CULTURAL SIGNS IN TEXTS OF LATGALIAN BANDS

Via Latgalica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Ingars Gusāns

During ten years, since Latgalian popular music has returned to the mainstream Latvian music stage, 44 Latgalian music albums have been released. The lyrics of these songs are written by musicians, Latgalian and Latvian poets and as a result of teamwork of poets and music authors. The subject of the present research is represented by cultural signs in the song texts of Latgalian bands; the research object is song lyrics of Latgalian bands. Sources selected for the research are the song texts of Latgalian bands and performers: "Borowa MC", "Bez PVN", "Dabasu Durovys", "Green Novice", Laura Bicāne, "Kapļi". Some musicians and bands use Latvian and Latgalian folk songs in their music, yet they are not discussed in the present research. Other musicians use works of Latgalian poets, which are mentioned here only for comparison. Therefore, the key focus is on texts written by musicians themselves, collected from the released music album brochures and from correspondence with band members. The texts of schlager music bands are not examined here either, as they are worth making a separate research.It must be admitted that cultural signs in the examined texts do not occur particularly often, although the feature of the post-modernist culture is related to reassessment and mock of previous culture, the song lyrics are still rather romantic, traditional and compliant with the requirements of mass culture. The use of cultural signs is not characteristic of bands "Green Novice", "Bez PVN" and performer Laura Bicāne, therefore, the song texts of bands "Borowa MC", "Dabasu Durovys" and "Kapļi" are analysed the most. The research has been carried out based on the method of structural semiotics (J. Lotmans, R. Veidemane) by analysing cultural signs found in the selected texts.The signs related to cultural history are rather traditional: Latgale, Latgalians, rarely, some specific natural or geographical objects relevant to cultural historical events or associated exactly with the Latgale region. However, the search for territorial and ethnic identity and its construction for oneself and others (mostly, neighbours of other regions) is one of the main questions in the lyrics. As the mentioned bands "Borowa Mc", "Dabasu Durovys" and "Bez PVN" play popular, mass-oriented music, their texts are mostly intended for broad public, therefore, the first features that characterize the song lyrics of Latgalian bands are the cultivation and preservation of stereotypes. These stereotypes are divided into two groups:1) favourable, emotionally uplifting, sometimes even rousing self-confidence; 2) critical, prejudiced, causing negative atmosphere and emotions.The poetical rock band "Kapļi", which belongs to an alternative direction of Latgalian music and has ironic, sarcastic texts, sing about cultural signs related to Latgale in a completely different way. Their lyrics show a different view of things that are holy, inviolable, and indisputable to many Latgalians.Regarding cultural signs representing the folkloristic level, it must be noted that in this research ‘folkloristic’ is meant in the broadest sense of this word (not only folk compositions, but also events, objects, things that have become a part of folklore over time, often becoming subjects of literary tales), for instance, Pinocchio, the main character combines several characters: a fool, a body-builder, and even a lyrical ego seeking for its own identity. All character appearances, which are reflected in other songs about the modern hero, suggest that the character avoids activity or makes the new world unstable by drawing, making it from plasticine, using the phone, and consequently, creates a virtual world which is modern and transitory.  "Dabasu Durovys" reveals their life philosophy and search for meaning with the help of historical cultural signs, for instance, the river Rubicon, known from ancient times, meaning the breaking of links to the past and not returning to previous situation, or the royal court of the Sun King, that symbolizes absolute monarchy, or Napoleon, etc.“Little man” and his daily life are related to another group of cultural signs. Depiction of daily life in poetry shows on the one hand that the author values the place and time of his life; on the other hand it demonstrates an artistic approach to everyday reality. These texts usually convey tragically ironical feeling and show modern typical dramas right beside us. Such characters most frequently appear in the texts of the bands "Kapļi" and "Dabasu Durovys".Even though cultural signs do not appear in the texts of Latgalian bands frequently, they are diverse. Cultural historical signs, which appear in patriotic and ironic lyrics, reveal authors’ homeland Latgale and Latgalians with their typical positive and negative stereotypes. Cultural signs related to Latvia and Europe highlight ironically sharp reality of emigration and infrequent visits to Latvia and are bound to several historical periods, which are mostly related to domestic, rarely social political situations.  

Screen Bodies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
David Yagüe González

The behaviors and actions that an individual carries out in their daily life and how they are translated by their society overdetermine the gender one might have—or not—according to social norms. However, do the postulates enounced by feminist and queer Western thinkers still maintain their validity when the context changes? Can the performances of gender carry out their validity when the landscape is other than the one in Europe or the United States? And how can the context of drag complicate these matters? These are the questions that this article will try to answer by analyzing the 2015 movie Viva by Irish director Paddy Breathnach.


Author(s):  
Daiva Milinkevičiūtė

The Age of Enlightenment is defined as the period when the universal ideas of progress, deism, humanism, naturalism and others were materialized and became a golden age for freemasons. It is wrong to assume that old and conservative Christian ideas were rejected. Conversely, freemasons put them into new general shapes and expressed them with the help of symbols in their daily routine. Symbols of freemasons had close ties with the past and gave them, on the one hand, a visible instrument, such as rituals and ideas to sense the transcendental, and on the other, intense gnostic aspirations. Freemasons put in a great amount of effort to improve themselves and to create their identity with the help of myths and symbols. It traces its origins to the biblical builders of King Solomon’s Temple, the posterity of the Templar Knights, and associations of the medieval craft guilds, which were also symbolical and became their link not only to each other but also to the secular world. In this work we analysed codified masonic symbols used in their rituals. The subject of our research is the universal Masonic idea and its aspects through the symbols in the daily life of the freemasons in Vilnius. Thanks to freemasons’ signets, we could find continuity, reception, and transformation of universal masonic ideas in the Lithuanian freemasonry and national characteristics of lodges. Taking everything into account, our article shows how the universal idea of freemasonry spread among Lithuanian freemasonry, and which forms and meanings it incorporated in its symbols. The objective of this research is to find a universal Masonic idea throughout their visual and oral symbols and see its impact on the daily life of the masons in Vilnius. Keywords: Freemasonry, Bible, lodge, symbols, rituals, freemasons’ signets.


APRIA Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-16
Author(s):  
José Teunissen

In the last few years, it has often been said that the current fashion system is outdated, still operating by a twentieth-century model that celebrates the individualism of the 'star designer'. In I- D, Sarah Mower recently stated that for the last twenty years, fashion has been at a cocktail party and has completely lost any connection with the public and daily life. On the one hand, designers and big brands experience the enormous pressure to produce new collections at an ever higher pace, leaving less room for reflection, contemplation, and innovation. On the other hand, there is the continuous race to produce at even lower costs and implement more rapid life cycles, resulting in disastrous consequences for society and the environment.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 238212052110294
Author(s):  
Sheila Harms ◽  
Anita Acai ◽  
Bryce JM Bogie ◽  
Meghan M McConnell ◽  
Ben McCutchen ◽  
...  

Introduction: Some studies on academic half days (AHDs) suggest that learning in this context is associated with a lack of educational engagement. This challenge may be amplified in distributed campus settings, where geographical disadvantages demand reliance on videoconferencing or considerable time spent travelling to in-person learning events. Concerns about the educational effectiveness of AHDs by learners within our distributed campus setting led to the development and evaluation of the One Room Schoolhouse (ORS), a unique, evidence-informed, community-based curriculum that partially replaced the AHD sessions delivered at the main campus. It was hypothesized that creating an AHD experience that was clinically reflective of the community in which residents practiced and where residents were given the autonomy to implement novel pedagogical elements would result in better test scores and improved learner satisfaction among ORS learners. Methods: The ORS was implemented at McMaster University’s Waterloo Regional Campus in 2017. Residents across training cohorts (N = 9) engaged in co-learning based on scenarios co-developed from clinical experiences within the region. The learning approach relied on multiple, evidence-informed pedagogical strategies. A multi-method approach was used to evaluate the ORS curriculum. Between-subject analyses of variance were used to compare scores on practice exams (COPE and PRITE), in-training assessment reports (ITARs), and objective structured clinical exams (OSCEs) between learners who took part in the ORS and learners at the main campus. A semi-structured focus group probing residents’ experiences with the ORS was analyzed using interpretive description. Results: ORS learners significantly outperformed learners at the main campus on the November OSCE ( p = .02), but not on the COPE, PRITE, ITARs, or September OSCE ( p’s < .05). Qualitative themes suggested advantages of the ORS in inspiring learning, engaging learners, and improving self-confidence in knowledge acquisition. These findings are aligned with the broader literature on learner agency, social development, and communities of practice. Conclusion: While the quantitative data only showed a significant difference between the 2 curricula on 1 measure (ie, the November OSCE), the qualitative findings offered an opportunity for educators to reimagine what medical education might consist of beyond the confines of a “traditional” AHD. Creating opportunities to enhance personal agency when acquiring knowledge, inspiring engagement about patient-related problems, and incorporating interdisciplinary learning through community engagement were critical pedagogical elements that were attributed to the success of the ORS.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 672-689
Author(s):  
Vlada Baranova ◽  
Kapitolina Fedorova

AbstractThe study deals with linguistic prejudices of citizens of the two main Russian cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, toward speakers of foreign languages. It aims to reveal possible recent changes in the language ideology dominating Russian society. Monolingual and linguistically normative orientations rooted in the Soviet ideological approach are being challenged nowadays by global processes of migration and cultural diversification, which influence the everyday reality of Russian megalopolises. The research is based on the analysis of two sets of data: (1) meta-discourse on language attitudes derived from interviews with labor migrants and native Russian speakers in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and posts and comments on issues of language, migration, and linguistic landscapes, collected from websites and social media and (2) linguistic landscape data collected in 2016–2019, mainly in St. Petersburg, which reflect recent changes in attitude toward linguistic diversity in public space. These data show, on the one hand, that most city dwellers still relate to monolingual speech norms and try to implement control over public space; on the other hand, that the tolerance toward multilingual communication has been increasing over the years. The study suggests that these “first cracks” in monolinguals facades of Russian cities could eventually lead to the establishing of a less rigid language regime.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 117
Author(s):  
Liana Pereira Borba dos Santos

O objetivo desse artigo é discutir, à luz da história cultural, elementos relevantes para a construção de uma operação historiográfica, como a metodologia, a escolha e o uso das fontes, assim como a sua respectiva materialidade. Trata-se de um processo que se consolida, de um lado, na escrita de uma narrativa autoral e, de outro, na aproximação com os demais estudos do campo científico. De modo específico, pretende-se estabelecer um diálogo entre os discursos teóricos e metodológicos com a pesquisa desenvolvida, no qual realizo o levantamento e análise das práticas discursivas e representações sociais de infância e de suas instituições afins (como famílias, espaços escolares e médicos, por exemplo), nas páginas da revista Pais & Filhos.Between documents and representations: reflections on the historiographical operation in the Pais & Filhos magazine. This present paper aims to discuss the prominent issues for the historiographical operation in the context of cultural history, as the methodology, the choice and use of sources and their respective materiality. On the one hand, this process is consolidated in writing an authorial narrative and the other hand it is marked by the necessary approximation with other studies the scientific field. In a specific way, the goal is to relate the theoretical and methodological discourse to the research that I have developed, in which I realize the analysis of the discursive practices and social representations of childhood and its related institutions (such as families, school spaces and doctors, for example), the pages of the publication entitled Pais & Filhos (Parents & Children). Keywords: Historiographical operation; Cultural history; Pais & Filhos Magazine; Education.


2004 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
SANDRINE KOTT

Konrad Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience. Toward a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999), 388 pp., £14.00 (pb), ISBN 1-57181-182-6.Thomas Lindenberger, ed., Herrschaft und Eigensinn in der Diktatur (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1999) 367 pp., €39.90 (hb), ISBN 3-412-13598-4.Annegret Schüle, ‘Die Spinne’. Die Erfahrungsgeschichte weiblicher Industriearbeit im VEB Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2001), 398 pp., €18.00 (pb), ISBN 3-934565-87-5.Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond, eds., The Workers' and Peasants' State. Communism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht 1945–71 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 272 pp., £15.99 (pb), ISBN 0-7190-6289-6.Joshua Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary. Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema 1949–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 331 pp., £19.50 (pb), ISBN 0-8078-5385-2.


Author(s):  
L. I. Ivonina

The article analyzes the main features of the Caroline era in the history of Britain, which were reflected in the cultural representation of the power of King Charles I Stuart and the court’s daily life in the 1630s. The author shows that, on the one hand, the cult of peace and the greatness of the monarch were the cultural product of the Caroline court against the background of the Thirty Years' War in continental Europe. On the other hand, there was a spread of various forms of escapism, the departure into the world of illusions. On the whole, the representation of the power of Charles Stuart and the court’s daily life were in line with the general trend of the time. At the same time, the court of Charles I reflected his personality. Thinly sensing and even determining the artistic tastes of his era, the English king abstracted from its political and social context.


Author(s):  
Lene Heiselberg

Når man arbejder professionelt med at gennemføre kvalitative mini- og fokusgruppeanalyser, kan det ikke undgås, at man som moderator indimellem tænker: Hvorfor deltager hun ikke? Hvad kan jeg gøre for at inkludere hende i diskussionen? Ofte skyldes nogle deltageres manglende engagement, at mini- eller fokusgruppens metodiske design favoriserer de deltagere, som har en fremtrædende verbalsproglig intelligens, og samtidig ekskluderes de, der har andre fremtrædende intelligenser, fra at yde det maksimale. En sådan situation er meget uheldig og kan i værste fald give en undersøgelse bias. Derfor har vi i DR Medieforskning arbejdet med en pragmatisk tilgang til problemet, hvor vi har afprøvet et metodisk design, som inkluderer kvalitative interviewteknikker og procesværktøjer, som appellerer til samtlige intelligenser. Som et resultat af en målrettet indsats for at inkludere flere intelligenser i det metodiske design, oplever vi, at deltagerne har mere lyst til at engagere sig og gør det med større selvsikkerhed. Desuden oplever vi i mindre grad fænomenet “cognitive tuning” , og derfor kan vi arbejde med flere og bedre data i analyse- og fortolkningsfasen. Intelligent design of focus groups - article about methodological design of focus groups and the different intelligences When you work professionally with the conducting and moderating of qualitative mini- and focus groups, you can't avoid sometimes thinking: Why isn’t she participating? What can I do to include her in the discussion? A participant's apparent lack of enthusiasm is often caused by the methodological design of the focus group giving preference to participants who have an explicit verbal intelligence, and as a consequence excludes participants with other explicit intelligences from contributing. A situation like the one described above is very undesirable and in a worst-case scenario it can cause a study to be biased. In order to try to solve this problem DR Media Research applied a methodological design which includes qualitative interviewing techniques and processing tools, which appeal to all of the intelligences instead of just one. As a result of this work, we find that the participants are more eager to participate and that they do it with greater self-confidence. In addition we encounter less cognitive tuning, and are therefore able to work with richer data in the phases of analysis and interpretation.


Author(s):  
Mário Matos

This contribution focuses on the multifaceted conceptualization of travel in Western cultural history. Several discourses will be addressed that, over time, have oscillated between the sceptical and restrictive on the one hand, and the truly admiring perspectives of the journey on the other. A number of visions of the phenomenon of travel under the binomial spell/curse will be analysed. The different contexts and historical factors that determined the value of travel will be exposed, from its great power of attraction to its restriction by inward looking religious and political systems.


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