How Perceptions of the English Language Have Changed in Kazakhstan: A Narrative Analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-57
Author(s):  
Valerie Sartor

Abstract This study provides an overview of how perceptions of the English language in Kazakhstan have altered over time due to political, economic, social and technological changes. The sociocultural framework includes language commodification and critical pedagogy concerning Indigenous languages; the methodological approach is narrative analysis combined with Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. Three generational shifts were identified, each reflective of sociocultural changes that have occurred as Kazakhstan has transitioned from Soviet republic to modern Indigenous nation: from the Soviet Era/Soviet Man; to Independent Kazakhstan/Patriots and Outsiders; to Modern Kazakhstan/Young Cosmopolitans. The ongoing popularity of English may eventually threaten the Kazakh language.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 535
Author(s):  
Ali Akbar

Ayatollah Yusef Sanei was a prominent contemporary Shia scholar whose particular methodological approach led him to issue some of the most progressive Shia fatwas on the subject of women’s rights. However, the ideas he expressed in the last decades of his life have scarcely been addressed in the English language scholarship. This article explores Sanei’s broader jurisprudential approach and how he applied it to analyzing and often challenging traditional Shia rulings related to gender issues. The article first differentiates Sanei’s approach towards jurisprudence from established methodologies, particularly in relation to his consideration of the Sunna as secondary to the Qurʾān, his rejection of the practice of using consensus as an independent basis of legal rulings, his idea that Sharia rulings may change over time, and his strong emphasis on the Qurʾān’s messages of justice and human dignity. The article illuminates how this combination led Sanei to challenge traditional ideas about men’s authority over women, a fixed socio-political role for women, and men’s superiority in the areas of divorce rights, testimony and worth in blood money (dīya), while concurring with earlier scholars on the unequal division of inheritance. Notwithstanding this latter exception, the article demonstrates that Sanei drew upon jurisprudential approaches in arguing in favor of equality between men and women in many areas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nic Cheeseman ◽  
Sishuwa Sishuwa

Abstract Democracy is one of the most contested words in the English language. In Africa, these complexities are compounded by the question of whether democracy is a colonial imposition. Cheeseman and Sishuwa provide a historiography of debates around democracy, track how these narratives have developed over time, and argue that there is widespread public support for a form of what they call “consensual democracy.” This is not to say that democracy is universally loved, but despite the controversy it remains one of the most compelling ideals in political life, even in countries in which it is has yet to be realized.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016344372110227
Author(s):  
Yingzi Wang ◽  
Thoralf Klein

This paper examines the changes and continuities in TV representations of Chinese Communist Party’s revolutionary history and interprets them within the broader context of China’s political, economic and cultural transformations since the 1990s. Drawing on a comparative analysis of three state-sponsored TV dramas produced between the late 1990s and mid-2010s, it traces how the state-sanctioned revolutionary narratives have changed over time in response to the Party’s propaganda imperatives on the one hand, and to the market-oriented production environment on the other. The paper argues that while recent TV productions in the new century have made increasing concessions to audience taste by adopting visually stimulating depictions and introducing fictional characters as points of identification for the audience, the revolutionary narratives were still aligned with the Party’s propaganda agenda at different times. This shows the ongoing competition between ideological and commercial interests in Chinese TV production during the era of market reforms.


2000 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 602-606
Author(s):  
Sachiko Ide

The assumptions made by readers of Language in Society and other English-language academic publications, when they begin to read, are so widely shared that they are seldom reflected on or made explicit. These assumptions have to do with European traditions of scholarship; and over time, they have made their way around the world because of the unquestioned belief in their universal applicability. But other approaches do exist, although most are never featured in publications in Western languages. I commented on this situation long ago, but it persists to this day: “The work done by Japanese sociolinguists is virtually unknown to non-Japanese readers. The reason is probably that this work has developed independently of the Western disciplines. The fact that Japanese researchers have worked independently of the Western tradition has inevitably resulted in unique assumptions, orientations or approaches when viewed from an international perspective”.


1990 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 74-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth A. Meyer

It is now notorious that the production of inscriptions in the Roman Empire was not constant over time, but rose over the first and second centuries A.D. and fell in the third. Ramsay MacMullen pointed this out more than five years ago, with conclusions more cautionary than explanatory: ‘history is not being written in the right way’, he said, for historians have deduced Rome's decline from evidence that–since it appears only epigraphically–has merely disappeared for its own reasons, or have sought general explanations of decline in theories political, economic, or even demographic in nature, none of which can, in turn, explain the disappearance of epigraphy itself. Why this epigraphic habit rose and fell MacMullen left open to question, although he did postulate control by a ‘sense of audience’. The purpose of this paper is to propose that this ‘sense of audience’ was not generalized or generic, but depended on a belief in the value of romanization, of which (as noted but not explained by MacMullen's article) the epigraphic habit is also a rough indicator. Epitaphs constitute the bulk of all provincial inscriptions and in form and number are (generally speaking) the consequence of a provincial imitation of characteristically Roman practices, an imitation that depended on the belief that Roman legal status and style were important, and that may indeed have ultimately depended, at least in North Africa, on the acquisition or prior possession of that status. Such status-based motivations for erecting an epitaph help to explain not only the chronological distribution of epitaphs but also the differences in the type and distribution of epitaphs in the western and eastern halves of the empire. They will be used here moreover to suggest an explanation for the epigraphic habit as a whole.


Author(s):  
Raymond D. Adams ◽  
Waldo E. Johnson

Conceptualized using critical race theory as a theoretical underpinning, this study analyzed the lived experiences of older, rural, African American male prostate cancer (hereafter referenced as PrCA) survivors’ faith and health promotion practices within Northeast Louisiana. Qualitative data from journaling, observations, and semi-structured interviews were obtained from ten older, African American male PrCA survivors residing in four rural parishes of Louisiana. The data analysis employed a two-stage approach known as Polkinghorne’s analysis of narratives and narrative analysis using an art-based methodological approach. Framed as composite character counterstories, survivors’ narratives revealed how survivors made sense of and gave meaning to their PrCA diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and survivorship. Specifically, their counterstories indicate that centering and honoring the unique and often taken-for-granted perspectives of older, rural, African American male PrCA survivors offered a deeper understanding of the multiple factors influencing their quality of life, as well as the sociostructural mechanisms impacting their survivorship care. Faith was examined as both a secular and sacred source of support that these men viewed as central to the acceptance of their diagnosis, treatment, recovery, and survivorship.


2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrin Riese ◽  
Mareike Bayer ◽  
Gerhard Lauer ◽  
Annekathrin Schacht

Plot suspense is one of the most important components of narrative fiction that motivate recipients to follow fictional characters through their worlds. The present study investigates the dynamic development of narrative suspense in excerpts of literary classics from the 19th century in a multi-methodological approach. For two texts, differing in suspense as judged by a large independent sample, we collected (a) data from questionnaires, indicating different affective and cognitive dimensions of receptive engagement, (b) continuous ratings of suspense during text reception from both experts and lay recipients, and (c) registration of pupil diameter as a physiological indicator of changes in emotional arousal and attention during reception. Data analyses confirmed differences between the two texts at different dimensions of receptive engagement and, importantly, revealed significant correlations of pupil diameter and the course of suspense over time. Our findings demonstrate that changes of the pupil diameter provide a reliable ‘online’ indicator of suspense.


Author(s):  
Justine Humphry ◽  
Chris Chesher

Smart home, media and security systems intervene in the territory and boundaries of the home in a variety of ways. Among these are the capacity to watch the home from afar, and to record these observations over time, as well as using the home as a site of performance for those on the outside. In this paper, we map the meanings of the smart home and explore the tensions between security and visibility, adopting a cultural history and cultural analysis methodological approach. We make a contribution to the literature on the smart home, highlighting its connection to longer trajectories of media and cultural change, and to understanding the contemporary formations of technologised surveillance, with attention to practices that emerged in response to COVID-19. We focus on two aspects of our model of domestic smartification: Ludics (devices and systems for play or entertainment) and exteriorities (security and communication interfaces that remotely monitor and expose the home). We focus on these aspects relating them to ideas of haunting and the uncanny to explore the implications of making what was previously hidden visible and manipulable to others.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Nicholas Bremner

This study examined the educational life histories of 13 students at a Mexican university in order to gather their perspectives of effective language teaching. Most previous studies on students’ perspectives of language teaching have used quantitative and deductive methods, whereas this study employed qualitative and inductive methods. The main methodological approach was the ‘life history’ approach, and the specific methods were two extended interviews and an innovative ‘timeline’ activity. In total, 77 examples of effective (and ineffective) teachers emerged from the 13 students’ life histories. The study revealed three major findings. Firstly, teachers’ language knowledge and proficiency were not mentioned as important characteristics of effective language teaching, although several students did make reference to teachers’ command of language when it was perceived to be missing. Secondly, students generally favoured more ‘modern’ approaches (engaging, active, real-life skills, immersion in the target language), as opposed to more ‘conservative’ approaches (unappealing, passive, overly theoretical, lack of immersion in the target language). Thirdly, students emphasised the importance of a positive student-teacher relationship, and greatly appreciated the teacher being there to provide them with personalised attention. Notably, the students tended not to value autonomous learning, preferring teachers to be close to them to help them with their problems in class. Two main implications for practice were suggested. Firstly, a general consensus has been reached regarding several key characteristics of effective language teaching, strengthening the argument that these characteristics should be listened to, and acted upon, by teachers and educational decision-makers. Secondly, the study makes a strong case for future research to utilise more qualitative, inductive methods when investigating students’ perspectives.


Panta Rei ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-147
Author(s):  
Álvaro Chaparro Sainz ◽  
María del Mar Felices de la Fuente ◽  
Laura Triviño Cabrera

Este artículo analiza la evolución de la investigación sobre pensamiento histórico a partir de las tesis doctorales nacionales e internacionales de los últimos veinticinco años. Para ello, se ha seguido un proceso sistemático de búsqueda en las principales bases de datos a nivel mundial, que ha reportado un total de 163 tesis doctorales. Estos trabajos se han analizado desde un enfoque metodológico cuantitativo descriptivo, con el programa de análisis estadístico SPSS y la herramienta Voyant Tools. Los resultados nos ofrecen información acerca del número de investigaciones realizadas, su evolución en el tiempo, los países, idiomas y universidades de mayor producción, y las principales temáticas trabajadas. Concluimos que, pese al aumento de las tesis doctorales sobre pensamiento histórico en los últimos años, continúan existiendo vacíos en la investigación apenas abordados. In this article the evolution of research on Historical Thinking is analyzed based on national and international dissertations defended in the last twenty-five years. For this, we have followed a systematic search process in the main databases worldwide, which has reported a total of 163 dissertations. These works have been analyzed from a descriptive quantitative methodological approach, with the SPSS statistical analysis program and the Voyant Tools tool. The results offer us information about the number of researches carried out, their evolution over time, the countries, languages and universities with the highest production, and the main topics studied. We conclude that, despite the increase in doctoral thesis on Historical Thinking in recent years, there are still research gaps that have hardly been studied.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document