Ethnic personal names and multiple identities in Anglophone Caribbean speech communities in Latin America

2002 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-608 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Aceto

This study investigates the generation and maintenance of multiple personal names in an Anglophone Creole-speaking community of Panama. Nearly every Afro-Panamanian resident of the island of Bastimentos has two given names, one Spanish-derived and the other Creole-derived. The Creole or “ethnic name” is virtually the exclusive name used locally for reference and address. It is argued that these ethnic names are preferred for reference and address because they reflexively define who members of this speech community are in terms of culture and ancestry. A typology of nicknames and pseudonyms as well as a brief cross-cultural presentation of multiple or alternative personal names is provided. Ethnic name usage in Bastimentos is discussed within an acts of identity framework.

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 855-856
Author(s):  
JUBIN ABUTALEBI ◽  
HARALD CLAHSEN

Experimental and other empirical research on language is faced with the fact that language performance exhibits a high degree of variability at all linguistic levels. Variability is found across languages, across speech communities within one language, across individuals within one speech community and even within the same individual. Bilingual language use adds a further source of variability to this already complicated picture. On the other hand, there are aspects of language and language use that are constrained, stable, or robust and that are less (or not at all) subject to variability, for example, possible options that are not chosen in any language or kinds of error that are never produced. Several familiar ways of dealing with the variability of language use and its limits have turned out to be unsatisfactory. One approach has been to simply abstract away from variability with constructs such as the ‘ideal speaker–hearer’ (who – to our knowledge – nobody has met so far). Another strategy is to average across individuals, which sometimes results in arbitrary mean scores or mean activation patterns that are hard to replicate for individuals, even for those who took part in a given study. A third solution when confronted with variability in language use is to take it at face value, positing that every language, every speech community, and even every individual is different, an approach that essentially gives up on discovering any kind of generalizations. While none of these strategies appears to us to be particularly fruitful, the problem of how to deal with variability in language performance and its limits remains.


1999 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 196-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosario Martínez-Arias ◽  
Fernando Silva ◽  
Ma Teresa Díaz-Hidalgo ◽  
Generós Ortet ◽  
Micaela Moro

Summary: This paper presents the results obtained in Spain with The Interpersonal Adjective Scales of J.S. Wiggins (1995) concerning the variables' structure. There are two Spanish versions of IAS, developed by two independent research groups who were not aware of each other's work. One of these versions was published as an assessment test in 1996. Results from the other group have remained unpublished to date. The set of results presented here compares three sources of data: the original American manual (from Wiggins and collaborators), the Spanish manual (already published), and the new IAS (our own research). Results can be considered satisfactory since, broadly speaking, the inner structure of the original instrument is well replicated in the Spanish version.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49
Author(s):  
Tzu-Hui Chen

This narrative aims to explore the meaning and lived experiences of marriage that a unique immigrant population—“foreign brides” in Taiwan—possesses. This convergence narrative illustrates the dynamics and complexity of mail-order marriage and women's perseverance in a cross-cultural context. The relationship between marriage, race, and migration is analyzed. This narrative is comprised of and intertwined by two story lines. One is the story of two “foreign brides” in Taiwan. The other is my story about my cross-cultural relationship. All the dialogues are generated by 25 interviews of “foreign brides” in Taiwan and my personal experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Inés Pardo Martínez ◽  
William Alfonso Piña ◽  
Angelo Facchini ◽  
Alexander Cotte Poveda

Abstract Background Currently, most of the world’s population lives in cities, and the rapid urbanization of the population is driving increases in the demand for products, goods and services. To effectively design policies for urban sustainability, it is important to understand the trends of flows in energy and materials as they enter and leave a city. This knowledge is essential for determining the key elements characterizing future urban growth and addressing future supply challenges. Methods This paper presents an analysis of the energy and material flows in the city of Bogotá over the time span from 2001 to 2017. Urban flows are also characterized in terms of their temporal evolution with respect to population growth to compare and identify the changes in the main input flows, wealth production, emissions and waste in the city. Results The results of the analysis are then compared with those for other selected large urban agglomerations in Latin America and worldwide to highlight similarities and make inferences. The results show that in Bogotá, there was a decrease in some of the material flows, such as the consumption of water and the generation of discharge, in recent years, while there was an increase in the consumption of energy and cement and in the production of CO2 emissions and construction materials. Solid waste production remained relatively stable. With respect to the other large cities considered, we observe that the 10-year growth rates of the flows with respect to population growth are lower in Bogotá, particularly when compared with the other urban agglomerations in Latin America. Conclusions The findings of this study are important for advancing characterizations of the trends of material and energy flows in cities, and they contribute to the establishment of a benchmark that allows for the definition and evaluation of the different impacts of public policy while promoting the sustainability of Bogotá in the coming decades.


2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (60) ◽  
pp. 253-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Olstein

Abstract World history can be arranged into three major regional divergences: the 'Greatest Divergence' starting at the end of the last Ice Age (ca. 15,000 years ago) and isolating the Old and the New Worlds from one another till 1500; the 'Great Divergence' bifurcating the paths of Europe and Afro-Asia since 1500; and the 'American Divergence' which divided the fortunes of New World societies from 1500 onwards. Accordingly, all world regions have confronted two divergences: one disassociating the fates of the Old and New Worlds, and the other within either the Old or the New World. Latin America is in the uneasy position that in both divergences it ended up on the 'losing side.' As a result, a contentious historiography of Latin America evolved from the very moment that it was incorporated into the wider world. Three basic attitudes toward the place of Latin America in global history have since emerged and developed: admiration for the major impact that the emergence on Latin America on the world scene imprinted on global history; hostility and disdain over Latin America since it entered the world scene; direct rejection of and head on confrontation in reaction the former. This paper examines each of these three attitudes in five periods: the 'long sixteenth century' (1492-1650); the 'age of crisis' (1650-1780); 'the long nineteenth century' (1780-1914); 'the short twentieth century' (1914-1991); and 'contemporary globalization' (1991 onwards).


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Ploog

AbstractChange is an ongoing process constitutive of human language to which will be refered by the term of dynamics. It will be worked out how mere interaction conditions the language dynamics and how the disposable structural resources will be coordinated in microsystems. Since from this point of view grammar exists as a process, it will be of interest to work out by what type of mechanisms a bilingual speaker elaborates his/her discourse. It will be discussed what can be called a (more) 'useful' construction and through what type of mechanisms the constructions get coordinated. We will argue that all discursive mechanisms are bound to satisfy the pragmatic demands of an actual speech production and that the most useful items are those which best satisfy these pragmatic demands.One of the most characteristic phenomena of the linguistic dynamics in Ivory Coast is the microsystem of LA: In a highly heterogeneous context of social interaction, LA is used in (the locally dominant) discursive traditions of French and Mande languages, undergoing a grammaticalization process separately in each of them and used - consequently - in various constructions. The wide range of its referential values, the very importance of the negotiation of discourse referents between speaker and hearer and its simple phonological form seem to predestine LA to get reappropriated and to become a 'favorite' form in the emergent speech community.


2011 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandrine Ballester ◽  
Fatima Chatri ◽  
Maria Teresa Muñoz Sastre ◽  
Sheila Rivière ◽  
Etienne Mullet

The structure of the motives invoked by people for forgiveness and for unforgiveness was assessed, and the relationships between these motives and demographic characteristics, conceptualizations of forgiveness, forgivingness, personality and culture were examined. Forgiveness appeared to be fueled mainly by three largely independent kinds of motives: having recovered sympathy for a repentant offender, applying a moral principle and preserving a meaningful relationship. Forgiveness may sometimes, however, amount to exploiting the offense for dominating or for challenging the offender as well as others. Unforgiveness appeared to be fueled mainly by persistent anger and indignation, sometimes associated with the desire for self-affirmation and self-protection, and, for a few participants, it was the only response to outgroup members. For each kind of invoked motive a meaningful pattern of relationships with the other measurements, including culture, was found.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110594
Author(s):  
Yiyi Yin ◽  
Zhuoxiao Xie

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document