scholarly journals Art des langues et art du rythme : Pour un enseignement physique et musical des langues vivantes

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-42
Author(s):  
Albin Wagener ◽  
Mariane Gazaille
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
Physical Elements ◽  
Langue Seconde ◽  
Production Apparatus ◽  
Do So

Parfois, l’enseignement des langues semble oublier que les langues sont vivantes et qu’elles obéissent à des rythmes précis. Avant que d’être écrites, les langues sont parlées et impliquent plusieurs éléments physiques : cordes vocales, appareil phonatoire, muscles, mais également le corps entier pour les dimensions paraverbales et non verbales (Cosnier & Brossard, 1984). La question qui se pose dès lors est « comment favoriser l’articulation des dimensions verbale, paraverbale et non-verbale chez l’apprenant d’une langue seconde ou étrangère ? » Pour ce, il convient d’apporter une attention particulière au contexte systémique d’émergence des langues et de leurs rapports écologique et social au monde (Mühlhäusler, 2003). Nous inspirant des pratiques théâtrales (Tabensky, 1997), nous proposons ici une vision intégrative de l’enseignement des langues vivantes basée sur la musicalité de la parole, les gestes, la posture et les actions langagières afin de porter l’accent sur la dimension communicative (Meunier, 2003) et émotionnelle (Frijda, 2003) inhérente aux langues vivantes. Language, Rhythm and Art: Towards a Physical and Musical Approach to Language Teaching Language teaching sometimes sets aside the fact that languages are living entities, submitted to precise rhythms. Since languages are alive, they are spoken before being written and rely on physical elements: vocal cords, sound production apparatus, muscles and also the entire body, in the case of paraverbal and nonverbal dimensions (Cosnier & Brossard, 1984). The question that now arises is that of the articulation of the verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal dimensions for the second or foreign language learner. In order to do so, it is necessary to take the systemic context of emergence of languages and their ecological and social relations to the world (Mühlhäusler, 2003) into consideration. Drawing on theatre practices (Tabensky, 1997), we thus wish to submit a comprehensive perspective of language teaching based on the musicality of speech, gestures, postures and speech acts in order to underline the communicative (Meunier, 2003) and emotional (Frijda, 2003) dimensions of languages.

Focus on the language learner in an era of globalization: Tensions, positions and practices in technology-mediated language teaching

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 321-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia White
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
First Century ◽  
Global Learning ◽  
Learning And Teaching ◽  
Emerging Issues

Globalization as the intensification of worldwide social relations (Giddens 1990) continues to exert an influence on language, language use, and learning and teaching around the world. In this paper I examine the nature and influence of globalization on online language teaching through the lens of learner-centred principles, and the tensions between different positions and practices adopted by participants within virtual learning environments. I conclude by arguing that a focus on technology or innovation within global learning environments needs to be balanced by a focus on the learner in order to engage with and respond to emerging issues, challenges and practices, and to extend our understanding of language learning and teaching in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Entrepreneurial visions of the self: Language teaching and learning under neoliberal conditions

Multilingua ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-275
Author(s):  
Martina Zimmermann ◽  
Sebastian Muth
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Ideologies ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Critical Perspective ◽  
Future Success ◽  
Neoliberal Ideology ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn this special issue, we bring together empirical research that takes a critical perspective on the relationship between language learning and individual aspirations for future success. In doing so we aim to initiate a debate on how neoliberal ideology and mode of governance permeate language learning as part of a wider neoliberal project that postulates the ideal of the competitive and self-responsible language learner. The four contributions illustrate how neoliberal desires about entrepreneurial selves play out differently within different social, political, or linguistic contexts. They do not only address different languages individuals supposedly need to teach or acquire for a successful future within a specific context, but also concentrate on the discourses and social relations shaping these entrepreneurial aspirations. Ranging from vocational training in Japan, early education in Singapore, healthcare tourism in India, to higher education in Switzerland, the contributions all illustrate the role of language as part of the struggle to improve either oneself or others. While the research sites illustrate that investments in language are simultaneously promising and risky and as such dependent on local and global linguistic markets, they equally highlight underlying language ideologies and reveal wider structures of inequality that are firmly embedded in local, national and global contexts.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rekret
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

This article seeks to examine the political connotations of a recent ‘material turn’ in social and political theory and its implications for theorizations of political agency. ‘New materialist’ theories are premised upon transcending the limits which social constructivism places upon thought, viewed as a reification of the division of subject and object and so a hubristic anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of social existence. Yet new materialist theories have tended to locate the conditions of the separation of mind and world they seek to overcome upon the terrain of epistemic or ethical error. By taking the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad as exemplary, this article contends that new materialist theories not only fall short of their own materialist pretensions insofar as they do not interrogate the material conditions of the separation of the mental and material, but that the failure to do so has profound repercussions for the success of their accounts of political agency. This essay seeks to offer a counter-narrative to new materialist theories by situating the hierarchy between thought and world as a structural feature of capitalist social relations.

scholarly journals Understanding Language Teaching: An Educational Perspective

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-83
Author(s):  
Ravi Bhushan
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Educational Theory ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
Classroom Teaching ◽  
Second Language Teaching ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
Educational Treatment

Notwithstanding the prolonged debate on teaching methods, the concept of language teaching as such has remained less developed. It is not only gradually emancipating itself from the method debate through conceptual schemes, empirical studies and classroom observation, a more deliberate interpretation of second language teaching in terms of educational theory is needed. An educational interpretation of language teaching is clearly interdisciplinary; linguistics, sociolinguistics, cultural studies and educational theory. The model developed by two educational researchers Dunkin and Biddle (1974) for the study of classroom teaching distinguishes four main categories of variables; presage, context, process and product. In their seminal book The Study of Teaching, Dunkin and Biddle critically examine classroom teaching in terms of these essential factors/ relationships. Moreover this model identifies two principal actors; the language teacher and the language learner. The teacher like the learner brings to language teaching certain characteristics which have bearing on educational treatment; age, sex, previous education and personal qualities and social context. This paper would examine the educational dimension of second language teaching with an aim to equip a language teacher with effective tools of ELT.

scholarly journals Sociocultural Mechanisms of Conflict: Combining Topic and Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models in an Analysis of Afghanistan, 1979-2001

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Karell ◽  
Michael Raphael Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Interpersonal Relationships ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Semantic Network ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Conflict Studies ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Cultural Domain ◽  
Do So

How do sociocultural dynamics shape conflict? We develop a relational understanding of how social relations, culture, and conflict are interwoven. Using this framework, we examine how combatants' associations with cultural elements affect the interpersonal relationships underlying conflict dynamics, as well as how these relationships engender associations to cultural elements. To do so, we first introduce a novel analytical approach that synthesizes computational textual analysis and stochastic actor-oriented models of longitudinal networks. We then use our approach to analyze a two-level socio-semantic graph representing both the cultural domain and social relationships of prominent militants operating in one Afghan province, Balkh, between 1979 and 2001. Our results indicate that militants' interpersonal comradeships rely, in part, on their connections to cultural elements and relative power. Comradeship, in turn, fosters militants' connections to cultural elements. We conclude by discussing how conflict studies can continue to build on insights from cultural sociology, as well as how cultural sociology and socio-semantic network research can benefit from further engaging conflict studies and developing our analytical approach. We also highlight provisional insights into endogenous mechanisms of conflict resolution and cultural change.

The Extra-normal Voice

2014 ◽  
pp. 728-750
Author(s):  
Michael Edward Edgerton
Keyword(s):  
Complex Networks ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
Power Source ◽  
Sound Sources ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Voice Production ◽  
Multiple Parameters ◽  
Normal Voice ◽  
Production Apparatus

This chapter presents an overview of new developments in vocal exploration. Beginning with a discussion of multiple parameters involved in voice production, this chapter identifies the crucial role that non-linear phenomena has in the performance of the extra-normal voice. In this article, two related taxonomies are presented (source production related to degree of voicing; emphases within the acoustic framework of power, source, resonance, and articulation) that may be used as powerful generative tools for the production of multiple sound sources, filtering processes, and aerodynamic effects, etc. The paper then posits how scaled, multidimensional networks may be used to intelligently explore all elements of the acoustic sound production apparatus and not solely articulation, as is seen with some proponents of complex networks. In this discussion, it will be presented how fully scaling each parameter space will encompass far reaching benefits by engaging with little traversed regions of the total vocal topography.

Webs of Community

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-161
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Exchange Process ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Kin Relations ◽  
The Face ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Indian Control ◽  
Do So

A network of Indian trading villages dominated the tributary rivers of the Ohio and fostered Indian control over the exchange process. The face-to-face exchange process that characterized these villages ushered in a golden age of Indigenous prosperity as Indian women sought new types of cloth, incorporated silks and calicoes into their wardrobes, and demanded silver ornaments to highlight and decorate their clothing. Kin-based networks controlled trade as well as social relations in the region. Traders who sought a share of this prosperity resided in these Indian trading villages and carefully observed Indigenous trade protocols. Those who failed to do so found themselves unwelcome in Indian villages. Change was ongoing: newcomers were incorporated, populations multiplied, and village life was defined by evolving kin relations. These changes occurred within the framework of an Indian world, one that was increasingly shaped by Miami hegemony over the Wabash region. Intermarriage blurred social borders and simultaneously created pathways to authority and power.

scholarly journals Make development great again? Accumulation regimes, spaces of sovereign exception and the elite development paradigm of China's Belt and Road Initiative

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 487-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruben Gonzalez-Vicente
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Belt And Road Initiative ◽  
Social Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
Public Resources ◽  
Uneven And Combined Development ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Belt And Road ◽  
Development Paradigm ◽  
Do So

AbstractThis article studies what I describe as “state-coordinated investment partnerships,” an investment modality central to the deployment of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). These partnerships bring together state and business actors to export overcapacity and address infrastructural demands in underdeveloped markets. To do so, they require accumulation and sovereignty regimes that mirror, in contingent ways, similar social arrangements within China. The superposition of such regimes and the interests and social imaginaries of local actors produces forms of uneven and combined development and shapes the contours of the BRI's emerging developmental and geoeconomic footprints. The BRI exports also an elite development paradigm which promotes urbanization, connectivity and economic growth over participatory approaches. This paradigm projects a depoliticized version of China's present into the BRI's future to justify social and environmental dislocations, and shields Chinese firms from civil society scrutiny. My analysis rejects this elite perspective and favors a labor-centric approach that unearths the social foundations of the BRI. From this perspective, despite relevant differences in format, the BRI's quintessential investment modality is closely aligned to a contemporary global current of public-private partnerships endeavored to mobilize public resources and state power for the expansion of capitalist social relations.

Mediating Conflicts, Creating Bonds

2016 ◽  
Vol 76 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 30-50
Author(s):  
Luca D’Anna
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Islamic Religion ◽  
Arabic Speaking ◽  
Patterns Of Interaction ◽  
Do So

The present paper discusses the patterns of interaction between the Islamic religion and the universal categories of verbal politeness described by Brown, Levinson (1987). The two scholars based their theory on the existence of two contrasting sets of ‘face-wants’ (negative and positive) and on the speakers’ necessity to preserve them while, at the same time, pursuing their goals. Verbal politeness provides means that enable the speaker to do so without endangering his social relations. While the phenomenon is, in itself, universal (i.e. found in all known cultures), its outer manifestations tend to be culturally bound. Amongst Maghrebi Arabic-speaking societies, the object of the present study, the ‘code’ of verbal politeness heavily draws on the Islamic religion. The present paper, thus, aims to analyse the interplay between Islam and the different strategies described by Brown and Levinson, by means of a wide exemplification that will highlight general trends and underlying structures.

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