A Systemic Functional Perspective on the Controversy surrounding the Two English Translations of Simone de Beauvoir’s Iconic Sentence in Le Deuxième Sexe

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 274-296
Author(s):  
Alice Caffarel-Cayron
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Functional Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Philosophical Debates ◽  
Point Of Departure

Abstract This article presents a systemic functional perspective for understanding the social and philosophical meanings conveyed by Beauvoir’s iconic sentence “on ne naît pas femme: on le devient,” with a view to addressing the controversy surrounding its English translations and complementing current philosophical debates. It analyzes Beauvoir’s linguistic resources in the sentence in question and describes how its meanings are symbolically articulated through her lexicogrammatical selections. This analysis serves as a point of departure for discussing the 1953 and 2009 translators’ choices.

scholarly journals The Social Construction of Internet Addiction in China: Youth between Reality and Temporal Autonomy in the Documentary Web Junkie

2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-105
Author(s):  
Annika Pissin
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Internet Addiction ◽  
Documentary Film ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Critical Thought ◽  
The Core ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
The Social ◽  
China Today ◽  
Point Of Departure

This article addresses issues surrounding the social construction of internet addiction, focusing on conceptualisations of reality, escape, hope, and time. Drawing on a critical realist account of semiosis, the framing of internet addiction in China is analysed using the documentary film Web Junkie as an empirical pivot and point of departure. A contextual overview of relations, interests, and tensions surrounding youth and the internet in China is provided, and the film Web Junkie is briefly presented. The main body of the article consists of a critical analysis of conceptualisations of “reality” and “escape.” The core tension focused on in the analysis is the struggle over time, necessitating engagement with critical thought on hope and utopia. The analysis concludes that struggles over temporal autonomy underlie conflicting claims about “reality” and “escape” that are central to “internet addiction” and its treatment in China today.

scholarly journals Is and Ought? How the (Social) Ontological Circumscribes the Normative

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 509-525
Author(s):  
Dorothea Gädeke
Keyword(s):  
Well Being ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Normative Values ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
Individual Values ◽  
The Social ◽  
Argument Proceeds ◽  
Ontological Position ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Normative Content

Abstract Is normative theory grounded in ontology and if so, how? Taking a debate between Kwame Gyekye and Thaddeus Metz as my point of departure, my aim in this article is to show that something normative does indeed follow from ontological views: The social ontological, I maintain, circumscribes the normative without, however, fully determining its content. My argument proceeds in two steps: First, I argue that our social ontological position constrains what kind of normative theory we may plausibly defend. A relational ontology as defended by Gyekye entails a relational normative theory, whereas an atomist ontology calls for an individualist normative approach and a collectivist ontology for a strong communitarian one. Second, this link between the ontological and the normative has substantive implications for how to interpret the normative content of a theory; it entails interpreting normative values in light of the appropriate kind of normative thought. I illustrate the importance of this implication by showing that it suggests a decidedly relational reading of the core value of well-being in Gyekye’s moderate communitarianism, that resolves the alleged tension between communal and individual values in his account.

The Linguistic Ecology of the Sahel

2021 ◽  
pp. 648-666
Author(s):  
Fiona Mc Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Official Statistics ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Social ◽  
Linguistic Repertoire ◽  
Literary Arabic

The topic of this chapter is the linguistic ecology of multilingualism in the Sahel. Based on the premise that named languages are social and often colonial constructs, the chapter focuses on the speaker-centered notion of linguistic repertoire and the ways in which Sahelians use their linguistic resources. French and standard or literary Arabic are important languages in the Sahel, and they reflect strong regimes of language that are reinforced through education, both secular and Quranic. Communication in the multilingual Sahel is facilitated by indigenous languages that have become local or regional lingua francas. There are a number of writing practices generally overlooked in official statistics on literacy, including the use of the Arabic and other scripts to write indigenous languages. Orality is widely valued, and mastery of eloquent language has resulted in the differentiation of a caste of verbal artists or griots within the social hierarchy.

Chicago's Mecca Flat Blues

1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 382-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bluestone
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Single Family ◽  
Domestic Ideology ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Point Of Departure

This essay explores the Mecca, one of Chicago's largest nineteenth-century apartment houses. Designed in 1891, the Mecca's innovative plan incorporated an exterior landscaped courtyard and two monumental interior atria. The form and meaning of these spaces diverged in important respects. The exterior courtyards appropriated aspects of the single-family residential form and domestic ideology. The interior atria relied on Chicago skyscraper models and their cosmopolitan approach to the possibilities of density. Exterior courtyards later proliferated, while atria appeared in only two other local residential buildings. Nevertheless, the Mecca's atria possessed a sense of place that deeply etched the building into Chicago's cultural and political landscape. The building became the subject of 1920s blues improvisation-the "Mecca Flat Blues." In the 1940s and 1950s tenants waged a decadelong Mecca preservation campaign. Housing rather than Chicago School aesthetics provided the preservationists with their point of departure. Race interesected with space and Mies van der Rohe's vision of modern urbanism to seal the Mecca's fate. The essay's methodology develops the social and cultural meaning of form. Moreover, it demonstrates the importance of pushing architectural history beyond the nexus of meaning created by original patrons and designers. We stand to learn a great deal about architectural and urban history by studying how people have defined and redefined, valued and devalued, their buildings, cities, and landscapes.

scholarly journals Deltagelsens kunst?

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (118) ◽  
pp. 51-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Schwarzbart ◽  
Kristine Samson
Keyword(s):  
The Social ◽  
Individual Actor ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The City ◽  
Point Of Departure

Within recent years, art and urbanism have gradually moved closer to each other and come together around socially engaged, dialogical projects. Participation and the creation of urban publics are topics that often concern artists as well as urban planners and activists. Based on a record of this recent conjunction between art and urbanism, the article examines practices, fractures, and conflicts in the aftermath of the social turn. With a point of departure in the coalescing public programme of the Istanbul Biennial and Occupy Gezi at Taksim Square in 2013, the article questions the art of participation. What type of public is created in the participative art? And is an artistic social turn towards the city even possible beyond the art institution? The article concludes that precisely in the conflict between the two different rationales of art and urbanism a participatory, urban public can emerge; a public, however, which lie beyond the intention and rationales of the individual actor.

Modeling the Intellect from a Coordination Perspective

2011 ◽  
pp. 413-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Taxén
Keyword(s):  
Research Program ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Central Task ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sensory Modalities ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Preliminary Research ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Point Of Departure

Usually, models of the intellect take the individual mind and body as the point of departure and proceed outward towards the social and natural environment in which the individual is immersed. As a consequence, important social dimensions contributing to the epigenetic development of the individual are less articulated. This chapter suggests modeling the intellect from a more balanced perspective that recognizes both social and individual aspects–the coordination of actions. The author argues that coordination is made possible by certain innate dispositions called activity modalities: contextualization, spatialization, temporalization, stabilization, and transition. Consequently, a central task for modeling the intellect is to understand how perceptions received through sensory modalities are related to the activity modalities. To this end, the author proposes a research program for modeling the intellect, based on the concept of “activity” in the Russian Activity Theory and the activity modalities. Provisional arguments for the relevance of these modalities are discussed in three different realms associated with the intellect: the social, conceptual, and neural ones. The chapter is concluded with some preliminary research questions, pertinent for the research program.

scholarly journals The Waggle Dance as an Intended Flight: A Cognitive Perspective

Insects ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolf Menzel
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Social Insect ◽  
Waggle Dance ◽  
Flight Performance ◽  
Social Community ◽  
Functional Perspective ◽  
Walking Pattern ◽  
The Social ◽  
Dance Communication ◽  
Navigational Memory

The notion of the waggle dance simulating a flight towards a goal in a walking pattern has been proposed in the context of evolutionary considerations. Behavioral components, like its arousing effect on the social community, the attention of hive mates induced by this behavior, the direction of the waggle run relative to the sun azimuth or to gravity, as well as the number of waggles per run, have been tentatively related to peculiar behavioral patterns in both solitary and social insect species and are thought to reflect phylogenetic pre-adaptations. Here, I ask whether these thoughts can be substantiated from a functional perspective. Communication in the waggle dance is a group phenomenon involving the dancer and the followers that perform partially overlapping movements encoding and decoding the message respectively. It is thus assumed that the dancer and follower perform close cognitive processes. This provides us with access to these cognitive processes during dance communication because the follower can be tested in its flight performance when it becomes a recruit. I argue that the dance message and the landscape experience are processed in the same navigational memory, allowing the bee to fly novel direct routes, a property understood as an indication of a cognitive map.

scholarly journals Searching for Statesmanship: a Corpus-Based Analysis of a Translated Political Discourse

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry Jones
Keyword(s):  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Leadership Qualities ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Victorian Britain ◽  
Classical World ◽  
The Social ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Social Anxieties ◽  
Political Works

Abstract With its connotations of superior moral integrity, exceptional leadership qualities and expertise in the science of government, the modern ideal of statesmanship is most commonly traced back to the ancient Greek concept of πολιτικός (politikos) and the work of Plato and Aristotle in particular. Through an analysis of a large corpus of modern English translations of political works, built as part of the AHRC Genealogies of Knowledge project (http://genealogiesofknowledge.net/), this case-study aims to explore patterns that are specific to this translated discourse, with a view to understanding the crucial role played by translators in shaping its development and reception in society. It ultimately seeks to argue that the model of statesmanship presented in translations from ancient Greek is just as much a product of the receiving culture (and the social anxieties of Victorian Britain especially) as it is inherited from the classical world.

scholarly journals Introduction: When Difference Makes a Difference

Episteme ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Wylie
Keyword(s):  
Personal History ◽  
Cognitive Capacity ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Point Of Departure

Taking seriously the social dimensions of knowledge puts pressure on the assumption that epistemic agents can usefully be thought of as autonomous, interchangeable individuals, capable, insofar as they are rational and objective, of transcending the specificities of personal history, experience, and context. If this idealization is abandoned as the point of departure for epistemic inquiry, then differences among situated knowers come sharply into focus. These include differences in cognitive capacity, experience, and expertise; in access to information and the heuristics that make it intelligible; and in motivating interests and orienting standpoint. Dissent takes on rather different significance, as a potentially productive feature of epistemic life rather than evidence of a failure of aperspectivality or an indication of error. The central questions are, then, what forms of diversity are epistemically consequential, and how can they best be deployed to ensure that the beliefs we warrant as knowledge are as well grounded and truth-tracking as possible.

Framing a Modern Umma

2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 146-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itzchak Weismann
Keyword(s):  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Founding Father ◽  
Main Thrust ◽  
Movement Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Christian Missionary ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Ongoing Project ◽  
Muslim Brothers

This article’s point of departure is that da‘wa – the preaching or call to Islam – rather than jihad constitutes the backbone of modern organized Islamic action. The Society of the Muslim Brothers made it the essence of its mission since its foundation in 1928, turning its main thrust inwards, toward the Muslims themselves. Focusing on its processes of framing within the social movement theory approach, the essay analyzes three generations of Muslim Brothers and related Islamist thinkers in three concentric geographical circles: Banna, the Egyptian founding father, who strove to re-Islamize society of Christian missionary and Western secular materialism; his moderate successors such as Sa‘id Hawwa and Fathi Yakan, who struggled to overcome the double challenge of the ordeal they suffered by the Arab authoritarian regimes and of Sayyid Qutb’s radical response; and the contemporary Islamic thinkers Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Tariq Ramadan, who seek to remold it as a dialogue and example in the Western and global environments. I argue that this resilience of the Muslim Brotherhood’s da‘wa is an important key to its survival and to the viability of its ongoing project of framing the modern umma.

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