Theorizing and Documenting Cultural Insularity in the Center: A Critical Analysis of U.S. College Students’ English-Language Spotify Consumption Orientations

2020 ◽  
pp. 019685992097715
Author(s):  
Christof Demont-Heinrich
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
English Language ◽  
Cultural Consumption ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Cultural Domain ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Analytical Utility

This paper highlights an instructive case of cultural insularity in the center (CIC) and illustrates the potential theoretical and analytical utility of a theory of CIC. CIC refers to a tendency among many American cultural consumers toward comparative inwardness in their cultural consumption orientations. This insular tendency is particularly pronounced vis-a-vis “language heavy” cultural goods such as popular music. I critically engage the notion of CIC via a textual analysis of the written discourse of 86 American undergraduates produced via an assignment completed in four international communication classes. This assignment asked students to investigate popular music on Spotify sung in languages other than English and to write about their process. I use this analysis of undergraduate written reflection vis-à-vis their exploration of non-English language pop music to reflect on the general explanatory utility of CIC. Ultimately, a CIC model encourages us to critically explore the unique ways in which American cultural consumers and Anglo-American consumers in countries such as the United Kingdom are positioned vis-à-vis the global cultural system. More broadly, CIC encourages us to critically engage the ways in which the global cultural system orients toward an English-language dominated center, especially in the cultural domain of popular music.

Legal Principles, Constitutional Principles, and Judicial Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (4) ◽  
pp. 899-930
Author(s):  
Han-Ru Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Judicial Review ◽  
English Language ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Legal Discourse ◽  
Significant Degree ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Logical Connection ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Law ◽  
Anglo American

Abstract Principles form part and parcel of our law and legal discourse, so much so that we seldom think of what they are and what they entail. For centuries they have been invoked daily to interpret and argue about the law. But when it comes to matters of constitutional law, principles are further called upon to perform a perennially controversial function: to help police the boundaries of state action. In most common law jurisdictions with a written constitution, this function of principles runs against the generally accepted view that the exercise of judicial review must ultimately be governed and restricted by the terms of the national constitution. This Article argues that the exercise of judicial review based on principles is not confined to that view, once the relationship between principles and the constitution is unpacked and recontextualized. While the English-language literature on principles over the past half-century has been dominated by a select group of Anglo-American scholars, there is a wealth of untapped insights from other parts of the world. One of the major contributions by continental legal theorists even predates the earliest modern Anglo-American writings on the subject by more than a decade. Overall, the law literature in common law and civil law systems reveals a significant degree of commonalities in the basic characters of principles despite the absence of initial evidence of transsystemic borrowings. The wider conceptual inquiry also displays a shift in the focus of the debate, from the protracted search for a clear-cut distinction between rules and principles towards a redefinition of principles’ relationship with “written” law, be it in the form of a civil code or a constitutional instrument. From this inquiry reemerge “unwritten” principles not deriving from codified or legislated law although they have been used to develop the law. Translated into the constitutional domain, these unwritten principles bear no logical connection with the terms of the constitution. Their main functions cover the entire spectrum from serving as interpretive aids to making law by filling gaps. The theoretical framework fits with an ongoing four-century-old narrative of the evolution of constitutional principles and judicial review across most common law-based systems. Constitutional principles are another area where Anglo-American law and legal discourse is less exceptional and more universal than what many assume. Throughout modern Western history, legal battles have been fought and ensuing developments have been made on the grounds of principles. Our law and jurisprudence remain based on them.

Who Publishes Where? Exploring the Geographic Diversity of Global IR Journals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathis Lohaus ◽  
Wiebke Wemheuer-Vogelaar
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
North America ◽  
International Relations ◽  
English Language ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Diverse Backgrounds ◽  
Geographic Diversity ◽  
International Publishing ◽  
American Authors

Abstract To what extent is International Relations (IR) a globalized discipline? We investigate the geographic diversity of authorship in seventeen IR journals from Africa, East Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the United Kingdom. Biographical records were collected for the authors of 2,362 articles published between 2011 and 2015. To interpret the data, we discuss how publishing patterns are driven by author incentives (supply) in tandem with editorial preferences and strategies (demand). Our main findings are twofold. First, global IR is fragmented and provincial. All journals frequently publish works by authors located in their own region—but the size of these local clusters varies. Geographic diversity is highest in what we identify as the “goldilocks zone” of international publishing: English-language journals that are globally visible but not so competitive that North American authors crowd out other contributions. Second, IR is being globalized through researcher mobility. Many scholars have moved to pursue their doctoral education and then publish as expats, returnees, or part of the diaspora. They are joined by academic tourists publishing in regions to which they have no obvious ties. IR journals thus feature more diverse backgrounds than it may seem at first sight, but many of these authors were educated in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

The Culture of the Sound Image in Prewar Japan

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Japanese Cinema ◽  
Electronic Sound ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Sound Image ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Sound Technology ◽  
Sound Culture

This collection of essays explores the development of electronic sound recording in Japanese cinema, radio, and popular music to illuminate the interrelationship of aesthetics, technology, and cultural modernity in prewar Japan. Putting the cinema at the center of a ‘culture of the sound image’, it restores complexity to a media transition that is often described simply as slow and reluctant. In that vibrant sound culture, the talkie was introduced on the radio before it could be heard in the cinema, and pop music adaptations substituted for musicals even as cinema musicians and live narrators resisted the introduction of recorded sound. Taken together, the essays show that the development of sound technology shaped the economic structure of the film industry and its labour practices, the intermedial relation between cinema, radio, and popular music, as well as the architecture of cinemas and the visual style of individual Japanese films and filmmakers.

The problem of teaching communicative tactics in English-language professional discourse

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
Svetlana S. Andreeva
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
English Language ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Civil Engineering ◽  
Professional Communication ◽  
Language Documentation ◽  
Written Discourse ◽  
Professional Discourse ◽  
Professional Field ◽  
The Will

The work discusses the problem of teaching students of civil engineering departments English-language civil engineering discourse, in particular, communicative tactics of this type of discourse. We substantiate the need to form students’ skills in using the communicative tactics applied in civil engineering discourse in professional communication. We give an overview of com-municative tactics of written discourse used by the authors of English-language documentation in civil engineering professional field. The purpose of the study is to determine the level of students’ skills in using communicative tactics in a foreign language professional written speech. Theoretical and practical research showed that in a modern technical university, insufficient attention is paid to teaching students this component of professional discourse. At the same time, the level of students’ skills to use communicative tactics in professional communication is quite low, which led us to the conclusion that it is of paramount importance to include this component in the pro-gram of teaching a foreign language in a professional field. The results of the will serve as the ba-sis for the development of a methodic model of teaching civil engineering students the communic-ative tactics of professional civil engineering discourse.

scholarly journals The English language in academia: Identifying power structures, denaturalizing daily choices. ECREA 2018 special panel report

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena Sousa
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
Special Session ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Critical Reasoning ◽  
Panel Report ◽  
Specific Dimension ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Media And Communication

Media and communication research has been dominated by the Anglo-American paradigm and English has become the lingua franca of academic life. The 2018 ECREA conference focused on centres and peripheries, inclusions and exclusions, cores and margins in the field. In line with the programme, this special session on Language in Academia tried to respond to contemporary critical asymmetries, analysing a specific dimension often taken for granted: the English language hegemony. The centrality of the English language is often assumed without questioning or critical reasoning.

scholarly journals Autobiographical narratives in the elderly with neurocognitive disorder: an integrative literature review

Revista CEFAC ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Paula Machado Goyano Mac-Kay ◽  
Melissa Barrera ◽  
Camila Córdova ◽  
Romina Olivares ◽  
Daniela Vásquez
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Neurocognitive Disorder ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Related Data ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Specific Objective ◽  
Autobiographical Study ◽  
Autobiographical Narrative

ABSTRACT Objective: to carry out an integrative review of the literature on autobiographical narratives as a discursive activity in the older adult with neurocognitive disorder. Methods: a descriptive study that covered the Scopus, SciELO, PubMed, and Science Direct databases, from 2009 to 2019, using the keywords autobiographical, narrative, dementia, reminiscence, the elderly, and the Boolean operator. A narrative synthesis was adopted considering the characteristics of the clinical, and methodological heterogeneity of the studies. Results: the results included 3 articles published between 2012 and 2018, in the English language, from the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Argentina, which highlighted the autobiographical narratives. Although in a strict sense they did not present the narrative as a specific objective of the autobiographical study, they did provide interesting and related data which justified their inclusion. Conclusion: it is observed that the literature researched presents a limited number of articles, adressing the autobiographical narrative as a discursive activity in the elderly with neurocognitive disorder.

scholarly journals Starting young: Multimodal gender presentation in children’s pop music

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
School Age ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Music Competition ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Eurovision Song Contest ◽  
Gender Presentation ◽  
Background Context ◽  
Selection Of

A recent quantitative study (Smith, Choueiti, and Pieper 2018) demonstrates the hegemonic discrimination in today’s popular music scene, particularly but not exclusively in gender and race. This paper builds on that study, taking it not only into a multimodal dimension (where musical and visual performances are taken into account), but also extending it to children’s popular music, here defined as popular music performed by children for an audience and market primarily made up of children and their guardians.  The annual Norwegian popular music competition for children aged 8-15 Melodi Grand Prix Junior (MGP Jr) is the children’s equivalent of the adult competition to be Norway’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC). It has been running since 2004, with 10 entries in each final, and those from 2007 onwards are available for public viewing on the national television channel’s website (tv.NRK.no). The resulting 130 songs thus provide a meaningful corpus from which to study current and recent multimodal gendered presentations of child performers.  Preliminary multimodal gender analyses (cf Maxwell and Mittner 2018) show that the performances are based around traditional gender binaries (i.e. boys and girls). While both presented genders sing, except for rare exceptions it is only boys who play instruments. This both complements and contrasts the study of the ESC (Isaksen forthcoming) which also shows a clear dominance of singing, particularly among female and female-presenting artists (including drag queens).  When these results from children’s pop music and from the ESC are set in relation to Smith, Choueiti, and Peiper 2018 in an interdisciplinary mixed methods approach, it is clear to see that the discrimination in the industry not only begins at a young age, it is also presented as normal, indeed attractive, to child viewers. This is borne out by the decreasing uptake of music tuition at Norwegian kulturskoler (the provider of state-sponsored lessons in the arts), particularly among school-age girls (Utdanningsdirektøret 2017).  In this paper I will present multimodal analyses of a selection of songs from MGP Jr in order to provide both examples of and exceptions to the norms shown by the statistics. In addition, an analysis of the (gendered) presentations of standard Norwegian instrument textbooks (cf Blix 2018) provides background context, with an emphasis on the gendered meanings that surround children in their everyday musical lives.  With thanks to Matilda Maxwell (age 11), aspiring instrumentalist, fan of MGP Jr, and research assistant. 

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