Social Skills, Workplaces and Social Remittances: A Case of Post-Accession Migrants

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 868-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Izabela Grabowska

This article examines how the social skills of migrants are moulded in workplaces and employment-related situations. It surveys literature on social skills, workplaces, social remittances and relational learning. It devotes attention to destination workplaces as spaces where people who left their comfort zones experience disjuncture between origin and destination. This can bring insights, noticing differences and making comparisons. On return to their workplaces in their origin countries, migrants are able to reflect upon and eventually remit these experiences, packaged as social remittances. Three categories of social skill were distilled from biographical interviews with returnees to Poland: (1) the capability for cross-cultural communication; (2) the capability for dealing with emotional labour; (3) the capability for taking initiative and acting independently. The study analysed situations of disjuncture as a result of migration which led to learning, non-learning and alienation. By bringing migration to the forefront, we consider social skills as social remittances.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Jerome Dumetz ◽  
Jerome Dumetz ◽  
Jerome Dumetz ◽  
Jerome Dumetz

At the crossroad between linguistics and cross-cultural communication, multilingualism is frequently presented through its most positive perspective. However, if the long-term benefits outrun the disadvantages, frustration is often the dominant feeling among the speakers during their early years. Based upon meticulous observations and careful collection of examples in a multilingual family, this article is a case study of the difficulties encountered by polyglots growing up with four simultaneous languages: Russian, French, Czech, and English. Using the research framework usually developed for the study of bilingualism, the article reviews not only the psychological and cognitive difficulties encountered by tetraglots, but also the social and linguistic drawbacks they are confronted with. It also examines common multilingual strategies such as code-switching, words creation and language mixing. It concludes that the linguistic development of tetraglots does not differ much from bilingual ones, except for the elongated period before acquiring production speech. Quadrilingual children tend to speak later than not only monolingual children, but also bilingual ones.


Author(s):  
Mary Catherine Boehmer

As technology increasingly becomes a part of our day-to-day lives in the United States and throughout the globe, there is a greater push for students to develop the digital and media literacy skills necessary for the twenty-first century. In the United States, students learning these skills often come from a wide range of linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The diversity of the U.S. is one of its greatest strengths, but with this diversity come cultural differences in access to technology and how it is used across different cultural contexts. This chapter analyzes the constructs of digital and media literacy, the ways in which culture can be defined and how that can affect the intersectional identities performed in the social and participatory world of Web 2.0. It also examines access to technology and how technology is used for communication and accessing information in Russia, Germany, and Azerbaijan, and how approaching digital and media literacy through the lens of cross-cultural communication can help teachers to better meet the needs of learners from diverse backgrounds.


Author(s):  
Anthony Pym

The structuralist principles of systems-based Translation Studies tend to conceal the social roles played by translators in mediating between cultures. Attention to slightly alternative principles might be able to initiate a progressive humanization of Translation Studies, possibly alerting scholars to phenomena previously overlooked. Two such principles are illustrated here on the basis of Hispanic translation history. First, if attention is paid to translators and only then to the texts they produce, the subjectivities thus revealed tend to display multidiscursive involvement (translators usually do more than translate), complex cultural allegiances (they are not always faithful or loyal to one side), and physical mobility (they tend not to not stay in just one place). The second idea is that translators can be seen as operating in professional intercultures, where their membership tends to be based on purely professional criteria (not birthright), they may adopt secondary positions with respect to cross-cultural communication (they tend not to initiate negotiations), and their institutions are often particularly transitory (based on contact-renewed networks rather than sovereign space). The application and exploration of these principles might ideally move Translation Studies toward the wider questions of Intercultural Studies.


1971 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. K. Eric Gunderson ◽  
Lorand B. Szalay ◽  
Prescott Eaton

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-80
Author(s):  
Irina Stanislavova ◽  
Galina Solovyova

The article is devoted to the study of issues related to the problem of “intercultural com-munication”.The complexity and relevance of this problem for the modern stage of cultur-al development is shown. Modernism is seen as an element of erosion of the functional integrity and balance of the dominant cultural system. Based on this research, a number of conclusions are made.


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