters’ within which aging is discussed
and older people are talked about. The next step involves exploring particular discourse
practices and the order of discourse in each distinguished cluster. The prime focus is on
representations and identities present in those articles and referring to aging process and
older people on one side and the author and reader on the other. To certain extent, the
study draws on tradition of critical discourse analysis of racism, particularly on the
‘othering’ process. The findings indicate that there is a diversity of discourse practices
employed within various thematic clusters and substantial changes occur with regard to
the use of ‘we’ and ‘they’ figures.
Isabella Paoletti, Social Research and Intervention Centre, Italy, paoletti@crisaps.org
paoletti@crisaps.org
Age discrimination and the discursive construction of the older worker
At present, in Western Countries the labour market shows two opposite, schizophrenic
trends: legislation towards rising of pensioning age and high unemployment rate among
older workers. The aging of the population imposes a restructuring of the welfare system,
so that older workers have to be retained in the workforce, but at the same time, any
industrial or institutional restructuring process see the older workers as the first ones
asked to leave.
The paper aims to show social and institutional occasions in which to talk about older
workers become relevant. In particular it aims to describe how older worker identity is
socially constructed through specific institutional discourses and practices. How is the
dequalification and marginalization of the older worker produced? Which are the
discourses and social practices, unspoken institutional policies used? Are there discourses
and social and institutional practices that contrast with this improper typicization of the
older worker?
The data collected in this study are part of a research project “Age discrimination in the
work setting”. The data include interviews with older workers, selection personnel, job
centres operators, trade union representatives; tape recording of encounters of older
workers in work centers and job interviews.
The data are inspected through a detailed converation analysis within the
ethnomethodological framework. The analysis describes how stereotyped assumptions
about older workers’ flexibility, drive, willingness to learn, in particular new technology
etc. often are observable in the data analysed. In other words, the analysis aims to show
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how older workers are made redundant and dequalified for their job though specific
discourses and social practices.
The unemployment of older workers is particularly dramatic phenomena at a personal
level, often causing the financial and relational destabilization of the entire families. It is
also a relevant issue to be faced in the labour market, since the increasing ageing of the
population, particularly in Western countries, impose the inclusion of older workers in
the labour force.
Elisabet Cedersund, Jönköping University, Sweden ceel@hhj.hj.se and
Anna Olaison, Linköping University, Sweden, Anna.olaison@isv.liu.se
The discourse of care: Negotiating age in assessment talk
This paper explores care management as an activity that regulates the distribution of
society’s resources for home care for older people. The paper has a focus on interaction
in assessment meetings, which often are part of the planning of services and care. The
care managers use to visit the older persons/applicants in their homes to discuss and make
assessments of the needs for care. The assessment situation involves active participation
by the older person, who is expected to account for his or her situation as a basis for the
assessment.
The intention with the reported study is to explore if and how institutional interaction
may include forms of ageist social practices, possible to describe and analyse at a micro
interactional level. The data consists of twenty audio-taped home care assessments from
three social service districts in Sweden. The participants include care managers, older
persons (67-95 years old), sometimes also relatives. The assessments were studied using
discourse analysis. The aim with this analysis was to give an understanding how issues
related to ageing may be accounted for by the participants in the assessments and maybe
also used as an argument for or against care.
The results show that the assessment meetings had an institutional structure within which
older people were assessed. Different types of life course-related accounts or
explanations were used by the older persons and their relatives as arguments for receiving
care. The care managers focused more on the importance for older people to accept the
decline of abilities in later life, but also on the need to deal with negative consequences of
this decline. The meetings furthermore included talk about aging and the change of the
individual’s living conditions during later life. This consisted both of the care managers’
talk with and about the older persons.
This type of analysis has a potential to expose patterns on a micro analytical level of the
existing discourses of care. This poses further questions about whether assessments may
impute frailty or dependency to older people and deny the individuals an impact on the
decisions about home care.
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Session 7 Nationalization and Identity: Discourses of (Not) Belonging
Chair: Mahmoud Dhaouadi, University of Tunis, Tunisia, mthawad@yahoo.ca
Discussant: Roland Terborg, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México,
rterborg@servidor.unam.mx
Presenters:
Shinya Uekusa, California State University San Marcos, United States,
uekus001@csusm.edu
Everyday Experiences of Linguicism: A Sociological Critique of Linguistic Human Rights
(LHRs)
This study explores sociologically how linguistic minorities in the United States
experience linguicism in their everyday lives, and how linguicism is negotiated. In this
research project, I employ a “study up” approach to obtain a deeper and more
comprehensive understanding of non-dominant language speakers’ everyday experiences.
Unlike a typical “study down” approach, this methodological approach allows both
researchers and studied populations to benefit from research by increasing our
understanding of how LHRs could be put to practical use to protect linguistic minorities
from linguicism in the United States. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence is the
principle theoretical perspective which provides scope to perceive linguistic minorities’
everyday experiences with linguicism as not only shaped by structural factors but also
negotiated by these individuals.
My study population includes linguistic minorities who reside in the United States,
recognizing the fact that all linguistic minorities suffer from linguicism to some extent.
The research data is drawn from qualitative semi-structured interviews with 12 linguistic
minorities, including four native South American Spanish speakers, four native Castellan
Spanish speakers and four native Japanese speakers, selected by a purposive snowball
sampling method. The interviews were conducted in English, Japanese and/or Spanish.
My data suggests that, for some linguistic minorities, it is critical to educate themselves
and their children in their language and based on their cultural values, thereby preserving
their language and identity. However, respondents tell of past experiences with
linguicism and how economic prospects often encourage them to linguistically assimilate
to the mainstream and accept linguicism as a normal part of their everyday lives,
demonstrating the presence of symbolic violence. Yet linguistic minorities who became
bilingual in English and their native tongue selectively use these languages, avoiding
linguicism to the possible extent but preserving a crucial part of their identity and taking
advantage of their knowledge of both languages, demonstrating that linguistic minorities
develop oppositional strategies. This research is a first step towards deconstructing
symbolic violence and empowering linguistic minorities, and it shows that there is a
strong need for more empirical studies on this topic.
Nikolaevna Bitkeeva, Research Center on ethnic and language relations, Institute of
Linguistics of Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia, aisa_bitkeeva@yahoo.com
Language and society: ethno-language policy in the Russian Federation
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Almost every ethnos comes across language problems in its history. The world linguistic
practice knows successful experiences of restoration and expansion of social functions of
languages. That is the effective language policy towards Irish in Ireland, Catalan in
Spain, Hebrew in Israel etc. Correct language planning is one of the fundamental factors
of stability in ethnic relations, because functional interaction of languages it is for the
first instance an interaction of ethnicities speaking these languages. Russian Federation is
formed by 176 national groups and a similar number of languages most of the them are
“in process of extinction” or “endangered”, the Kalmyk language included. Kalmyk
belongs to the west branch of Mongolian languages (Altaic language family). The
Republic of Kalmykia in Russian Federation is an ethnic Mongol region in the Caucasus
border. The ethnic composition of Kalmykia is relatively balanced (the whole population
is of 323,000 people, 45% Kalmyks and 55% other nationalities). All the factors cause a
peculiar language situation and language policy in the region that is worth of special
consideration.
Geographic situation of Kalmykia in the northern border of Caucasus on the one hand, its
Asian origin as well as its cultural traditions, on the other hand have made of Kalmykia a
crossroad of nationalities unique in Russia. Kalmyk language transmission patterns were
weakening dramatically as far the deportation of the entire Kalmyk population during
1943-1956 produced a severe breakdown of the intergenerational transmission of the
language. Kalmyk can be considered (and is taught) as the second language of the
autochthonous population. Gradually Kalmyk lost its social status, most of Kalmyk
speech community adopted negative attitude towards the mother tongue ceasing to pass it
to the next generations. In 1991 Kalmyk was proclaimed the state language of Kalmykia
along with Russian. Since that time there started an aimed Kalmyk language revival. At
the same time Kalmyk language revitalisation process faces pluses and minuses.
Nowadays Kalmyk is still rare used by the middle-aged (30-40 years) and young (below
30 years) generations of the Kalmyks. The Kalmyk language has still low functional
value today and, although Kalmyks have a sentimental attachment to their language and
culture, this may not be enough to ensure that young people will acquire a good
command of the language or, more importantly, that they will use it. I share the point of
view of the independent consultant on language planning Dónall Ó Riagáin that the
Acquisition planning (teaching the language to children) alone doesn’t work. Status
planning and Corpus Planning need to go hand in hand with it. Language problems
mustn’t be treated isolated but in complex way, for example there is little sense in
teaching language if its use inside the educational sphere is not realised, as it happens in
Kalmykia, just reasonable targets should be set by language planning, the revitalisation
program shouldn’t be burdened with unnecessary political, religious or ideological
meaning as it usually happens and the language conflicts of the last decades demonstrate
it, everyone has right to use the language inspite of his views
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Mahmoud Dhaouadi, University of Tunis, Tunisia, mthawad@yahoo.ca
The Two Arabizations and Language Nationalization in Post Colonial Tunisia
In post colonial Tunisia, the term Arabization (Ar) means the written and oral use of the
Arabic language instead of French, the language of French colonialism in Tunisia (19811956). As such, the process of Ar in independent Tunisia aims at the promotion of Arabic
in social interactions in the Tunisian society and its institutions.
Ar in that sense is hardly successful in Tunisia after more than half century of
independence. Today, code-switching (the Franco-Arabe) is on the increase and more
than 95% of Tunisian write in French their cheques.
My paper argues that this is due in principal to the lack or absence of what I would like to
call Psychological Arabization (PA).The latter means the presence among Tunisians of a
strong positive feeling, commitment and relationship toward Arabic as their national
language. PA as a collective positive attitude toward Arabic is not yet earned in post
colonial Tunisia. Failure to have both PA and Ar has led to the enormous presence in
independent Tunisia of what I have called the Other Underdevelopment (OU). Political,
educational and globalization factors are behind the OU.
Reazul Karim, Institute of Hazrat Mohammad, Bangladesh, email@ihmsaw.org
Language Movement of 1952: Identifying a People
At the end of British colonial in 1947 Indian sub-continent was separated in two new
nations, India and Pakistan. Pakistan was divided in 2 regions by thousand miles, East
and West. The Bengali language speaking Bengalis lived in the East and people of other
linguistic and cultural groups in the West. The people of the 2 regions had nothing in
common except Islam as its religion. To compound this oddity the power of the new state
resided in the hands of the bureaucracy, army and feudal leadership of the West Pakistan.
The issue of national language arose immediately after independence of Pakistan and
government favoured Urdu as national language. To the ruling elite this was a tool to
dominate the educated Bengalis culturally and politically and they tried to justify their
preference on the basis that Urdu was written in Arabic script and a vehicle of Islamic
thought and values. Bengalis, who demanded the recognition of Bengali as one of the
state language was agitated by the rulers cynical use of religion as an instrument to
control thoughts and speech to impose their political and economic interest. The founder
of Pakistan Mr. Md. Ali Jinnah in 1948 and the Prime Minister of Pakistan in 1952
declared that only Urdu would be the national language. This triggered further protests
and formation of ‘All Party State Language Committee’ which declared 21.02.1952 as
the State Language Day. University students brought out massive demonstration on this
day defying government ban and this led to a direct clash with paramilitary forces
causing several deaths, mass injuries and arrests. The language movement eventually
forced the government to recognize Bengali as one of the state language of Pakistan in
1954.
This paper will attempt to analyze how a language gave rise to the emergence of Bengali
Nationalism and united a people against economical, cultural and political oppression in
the name of religion. This eventually led to a liberation war in 1971, giving birth of a
nation, Bangladesh. In 1999, UNESCO declared 21st February as the ‘International
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Mother Language Day’ for all UN member countries to protect world’s disappearing
languages.
M. Bauer, Tyumen State Oil and Gas University, Russia, fra@tgngu.tyumen.ru
Modern transformations in the linguistic space of a polyethnic region of Russia
Russia - multinational and multilingual state - experiences the difficult and
inconsistent moment of its cultural and linguistic development. There is national
languages and cultures revival, but we can see strengthening of the separate tendencies
bringing the national languages and cultures isolation, limitation of its interactions.
Modern transformational processes are understood as a change of habitual language
situation under the complex of intra-and extralinguistic factors caused by new
geopolitical and sociocultural conditions of modern Russian society development. There
is the necessity of system social-linguistic studying of state-forming Russian language, its
interactions with other national languages that were directly reflected on sociolinguistic
situation in one of the most polyethnic regions of Russia – the West Siberian region.
Western Siberia linguistic situation uniqueness speaks as extralinguistic factors
(numerical, geographical and social distribution of various ethnoses, migratory processes,
historical, political reasons), and especially linguistic factors (types of mass bilinguism,
character of spheres of other national and Russian languages application and their
functioning in the education system, levels of other national and Russian languages
possession etc.).
In polyethnic region there was a unique space of system interaction of regional
languages and the cultures, named a “regional system and semantic field”. Russian
language is played the essential role in preservation and development of national regional
languages because it acts as integrator of regional linguocultural processes.
The transformations of languages caused by changes in a society, lead to the values
system changes. Modern transformational processes occurring in Russian language are
negatively influenced by the post-“perestroïka” phenomena and globalization
mechanisms. This fact leads to the destruction of Russian peoples language system
values. The communications between different elements of various languages are broken.
At the same time rapid development of mass media, Internet and other electronic
communications, wide circulation of English language have aggravated contradictions of
modern language system, made active its dynamics.
Destruction of natural processes of languages functioning (burdened by modern
negative influence: americanization, vulgarization, computerization of language),
conducts to “shaking” unique regional sociocultural and linguistic space and is fraught
with irreversible consequences for system of national languages in region.
Session 8 New Language Forms in Computer-Mediated Communication: ‘NetLingo’
and Related Developments
Chair: Corinne Kirchner, Columbia University, United States, ck12@columbia.edu
Discussant:
Gianluca
Miscione,
University
of
Oslo,
Norway,
gianluca.miscione@gmail.com
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If we accept that all knowledge is socially constructed and historically situated,
sociologists must refuse to reify the analytical constructs of social research and instead
carefully, and consistently, examine methodologies as historically produced social
formations. This paper is a theoretical investigation of the underlying philosophical
foundations of qualitative tools for studying language and their ability to apprehend
routinized relations of privilege. The epistemic foundation of any methodology directs
our attention to certain ‘realities’ and not to others and thereby determines the horizon of
possibilities for any research project—what can and cannot be seen as well as what can
and cannot legitimately be argued. In this paper, I argue that without a grasp of the
ontological and epistemological underpinnings of research methodology, we lose an
important basis for understanding the fundamental concepts of reality and intelligibility
that are central to the production of knowledge. This is especially relevant to our ability
to develop research strategies that are congruent with contemporary concerns for human
rights and social justice.
Presenters:
Daniela Landert, University of Zurich, Switzerland, dlandert@access.uzh.ch,
Interacting with Strangers in Online Chats: How Net Lingo is Used to Construct
Identities and Perform Bodies
One of the main purposes of text-based online chats is the communication with strangers.
Correspondingly, identity construction is a central process in chat communication. It is
therefore no surprise that several of the typical features of chat-specific Net Lingo have
the function to establish the identity of chat participants (e.g. nicknames, standardised
a/s/l-information). While in real life face-to-face interaction visual perception of the
physical body plays an important role in the process of identity construction, text-based
online chats restrict their users to the exchange
of textual information. Thus, Net Lingo takes over certain functions of identity
construction which in face-to-face interaction are carried out through physical appearance
and gestures. I will therefore argue that the absence of the physical body does not mean
that the identity of chat participants is ’liberated’ from the body, as this was sometimes
claimed in the early days of the Internet. In contrast, I will show how specific features of
Net Lingo are used to construct identity in relation to the body.
My analysis is based on an evaluation of seven chat sessions (8’145 lines in total), taken
from public online chat rooms. First, a quantitative evaluation focuses on ten dimensions
of identity, such as sex, appearance, interests, and occupation. These can be indicated
through nicknames, standardised a/s/l-information, or explicitly during conversation. As
the results will show, indications of body-related aspects of identity outnumber
indications of non-body-related identity information by far. In a second step, I will argue
that the body is not only implied in references to identity, but that it is also textually
performed through typed actions, another feature of Net Lingo. In these actions,
participants write about themselves in the third person and describe what their virtual
selves are doing, mostly in terms of embodied performances. In this way participants
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create virtual bodies that are in correspondence with their virtual identities. An analysis
of several passages of chat data will show that the negotiation of the status of these
virtual bodies serves to authenticate identity and establish power relations between chat
participants.
Olena Goroshko, National Technical University, Ukraine, pelena@lin.com.ua,
Structural Characteristics of Russian and English CMC (Case Study of Corporative
Blogging)
The established lingua franca of Internet is English and this is triggered discussion about
the Digital Divide. Developed English speaking nations dominate in Internet business
activity and enjoy a huge advantage in international business over undeveloped countries
where English skills are rare (Deneke 2007: 5). However despite the dominance of
English the Net has justly been specified as a global phenomenon that permits people
from all over the world to take advantage of previously inaccessible information. Thus
there are two opposing trends in language use on the Net: an increasing number of people
from around the world use the Net in English (not as their mother tongue) thereby further
establishing it as the lingua franca and this fact greatly influences the other languages.
Secondly, languages other than English penetrating the Web, reflecting the “demographic
speed” from its base in the US to the rest of the world, and the globalisation of business
(Warschauer 2002: 65; Deneke 2007: 6).
Currently one can claim not only about Digital Divide but Digital Under- or Nonresearched concerning language diversity on the web. Also one can argue about great
impact of English on other languages used on the web and especially within business
context. Hence the structural characteristics of CMC in Russian and English blogging
have been selected for this research. The latest CMC research focuses on the power of
blogs in shaping a corporation’s reputation and the ensuing habit of many corporations to
monitor millions of web logs in order to be able to respond to customer complaints before
the traditional media pick up the issue. Blogs have possessed a huge popularity for the
last five years. Blogging becomes more and more popular not only in English- but in
Russian –speaking Internet. The CMC findings also indicate that the Russian network of
blogging is healthy and growing constantly (Herring at al., 2007).
The design of proposed comparative case study: the blog sample for study is formed
through
the
Blogs.Yandex.ru
Service
and
the
Technorati
Service
(http://www.technorati.com) using the key search words business blog. Then first five
blogs in Russian and five blogs in English are selected. The main prerequisites are the
Russian and English Languages, ‘fresh update’ and linkage with the corporate CMC.
Inherent characteristics of the Internet affecting language - lexical innovations, spelling,
typology and punctuation of CMC and also features constituting the blogging as a
separate digital genre are under review in comparative perspective. The principal
differences and similarities in CMC functioning through blogging in two languages are
discussed.
Corinne Kirchner, Columbia University, USA, ck12@columbia.edu,
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NetLingo Goes 2 Skul:
Language
Educators’ Reactions to CMC-based Innovation in Written
“NetLingo” – one of several names for the shorthand form of language flourishing in
CMC --can still be considered as an “anti-language” (Halliday, 1978), relished by
youngsters because it baffles, annoys and even may delude their parents and teachers.
However, as early adopters are reaching adulthood, and as NetLingo is being accepted for
limited purposes in some “respectable” settings, social scientists have a valuable
opportunity to observe processes of an “anti-language” (non-standard and deviant vis-avis the dominant language) starting to move toward standardization and, if not
dominance, at least respectability among dominant language users.
Put otherwise, we can observe institutional processes of resistance or acceptance of
linguistic innovation. Those processes could, and should, be studied in varied institutional
domains, such as the creation of rule-books and dictionaries that in turn facilitate wider
use of the lingo, and its standardization. One could study recent managerially-approved
applications of NetLingo in business. Those developments constitute context for this
paper, which focuses on NetLingo’s infiltration into primary- and high-school
educational settings. Crystal summarized the importance of educational institutions for
language change: “When the schools change their linguistic ways, everything changes.”
(2006,.193; also see Halliday 1978)
Pursuing an exploratory approach, this paper will use several types of secondary data
sources, focusing on rationales educators offer to support or oppose NetLingo use by
youngsters in their schoolwork. Sources will include news reports; educators’ blogs;
dissertations; journals for teachers and teacher-educators. Insofar as possible, the data
about rationales will include: educators’ professional characteristics, school
characteristics, distinctive terminology (e.g., “language deconstruction” to describe
NetLingo [Ellers 2005]); general attitude toward Net Lingo, and conditions specified for
its acceptable use, if any. Because spelling is the key element of invention/deviance in
NetLingo, it will be a central point of attention in the rationales.
The analysis will draw upon a framework of societal reactions to innovation, drawing
both on models of “deviance” and of positively-valued “inventions.” The aim is to sketch
a classificatory scheme of rationales for responding to NetLingo in education, that is
useful for empirical research, and that readily links to general sociological theory of
language development and change.
Johann Chaulet, University of Toulouse, France, chaulet@univ-tlse2.fr
“Take My Word for It”: A Study of Building Trust through Words in CMC
Session 9 Contests for Meaning & Identity in Education
Chair: Jean Humphreys, Dallas Baptist University, United States, jean@dbu.edu
Presenters:
Jean Humphreys, Dallas Baptist University, United States, jean@dbu.edu
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The Veiled Facebook: An Online Telling of the Stories of Muslim Students
Most of the research conducted on prejudice reduction has dealt with ethnic groups, but
increasingly the focus within the US has been on a religious minority, Muslims. This
research uses asynchronous focus groups conducted online through Facebook to record
the narratives of the participants' experiences of prejudice and discrimination in the
public schools. The participants are high school students recruited from personal
contacts through Daughters of Abraham, an interfaith group, as well as college students
from Muslim Facebook groups at UTA. The rich data provided in this qualitative
research provides the stories needed to develop multicultural prejudice reduction
programs in public schools.
Tim Mahoney, Millersville University, United States, Tim.mahoney@millersville.edu
Out of the Frying Pan and into the Fire: New Teachers and the Undoing of Normative
Whiteness
This paper will describe the ongoing effort of a teacher education program in the eastern
United States to make racism and social justice a visible part of the pedagogies of
beginning teachers. It is our belief that racism and justice play a determining factor in the
access to educational opportunities of all students, and when they are topics discussed
openly in classrooms, all students benefit (Darling-Hammond, French and Paloma
Garcia-Lopez, 2002). In our efforts to make race visible, both in the dispositions of our
students and in the practices they engage in early field experiences and student teaching,
we use anti-racist pedagogy to confront a number of often unintentional but nonetheless
damaging presuppositions about race in our students. The first among these is the
perspective we call “the invisible other,” founded in the belief that all Americans are
pretty much the same, and although we may look different, deep inside we are all just
people. We call the second presupposition white normativity after the work of Apple
(1998) and Wellman (2002). Under white normativity, the white students do not see
themselves as racialized persons, since white is not viewed as a color but rather as
something transparent and invisible. Thus, race is often understood to be something
others have. Both of these perspectives begin with the notion that since the students are
not racist themselves, the do not benefit from or participate in larger racist institutions
like public schools. This project uses three sets of data to tell the stories of how beginning
teachers undo their presuppositions as they prepare to become public school teachers.
Reflective coursework from the students begins the process of understanding the role of
racism more deeply.
Classroom observations supplement these writings by documenting how the teachers do
engage in critical discourses about race and racism in their field experiences in diverse
classrooms, and finally interviews at the end of coursework gives us insight into how new
teachers confront their own biases about difference and move into a more nuanced and
sensitive understanding of race and social justice in their teaching
P. Taylor Webb, University of British Columbia, Canada, taylor.webb@ubc.ca
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The Language of Accountability: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Higher Education
Policy in British Colombia
The paper analyzes the discourse of the most recent policy document in British
Columbia, Canada (BC) that attempts to hold universities accountable to notions of
performance. The policy document in question is entitled Campus 2020: Thinking Ahead
(Plant, 2007). The analysis demonstrates how this Canadian example of neoliberal
discourse intends to develop governmentality constellations to regulate universities’
research activities. I pursue my analysis by juxtaposing sections of the report with the
discursive frameworks of Deleuze (1992), Fairclough (2005), and Foucault (1991). The
analysis of policy language reveals how the provincial government intends to: 1)
subjugate higher education to economic desires, 2) develop new government
constellations to hold universities accountable to performance, 3) use macro- and microsurveillance technologies as preferred forms of power, and 4) obfuscate democratic
dialogue about how to hold governments accountable to socially-just education (e.g.
access, representation, funding).
A goal of the paper is to demonstrate configurations of educational accountability
that sometimes remain latent in discourse-policy analyses (Apple, 2003). That is, this
analysis intends to show the material apparatuses of educational accountability in BC and
illustrate how these constellations will constitute new forms of educational control. It is
through such constellations, I argue, that the BC government will attempt to maintain
seamless control of its universities (and future work force) through asymmetrical forms
of transparency. Ultimately, I speculate, the proposed government constellations will try
to disqualify certain forms of research that strive for democratic emancipation and
replace them with research designed for economic production – indeed, “a whole set of
knowledges that have been disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently
elaborated: naïve knowledges” (Foucault, 1980, p. 82).
The analysis concludes with a discussion about how research in the university
might resist the growing appetite for economic performance by forming “counterconstellations” across faculties within the university (and across, including
internationally). The basis for my conclusion rests on ways to rearticulate the work of
higher education as a democratic enterprise rather than as a for-profit consortium.
References
Apple, M. (2003). Down from the balcony: Critically engaged policy analysis in
education. Educational Policy, 17 (2), 280-287.
Deleuze, G. (1992). Postscript on the societies of control. October, 59, 3-7.
Fairclough, N. (2005). Critical discourse analysis in transdisciplinary research. In R.
Wodak and P. Chilton, A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory,
Methodology and Interdisciplinarity. Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. New
York: Pantheon.
Foucault, M. (1991). The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (with two lectures
by and an interview with Michel Foucault). In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P.
Miller (Eds.). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Plant, G. (2007). Campus 2020: Thinking ahead: The report. Library and archives
Canada cataloguing in publication data. (http://www.campus2020.bc.ca/).
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Nira Rahman, Monash University, Australia, nirainmonash@yahoo.com
Representation of Identity of Linguistic Minority International Students
Nira Rahman, Monash University, Australia, nirainmonash@yahoo.com
Representation of Identity of Linguistic Minority International Students
Recent linguistic literatures have shown strong ties between identity and language
learning. As a result, in recent years, identity has become a key concept in language
learning research. For many scholars, it is now taken as axiomatic that identity and
language learning are inextricably linked. However, with the emergence of globalisation
the demographic profiles of once mono-linguist nation states are rapidly changing as they
become multicultural and multilingual although founded in most cases in discourses of
more narrow cultural and linguistic parameters. This pluralisation is not only the product
of formal immigration or refugee and other settlement movements. Student mobility also
makes a contribution. Often with high expectations, well-specified career goals and the
will to work hard for higher and/or better education, international students from different
language and cultural backgrounds, who mostly belong to linguistic and cultural minority
groups in the host country also contribute to broader changes in culture, language and
identities. Adjusting to a new environment through the use of a second language involves
challenges to self-concept, worldviews, values, and attitudes. These students need to be
prepared socio-culturally and emotionally to deal with a multitude of non-linguistic
factors in order to succeed academically in an unfamiliar educational
environment.Therefore, there is a need for studies that provide insight into the ways in
which such linguistic and culturally minority international students negotiate and
represent identities and are themselves constructed through discourse in specific
instituted context.
To investigate the relationship between identity and language learning, between the
individual language learner and the larger social world, this paper will therefore consider
the efforts of linguistic minority international students in an Australian university with
reference to their investment in learning English and their changing identities in a
different social and cultural space. As a result the paper will take a socio-culturally
framed view of dominant language learning in multilingual/multicultural context
addressing the covert and overt representation of the identity of linguistic minority
international students. Through a case study, this paper will also examine how linguistic
minority international students negotiate their identity and form multiple identities and
whether this process impacts on their access to various resources and community
practices of the university.
Session 10 Making Sexuality & Gender Meaningful
Chair: Jyoti Puri, Simmons College, United States, puri@simmons.edu
Freedom in Gender Relations: An Analysis of Communicative Acts Among Adolescents
This paper presents the results of a study about sexual and affective relations among
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adolescents (aged 14-18). The study focused on identifying, in situations of youth
interaction, what elements contribute to deciding and acting freely and from equality, or
rather deciding and acting under coercion and inequality. This study was funded by the
Spanish Ministry of Science.
Research from different perspectives – discursive, socio-demographic, psychological,
communicative- have targeted the analysis of the sexual-affective relationships among
adolescents, focusing e.g. on social discourses of gender or socio-demographic
characteristics
of women and men (Stobbe 2005; Shurman, Rodriguez 2006; Osman 2004; Kelly et al.
2005). However, little has been analysed about the social inequality in sexual-affective
relationships from the perspective of the linguistic interactions and no research has been
conducted in this topic from the analysis of the communicative acts. Communicative acts
include not only speech acts but also non-verbal acts, the social context of the interaction
and its consequences (Searle & Soler, 2004).
This perspective includes the influence of power relations among participants in the
interaction (verbal, non-verbal or both), and other elements from the social context such
as
speakers’ stereotypes, common beliefs, socialization, assumptions. It is also oriented not
only to analyse speakers’ intentions but also to a Weberian ethics of responsibility. It
complements speech acts’ theory (Searle, 1969) with contemporary sociological
contributions: Habermas’ Theory of the Communicative Action (1984), Mead’s symbolic
interactionism (1934), among other.
Drawing from this theoretical background, our study aims at understanding which sort of
socialisation is at work among adolescents in their daily contexts of relation (high-school,
group of peers and friends, pubs, street groups) and which elements can contribute to
identify and clarify situations of discrimination or imposition from situations of equality
and freedom in their sexual and affective relationships. The analysis of these
communicative acts can provide new elements to current research about adolescent
gender
relationships. Particularly, it can contribute new insights to help distinguishing a situation
of freedom from one of harassment contributing thus to current research on prevention of
gender violence among youth.
Presenters:
Marta Soler and Maria del Mar Ramis, University de Barcelona, Spain,
mimarramis@hotmail.com
Freedom in Gender Relations: An Analysis of Communicative Acts Among Adolescents
This paper presents the results of a study about sexual and affective relations among
adolescents (aged 14-18). The study focused on identifying, in situations of youth
interaction, what elements contribute to deciding and acting freely and from equality, or
rather deciding and acting under coercion and inequality. This study was funded by the
Spanish Ministry of Science. Research from different perspectives – discursive, sociodemographic, psychological, communicative- have targeted the analysis of the sexualaffective relationships among adolescents, focusing e.g. on social discourses of gender or
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socio-demographic characteristics of women and men (Stobbe 2005; Shurman, Rodriguez
2006; Osman 2004; Kelly et al. 2005). However, little has been analysed about the social
inequality in sexual-affective relationships from the perspective of the linguistic
interactions and no research has been conducted in this topic from the analysis of the
communicative acts. Communicative acts include not only speech acts but also nonverbal acts, the social context of the interaction and its consequences (Searle & Soler,
2004).
This perspective includes the influence of power relations among participants in the
interaction (verbal, non-verbal or both), and other elements from the social context such
as speakers’ stereotypes, common beliefs, socialization, assumptions. It is also oriented
not only to analyse speakers’ intentions but also to a Weberian ethics of responsibility. It
complements speech acts’ theory (Searle, 1969) with contemporary sociological
contributions: Habermas’ Theory of the Communicative Action (1984), Mead’s symbolic
interactionism
(1934),
among
other.
Drawing from this theoretical background, our study aims at understanding which sort of
socialisation is at work among adolescents in their daily contexts of relation (high-school,
group of peers and friends, pubs, street groups) and which elements can contribute to
identify and clarify situations of discrimination or imposition from situations of equality
and freedom in their sexual and affective relationships. The analysis of these
communicative acts can provide new elements to current research about adolescent
gender relationships. Particularly, it can contribute new insights to help distinguishing a
situation of freedom from one of harassment contributing thus to current research on
prevention of gender violence among youth.
Erzsébet
Barát,
University of
Szeged,
Hungary,
b_zsazsa@freemail.hu
The Public Debate on Hate Speech Regulation in Hungary: The Difference a Queer
Perspective Could Make
In my presentation I would like to provide a critical analysis of the discourses
around the issue of regulating speech 'behavior' in Hungary. I want to foreground in my
argumentation is what the major approaches have in common in their allegedly
oppositional epistemological standpoints. My analysis will demonstrate first that both the
small pro-legislation group and the mainstream position of anti-regulation draw on a
homogeneous understanding of identity that is informed by a relatively new form of
“identity politics”. Here agency and action is not derived from the constraints of (external
or internalized) interests or norms any more but from a sense of solidarity with, and
belonging in, a pre given social collective (of black people and LGBT people). Second
that they are equally blind to viewing the exclusionary practices form the perspective of
the victim, and especially to that of the immediate target of homophobia. As a potential
shift from this individualized ontology, I would like to address exclusion as a dynamic
practice that involves several differential aspects of discriminatory language use and start
with hate speech of homophobia as the one that can be most easily shown to be at the
intersection of materiality and symbolic harm. Such a move is inevitable if we wish to
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challenge the binary logic of mainstream categorization practices involved in the various
discursive fields of practices involved in reiterating hate speech, including the disguise of
polite gestures of patronizing sympathy, the most ardent defenders of so-called free
speech are able to enunciate.
Jyoti Puri, Simmons College, United States, puri@simmons.edu
Transgender Grammar: Personhood and Politics in the Indian Context
Hijra is a longstanding form of self-identity in the South Asian subcontinent. Hijras are
interchangeably known as “Third Gender,” “Third Sex,” or in the language of their most
widely-known ethnographer, Serena Nanda, “Neither men nor women.” Hijras are also
varyingly seen as eunuchs, transsexuals, effeminate men, and, increasingly, as
transgenders. In the Indian context, the frequently derogatory use of the term Hijra and its
synonyms (Ali, for example) has contributed to the emergence of new regionally-distinct
terms. Especially around the Chennai, a metropolis in Southern India, Aravani is the
preferred term and Kinnar is fast gaining popularity in Northern India as a form of selfidentity. Transgender is yet another term that is being widely used to describe Hijras. In
contrast to the regional terms of Kinnar and Aravani, transgender is has currency within a
transnational political field.
This presentation maps and analyses the shifting grammar of personhood through the
terminology of Hijra, Kinnar, Aravani, and transgender. I argue that the historically
widespread uses of terms such as Hijra and Ali have come to be disputably associated
with Muslim culture and Islamic tradition. What we are witnessing are alternate
orientations—to the regional and the transnational, as ways of constituting the self. These
alternate positionings occur within a highly charged national and religious political
context, dominated by Hindu majoritarianism. The turn to regionally varied Hindu
terminology, such as Kinnar and Aravani, is an implicit claim to a pre-Islamic histories
seen as necessary to fortify Hijras’ legal and cultural struggle for personhood. The term
transgender has cache and significance transnationally and it can also leverage funding
and political affiliations. Analyzing the dynamic preference for the terms Kinnar and
Aravani, and transgender, this presentation seeks to highlight the nexus between political
struggles for personhood and prevailing religious, regional, and transnational discourses.
It seeks to analyze the multiple contested discourses within which the idioms of
personhood take shape for those widely known as Hijras.
Chanda Cook, American University, United States, chanda.cook@american.edu
The Legal Framing of Same-Sex Marriage in the United States
Abstract: In the United States, Maryland’s Court of Appeals case, Frank Conaway et al.
v. Gitanjali Deane et al., is the most recent court decision to define and limit the terms of
civil marriage to the exclusion of all but heterosexual couples. In this paper, I analyze the
oral arguments from the court hearing, which was broadcast live on the web in December
2006, as well as the Maryland Court of Appeals majority and dissenting court opinions
published in September 2007. Drawing from Goffman, I examine the central frames
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employed by the appellee, the state, and the High Court Justices in their arguments
supporting and opposing same-sex marriage. This paper explores how the legal framings
of the debate construct the meanings of sexuality, family, marriage, citizenship,
otherness, and privilege.
Melanie Heath, Ph.D. Rice University, United States, mah2@rice.edu
‘Universally Harmful or Benign’: Double Jeopardy in Representing Polygamous
Women’s Subjectivities in Canadian Law and Policy
Session 11 Migrant women: human rights violations and resistance. Joint session
RC05 Ethnic, Race and Minority Relations, TG03 Human rights and Social justice
Chair: Isabella Paoletti,
paoletti@crisaps.org
Social
Research
and
Intervention
Centre,
Italy,
Migration is a vast phenomenon world wide. Internal migration, as well as
migration to other countries expose migrants to various forms of exploitation and human
rights violations. Women suffer from particular forms of abuse that remains hidden at
times. Women also find specific forms of aggregation and resistance.
The panel discuss the condition of migrant women. In particular the panel aims to
describe and problematize multicultural discourses that justifies women’s oppression,
through a misinterpreted “respect of other cultures,” which is in open violation of the
Human Rights Charter. This ideology originates with feminists who justify infibulation
and judges who disregard, and therefore, legitimise polygamy. Forms of women
oppression are “exported” in countries in which women’s rights have been long
guaranteed, by constitutional rights.
Institutional intervention to protect women’s rights will be discussed together with
forms of migrant women’s action of resistance. We think that it is really important and
urgent to understand and document those phenomena, in order to contribute to stopping
regressive processes that, once spread, it would be a lot more difficult to control.
Presenters RC25:
Maria Rita Bartolomei, Macerata University, Italy m.bartolomei@unimc.it
Islamic education and women’s rights in Italy
During the last years, due to the ongoing immigration of Muslims in our country,
we witness an increasing number of mosques, madrasse, educational and cultural Islamic
centres and associations. This phenomenon raises questions about relativism, integration,
cultural differences, tolerance, multiculturalism, extremism, etc.
Although liberal Muslims, Islamic feminists and other criticisms denounce
women’s rights violation and try to develop a more progressive form of Islam, the issue
of the condition of immigrant Muslim women in Italy has received almost no adequate
attention in both public and academic debate.
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Specifically, we remark a dearth of empirical research and of theoretical
approaches acquiring an understanding of which kind of relationship is taking place
between migration processes and conservative patriarchal interpretations of Islamic
teachings.
Drawing on current literature on the topic and adopting narrative methods, the
paper is a contribution, from an anthropological perspective, to the understanding of how
different languages and representations can open to several interpretations of the Koran’s
religious imperatives among Muslim settlers in the Marche region of Italy.
Special attention is devoted to the controversial husband right and duty to urge his wife to
mend her ways in case of "rebellious" behaviour and admonish her by beating.
The research is based on a gathered sample of 20 life-stories of abused wives and
daughters, and 55 in-depth interviews given to imams (10), immigrants man practicing
either teaching, or counselling or representative activity in local institutions (25), and 20
selected ACMID’s (Moroccan women’s association in Italy) members.
Without any willingness to definitively settle all debates on the matter, the paper
tries to repurpose important issues such us domestic violence, women's rights, gender
equality and social justice.
Current legal practices and global approaches tend to dichotomize along the lines of it
being either universally harmful or benign to women. In a series of policy research
reports funded by Status of Women Canada, a multi-faceted approach called for repealing
the ban on polygamy in favor of other laws to extend protections to women and children
in plural marriages. A subsequent report advocated polygamy’s continued
criminalization, arguing that polygyny deprives women of their rights. From this angle,
criminalization plays an important symbolic role to communicate Canada’s censure of
polygamous relationships. Legal and cultural debates over polygamy offer a window into
the production of knowledge about and regulation of immigrant women’s lives. In what
ways do dominant legal discourses concerning gender equality and child welfare
constrain or empower the lives of immigrant women in plural marriages? What kinds of
knowledges are produced concerning race, immigration, and gender by universal laws
that criminalize polygamy? In this paper, I offer a textual analysis of Canada’s Criminal
Code s. 293, of research reports, and of media accounts to consider the tensions between
universal ideals of gender equality and the production of otherness that criminalization
might imply.
Isabella Paoletti, Social Research and Intervention Centre, Italy, paoletti@crisaps.org
Migrant women from Muslim Countries: social and institutional discourses producing
segregation
Many migrant women see Europe and other Western Countries as places where
they can finally see their rights acknowledged, but this is often an illusion. In their own
country, with their husbands abroad, they often have the household role and they work.
Emigrating to Italy they find themselves segregated at home, they don’t speak the Italian
language and they are totally isolated. With no institutional and social support, nor the
informal networks on which they can rely on in their own home country, often they find
themselves segregated at home.
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The data analysed in this paper are part of larger set collected in the research
project: “Women’s migratory projects coming from Muslim countries: support
strategies”. The data comprise of interviews with migrant women, social workers and
migrants associations’ members.
Through a detailed conversation analysis within an ethnomethodological
framework, the paper explores moral, relational and identity issues, linked to specific
women’s immigration experiences. Women are shown to be often at risk of abuse and
segregation. The study aims also to describe the influence that institutional intervention
has on women emancipation processes, and that of social agencies’ support, for example,
immigrants associations.
Human rights violations cannot be tolerated in the name of a misinterpreted
“respect of other cultures,” but proper institutional intervention has to be promoted in
order to insure the respect of constitutional rights of migrant women.
Carola Mick Campus Walferdange; Walferdange, Luxembourg, carola.mick@uni.lu
Peruvian domestic servants as promoters of social justice in Peru?
The internal migration flow in direction of the Peruvian capital is linked to an
ideology, which establishes a hierarchy between two separated groups inside the Peruvian
society. As these groups encounter with each other in domestic service in Lima, the
asymmetries imposed by the dominant discourse get highly performative in this sector.
Despite the oppression a lot of domestic servants suffer from, I want to focus the
discursive freedom of action they are endued with, and evaluate its possible effects on the
promotion of social justice in Peru. In interviews, domestic servants in Lima used six
different discourse-strategies to participate in the construction of social reality and their
own identity. Whereas a majority of the strategies follows the logic of the dominant
discourse, some of them succeed in challenging it, tending to deconstruct the idea of
naturalized social injustice between different groups inside the Peruvian society. These
‘emancipated’ discourses seem to have ‘real’ effects on the direct interaction of these
perceived groups as well as on the development of their relationship in the long term,
empowering the socially disadvantaged.
The discourse-analytical ‘bottom-up’ perspective reveals the performative
potential of the discourses of the migrants/servants/’powerless’ themselves and opens
new ways to strengthen it, targeting integration and social justice not only on the national
but also on the international level.
E. Huss. Ben Gurion University, Israel, ehuss@bgu.ac.il
Art as a 'Speech Act' from the Margins: Arts based research as a trigger for a narrative
of resistance.
This presentation will show how arts based research used with a group of
impoverished Bedouin women in Israel undergoing urbanization, enables the women to
express their indirect resistance to oppression.
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The model utilizes drawing as a trigger for clarification and reflection upon
contents raised by, and interpreted by, the women themselves, rather than by an external
construct or ideology of the dominant Jewish culture. Thus the "silenced" woman can
gather and organize her own personal 'data' or experience from inside onto the empty
page, before dealing with translating her ideas to the different and dominant culture of
the researcher.
Living within two cultures can be experienced as a splitting and fragmentation of
identity: The assumption of this paper is that the art, as an inherently multifaceted
language, can provide an integrative working through of this duality, empowering the
women to experience, integrate and express different facets of their identity without
being reduced to cultural stereotypes.
This presentation will show how arts based research used with a group of
impoverished Bedouin women in Israel undergoing urbanization, enables the women to
express their indirect resistance to oppression.
The model utilizes drawing as a trigger for clarification and reflection upon
contents raised by, and interpreted by, the women themselves, rather than by an external
construct or ideology of the dominant Jewish culture. Thus the "silenced" woman can
gather and organize her own personal 'data' or experience from inside onto the empty
page, before dealing with translating her ideas to the different and dominant culture of
the researcher.
Living within two cultures can be experienced as a splitting and fragmentation of
identity: The assumption of this paper is that the art, as an inherently multifaceted
language, can provide an integrative working through of this duality, empowering the
women to experience, integrate and express different facets of their identity without
being reduced to cultural stereotypes.
Presenters TG03:
Shobha Hamal Gurung, South Utah University, United States, Gurung@suu.edu
Informal Global Economy: The case of Nepali Female Migrants in Boston and New York
South Asian female workers in the contemporary informal economy in the U.S.
have received very little research attention. Among South Asian origin groups, Nepalese
women are barely studied at all. This paper is based on my current research project
investigating the work experiences of Nepali female migrants in Boston and New York
who work in the informal economic sector. The data for this research were collected
through semi-structured, informal in-depth interviews, and narrative collections. Using
snowball sampling, ten research participants (between 16-65 years of age) were selected.
This paper addresses the demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds of these
women; the reasons for their migration; how and why women select their destination
cities; the type and nature of work that women do in these cities; how women are drawn
to these jobs; and their experiences in these jobs and foreignland. The focus of this paper
is to examine to what extent these women have become the main earners for their
families (in the U.S. and in Nepal) and how this new economic capability has affected
their gender positions within their families and communities.
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Rizwana Yusuf, Institute of Hazrat Mohammad, Bangladesh, email@ihmsaw.org
The Exploitations of Asian Migrant Women Workers: Policy Issues and Solutions
The application of human rights in the discussion of marginalization and oppression and
the way it affects migrant women is pertinent because the purpose of human rights is to
define what rights are essential if all people are to live lives in a secure and healthy
environment in whatever communities they belong.
It is critical to articulate that migrant women facing human rights violations do share
many common experiences of gender based violence, marginalization, exclusion,
oppression, discrimination and gender inequality. Policy and practice responses to
address the emancipation of migrant women are inadequate. Understanding and
responding to violence against migrant women necessarily requires an understanding of
why these issues are occurring.
Social isolation from friends and family; and emotional alienation as a result of selfblame and low self esteem, commonly affect migrant women. Isolation is particularly
acute for migrant women and requires an analysis of culture, racism, gender, economic
status and psychological status. Women are known to depend more on social networks
but those social networks are often absent.
The largest obstacles facing them are their lack of language skills, which are essential for
their assimilation into mainstream culture and societies in the country of residence.
Therefore, they are unaware of their basic rights, state laws, governmental allowances
and financial entitlements. They are often exploited in the sector of employment, social
acceptance and in personal lives. Consequently they resort to marriage as a form of
security and sustenance, which sometimes perpetuates the practice of monogamy. This
paper shall highlight the victimization and violence against them which often tantamount
to Human Rights violation primarily due to lack of awareness stemming from language
barrier.
This paper shall discuss the significant dilemma of Asian migrant women workers in
Western countries with regard to their social, cultural and economic status. It shall also
underscore their ability to seek redress for their legal rights and awareness of their social
and employment facilities. It shall conclude with the recommendations and proposals
regarding the role of government both in the home country and the country of residence
to improve the quality and expertise of women migrant worker.
Yi-Hsuan Kuo, Columbia University, United States, yk489@columbia.edu
Reframing Studies of Female Marriage Migrants’ Educational Involvement: A Study of
Chinese and Southeast Asian Female Marriage Migrants in Taiwan
This study looks at female marriage migrants’ involvement in their children’s education
in Taiwan. This phenomenon must however be seen within the context of international
hypergamy, which has become an increasingly notable trend in many countries,
especially those of East Asia. Female marriage migrants, coming to Taiwan chiefly from
Southeast Asian countries and from China, often are depicted by the mainstream
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discourse of media, government, and school, and even in academic studies, as being
incapable mothers, based strictly on their cultural-linguistic difference and arguably low
socio-economic status. This paper cautions against this assimilationist and structuraldeterminist viewpoint, for it often ignores the agency of the female marriage migrant by
looking upon her degree of involvement in her children’s education as a direct result of
her linguistic capital or her family’s socioeconomic status. The author seeks to reframe
such studies by taking into account the female marriage migrant’s active role in shaping
her own unique adaptation strategy.
Sergey V. Ryazantsev, Social and Political Research Institute, Russian Academy of
Sciences
Russia, riazan@mail.ru
Russian women abroad: migration channels and problems of adaptation
The Russian women have appeared active enough participants of process of the
international migration. On women it was necessary about 53 all emigrants who have left
on a constant residence from Russia and 17 among time labour migration from Russia.
Scales of emigration of women from Russia on a constant residence last years tend to
reduction volumes of time labour migration of the Russian women constantly grow. For
last decade Russia was left more than 750 thousand women, nearby 50 thousand have left
on time earnings abroad. The presented data represent only "a visible part of an iceberg"
as the big number of women goes abroad as tourists and it is necessary to work abroad
illegally.
Three basic channels of departure of the Russian women abroad are allocated: official,
not official and illegal. Steady geographical laws of emigration from Russia are revealed.
Women leave the European part of Russia in the countries of the European Union or the
Near East; inhabitants of regions of the Far East are focused on departure work in the
countries of Asia (Japan, China, Korea); scale enough stream of women goes to the USA,
Canada and Australia without dependence from territory of residing.
Among the women who are going abroad, girls and women in the age of from 18 till 29
years prevail. As have shown our researches, the basic contingent of leaving women is
made by two age groups. The first - very young girls from 16 till 20 years, as a rule, not
finished or interrupted the formation; the second - young women in the age of from 25 till
35 years. The most significant objective factors which are "pushing out" women from
Russia abroad are deterioration of social and economic position and the low salary,
impossibility to find work and complexities of professional realization on the Russian
labour market, and also demographic no-stability in the marriage market - impossibility
to find the husband in Russia. Data testify, that in the various countries work in sector of
entertainments and sex-services work not less than 1 million girls from the CIS countries
from which 300-400 thousand is necessary on Russians. Russians work as prostitutes
more than in 50 various countries of the Europe, East Asia, in the Near East, to Northern
America.
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Session 12 Indigneous Language Shift in Mexico
Chair : Roland Terborg, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México,
rterborg@servidor.unam.mx,
Presenters:
Roland Terborg, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México,
rterborg@servidor.unam.mx, and Laura García Landa Universidad Nacional Autónoma
de México, Mexico, garlanster@gmail.com
Las lenguas indígenas y la disminución de su vitalidad en la actualidad en México
Igual que en muchos países del mundo también en México las lenguas indígenas están
perdiendo vitalidad frente al español. De esta manera se está reduciendo fuertemente la
diversidad cultural.
En el proyecto “La vitalidad de las lenguas indígenas en México: un estudio en tres
contextos” se está investigando el grado de la vitalidad en diferentes comunidades
indígenas de diferentes lenguas autóctonas.
Los datos están basados en un cuestionario que da cuenta sobre la competencia de los
hablantes y sobre las funciones de la lengua indígena en el hogar. Nuestro propósito es
presentar y comparar los resultados que obtuvieron diferentes investigadores en
comunidades de habla indígena. Los datos se recolectaron en varios estados de México
incluyendo comunidades de diferentes idiomas.
Laura García Landa Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico,
garlanster@gmail.com and Brenda Cantú Bolán, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México, Mexico, dabner27@gmail.com
Linguistic vitality and language shift of Nahuatlahtolli in Xoxocotla, Morelos (Mexico)
This study is based on the metaphor of linguistic ecology, which claims that language
shift can only be studied in the specific context in which it is spoken. This means that all
the speakers’ circumstances have to be taken into account. Thus, we have the purpose of
finding out and explaining the causes of Nahuatl shift caused by Spanish and the effects
of this fact in the inhabitants of the community of Xoxocotla. In order to reach this
objective, we have designed a questionnaire to show the process of Nahuat shift, which
means the change of usages and the modification of the linguistic competence in the new
generations of speakers. In addition, we have done some interviews to Xoxocotla’s
inhabitants, so as to detect some of the causes of this shift.
A model that analyses the relations of power and pressures that work on the speakers of
the minority language in the context of a determinate linguistic ecology, was designed
with the aim of analyzing the data (Pressures Ecology Model). This model is linked to
power, ideologies, values, human actions and attitudes towards a certain linguistic
variety. This model claims that the person who experiments less pressure has a power
position.
The results showed that this shift in Xoxocotla has widely spread, this means that there is
an increment of pressures for the usage of Spanish in Xoxocotla inhabitants. Actually,
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there is very little transmition of Nahuatl to the new generations. In Nahuatl speakers,
coexist the impositions as well as the acceptations of ideologies and attitudes of Spanish
speakers. The several pressures that come out of the change of interests have modified
the power relations too. Different reasons have contributed for an increasing pressure in
the Nahuatl speakers versus Spanish speakers, but not viceversa.
Vera Bermeo Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico, berceve@gmail.com
and Roland Terborg, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico,
rterborg@servidor.unam.mx
Otomí language shift-maintenance in two different communities of Mexico
Many of the indigenous languages from Mexico are loosing vitality because the number
of their speakers is decreasing, therefore, the purpose of this paper is measuring the
indigenous language vitality of two communities where otomí is spoken; in San Cristóbal
Huichochitlán, State of Mexico and in Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro.
The results we present are based on a corpus of quantitative data taken by means of a
questionnaire. The consequence of this study is an exploration of the linguistic situation
and a support to develop a planification of language founded on a sociolinguistic study.
Within this context we present a formula that allows researchers to determine the degree
of vitality in a defined population and we especially emphasize the difference in
knowledge of the language between genders; as there are high levels of vitality where
women dominate the indigenous language. The phenomenon depicted here could be a
constant in the languages in general to indicate the minority language shift or
maintenance.
Virna Velázquez Vilchis, Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, Mexico,
vvir71@gmail.com and Ma. Del Pilar Ampudia, Autonomous University of the State of
Mexico, Mexico planeacionlenguas@hotmail.com
Language Vitality of Two Indigenous Communities in the State of Mexico
The object of this talk is to present the language vitality of two indigenous communities
in the State of Mexico, Mexico. Our aim is to give an account of and present the current
linguistic conditions of these communities from a sociolinguistic point of view
(specifically the sociology of language (Fishman, 1971), linguistic ecology and pressures
(Hagège, 2002)).
The data was collected through questionnaires related to literacy, migration, competence
and use of the indigenous languages as well as the influence of schooling in the
communities in matters of linguistic vitality.
Our results show how adults use more the indigenous language than younger generations.
This seems to be the natural pattern for most local languages in Mexico; however, in one
community the opposite is taking place. We compare and contrast the results in each
community and provide hypotheses as to why these languages are shifting to Spanish.
This research and the communities of study are part of a bigger research project with the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), whose aim is to identify the
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degree of linguistic vitality in various indigenous communities in Mexico. The goal is to
extend the knowledge of shift and vitality of indigenous languages in our country, so that
the results obtained could be considered in the linguistic planning of Mexico.
Alma Isela Trujillo Tamez, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México,
almaiselatrujillo@gmail.com and María Eugenia Herrera Lima, Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México, Mexico, limah@servidor.unam.mx
In the paper we are interested in discussing the role that the indigenous woman plays in
the maintenance - shift of her mother language. The dominant position in the
sociolinguistic reports that the change towards a prestigious variation of the language
is led by the women. Nevertheless, there are few studies that attend the role of the woman
as a key factor in the maintenance or the shift of her language.
In case of Mexico we refer concretly to the possibility that there is a trend that favors the
use of the Spanish over the indigenous language in the linguistic manifestations of the
women. Then we wonder:
Does change the role of the indigenous woman into the different linguistic communities
according to the stage of shift of her language? If it is like that, can this behavior help to
measure the degree of vitality of the language? We will present concrete information
obtained in several indigenous communities.
Terborg, Roland. 1995. "La 'presión monolingüe' y el 'papel de la mujer' como factores
del conflicto entre lenguas." En Munguía, Irma y Lema, José (Eds.) Serie de
Investigaciones Lingüísticas I. México, D.F.: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana,
Unidad Iztapalapa. pp. 179-93.
Gal, Susan. 1978. ´´Peasant men can´t get wives: language change and sex roles in a
bilingual community´´ en Language in Society 7: 1-16.
Trudgill, Peter. 1974. Language and Sex. In Sociolinguistics: An introduction. Great
Britain: Penguin Books.
Session 13 Codeswitching as a Human Right?
Chairs: Paramasivam Muthusamy, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
mparam98@hotmail.com and Svetlana I. Harnisch, Institute of Sociology, RAS,
Russian Federation, sve-harnisch@yandex.ru
Presenters:
Svetlana I. Harnisch, Institute of Sociology, RAS, Russian
harnisch@yandex.ru
Codeswitching as the Subject of Research and as a Modus of Behavior
Federation,
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Phenomenon of codeswitching (CS) was once called “verbal salad” by Leo Bloomfield.
By now it is described as a theoretical concept within sociolinguistic theories and
discourse analysis methods. And after the contributions of C. Myers-Scotton there is
hardly anything left to say about typology of codeswitching and its classification. We
teach students how to distinguish codeswitching from code mixing, borrowings, and
other possible ends of two languages used by one speaking person either in class-room
or other public spheres of social life (in synchrony) and as a result of languages on
contact (in diachrony).
Why scholars keep researching codeswitching?
There are several answers to the question. First of all, it attracts attention of researchers
because codeswitching is much more than a mixture of two languages in one sentence.
As Rodolfo Jacobson said it is the way to reduce social distance between speakers, never
mind if they are users of two languages or two dialects or two variants of the same
language. It means that codeswitching is the subject of sociological approach to verbal
behavior.
Secondly, up to now it is not easy to explain why codeswitching is done by a speaker of
some languages in a given setting. And why codeswitching is not done by speakers of
other languages in certain lnguitic situations? It means that codeswitching is more
psychologically dependant as one suggested.
Finally, under conditions of globalization and cross-cultural contacts the worldwide,
codeswitching has become a symbol of human cultural interactions and international
loyalty.
Since (a) CS is met in bilingual's talks to monolinguals and vise versa and (b) within a
sentence as well as between sentences and (c) not only in spoken discourses but in
written messages as well, Gibbons has been argued that codeswitching can be treated as
"an autonomous system" at
different levels of grammatical language systems' switching.
Main dimensions of language and culture interactions are argued at the levels of micro
versus macro studies and along the lines of synchrony and diachrony. There are urgent
tasks to describe various cases of CS as everyday and occasional discourses under
conditions of bilingualism and linguistic diversity of a modern society.
Paramasivam Muthusamy, University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia,
mparam98@hotmail.com
Inter-language Interference and Code Switching at the Syntactic Level: A Case Study of
Malaysia
Code switching is a common linguistic phenomenon in a multilingual situation where two
or more languages are being used during a social interaction. Inter language code
switching has several socio linguistic reasons and switching can be at different levels
namely, lexical level switching, sentence level switching, phrasal level switching etc.
These switching take place depending upon the need of the context and content.
Numerous studies have been undertaken regarding the patterns of code switching in
grammatical and other linguistic levels when two or more languages are in contact. While
discussing about the metaphoric and other grammatical levels of code switching, Blom
and Gumperz (1972) have identified transactional or situational alternations and non
situational code switching. They further claims that situational code switching is mainly
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depend on the conversational sequences. In other words, the situational code swithching
is always topic bound. But the non situational code switching is mainly concern about the
communicative competence of the content. The present paper mainly discusses about the
situation oriented code switching. Main thrust for the analysis is given to the syntactic
level of code switching during situation based social interactions. The analysis of the data
collected from the undergraduate students of the University Putra Malaysia, whose
mother tongue is Tamil show that situational code switching is observed in most of the
sentences uttered by the interlocutors. The trilingual switch alternates between Tamil,
English and Malay languages. The interlocutors are fluent in all these three languages. It
is also observed during the study that the sentences with multilingual switches have
plenty of grammatical level errors for a normal listener. Yet, the persons involved in
these speech events are quite competent in totally comprehending even the intricate
meanings of the utterances. Further, the paper explains about the various socio linguistic
and cultural reasons which contribute for the totality of comprehension by the
interlocutors. Another finding while analyzing the data is that through certain truncated
clause and phrase level code switching the speaker has the tendency to impose his/her
concepts, ideologies on the listener. While discussing this concept Myer-Scotton (1996)
claims that ‘ Insertional code switching mainly occurs with words that have a high
degree of semantic specificity. That is, code switching is not just determined by what is
syntactically possible, but also by what speaker wishes to say.’ The paper further
identifies and spells out the emerging pattern of code switching in various situations with
appropriate examples.
Kazakevich Olga Laboratory for Computational Lexicography, Research Computer Centre,
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia, kazakevich.olga@gmail.com
Code Switching, Borrowings and Structural Interference: A Bundle of Issues Revisited
In my paper I am going to return to the problem which up to now have received no
proper solution, though it is being discussed here and again in different contexts
including quite practical ones, e.g. compilation of a word list for a dictionary: how can
we tell a borrowing from a code-switching? Scholars have developed some criteria, but
almost all of them are rather statistical than absolute. Using the material of three minor
Siberian languages – Selkup, Ket and Evenki, contacting with each other as well as with
Russian, I’ll try to show that neither phonetic adaptation nor grammar adaptation criteria
being applied to this material give a satisfactory result. There are some old lexical loans
from Russian in each of these languages integrated into the language structure which
can be undoubtedly called borrowings but these are not many. It is worth mentioning
that most frequently used Russian borrowings are the same in the three languages. One
more point I would like to touch upon is structural interference with parallel
grammatical morpheme borrowing (?) from a contacting language. Are we to call such a
morpheme a borrowing or just code switching? I’ll try to show some intricate examples
where the answer does not seem so easy to be found.
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M. Rajantheran, University Malaya, Malaysia, Malaysia, rajantheran@yahoo.com
Codeswitching Pattern and its Relationships with Sociolinguistic Variables:
Malaysian Context
Communication is vital in any social situation. Social situation may vary from place to
place and society to society. These variations may be seen as linguistic variation, cultural
variation, variation due to several kinds of hierarchy prevalent in the societies starting
from economic to linguistic hierarchy. In bi/multilingual countries where more than one
languages are used for day to day interactions, code switching is a common phenomenon
which has several sociolinguistic reasons. Malaysia in its societal composition is multi
ethnic, multilingual and pluricultural in nature. As per the available literature the major
ethnic composition of Malaysia comprised of major ethnic communities namely, Malays,
Chinese, Indians and Bumiputras. Apart from these major communities there are several
other communities consisting of Thais, Caucasians, Filipinos and few others from other
national background. In this multilingual context a detailed study of sociolinguistic and
socio-cultural construct of the speech event is very significant. Subsequent to the concept
developed by Malinowsky on ‘context of situation’ (1923) Jacobson formulated six
factors and corresponding functions of speech (1960).These studies on contextual speech
event paved the way for Hymes (1972) to develop a systematic study on speech events
where he has discussed that every speech event is directly governed by rules and certain
social norms for proper discourse. This paper built on the above theoretical frame
discusses in detail about the code switching pattern among the undergraduate students of
the University Putra Malaysia, Malaysia whose mother tongue is Tamil and have good
control over minimum three languages such as, Tamil, Malay and English. As findings of
the study, owing to this sociolinguistic situation, during discourse several types of inter
sentential switches take place among the interlocutors. While discussing about code
switching in a multilingual context Jacobson (1978 a) argues that if a balance between the
two participating languages could be found in mixed language discourse, it might well be
worthwhile to formalize the concept of a third code switching mechanism. As stated by
Jacobson, in the present situation also we could identify that all the students switch from
code 1(Tamil) to code 2(Malay) and to code 3(English) depending on several
sociolinguistic variables which are correlated to the type of switch they use. That is, in
which context the student selects which language as the matrix language and in which
context who selects which language as the embedded language.
Irina N.Chudnovskaya, Moscow State University, Russian Federation, lsc2004@mail.ru
Imposing of Barriers of National - Language and Character Type Codes as a Problem of
Mutual Understanding
It’s obvious that in multilanguage labour collective obstacles during professional
communication are inevitable. We carried out questioning students of the senior rates to
find-out the answer to a question, whether students of other nationalities encounter
difficulties during professional dialogue in their student's Russian-speaking collective.
More than 60 % of Russian respondents answered positively. It is important to note, that
14,3 % did not notice these difficulties, but nevertheless consider, that difficulties should
exist. Among the reasons of difficulties the most frequent one refers to the language,
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cultural and religious barrier, but each 10-th respondent explained these difficulties with
personal features of people in collective. The modern communications is characterized
with dissociation and egocentricity, therefore for effective mutual understanding it is very
important to find a key to the partner under the communications.
In the research we rely on MBTI character type model which is constructed on the basis
of K.Jung's sights. Four pairs of characteristics of people are allocated in the model: E-I
(extravert-introvert), S-N (sensing - intuitive), T-F (thinking - feeling), J-P (judging perceiving). These characteristics describe people on their preferences in ways of
receiving and processing the information and decision-making. To each type it’s own set
of communications and language features is peculiar. Therefore the situations when
people speaking on the same national language, but refering to different types, cannot
come to mutual understanding are frequent. For example, the introvert who has received
the instruction, even in written form, from the extrovert, frequently does not
Maria Kistereva, Moscow State University, Russia, mkistereva@gmail.com
The First Grammars of the European languages: from the points of view in Nowadays
Theories of Codeswitching as a Linguistic Phenomena.
The aim of this paper is to tell you about a small comparative study devoted to the first
grammars of the European languages, speaking about the problem from the modern
times.
Our study is carried out involving the first language descriptions written in national
languages and which had a national language as the object. They appeared in Renaissance
times and most of them have partly influenced the so called “modern” European
linguistic tradition, which was founded in those remote times and survived till nowadays
having been transformed during the evolution process.
The modern globalization nowadays has influenced not only economics but also some
other fields of human activities and knowledge. The educational process has also
suffered. Unification and reduction of language science to common standards can be
observed as a demonstrative and significant example.
This process of standardization can be rather compared with the Renaissance grammars:
they used the same standards as Ancient authors, scholastics and humanists, but at the
same time each author wanted to remain original in his work.
We appealed to the following grammar texts: Spanish - A. Nebrija Grammatica da lengua
castellana 1492; Italian - P. Bembo Prose della volgar lingua 1525; German V.Ickelsamer Die rechte weis aufs kürzist lesen zu lernen 1527; Portuguese – F. Oliveira
Grammatica da lingoagem portuguesa 1536, J. Barros Gramatica da lingua portuguesa
1540; French - R. Estienne Traicte de la Grammaire Francoise 1557; English W.Bullokar A Brief history of English Usage 1586. A comparison is made in several
basic
aspects.
Thus, one can find much in common when generally comparing the works of “new”
linguistic tradition, though they were geographically and culturally remote from each
other and despite the differences between the languages themselves.
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Session 14 Beyond Black and White: New Issues in Racial Discourse at Schools
Chair: Antonia Randolph, University of Delaware, USA, arandolp@udel.edu
Presenters:
Michael Olneck, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, olneck@education.wisc.edu
Regulating Language: Oakland’s Ebonics Resolution, California’s Proposition227, and
the Contestation of Linguistic Capital in American Education
This paper draws upon Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of linguistic capital and linguistic
market, and applies methods of discourse analysis to various public texts, in an effort to
explain similarities and distinctions between the discourses of the debates concerning the
1996 Oakland School Board's so-called “Ebonics Resolution,” and the 1998 campaign
concerning California’s Proposition 227.
The Oakland resolution designated the language patterns utilized by numerous AfricanAmerican students, termed Ebonics, as a distinct “language” having West African
origins, and it deemed Ebonics to be African-American student’s “primary language.”
The resolution directed the school system to develop a program “for imparting instruction
to African-American students in their primary language for the combined purposes of
maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language..., and to facilitate their
acquisition of English language skills.” Passage of the resolution sparked a national furor
which did not abate until a revised resolution, modifying the claims about Ebonics and
emphasizing the priority of students acquiring proficiency in Standard English, was
passed in mid-January, 1997.
Proposition 227 aimed to abolish bilingual education in California by requiring that “all
children ...be taught English as rapidly and effectively as possible ... [and that] all
children...be taught English by being taught in English.” The Proposition required that
English language learners be placed in “sheltered English immersion” classrooms for a
one-year period. Proposition 227 succeeded in substantially curtailing bilingual education
in California; its passage spurred passage of similar measures in Arizona and
Massachusetts, as well provided impetus to the abolition of the federal Bilingual
Education Act of 1968, and its replacement with the “English Language Acquisition,
Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement Act,” as Title III of the 2001 No
Child Left Behind Act.
Theresa McGinnis, Hofstra University, USA, theresa.a.mcginnis@hofstra.edu
Seeing Possible Futures: Khmer Youth and the Discourse of the American Dream
The discourse of the American Dream reflects a larger ideology of United States’
societal values and beliefs in “the common sensical” notion that through hard work and
resilience anything is possible. The American Dream discourse has become what
Fairclough (1989) calls a dominant discourse enabling the ideology embedded in it to be
considered “common-sense practice.” Grounded in normative whiteness, this dominant
discourse permits those who see themselves as superior – dominant, white, middle class –
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to make judgments about students who are seen as “at-risk” – usually students from nondominant groups. One of the effects of this ideology is its support of pervasive images of
poor, urban and immigrant students as impoverished – economically, socially and
culturally.
This paper adds an important dimension to the critique of the myth of the
American Dream. by examining ethnographically the ways its dominant discourse is
circulated to Khmer American middle school children of migratory agricultural workers.
I detail how the ideological uses of small ‘d’ discourses (i.e. conversations, speeches,
songs, poems etc.} sustain or support the dominant beliefs of the American Dream
(Fairclough, 1989; Gee, 1990; Lemke, 1995). I provide a nuanced analysis of the
complexities involved in the students’ responses to the Discourse. I look at the students’
worldviews, which are created by their situations as children of refugees and as urban
youth, by their cultural/religious values and beliefs, and by their families’ socioeconomic
status. More critically, I discuss how the beliefs embedded in the American Dream
discourse hide from public view disturbing realities about the educational and social
experiences of the Khmer youth and serves to sustain these experiences.
Casey Cobb, University of Connecticut, USA, casey.cobb.uconn.edu
Student perspectives on race: The role of place and space
As part of a larger project examining student experiences in interdistrict magnet and
suburban-urban transfer programs in Connecticut, this study gathered in-depth interview
data from fifteen students of color on their perspectives on race. Students were
initially asked for their input on a draft survey designed to collect information on racial
attitudes. The discussions lead to a separate project which explored how students
conceptualized race and how it played out in their school and neighborhood
environments. Multiple group interviews were subjected to discourse analysis that was
informed by critical race theory among other theoretical perspectives. The findings
suggest that perspectives on race can be geo-specific and defined by the particular space
students occupy. For instance, in some places students thought about race in terms of
geography (or neighborhood). In other areas students thought about race in terms of
ethnicity and culture, divorced of location.
Antonia Randolph, University of Delaware, USA, arandolp@udel.edu
Race as a Resource? School Composition and Teachers’ Disparate Discourse on School
Quality
As part of a larger project examining student experiences in interdistrict magnet and
suburban-urban transfer programs in Connecticut, this study gathered in-depth interview
data from fifteen students of color on their perspectives on race. Students were
initially asked for their input on a draft survey designed to collect information on racial
attitudes. The discussions lead to a separate project which explored how students
conceptualized race and how it played out in their school and neighborhood
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environments. Multiple group interviews were subjected to discourse analysis that was
informed by critical race theory among other theoretical perspectives. The findings
suggest that perspectives on race can be geo-specific and defined by the particular space
students occupy. For instance, in some places students thought about race in terms of
geography (or neighborhood). In other areas students thought about race in terms of
ethnicity and culture, divorced of location.
Shirlena Campos de Souza Amaral, Northern Fluminense State University, Brazil,
shirlenacsamaral@yahoo.com.br and Adelia Maria Miglievich Ribeiro, Northern
Fluminense State University, Brazil, adeliam@censanet.com.br
The “Policy of Share” and the Access of Afro-Brazilians to Public Universities:
Conflicts of Speeches and Ideas in the Scientific Community, in the Governments and in
the Society - The Case of UENF, Campos dos Goytacazes, Rio de Janiero, Brazil
In Brazil, the poverty - and the few access of the most part of the population to quality
university degree - started to be related to racism. The Representative House of Rio de
Janeiro State, approved in 2003 the so-called "Racial Policy of Share”. A law that, in
order to reduce the disproportional racial composition in the universities, reserves 20% of
all State University vacancy to self-declared Afro-Brazilians and to other students that
prove they are poor. But in the UFNF (Darcy Ribeiro Northern Fluminense State
University) we were able to verify the inefficiency of a social inclusion when using this
law. Actually, in 2004 the University had 60 requests against 12 requests in the last year.
It is important to mention that this decrease was due to some endless debates that
occurred since its initial idea until its final implementation. We should analyze the
differences of ideas among all participants, i.e. government, UFNF delegate and leaders
of social movement for racial matters, their opposite ideas about what is racism, its
influence in our society, democracy and social justice, what led to a resistance to the
policy itself. In 2008 the Representative House of Rio de Janeiro State will review the
"Racial Policy of Share” law. But all involved parts are already working to show theirs
ideas and interests. At the end our debate is about "cultural justice" and "distributive
justice" as the real motives for the "Racial Policy of Share”.
Session 15
Analyzing Racism
Chair: Melissa Steyn, University of Capetown, South Africa, Melissa.Steyn@uct.ac.za
Discussant:
Melissa
Steyn,
University
of
Capetown,
South
Africa,
Melissa.Steyn@uct.ac.za
Presenters:
Adrian Wójcik, Warsaw University, Poland, awojcik@uw.edu.pl
Who are “we”, who are the perpetrators? Analysis of the newspapers discourse after the
pogrom in Kielce
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The Kielce pogrom refers to the events that occurred on the 4th of July, 1946, in the
Polish town of Kielce. 37 innocent Polish Jews were murdered and 82 wounded. The
events related to pogrom were then given a detailed description and intensively discussed
in the Polish contemporary newspapers. The paper is focused on the analysis of the
newspaper discourse following the Kielce events. Six Polish newspapers reflecting the
perspectives of the main actors of the Polish political scene in 1946 were chosen, what
allowed to capture the whole scope of opinions presented in the newspapers at the time.
The analysis revealed three main underlying motives of the public discourse on the
Kielce pogrom. The first one were the pragmatical and political motivations of the main
actors involved, that lead them to use the certain strategies in the description and the
explanation of the pogrom itself. The question of the responsibility for the pogrom
appeared to be one of the main controversies between newspapers representing
independent and communist parties. The assignment of perpetrators' status to adverse
political group was identified as a powerful rhetorical strategy. Different perpetrators'
identities (the Poles, the Soviets, the rabble) appearing in particular newspapers will be
then explained by the logic of political struggle.
The second one was strictly connected to the process of positive in-group image defence
and victim status' assignment. One of the most surprising findings in analysed discourse
was lack of Jews as the main victims of the pogrom. The category of victims was
broadened and included also the Poles. The role of that discursive strategy will be
analysed in the connection to possible socio-psychological motivations of different
political actors.
The third underlying motive was directly connected to stereotypical and anti-Semitic
images of the Jews presented by the right-wing parties. The social myth that connected
the communists and the Jews was used in order to delegitimize the influence of Polish
Communist Party.
The relations between all those three underlying motives will be then discussed.
Tatjana Soldat-Jaffe, University of Louisville, United States, t0sold01@louisville.edu
Kosher Anti-Semitism? Language, Anti-Semitism, and Public Discourse
In November 2007, the German court of appeals in Frankfurt affirmed the claim
of prominent German Jewish journalist Henryk M. Broder that Jewish self-hatred and
Jewish anti-Semitism do indeed exist. This verdict came by surprise as it was the first
legal verdict in the history of the German judiciary in which a court recognized the
phenomenon of Jews relying on anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist statements and material to
speak against Jews or Israel.
In recent past, Jewish intellectuals have increasingly made accusations against
other Jewish intellectuals who have openly criticized Israel. Alvin Rosenfeld, professor at
Indiana University, discusses this new form of Jewish anti-Semitism in his provocative
essay "'Progressive’ Jewish thought and the New Anti-Semitism," and Broder, labels this
phenomenon accordingly "applied Judeophobia."
This paper investigates the social and political context of the discourse and the
discourse structure about the so-called new Jewish anti-Semitism of the present day.
Following the theory of DCAC (discourse centered approach to culture) which argues
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that culture is localized in actually occurring instances of discourse, this paper will
investigate whether criticism of Israel indeed simultaneously reflects, constitutes, and
reproduces racial and cultural beliefs and norms in a society, and ultimately generates
social conflicts. Specifically, this paper will investigate social processes and study
stability, conflict, and change in cultural, political, and social institutions capturing the
relation between "what is said" and "what is meant." If we can assume that ideologies
seek to set limits to what will appear as rational, reasonable, credible and speakable
within a given social formation, this paper attempts to map the web of meanings and the
discursive space the subjects share. With this in mind, this paper will explore the rules
and violations within this particular discourse community that is accused of exhibiting
traces of anti-Semitism.
T.J. Berard, Kent State University, United States, tjberard@yahoo.com
Justice, Injustice, and U.S. Deportation Policy: Alternative Versions from the Web
Injustice and justice are recurring themes in discourse about minorities in the U.S.,
whether minorities are portrayed as victims or criminals. It is only rarely, however, that
minority groups and their treatment are understood in an international context. When
international issues are addressed this is often by means of historical references to the
Atlantic slave trade or to racial restrictions in past immigration law. The War on Terror,
and national immigration debates, allow and require a broader perspective on issues of
justice and injustice for minorities in America, beyond the racial divide between Black
and white, and with reference to international issues such as immigration and deportation.
Deportation, especially, has become a central issue for Hispanics, now the largest ethnic
minority, and for Muslims. The liabilities and vulnerabilities faced by resident aliens of
all kinds, whether illegal or legal, have become a significant dimension of the American
experience for tens of millions of residents and citizens.
Although deportation cases are occasionally covered in mainstream media, the
significance of deportation for multiple minority groups is hardly covered. The internet,
however, provides a forum for the concerns of a variety of groups, from those who see
deportation as an instrument of national security, to those who see deportation as an
arbitrary or discriminatory abuse of power. This paper will identify relevant websites
associated with advocates and critics of deportation, and discuss similarities and
differences across ethnic groups, with reference to Hispanics and Muslims. A key
concern will be to understand the pragmatics involved in speaking of deportation as an
issue of justice or injustice, security or insecurity. Close attention will be given to
contrasting formulations of American identity, immigrant identities, and whether these
identities are formulated as overlapping or mutually exclusive. The analysis will draw
from ethnomethodological conversation analysis, especially membership categorization
analysis, and also upon constructionist social problems theory, with its emphasis on
claims-making practices. The aim is to illuminate the logic as well as the content of
political discourse concerning deportation, with reference to the web-based media where
the concerns of minorities and nationalists, both, can be expressed most directly.
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Natalie P. Byfield, St. John’s University, United States, byfieldn@stjohns.edu
At a Loss for Words
This paper investigates the relationship between public discourse and the
organization of institutions. It suggests that the structure of institutions is a type of
language in our public discourse.
The relationship between public discourse and institutional organization is
explored through a study of the newspaper coverage of the Central Park Jogger Story, a
1989 incident in which a white, female investment banker jogging through New York
City’s Central Park was raped and a group of six Black and Latino teenage boys were
falsely charged and convicted with some serving as many as 10 years in prison. Data is
gathered from a content analysis of a sample of 251 newspaper articles about the incident
published in The New York Times and the New York Daily News over a period of 14
years.
This paper utilizes the notion of a “Habermasian public sphere” with its requisite
multiplicity of perspectives that would enable democratic discourse. It questions if and
how the media served the public sphere. It examines the language used in the coverage
to formulate shared knowledge about the case as well as a number of concepts including
race, class, gender, violence, age, and one’s status as a victim.
An examination of the sources in the coverage found that the suspects’ defense
attorneys were the most paraphrased. Over the 14 years, they were paraphrased in 36
percent of the articles as compared to the District Attorney’s office paraphrased in 30
percent, and the police in 27 percent of the articles. Despite this reliance, the language of
the coverage was extremely racialized. The word found to most shape the meaning of
non-white racial identity in the coverage is “wilding,” erroneously claimed by the police
to be the suspects’ term for the gang rape. The term itself harkens to the era of traditional
racism, built on the concept of the genetic inferiority of all non-white races. The findings
also indicate that during the one and one-half year period, when the coverage focused on
the trials and the convictions, there was a dramatic decline in the use of indicators for the
concept race.
Ronald Robinson, University of California,
ronaldbrobinson@umail.ucsb.edu
Reframing Racial Discourse in and About Schools
Santa
Barbara,
United
States,
As a Black man, ex-innercity public high school teacher, and current doctoral student, I
am appalled at much of the “race discourse” occurring within schools and about them.
Whether related to the so called “achievement gap,” “diversity,” or “colorblindness,” this
discourse, which ostensibly attempts to address the problem of racial inequality,
nevertheless, through its framing of the problem, masks the implicit ideologies and
interests of white, socio-cultural supremacy and neo-eugenics, which are both part of the
problem and continue to perpetuate it.
This discourse continues to privilege the ways of speaking, knowing and being of people
who are classified as white and certain non-white groups (Bonilla-Silva, 2001) and has
been framed as white supremacy by Bonilla-Silva, Mills (1998), Lemelle (1998), hooks
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(1989), Ladson-Billings (1995) and many other scholars. Building on these scholars’
definitions of white supremacy, for the purposes of this paper I will define it as follows: a
feedback loop integrating the political, socio-cultural, normative, ideological, and
psychological regimes of power, discourse, and practice that maintain non-whites in a
racially subordinate position vis-à-vis whites while disadvantaging African Americans in
particular.
Engaging what Schon and Rein have called “frame restructuring” (1994, 1996), I will
problematize white supremacy, analyzing how it has framed the problem of racial
inequality and solutions to it in terms of the “academic achievement” gap between blacks
and whites (e.g. Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 2003) and used “diversity” and
“colorblindness” to further disadvantage African Americans, and black males and innercity youth in particular (Wilson, Smelser, Mitchell, 1998). I will also examine how it has
placed the onus on blacks and the public education system to eliminate the gap, and
therefore racial inequality, within a feedback loop that reproduces and exacerbates it. I
will then propose a counter-hegemonic framing to the problem as well as culturally
responsive solutions based on insights gleaned from my experience both teaching social
studies in an 85% African American, low income inner-city high school in Oakland, Ca.
and living in its immediate neighborhood.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2001. White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era.
Boulder, Co.: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
hooks, b. 1989. Talking Back: thinking Feminist. Thinking Black. Boston, Ma.: South
End Press.
Lemelle, Anthony J. Jr. 995. Black Male Deviance. Westport, Ct.: Praeger.
------. 1998a. “Meritorious Exclusion: Capitalism, White Supremacy, and Criminalization
of the African-American Male.” San Francisco, Ca: Conference Paper from Convention
of the American Sociological Association.
------.1998b. “Killing the Author of Life, or Decimating ‘Bad Niggers.’” Journal of Black
Studies 19, 2 (December): 216-31.
Ladson-Billings, Gloria. and W.F. Tate. 1995. “Toward a Critical Race Theory of
Education.” Teachers College Record 97, 1: 47-68.
Mills, Charles. 1998. Blackness Visible. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.
Schon, Donald A. and Martin Rein. 1994. Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of
Intractable Policy Controversies. New York: Basic Books.
------. 1996. “Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice.”
Knowledge and Policy, 9, 1 (spring): 85-104.
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Thernstrom, Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom. 2003. No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap
in Learning. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Wilson, William Julius, Neil J. Smelser and Faith Mitchell (eds.) 1998, October. America
Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences. Vols. I and II. Washington, D.C.:
Proceedings of the Research Conference on Racial Trends in the United States.
Session 16: The (Re)production of Knowledge: Classifications in Health Care
Organizations
Chair:
Celine-Marie
Pascale,
American
University,
United
States,
pascale@american.edu
Discussant:
Gianluca
Miscione,
University
of
Oslo,
Norway,
gianluca.miscione@gmail.com
Classifications as shared systems to organize the representation of a knowledge domain
are crucial in coordinating social activities. This became more evident since organizing
processes are increasingly taking place across dispersed organizations and institutional
contexts. As far as the common understanding is not provided by co-location,
classifications are expected to keep patterns of action aligned.
Health care practices provide a clear example: information about patients need to travel
together and beyond the patients themselves, in order to allow the consequent actions
performed by a variety of actors (a number of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, relatives,
lab technicians…). Studies have showed that classifications do not necessarily travel
across different contexts without being reinterpreted or changed. They are often
renegotiated locally and given a different meaning.
Similarly, aggregated data about divisions and organizational activities need to be
comparable, therefore based on common classification schemes. This may seem linear
and logical, but it is been shown how different accountabilities make the definition, use
and evolution of classified information and related systems complex. Micro and macro
complexities bring about questions about how the tension between flexibility and
standardization is (and can be) handled.
Given this frame, we invite short texts about how classifications are handled in healthrelated organizations, and affect health delivery practices.
Examples of possible topics:
MICRO
- Health parameters’ definition, implementation and eventual standardization
within and across health-related organizations
- Transfer and use of health parameters’ sets into new contexts (tinkering,
adjustments…)
- datasets definition’s process in databases development
- discrepant categorizations for the same diseases from different (medical)
disciplines, and their effects
- theory and practice of interpretation of medical images for diagnostic purposes
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-
classifications from the patients’ viewpoint: communication among them and with
the health personnel
MACRO
- the role of the International Classification of Diseases in integrating different
organizations (in different countries or in case of major political changes) How
politics of classification systems (like the ICD embedding its Paris early XX
century origin, complained by tropical medicine)
- data mining and use of health indicators to monitor and evaluate health conditions
in a region
- evolution of classifications overtime (historicize them)
Presenters:
Stephanie Fox, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, sjf1@sfu.ca
Patient Empowerment: Defining Agency
Praises are widely sung of the empowered patient and of the patient as partner in
care, especially in the North American context. In this paper, I explore notions of patient
agency to show how the particular model used for framing care greatly influences the
agentic opportunities available for patient involvement in decision-making about care. I
briefly discuss why several prevalent notions of patient empowerment are insufficient in
terms of promoting actual patient agency within the biomedical context of patient care. I
describe the rise of the biomedical model of care, examining the idea that what counts in
this model is not the patient as (sick) person, but rather biological phenomena such as
disease symptoms and cellular or genetic functions. Indeed, many scholars contend that
the patient as person—a conception of the patient that takes account of him or her
primarily as a human being with a particular personal situation, history, culture,
experience of illness, and, especially, treatment preferences (a conception that is essential
to humane practice)—has all but disappeared from the biomedical model.
This disappearance can be contrasted with the patient’s prominent place in an
alternative care framework operating to a lesser degree within the health care context:
patient-centered care (PCC). Here, I argue that our conceptualization of patient agency
ought to include two key elements: the opportunity for the patient (a) to express his or her
experience and meaning(s) of illness, and (b) to broadly participate in decision-making
regarding his or her care. This framework prioritizes the patient as person and, as such,
offers ways for the patient as person to “re-invade” the health care context, including
treatment decision-making.
I conclude by arguing that the PCC framework ought to be extended further, by
incorporating a hybrid notion of agency that takes into account ways that non-human
and/or material objects make a difference in patients’ lives. This conceptualization of
agency helps us to recognize opportunities for patient involvement in other areas, such as
the design of medical technologies and techniques, organizational and institutional
policies, and even such mundane objects as symptom checklists, which would strengthen
humane practice.
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Martin French, Queen's University, Canada, 3mf6@queensu.ca
The Evolution of Classifications: Health In-formation in Ontario, Canada
Roberto Lusardi, University of Trento, Italy, roberto.lusardi@soc.unitn.it
Biographical & medical evidences: practices of interpreting health and illness in
Intensive Care Unit
The distinction between the symptoms categorization developed by medical science and the
patient narration of his suffering has been debated in sociology of health and illness. The
concepts of disease and illness refer to that distinction, pointing out two different systems of
classification and interpretation of bodily suffering: two semantic codes characterized by
different weight on the treatment process, traditionally based on medical evidences. In the
last decade, the convergence of medical investigation, nursing research and anthropologic
and sociological studies of medicine has begun to equilibrate the asymmetry. The so called
narrative-based medicine is an attempt to involve the new semantic in medical knowledge,
even if this new approach still has low diffusion. In the majority of western health care
organizations, only data and protocols from Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) are allowed
to guide medical practice.
However, in everyday practice of their work, physicians and nurses use to manage
narrations and information from patients and their relatives, in order to complete anamnesis
and living wills, for example.
Based on a six months participant observation, carried out in 2006, in an Italian Intensive
Care Unit (ICU), the paper describes the different kinds of information with whom health
care workers interact in everyday practice in high technological density medical unit. Data
from physicians and relatives colloquia, medical staff meetings and observations of unit’s
activity show how relatives (usually, in ICU, patients are unable to speak) are provided of a
system of interpretation and valuation of illness and treatments based on patient biography.
Moreover, the paper illustrates how biographical evidences reported by parents are involved
in therapeutic trajectories and in medical decision-making.
Laura Lucia Parolin, Università di Milano Bicocca, Italy, parolin.laura@gmail.com
Classification and discursive practice: the case of teleconsulting
One effect of the development of medical knowledge and its progressive specialization is
the increasing “replacing” of the patient with her/his representations, such as diagnostic
texts. Different approaches have questioned this progressive substitution. The humanistic
point of view criticizes the loss of the subject as privileged focus of medical practices. At
the same time, even within medicine critics are addressed to these medical practices
because this replacement is considered technically not trustable. The use of “labels” is
necessary for the transformation of the patient’s body and his individuality in the
representation of a specific case of a standardized category in the medical literature. The
patient is then re-constructed (Berg, Bowker, 1996) as clinical subject with physical and
pathological characteristics reflecting standardised typologies. As focused by Berg and
Bowker in the case of the clinical records, the representation of the body in drug dosages
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are adjusted to correct a decreasing liver function, antibiotics are geared towards a
possible focus for infection seen on an X-ray, and tubes and monitor cables are put in
place to monitor the cardio-vascular circulation. As above, in an ever tightening cycle,
the patient’s body becomes its representation (Berg, Bowker, 1996). The patient’s body
becomes then an heterogeneous ensemble of representations, such as ECG curves and the
measures of haematological tests, and labels which define and classify it in medical
categories. It is in this context that consultation among experts of different medical
sectors reveals its potentialities in re-constructuring the patient’s pathology in its
wholeness, taking into account different bodies of knowledge and discursively
reconstructing the patient. The paper present a case study from cardiological teleconsulting field. Based on the recordings of one month of telephone conversations, the
paper consider how a technological object (the telematic ECG) is constructed and acts
through discursive practices and distant interaction. The analysis will show how the
interaction between cardiologist and general practitioner is oriented to frame a coherent
scenario that makes the connections between the different elements accountable. The
research was conducted in a remote cardiology unit in the north of Italy: the Health
Telematic Network (HTN) set up in 1998 and which today is one of the most advanced
remote cardiology call centres in Italy. The unit is staffed by cardiologists who examine
electrocardiograms sent to them (telematically) by general practitioners (GPs) in various
regions. The general practitioner records the patient’s ECG with a portable apparatus.
Gunhild Tøndel, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway,
Gunhild.Tondel@svt.ntnu.no
Statistical Classification Systems in Norwegian Health Care Governance: Negotiating
Contradictory Philosophies of World-Number Relationships
Statistical classification systems are often used in Health care governance to create
impressions of common understandings among actors from different contexts who must
cooperate. Those that formally design the tools – as politicians, software producers and
technical engineers - are dependent upon a 1:1 relationship between what is counted and
the numbers. Politicians and administrators in the health care sector use the statistics as
decision making material, also to authorize their actions whether the given decision is
made in advance or not. Nevertheless, the users of the statistics are not consequential in
their way of defining the relationships between what they want to be counted, what the
systems can categorize and count at all, and what actually becomes categorized and
counted. During implementation and what can be characterized as the “first stage” of the
system’s everyday life after implementation, politicians and system developers seem to
rather follow a version of the well-known constructivist Thomas’ theorem. If only you
believe in the numbers, they will become real. In this paper I describe negotiations
between relevant actors surrounding recently implemented classification systems in
Norway. Through negotiations about the systems’ functionality actors ground the
classification systems in a reciprocally recognizable practical philosophy of the
representation relationship(s) between system and social world. I build my arguments on
a document analysis of texts produced about and of two classification systems in Norway.
Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) classifies the somatic hospitals’ in-patients according
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to among other variables the diagnoses and procedures undertaken during hospital stay.
This information is used to finance the public hospitals in accordance with the Norwegian
activity based financing model. IPLOS - an acronym for “individual based health and
care statistics” - measures function level and assistance needs of every citizen who
applies for or receives help from the municipality’s based health and social services.
IPLOS information shall be used to further develop the local services. DRG information
affects the economic status of the hospitals. In other words, both these systems are of
crucial importance in Norwegian health care governance.
Session 17 Changing Science, Changing Knowledge
Chairs: Svjatoslav I. Grigorijev, National Project on Sociology of Social Health,
Moscow & Barnaul, and Moscow State University, Russion Federation,
rebs.tpp.rf@mail.ru and Joerg-Henner Harnisch, Institute for Economic and Cultural
Analysis, Germany, joharnisch@googlemail.com
Presenters:
SvjatoslavI.Grigor’jev,
Moscow
State
University,
Russian
Federation,
rebs.tpp.rf@mail.ru
New Social Phenomena and Sociological Theories of the 21st Centuary in the Context of
Cognitive Scientific Discourses and Public Know-How Disputes.
Joerg-Henner Harnisch, Institute for Economic and Cultural Analysis, Germany,
joharnisch@googlemail.com
Transfer of American Language Philosophy of Pragmatism into other Intellectual
Worlds, Cultures and Languages
Comparative view of philosophy of pragmatism has been done to see the sources and
outcomes of American language philosophy. Based mostly on the ideas of Sanders Pierce
it is argued that its spread has become the worldwide with its transformations into other
countries cultures and social experience. Public debates as a form of intellectual
performance are scrutinized within the framework of the main and fundamental concepts
of theories of language, communication, semiotics and information. Achievements in
American philosophy of pragmatism are argued as rooted in intellectual contributions of
European schools of thought and science – of the past and the present. Transformation of
then into Eastern and Western traditions of intellectual worlds have special affects in
their forms of adaptation through their concepts, languages and idioms as well as in
connection with author rights laws recently revived in broad discussions in public spheres
and scientific institutions. Results of special surveys are discussed as connected with the
previous publications on the matter.
Svetlana I. Harnisch, Institute of Sociology, RAS, Russian Federation,
harnisch@yandex.ru
Advertising Healthy Food for Eastern and Western Europeans as Bridging the Gaps
between Scientific Knowledge and Public Awareness: Smeckt Nestlé gut wie immer?
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Three forms of knowledge about healthy life and food are argued as three levels of
understanding: scientific, common sense and advertisements. The latter takes an
intermediated position to use the gaps between experts’ knowledge and public awareness
about malign and benign sites of bio-technolo gy and medical reports about healthy food.
Using key-words like bio-products, eco-fruits, gene-modified corn, fast-food, meat and
milk of cloned-animals and codified information about ingredients of food available in
supermarkets mass-mediated public disputes are analyzed to show how public opinions
can be manipulated. Results of content analysis of advertisements in Russia, English and
German languages about healthy food are discussed with a focus on the sociolinguistic
tests used to find out attitudes of respondents (in western and eastern European countries)
to advertised names of food (foreign versus own). Responses to questions about one’s
preferences in eating traditions and a choice of food (home-made versus bought alreadyprepared) have shown that the trends to care about one’s healthy food increase in forms
of talks about diets and food qualities. It is due to nowadays modus of life/work and
easiness to get fast-food in canteens that already-prepared fo od is preferable. Since
products of the same firm now can be available in eastern and western countries of
Europe and Russia the question is whether their qualities are the same as their
advertisements promise. The doublespeak as a means of mass audience manipulation by
the means of language is argued. It has become an integrated constantly developing
linguistic system closely connected with processes of a society’s sociodynamics, the
means of inner influence on public minds and opinions being realized at various levels of
language structure. The lexical level of word comprises is argued as the most effective
means of influence based on dissociation of its signific ant and denotant. Borrowed units
acquire new meanings in their new geopolitical contexts. Alongside the euphemisms and
dysphemisms a new group of the extralinguisically bound positional replacement has
been analyzed. The paper gives an insight to the most widespread doublespeak terms that
appeared in Russian through English during the last several decades and that have been
adopted in their double-speaking forms by other languages.
Oleg N. Yanitsky Institute of Sociology RAS, yanitsky@mtu-net.ru; Irina B. Mardar
Institute of Sociology RAS, yanitsky@mtu-net.ru
Russian Federation. Shift of the Environmental Debates in Russia (1987-2007)
The paper presents the results of long-term research aimed at the discovering the
major trends in environmental debates conditioned by Russian reforms, the emergence of
civil society, and the shift of the geopolitical situation of the Russian nation-state. Changes
in the very topic (theme) of debates, actors and its resources, allies and adversaries
involved, the corridor of political opportunities of the debates as well as the character and
meanings of symbols used by the participants of the debates are the main topics of
proposed paper. Four major shifts, as it seems, have occurred. First, there is a shift from
general debates on ultimate goals to short-term and urgent issues. Second, a shift from
holistic concepts of nation-wide problems to “island-like” debates determined by a
division of Russia into specificity of a number of variable regions. Third, a shift from a
focus on value oriented estimations towards an interest in profit oriented strategies of local
economies. Forth, a shift from elaboration trends within the framework of humanity
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concepts towards applied aspects of pragmatics and linguistic sociology dealing with
means of communication under conditions of cross-cultural environmental debates in
professional spheres.
Session 18 The Linguistic Transformation of Public Spaces
Chair: Federico Farini,
federico.farini@unimore.it
University
of
Modena
and
Reggio
Emilia,
Italy
Presenters:
Federico
Farini,
University of
Modena
and
Reggio
Emilia,
Italy,
federico.farini@unimore.it
Intercultural communication and the promotion of change in the healthcare system in
Region Emilia-Romagna: an integrated sociological-linguistic research
In a multicultural society, the analysis of communication involving institutional
representatives and migrants is particularly important in order to understand the
significance of healthcare services and to evaluate their effectiveness. Research on
doctor-patient communication in these services, has identified:
1) a doctor-centered culture, based on the authority of doctors as experts prescribing
adequate therapies to patients, and asking them to adapt to the healthcare system
(hyerarchical form);
2) a patient-centered culture, on the basis of which doctors encourage patients to express
themselves and to participate actively, showing involvement and attention (dialogic
form). In a multicultural context, doctor-patient communication is potentially
intercultural, since it makes evident a variety of presuppositions and identities that
could cause problems of understanding and acceptance. Difficulties in intercultural
communication encourage healthcare systems to provide mediation services, with the
task of promoting reciprocal understanding and acceptance between participants, and
preventing misunderstandings and conflicts. However, research highlights that
mediation may cause problems in coordination and promotion of doctors' and
patients' participation.
The research I would like to introduce, designed at the University of Modena-Reggio
Emilia (Department of Language and Culture Sciences) focuses on intercultural
communication which is produced in the healthcare system in Region Emilia-Romagna
(Central Italy) between healthcare personnel and migrant patients. To achieve this goal
our research aims at integrating two different theoretical and methodological approaches:
1) conversation analysis, in order to observe the interaction between healthcare
personnel, pointing out the cues of the participants' turn-taking sequences;
2) social system theory, for the analysis of the cultural presuppositions of the healthcare
system as a communication system with a specific function in society.
At a whole, we aim at exploring the cultural and organisational features of the healthcare
system, both in the concrete interactions (Conversation Analysis) and at a systemic level
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(Social Systems Theory). To achieve this goal we are experimenting such an integrated,
intedisciplinar sociological and linguistic approach.
Pia V. Rius, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Institut de Recherche et
Development piavrius@yahoo.com.ar
Unemployed organisations and the appropriation of the name of piquetero.
In Argentina, during the 90 popular sections of the population engaged different
strategies to overcame unemployment and the social consequences produced by the
“structural reforms”. Individual strategies are combined with collective engagements
through neighbours’ associations, charitable associations related to church or the creation
of unemployed organisations.
Those strategies, often related to available possibilities of the population involved are not
equally considered in the public sphere. In this article we examine the treatment that
national press made of the so called piquetero movement and the reaction of unemployed
organisations. In order to do so, we offer a diachronic study of the press report of the
news concerning unemployed movements in two national journals in Argentina: La
Nacion (LN) and Pagina/12 (P12). Whether both newspapers oppose from an ideological
perspective they share journalistic practices which tend to reproduce commonplaces and
stereotypes. The use of the name of piquetero movement is considered into the discoursal
processes of exclusionary differentiations through stereotypes that are affected by
unequal relations of power. The cleavage in both newspapers’ accounts regards mainly
social mobilisation and state intervention. In LN, private or individual initiatives are
considered legitimate, assumed as normal, social policy appears constantly suspected as
corrupted and collective action is pointed as non democratic. To sustain these binary
opposition scientific discourses are mobilised and experts’ evaluations are called into
debate. According to P/12, state intervention is needed to overcome social crisis and
social mobilisation is a mean for that purpose. Its analyses tend to multiply sources
introducing social movements and several institutional actors as legitimate ones.
However, even when the newspaper position seems closer to social organisations, access
to the media is not controlled by the latter and journalists often challenged in tracks and
various internal communications. The name given by the journalists is afterwards reappropriated by the unemployed organisations. Therefore, we consider this process which
reveals the ambiguities of this stigmatised name turning it into a positive identification to
a rebellious character, a way of engaging in “social change”. A vocabulary appears to
name some of the activities carried out in the organisations. However, its subversive
potential seems limited to the use of the name of piquetero in the context of social
protest.
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Bruno Monteiro, Psychology and Education Sciences of Porto – Portugal,
bmonteiro@fpce.up.pt
Men, beasts and machines: On the vocabularies of insurgence and indignity among
industrial workers
This paper wants to shed light on the ways the ordinary categories of worker`s
understanding of social reality of work shapes their actions and discourses about that
particular form of life that is the shopfloor everyday and collective existence. In the basis
of a four-month-long ethnographic experience working as a unspecialized worker in a
furniture factory, the author essays to comprehends how commonplace vocabulary acts as
a way of produce divisions or, on another way, to bring cohesion to the worker`s group.
First, acting as a kind of spontaneous and doxic knowledge (i.e. beyond any
suspicion and any necessity of explanation), the strongly metaphoric discourse employed
by the workers serves as a way to make intelligible the hard, sometimes brutal,
experience of industrial working conditions. That way they are employed as a mean to
convey insurgence and denunciate the exploration and domination raised in the factory,
as a way to defends dignity and autonomy in the everyday struggles in labour process
(«we`re not machines!», «for the management only numbers counts, but you are persons
too…»).
Second, and simultaneously, they act as a mean to eufemize and to sublimate that
same conditions. They serve to justify and to antecipate, as a kind of self-fulfilling
prophecy, on the basis of a irrevocably inferior, sometimes animal, condition that
workers are supposed to have. We can enunciate the auto-exclusion, associated to their
sense of one`s place («this is not for people of our kind»), as particular mode to
legitimate the work hierarchies – as something like the natural order of things.
In a context of intense power relations, this discourses acts, finally, as a way to
introduce differences and promote exclusion in the interior of workers group – as when
something is accused of having promiscuous relations with management. That way they
help to shape informal hierarchies of virtuosity in the working collective.
Feliu
López-i-Gelats,
Autonomous
University
of
Barcelona,
Spain,
Feliu.Lopez.Gelats@uab.cat, J. David Tàbara, Autonomous University of Barcelona,
Spain, and Jordi Bartolomé, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
Rural change and the politics of the notion of rurality
In many regions of rural Europe agriculture is on the decline. But this is just the tip of a
much broader process taking place: the so-called rural change. Understanding this
process only as a contingent crisis of an economic activity is obviously an
oversimplification. The rural is conformed by a multiplicity of representations and
practices that go beyond its simple association with agricultural and farming activities.
What constitutes ‘the rural’ is constantly being transformed and modified. The fast
process of economic tertiarisation and counterurbanisation that characterizes rural change
is bringing in increasing social complexity and new disputes about what is or should
become ‘the rural’. Increasing tensions between the growing number of alternative
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interpretations of the same realities become apparent. In practice, such conflicts reflect,
not only cultural differences on perceptions and values, but also inequalities in the
opportunities for social interaction and empowerment. As follows we argue that what is
in crisis is not agriculture itself nor rural areas, but the role of that society expects
agriculture and rural areas to play. In our case study, in the county of El Pallars Sobirà in
the Catalan Pyrenees (Spain), the growing complexity of rural society brought about by
the rural change process has been shown by the presence of four distinct discourses of
rurality, which struggle to impose their particular point of view, and that have been
distinguished using the Q methodology discourse analysis.
Session 19 Cross Talk in Professional Spheres, Panel A
Chair: Svetlana I. Harnisch, Institute of Sociology, RAS, Russian Federation,
harnisch@yandex.ru
The language situation and the language policy in every multilingual state is the result of
two contradictory needs: the need of identification and the need of communication. The
first need consists in the wish of every person to use his (her) native language in all
situations. The second need means the necessity of intercourse with any person without
complication. The ideal situation connected with the need of identification is
monolingualism. The ideal situation connected with the need of communication is the use
of common language for all the social communities. However the situation of
communication of two or more persons with different mother tongues is very common.
Different strategies are possible under such circumstances. 1) Communication without
any verbal language. 2) Every interlocutor is monolingual and uses his (her) native
language. The need of identification does not suffer but the communication is difficult in
both cases. 3) Communication through an interpreter. Both needs are satisfied but this
strategy is not always possible. 4) Every interlocutor is bilingual and uses his (her) native
language. Both needs are satisfied but this strategy is very rare. 5) Every interlocutor
knows some third language. 5a) situation of pidgin, 5b) situation of nobody’s language
(Latin, Esperanto etc.), 5c) situation of alien international language (English, Russian
etc.). 6) One person is monolingual, another person is bilingual and they speak the native
language of the monolingual person. The strategies 5 and 6 are convenient from the point
of view of the need of communication but they (especially the strategy 6) are not so
convenient for satisfaction of the need of identification. The use of an alien language can
be connected with the sense of ethnic, cultural and even political inferiority
Presenters:
Vladimir M. Alpatov, Institute of Oriental Studies RAS, Russian Federation,
v-alpatov@yandex.ru
Bilingualism and Strategies of Communication
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Amado Alarcón, University of Rovira & Virgili, Spain, Amado.alarcon@urv.net
Linguistic Choice in Multilingual Companies: Implications on Both Inclusion and
Exclusion of Social and Linguistic Groups.
Olga Beloborodova, Moscow State University, Russian Federation, sveharnisch@yandex.ru
The Variants of English Language: Sociological Aspects of Cross-Cultural
Communications
Alexandr Bouchev, St. Petersburg University, Russian Federation, alex.bouchev@list.ru
Codeswitching in Translation from Russian into English: Some Discrepancies
The paper discusses some discrepancies between Russian texts and their English
translators. The material under study includes public and media discourses well as
substandard colloquial discourse.
The studies reveal the abundance of borrowings in Russian, especially of English origin.
Often the borrowings are unmotivated und unclear, esp. when used euphemistically instead
of Russian full-fledged equivalents. The general impression produced by such text is that of
hackneyed, unoriginal, trite pretentious character. It is all completely lost in translation- in
the latter these coinages lose the flavor of “foreign borrowings” and hence the discourse is
no longer perceived as unclear, vain and cumbersome. This makes us consider the
LINGUISTIC FASHION AND CUSTOM as the components of substyles and include these
characteristics into the description of code.
Another example supporting this thesis may be found in the sphere of colloquial discourse.
The slang of Russian youngsters contained a lot of borrowed units. This barbarian
transliteration is not creative in the language. Their existence must be explained on the lines
of picking up prestigious trends in fashion, pop music, etc. It is of interest to note that some
of these borrowed words start being involved in the creative play of the language get well
rooted in Russian. The marker for this trend is that the barbarism get adjusted to typical
Russian forms, and are able to be active in the processes of derivation, word building,
language jokes, folk etymology, etc.
Mikhail F. Chernysh, IS RAS, Russian Federation, mfche@yandex.ru
Corporate Culture as a Way of Interclass Understanding
Russian companies are introducing corporate culture as a way of consolidating work
collectives. The Soviet history provided for a lot of corporate independence. The Soviet
enterprises formatted social space around them by setting up social infrastructures and social
networks that served the purposed intracorporate consolidation. In the course of
privatization the Soviet enterprise changed owner: in most cases they became private
ventures. The new owners faced the problem of factory autonomy. The collectives felt they
had rights to assert their particular private ideology and quite often disregarded the new
hierarchies. The new owners resorted to pressure to bring the collectives to heel. However
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the strategy often malfunctioned by giving boost to “silent resistance” in the collectives. The
new strategy consisted in elaborating a corporate culture that would serve imbue work
collective with a new sense of unity. The strategy combined with material stimuli for
integration worked for cultural change on enterprises. It created a new set of attitudes that
stressed unity rather than discord, symbols of market-related success of which the new
collected were called upon to take part. The new attitudes achieved success when they also
integrated the Soviet history of the enterprise into on narrative of enterprise development.
The new strategy presupposed collateral in the form of creating new enterprise media. The
old media were closed down; the new media stressed the role of enterprises as vehicles of
social mobility.
Session 20 Cross Talk in Professional Spheres, Panel B
Chairs:
Maya
Khemlani
David,
University
of
Malaysia,
Malaysi,
mayadavid@yahoo.com and Vladimir Alpatov, Institute of Oriental Studies RAS,
Russian Federation,
v-alpatov@yandex.ru
Presenters:
Maya Khemlani David University of Malaysi, Malaysia, mayadavid@yahoo.com
Achieving Professional Goals: Use of Mixed Discourse in Interviews
In multilingual Malaysia, using two or more languages in one’s discourse has become a
norm, be it in formal (see David, 2003 on code switching in Malaysian courts) and
informal settings (see David, 2007 on code switching among Malay , Chinese and Indian
Malaysian youth).While purists, including political figures in the country, disparage the
use of a mixed discourse especially when it entails the mix of Malay, the national
language, with the other languages used in the country, this presentation argues that the
use of a mixed code, especially between the national language, Malay and the
international language, English has become the sine qua non of language choice and is a
strategy used to achieve certain professional objectives in business talk and professional
interactions among the many ethnic groups in the country. This presentation focuses on
interviews by journalists of local English daily and examines the frequency of use of code
switches and the reasons for the mixed discourse between interviewers and interviewees.
Code switching should no longer be viewed negatively as a strategy to overcome
differences in levels of proficiency of the interlocutors involved. The analysis clearly
shows that code switching is intentionally used to and achieves professional objectives.
Nataly Khetagurova, IS, RAS, Russian Federation,rss@isras.ru
Cross-talk in Public Debates: Discourse on the Anti-Global Movement
Over the last time the conceptions of globalizations in any different modifications
has become the key position on description of modern society and its transformations all
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over the world. At the same time the widespread involving of social, economic, cultural
spheres into globalization processes is attended by arising of anti global movement.
Without having an efficient structure, hierarchy, and location anti global movement
correspond the centers of resistance that contact to each other for the purpose of
coordination all the international actions (protests accompany the activity of numerous
organizations such as G-8, NAFTA, WTA, and so on).
In process of communication inside the movement that is in fact kind of multicultural
communication in cause of multinational structure of activists, antiglobalists use the code
switching: mother tongue/English (as far as the last one is accustomed to be the language
of multinational communication.) This fact makes the problem of clear and adequate
perception of the information to become the most important in that type of
communication. The possible loss in both face to face communication and on/offline
contact defines the success of antiglobalist’s activity in general which are able to be
efficient as any other resistant movements only by high level of consolidation inside the
clusters of activists and among the territorially separated groups.
Alexander M Lola, WIDO, Belgium, amlola@mail.ru
Sancretization of Sciences and Polysemy of Realities: As Characterized by the Acute
Problem of What to Do?
Evolutionary the interrelated development of sciences could be subdivided into the
following three stages: borrowings; mutual convergence – as a more developed stage
and syncretization as the most developed stage. The latter is urgently needed by the
global ecology, elimination of wars, and mutual development of different ethnic
communities. However, sciences are not prepared to syncretization. Moreover, the world
science is based on hundreds of languages accumulated by eight modern civilizations,
each of them seeking to self-preserve its own science and language and with Western
civilization aspiring to the world leadership and a unified language. Esperanto failed to
come up to the expectations and the main obstacle was associated with non-perception of
“other languages” and failure to standardize scientific terminology. The problem still
exists and the information revolution urgently needs linguistic identification of its
heritage and SYNCRETIZATION of sciences.
Is the English language ready to perceive and standardize scientific terminology? The
author is going to present to the Forum participants the following information:
 Underdevelopment of terminology in the widest sphere: living environment, city,
programmes, legal science;
 Facts of the Russian drama in the field of city development resulted from the wrong
perception of English and French terms and inadequate perception of a number of
Russian terms and humiliation of Russia in the world and the UN.
Historically, the Russian language as a conductor of a unique civilization with 228 ethnic
communities and 87 languages formed a framework of terminological and conceptual
apparatus which could not be fully and adequately translated into other languages
without the loss of reality and identity. Thus, for example, a number of terms have not
been fully identical including the world urbanization; city; settlement; a number of terms
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and notions in the sphere of environment. Moreover, a number of historically-established
fundamental notions today lessen the importance of many nations. Thus, 280 million
members of the Orthodox Church are still called in the world “orthodox persons”. The
world made a start to “globalization” whereas the term is not good. A term
“environment” is not quite appropriate for eco-policy, not to mention a term
“sustainable” (sustainable development) borrowed from NATO’s plans of nuclear
bombardments. A term “national programmes” used by Russian politicians decreases the
role of many nations in the country of 133 ethnic communities.
What to do? Congresses and forums turned to be inefficient: rhetoric fails to give either
new knowledge or cooperation.
1. A goal-oriented approach is needed to SYNCRETIZE a terminological and
conceptual apparatus of sciences in the basic languages through the selection of the
key terminological and conceptual blocks and their integration into other languages
without lessening their significance in the native languages.
2. A broader interpretation of thesauruses and glossaries is needed as well as urgent
re-publishing of national dictionaries and text-books to include terms in the native
language and terms borrowed from other languages. Schoolchildren and students are
likely to welcome this virtual communication.
3. It is desirable that UNESCO and 3-4 outstanding world centers of humanitarian
sciences take the lead in this activity.
Kiril L.Reznik, Publishing House "Spectr", Helsinki, Finland, kirill@context.ru
The Russian Speaking Population in Finland: Informational Environment, Language and
Communication.
Few waves of the Russian-speaking immigration to Finland in the 20th century as well as
different immigration types in the past 20 years led to a simultaneous presence of various
in behavior and language Russian-speaking groups of population. They differently
communicate among themselves, with the society, with their children. Is their family
language a barrier and obstacle for their kids’ future? Different degree of integration and
assimilation has led to different types and ways for perception of information. Russianlanguage, English-language and local media differently “speak” with the new Finns.
Hence, various degree of social activity and involvement into the society’s life. Role of
mass-media (including Russian-language media) in the mutual integration of the modern
Finnish Russian-speaking population.
Inna Vasilenko Volgograd State University, Volgograd, Russian Federation,
vpetrov@hist.kubsu.ru
The Language of Professional Instruction and Professional Actions: Russian
Contemporary Organizational Practices.
There is communication including exchange of information and interaction among
persons which play various professional roles in the each organization. Efficacy of
communication often influences the quality and the realization of decision. There are
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RC 25 Language & Society Program
First World Forum, ISA
September 5-8, 2008
formal communications, among elements of formal organizational structure, interlevels
communication (ascending, descending), horizontal communication among equal level
departments, and communication such kind as: “head – people”, “head – working group”.
There are informal communications including informal groups, outsider’s issues, and
hearsays about official problems.
The language is a usual vehicle for formal and informal communication. The
language can integrate and disintegrate staff of the organization, because words have
defined value, which people perceive, remember and produce expected reaction.
In formal organization the exchange of information is regulated by job description,
which consists of staff behavior norms within their professional competence. The main
part of each professional competence include: functions, skills and knowledge
requirements, rights and responsibility. The job description researches concluded: first,
the staff charge is described too much in detail in a lot of Russian enterprises, second,
text meaning doesn’t contribute to personal’s initiative and creative work in order to
make staff conduct wide range of operations.
The rights and responsibility are presented a very poor, it leads the absence of
personal independence and freedom for discharge theirs obligations. The language of this
part unlike part of “Obligation” has a general meaning which leads beginning barriers
between personal at all levels.
A staff social positions form a social identity which based on inexplicit rights and
obligations definition. Staff head for their perception of organization, work, benefits,
formulate their feelings and estimations which determine professional actions lead to
success or failure.
The language of professional instruction is a part of the language of organizational
policy and organizational context. Too much details or much general meaning of
instruction makes a specific field of interaction. Fuzzy rights and obligations contribute
increasing of organizational uncertainty.
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