Circles, Trees, and Bears: Symbols of Power of the Weenuche Ute

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-130
Author(s):  
Robert McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Religious Expression ◽  
Indian Culture ◽  
Cultural Survival ◽  
Ghost Dance ◽  
The Past ◽  
New Information ◽  
The Common

The Ute community of White Mesa, comprised of approximately 315 people, sits in the corner of southeastern Utah, eleven miles outside of Blanding. The residents, primarily of Weenuche Ute and Paiute ancestry, enjoy a cultural heritage that embraces elements from plains, mountain, and desert/Great Basin Indian culture. Among their religious practices are the Worship Dance, Ghost Dance, Sun Dance, and Bear Dance. Although each ceremony is unique, and performed for a variety of reasons, the common ground among them cannot be missed. Healing the sick, renewing necessities for survival, connecting spiritually with ancestors, communicating with the Land Beyond, establishing patterns for life, and sharing symbols that unify religious expression—such as the circle, tree, and bear—are elements that characterize the faith of these people as expressed in these ceremonies. Their origin sheds light on the relevance of these practices as they blend traditions from the past with contemporary usage. As symbols imbued with religious relevance, they make the intangible visible while continuing to teach and protect that which is important in Ute cultural survival. This article looks at these shared elements while offering new information about the origin and symbolism of the Ghost Dance as practiced in the Worship Dance. Circles, trees, bears, and other emblems provide not only themes from past teaching but empower the Ute universe today.

Can Groups Assert That P?

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-344
Author(s):  
Deborah Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Constitutive Rule ◽  
The Past ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Declarative Statement ◽  
John Macfarlane

When a group or institution issues a declarative statement, what sort of speech act is this? Is it the assertion of a single individual (perhaps the group’s spokesperson or leader) or the assertion of all or most of the group members? Or is there a sense in which the group itself asserts that p? If assertion is a speech act, then who is the actor in the case of group assertion? These are the questions this chapter aims to address. Whether groups themselves can make assertions or whether a group of individuals can jointly assert that p depends, in part, on what sort of speech act assertion is. The literature on assertion has burgeoned over the past few years, and there is a great deal of debate regarding the nature of assertion. John MacFarlane has helpfully identified four theories of assertion. Following Sandy Goldberg, we can call these the attitudinal account, the constitutive rule account, the common-ground account, and the commitment account. I shall consider what group assertion might look like under each of these accounts and doing so will help us to examine some of the accounts of group assertion (often presented as theories of group testimony) on offer. I shall argue that, of the four accounts, the commitment account can best be extended to make sense of group assertion in all its various forms.

Linguistic influences on gesture’s form

Gesture ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Gerwing ◽  
Janet Bavelas
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Communicative Function ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Original Action ◽  
New Information ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Given ◽  
Linguistic Influences

Hand gestures in face-to-face dialogue are symbolic acts, integrated with speech. Little is known about the factors that determine the physical form of these gestures. When the gesture depicts a previous nonsymbolic action, it obviously resembles this action; however, such gestures are not only noticeably different from the original action but, when they occur in a series, are different from each other. This paper presents an experiment with two separate analyses (one quantitative, one qualitative) testing the hypothesis that the immediate communicative function is a determinant of the symbolic form of the gesture. First, we manipulated whether the speaker was describing the previous action to an addressee who had done the same actions and therefore shared common ground or to one who had done different actions and therefore did not share common ground. The common ground gestures were judged to be significantly less complex, precise, or informative than the latter, a finding similar to the effects of common ground on words. In the qualitative analysis, we used the given versus new principle to analyze a series of gestures about the same actions by the same speaker. The speaker emphasized the new information in each gesture by making it larger, clearer, etc. When this information became given, a gesture for the same action became smaller or less precise, which is similar to findings for given versus new information in words. Thus the immediate communicative function (e.g., to convey information that is common ground or that is new) played a major role in determining the physical form of the gestures.

Introduction: Rethinking Blackness and Indigeneity in the Light of Settler Colonial Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Circe Sturm
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Status ◽  
Land Dispossession ◽  
Colonial Theory ◽  
The Common ◽  
Theories Of Sovereignty

Racial analytics in the field, particularly those associated with theories of sovereignty and settler colonialism, have tended to obscure the common ground of Afro-descendant and Indigenous experience, such as land dispossession, political marginalization, and a shared desire for sovereignty and self-determination. In the wake of this analytic divide, even less attention is given to how blackness specifically structures or delimits Indigenous life, as blackness and indigeneity are often taken to be competing identities that cannot exist within the same individuals and communities without friction. This volume seeks to take the next step in pushing forward our theoretical conversations about blackness and indigeneity. Rather than assuming that anti-Black racism, as well as that directed against Indigenous people, are problems of the past or irrelevant to contemporary Indigenous political status, this volume engages with both critical race theory and settler colonial theory to explore how blackness intersects with Indigenous sovereignty, authority, identity, and lived experience.

scholarly journals Technopoïesis: Transmedia Mythologisation and the Unity of Knowedge

2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asunción López-Varela Azcárate ◽  
Henry Sussman
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Cultural Representation ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
The Past ◽  
Emerging Media ◽  
Strategic Narratives ◽  
Production Distribution ◽  
The Common

It is difficult to explain why different disciplines are drawn to similar problems. Inter-relations are not always explainable by direct influence. It has been argued that any common ground derives from the fact that people share certain kinds of everyday experiences. Is ‘consilience’ or the unification of knowledge a utopia or a possibility, as William Whewell Edward Wilson would have it? This thematic issue of Icono14 explores the common premise underlying all human disciplines: the confirmation that technology has a direct impact upon sign production, distribution and reception and, thus, upon the entire system of human thought, cultural representation and cognition. The collection examines transmedial representations of technological advance by looking at their mythical shades of meanings as strategic narratives. As practical knowledge engaged in the creation and use of tools and machines as well as in the development of techniques and methods of organization that perform specific functions in making human life easier, the technologies of the past can shed some light on the future that emerging media can bring about for human groups.

scholarly journals Why Walking the Common is more than a Walk in the Park

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nike Romano ◽  
Veronica Mitchell ◽  
Vivienne Bozaleck
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Coffee Shop ◽  
The Past ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
National Heritage ◽  
The Common ◽  
South African Higher Education

For the past few years, as concerned academics and educators in South African higher education, we have come together to meet/think/drink coffee/eat/discuss our research and teaching practices in a coffee shop that overlooks the Rondebosch Common, a public space and national heritage site. The Common invited us to take our thoughts for a walk and we embarked on numerous walking encounters that affected and troubled us in many ways. Our walks became research-creation events that surfaced the implicatedness of our white settler privilege. As we grappled with the complexities and ambivalences grounded in our relationality with this contested site, we were prompted to explore hauntology as a theoretical orientation for our pedagogical practices. Walking with/through the demarcated land that is surrounded by privilege in terms of buildings, services and residences enacted and materialised entanglements of the past/present/future histories. We felt an exchange of affect between those present, the ghosts of colonial and apartheid histories, and the implications for our ongoing teaching. Following Haraway's (2016) ‘staying with the trouble’ and Tsing et al.'s (2017) ‘how to live on a damaged planet’, the relationships between human and non-human continue to haunt us, as we grapple with the im/possibility of finding common ground in a country devastated by colonial and apartheid violences.

Mittelalterliche Literatur im Medienwandel von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch. Das Beispiel des ,Herzog Ernst‘

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Uta Goerlitz
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
German Language ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The Past ◽  
Popular Narrative ◽  
The Common ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Language Literature

AbstractCurrent competence-oriented curricula for secondary education in Germany demand a level of literary, linguistic, and media competence that enables students to study the common cultural heritage and to grow into their roles as members of society. The study of the German language, literature, and culture of the Middle Ages is particularly appropriate to develop this competence. Raising the question of both the alterity and the similarity of the period in comparison with the present, it demands a high degree of critical reflection. At the same time, current research is open to questions posed by the present of the past, concerncing e. g. the increasingly visible effects of the digital revolution, which echoes developments in the change from the manuscript to the printed book in the decades around 1500. The following contribution illustrates the relevance of the transfer of research from university to school by taking today’s media revolution as an opportunity to examine changes in literature and media in the 15th and 16th centuries. To this end, ‚Herzog Ernst‘ serves as an example of a popular narrative complex, interesting not only because of its comprehensiveness, but also for its distinctive transformations from manuscript to print.

scholarly journals Looking for the traces of Polish heritage on the map of Ukraine. Linguistic educational game

2021 ◽  
pp. 297-302
Author(s):  
Barbara Januszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Educational Game ◽  
Board Game ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Polish Language ◽  
The Common ◽  
Game Board

The article describes the idea for an educational game Polskie dziedzictwo na mapie Podola (Polish Heritage on the Map of Podolia) aimed at learning Polish as foreign language using a historical map. The article presents a map (as a game board) that was drawn up by a 17th-century cartographer Guillaume Le Vasseur de Beauplan. The map of Podolia provides a starting point for preparing scenarios of educational classes that would present historic figures, places, events and architectural monuments connected with Poland. The game is supposed to enhance the interest in learning Polish and teach respect for the common historical and cultural heritage, as well as encourage young people to study the past and discover their ‘personal homeland’. The author of the article suggests to use the board game as part of teaching the Polish language, which would certainly make linguistic education more attractive.

scholarly journals New Heathenry between past and present. The case of Ásatrúfélagið and Samfundet Forn Sed

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-26
Author(s):  
Irina Manea
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Far Right ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Spirituality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Public Message ◽  
Heritage Discourse

As a variant of alternative spirituality derived from postmodern fluidity and fragmentation of large narratives, Nordic Heathenry has gone through a revival for the past decades. Due to the common ground of potentially völkish/ethnicist views shared by far-right milieus, it has been confronted with the risk of the extremist framework dominating the reception of Norse symbols and myths. While many strains of heathenry might present similarities in their neo-romantic nativist revival, some have been attempting to focus on a heritage discourse that can become acceptable and normalized in society, reflecting an open and inclusive attitude. The Asatru Association in Iceland and The Old Way in Sweden, through their public message and stated mission, underline the need for the freedom to reinvent myth and ritual while remaining anchored in the present, thus distancing themselves from other cultural appropriations and proclaiming their own role in society. The very flexible view on myth and ritual constitutes a defining aspect for the identity of these movements.

History, Ethics and Philosophy: Bernard Williams’ Appraisal of R. G. Collingwood

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-53
Author(s):  
Stephen Leach
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Analytic Philosopher ◽  
Moral Attitudes ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThe author examines Williams’ appraisal of Collingwood both in his eponymous essay on Collingwood, in the posthumously published Sense of the Past (2006), and elsewhere in his work. The similarities and differences between their philosophies are explored: in particular, with regard to the relationship between philosophy and history and the relationship between the study of history and our present-day moral attitudes. It is argued that, despite Williams usually being classified as an analytic philosopher and Collingwood being classified as an idealist, there is substantial common ground between them. Williams was aware of this and made clear his sympathy for Collingwood; but, nonetheless, the relationship between Williams and Collingwood has not previously been explored in any detail. After establishing the common ground between these philosophers, and the areas of disagreement, the author suggests that both may have something to gain from the other.

On the Performative Use of the Past Participle in German

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 335-419
Author(s):  
Bjarne Ørsnes
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Speech Act ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Functional Grammar ◽  
Lexical Functional Grammar ◽  
The Past ◽  
Pragmatic Analysis ◽  
Root Position ◽  
The Common

In German, past participles not only occur in root position with a directive force, as in Stillgestanden! ‘Stop!’ lit. ‘stood still(ptcp)’, but also as performatives in responses: A: Du sagst also nichts zu Papi. ‘So you won’t tell dad.’ B: Versprochen! ‘I promise!’ lit. ‘promised(ptcp)’. Here B performs the speech act denoted by the verb by saying that it has been performed. The propositional argument of the participle (what is promised) is resolved contextually, and the agent and the recipient arguments are restricted to the speaker and the hearer, respectively. This article presents a syntactic analysis of this rarely studied phenomenon, arguing that the construction with a performative participle is not ellipsis but an IP with a participial head and null pronominal complements. The syntactic analysis is formalized within Lexical-Functional Grammar. A pragmatic analysis is proposed arguing that the performative participle in its core use alternates with Yes! to express agreement with an assertion or compliance with a request, that is, to express consent to the effect that a proposition p may safely be added to the Common Ground. This analysis is cast within the dialogue framework of Farkas & Bruce (2010) and extended to response performative participles in monological uses.*

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