scholarly journals Identity in the bilingual couple: Attitudes to language and culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 223-234
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Stępkowska

Abstract The article focuses on identity in bilingual couples by investigating their attitudes to language and culture. The research question asks how they make sense of their linguistic and cultural duality. Based on the data from in-depth interviews, I concentrate on the notion of identity in bilingual couplehood. I analyze excerpts of interviews produced by 24 couples of Poles with their foreign partners who reside in Poland. I investigate these couples’ talk with regard to their interpretations of identities resulting from their individual life histories and private ideologies about language and culture. My data suggest that attitudes to language and culture relate to the mutual understanding in the couple. I found evidence for differences and similarities as subjectively assessed by partners, higher metalinguistic awareness, an altered perception of one’s self and redefined national stereotypes. The results reveal that the couples’ attitudes are geared to jointly create and negotiate identities in interaction. The article views identity from a new perspective by giving voice to bilingual couples. The novelty relies on the less studied Polish context and, in general, the explicit evaluation of one’s own socialization to a different language and culture. The qualitative lens of the presented study contributes to our understanding of how individuals in intercultural couples use language to convey dual identity and accomplish social goals.

Author(s):  
Kathleen Gerson ◽  
Sarah Damaske

Qualitative interviewing is one of the most widely used methods in social research, but it is arguably the least well understood. To address that gap, this book offers a theoretically rigorous, empirically rich, and user-friendly set of strategies for conceiving and conducting interview-based research. Much more than a how-to manual, the book shows why depth interviewing is an indispensable method for discovering and explaining the social world—shedding light on the hidden patterns and dynamics that take place within institutions, social contexts, relationships, and individual experiences. It offers a step-by-step guide through every stage in the research process, from initially formulating a question to developing arguments and presenting the results. To do this, the book shows how to develop a research question, decide on and find an appropriate sample, construct an interview guide, conduct probing and theoretically focused interviews, and systematically analyze the complex material that depth interviews provide—all in the service of finding and presenting important new empirical discoveries and theoretical insights. The book also lays out the ever-present but rarely discussed challenges that interviewers routinely encounter and then presents grounded, thoughtful ways to respond to them. By addressing the most heated debates about the scientific status of qualitative methods, the book demonstrates how depth interviewing makes unique and essential contributions to the research enterprise. With an emphasis on the integral relationship between carefully crafted research and theory building, the book offers a compelling vision for what the “interviewing imagination” can and should be.


Author(s):  
Sri Seti Indriani ◽  
Deddy Mulyana

AbstractThis research underlines the communication patterns of Indonesian diaspora women in their mixed culture families and how they use these patterns in Australia. There are some differences in interpreting meanings because of the differences in language and culture. Thus, researchers are interested in examining communication patterns experienced by these diaspora women who live in Australia. The research was conducted through a qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. Data collection techniques used were in-depth interviews with 13 Indonesian women who had been living in Australia for more than 5 years and observation and documentation studies. The study showed that the communication patterns of Indonesian diaspora women living within their mixed culture families consist mainly of verbal communication classified into five categories: (1) pure English, (2) mixed language, (3) unstructured grammar English, (4) compliments and appreciation, and (5) obscene words or swearing.


2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Günthner ◽  
Angelika Linke

AbstractThe present issue of „Zeitschrift für Germanistische Linguistik“ focuses on the relationship between language and culture on the one hand and linguistics and cultural analysis on the other hand.This introductory article unfolds some of the facets of these relationships in a programmatic way and outlines a concept of language which zooms in on the study of language as a cultural resource and communicating as a cultural practice. Besides discussing pertinent definitions of „culture“ by scholars of cultural anthropology, we shall examine possible impacts of these definitions on a cultural notion of language. Furthermore, we shall show affiliations to concepts of language and culture developed by Herder and Humboldt in the late 18th and early 19th century and reshaped by Cassirer in the beginning of the 20th century. The article will also look into recent developments inside and outside linguistics (especially Ethnography of Communication, Anthropological Linguistics and Interactional Sociology) to trace out grounds for a new perspective on linguistics as part of the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies.


Human Affairs ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olayinka Akanle ◽  
Olanrewau Olutayo

AbstractUnderstanding the selves, situations and actions of Africans can never be comprehended outside kinship. Local and foreign worldviews are first pigeonholed into culture and defined within kinship realities in Nigeria and Africa. There have been studies on kinship in Africa. However, the findings from such studies portrayed the immutability of African kinship. Thus, as an important contribution to the on-going engagement of kinship in the twenty-first century as an interface between the contemporary Diaspora, this article engaged kinship within international migration. This is a major behavioural and socio-economic force in Nigeria. Methodological triangulation was adopted as part of the research design and primary data were collected through in-depth interviews (IDIs), and life histories of international migrants were documented and focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with kin of returnees. The article found and concluded that while returnees continued to appreciate local kinship infrastructures, the infrastructures were liable to reconstruction primarily determined by dominant support situations in the traditional African kinship networks.


Human Affairs ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-195
Author(s):  
Gabriel Bianchi ◽  
Jana Fúsková

Abstract Recent studies have used methods designed to obtain a precise quantitative assessment of sexual aggression, but these are based on the presumption of a normative psychological understanding of what the questionnaire items mean to respondents. This article takes a novel approach that is appropriate for analysing the ‘grey zone’ between wanted and unwanted sex as the key to obtaining a deeper understanding of the data on sexual violence. Stenner and Clinch (2013) developed the concept of “liminal hotspots”, which refer to liminal situations in which a rite of passage occurs from one recognised ‘structure’ to another. The article draws on in-depth interviews to examine the optimal and pessimal sexual encounters and contexts participants encounter in their sex lives. The main research question concerns how the boundary between wanted and unwanted sex is constructed. One important finding is that the concept of liminal hotspots can be used effectively to investigate the boundary between wanted and unwanted sex.


Author(s):  
José G. Vargas-Hernández

The objective of this chapter is to analyze the importance of professional integrity as the improvement concept and ethics in the development of professionals in administration and management sciences. The research method employed is the ethnographic, documental, and life histories, complemented with field work supported by in-depth interviews and analyzed using a comparative method. The outcomes of the research on the application in management education demonstrate that the drama of economic efficiency is centered on dysfunctional professional integrity. This chapter provides a sound professional philosophy that empowers professionals to act with integrity, increases the probability for long-term success and professional fulfillment. The results provide also the basis to develop a code of conduct and regulation policies to sustain management education for professional integrity that can positively impact on business culture through influencing the behavior of key actors.


Author(s):  
Suzanne Franzway ◽  
Nicole Moulding ◽  
Sarah Wendt ◽  
Carole Zufferey ◽  
Donna Chung

This chapter is focused on the challenges of researching gendered violence. Here, the chapter presents the empirical foundation and design of a large-scale national study conducted across Australia; which included a major survey, in-depth interviews, and constructed life histories. This chapter also considers some of the challenges faced when conducting and participating in gendered violence research in the context of the politics of ignorance and sexual politics. Given the risks that can flow from participating in and conducting research into gendered violence, it was particularly vital that the study was tightly conceptualised and methodologically sound, so that the benefits of participation by contributing to the development of new knowledge clearly outweighed any risks. The research study outlined here aimed to reveal the breadth and interconnected nature of the impact of intimate partner violence on women's citizenship as part of challenging wilful ignorance about violence and its relationship to gender inequality. As such, this research was an inherently political project that involved balancing a number of key considerations.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Eren Durmus Ozdemir ◽  
Saime Mecikoglu

<p>The aim of this study is to explore the impact of hybrid strategy on firm performance in a wire harness firm operating in the automotive supplier industry at Antalya Free Trade Zone in Turkey. It was the gap in literature concerning this relationship between hybrid strategy and firm performance under conditions of environment turbulence in the automotive supplier industry that motivated this study. The research question was pursued through in depth interviews with top-level managers of the firm. Data obtained from the interviews, observations and documents were analysed using NVivo software. The findings show that hybrid strategy influenced firm performance positively. Furthermore, the existence of environment turbulence positively influences hybrid strategy, whereas stable environment has a negative influence. Environment turbulence does not exert a direct influence on performance, but an indirect one, through hybrid strategy.</p>


2020 ◽  
pp. 152747642095358
Author(s):  
Zhongxuan Lin

With a special focus on the commercialization of creative videos, this article explores the research question of how digital platforms’ affordances simultaneously allow and constrain video producers’ commercialization activities in the platform era. This study adopts a case study design that focuses on the Chinese digital video producer Zheng Yun, founder of Zheng Yun Studio, using ethnographic participant observations and in-depth interviews. It explains how creative producers such as Zheng Yun struggle to survive in the context of intensified platformization and how they benefit from the digital platforms by employing various commercialization mechanisms, including the Revenue Sharing Program (RSP), Embedded Product Placement (EPP), Franchise Chains, Agent-commission, and Crowd-funding. This research also demonstrates the asymmetrical power relationships between platforms and video producers, which prompt us to rethink the political nature of platforms and the diversified nature of platformization in the digital platform age.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 946
Author(s):  
Ming Li

A Psalm of Life is a well-known poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and it has been translated into many different versions since the Qing Dynasty. From the 1980s, translation studies have focused on the cultural aspects rather than the literal equivalence. The new perspective takes into account how the translated version is adapted and accepted and influences the target culture. This paper, based on the cultural turn perspective, examines the theoretical background of translation research and analyzes a translated version of A Psalm of Life in light of the target language and culture. This paper concludes that the creative translation method in English-Chinese poetry translation is reasonable and innovative.


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