scholarly journals Italian Mothers and Italian-Canadian Daughters: Using Language to Negotiate the Politics of Gender

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Elena Anna Spagnuolo
Keyword(s):  
Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Female Condition ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Family Narratives ◽  
Mother Daughter Relationship ◽  
Linguistic Means

This paper examines how migration redefines family narratives and dynamics. Through a parallel between the mother and the mother tongue, I unravel the emotional, linguistic, social, and ideological connotations of the mother–daughter relationship, which I define as a ‘condensed narrative about origin and identity’. This definition refers to the fact that the daughter’s biological, affective, linguistic, and socio-cultural identity grounds in the mother. The mother–daughter tie also has a gendered dimension, which opens up interesting gateways into the female condition. Taking this assumption as a starting point, I examine how migration, impacting on the mother–daughter relationship, can redefine gender roles and challenge models of femininity, which are culturally, socially, geographically, and linguistically embedded. I investigate this aspect from a linguistic perspective, through a reading of a corpus of narratives written by four Italian-Canadian writers. The movement from Italy to Canada enacts ‘the emergence of alternative family romances’ and draws new routes to femininity. This paper seeks to illustrate how, in the narratives I examine, these new routes are explored through linguistic means. The authors in my corpus use code-switching to highlight contrasting views of femininity and reposition themselves with respect to politics of gender.

scholarly journals Human Rights and Cultural Identity

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 112-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon John-Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Culturally Sensitive ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Ethical Relativism ◽  
Small Core ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Universal Human Rights

Abstract Universal human rights and particular cultural identities, which are relativistic by nature, seem to stand in conflict with each other. It is commonly suggested that the relativistic natures of cultural identities undermine universal human rights and that human rights might compromise particular cultural identities in a globalised world. This article examines this supposed clash and suggests that it is possible to frame a human rights approach in such a way that it becomes the starting point and constraining framework for all non-deficient cultural identities. In other words, it is possible to depict human rights in a culturally sensitive way so that universal human rights can meet the demands of a moderate version of meta-ethical relativism which acknowledges a small universal core of objectively true or false moral statements and avers that, beyond that small core, all other moral statements are neither objectively true nor false.

Code-Switching and Code Mixing in the Selected Tracks of the Hip Hop Music of Flavour and 9ice

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Balogun Sarah ◽  
Murana Muniru Oladayo
Keyword(s):  
Hip Hop ◽  
English Language ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
First Language ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
National Language ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
Unique Identity

This article attempts a comparative analysis of code-switching and code-mixing in the Nigerian music industry, using the lyrics of Flavour and 9ice as a case study. Although the English language is the national language in Nigeria and the language used by most of the musicians for the composition of their songs, and due to the linguistic plurality of Nigeria, most of these musicians tend to lace their songs chunks of words and phrases from their mother tongue or at least one of the three major languages in Nigeria, which are Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. The Markedness Model by Myers-Scotton (1993) is used as the framework to interrogate the switching and mixing in the codes used by these selected musicians and we find that while most code-switching is done in three languages – English, Nigerian Pidgin and the artist’ first language (mother tongue)  – their mother tongue plays the prominent role. Code-switching or code-mixing in these songs, therefore, becomes a depiction of the Nigerian state with its diverse languages and it provides the links between the literates and the illiterates thereby giving the artiste the popularity desired. The study concludes that the unique identity created by code-switching and code-mixing in the Nigerian music industry has a positive influence on music lovers, helping artists to achieve wide patronage and reflecting the ethnolinguistic diversity of the Nigerian nation.

scholarly journals Language planning for "Mundurukú do Amazonas"

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 405-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gessiane Picanço
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Planning ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Ethnic And Cultural Identity ◽  
Language Revitalisation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Indigenous Land

Mundurukú, a Tupian language of Brazil, exhibits two opposite scenarios. On one extreme, there is Mundurukú do Pará, the language of daily communication in the Mundurukú Indigenous Land, with fluent speakers found across all generations and still acquired by children as a mother tongue. On the other extreme, there is Mundurukú do Amazonas, formerly spoken in the Kwatá-Laranjal Indigenous Land, but whose inhabitants have shifted to Portuguese. A group of Mundurukú students from Amazonas decided to initiate a process of language revitalisation as a way to strengthen the community's ethnic and cultural identity. This paper reports the initial stages of language planning, and includes future actions to promote language use in the homes and communities, assessement of language proficiency, and definition of educational programs to teach Mundurukú in local schools.

scholarly journals Digital life stories in year four of primary school

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
Piroska DEMÉNY
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Digital Storytelling ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Text Production ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Educational Requirement ◽  
Hungarian Language ◽  
The Impact

"Abstract: In Romania, the curriculum for mother tongue education for grade three and four of primary school defines spoken and written text production in various communication situations as a general educational requirement and competence. (see the curriculum for competence-based teaching of the mother tongue approved by Ministerial Decree No. 5003 of 4 December 2014. Hungarian Language and Literature, grade three and four). This experimental study examines the impact of digital storytelling on children’s text production skills. Our aim was to design an interventionprogramme that develops primary school children’s selfexpression, text production skills, creativity but also their digital competencies. The goal is to use digital storytelling to develop children’s composition skills, including staying on the subject, creating the connection between title and content, spelling, text appearance, and reaching the desired length. In order to achieve our objective, we devised experiments involving two cohorts of children in year four of primary school who were given stories selected from Angi Máté’s book Volt egyszer egy… (Once upon a time there was a…). Using these stories as a starting point, the members of the both groups created their own stories, the experimental group applying digital storytelling, while the control group applied the technique of collage."

scholarly journals Phraseologismen im Bereich der Sexualität. Eine lexikographische Analyse an deutschen und polnischen Beispielen

2021 ◽  
pp. 15-28
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Lidzba ◽  
Krystian Suchorab
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Unwritten Law ◽  
Linguistic Means

People’s sex life is very often, if not always, taboo in everyday life. The theming of this area of life is made possible by various linguistic means that allow one to speak about this content. Phraseological units also serve this purpose. The starting point of this article is the definition of phrasemes according to Burger (2015:11): “Firstly, they [phraseologisms] consist of more than one word; secondly, the words are not put together for this one occasion, but are combinations of words that we, as German speakers, know exactly in this combination (possibly with variants), similar to how we know German words as individual items”. In addition, it is noteworthy that thanks to the characteristic of idiomaticity (cf. Fleischer 1982:30), this taboo is particularly reinforced. At the center of our analysis are phrasemes related to sex life. The research material was taken from German and Polish dictionaries. The purpose of the presentation is to create a typology of thematic areas which are characterized with the help of phrasemes relating to sex life in German and Polish. The article is based on the following definition of a taboo: “an unwritten law that forbids doing certain things based on certain beliefs within a society” (Duden 2015:1735).

Cultural Diversity in Psychiatry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Chambers ◽  
Mary Guerriero Austrom ◽  
Ryan Harris ◽  
Danielle Patterson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Key Words Aging ◽  
Health Providers ◽  
Manage Care ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Key Aspects

This purpose of this review is to provide general guidelines to practicing psychiatrists and psychologists on cultural diversity in the discipline. Diversity and mental health is a complex topic in a complex discipline, and our goal is to contribute to an understanding of how cultural identity affects our work. This review does not explicitly state how to treat any one cultural group. Rather, it is a tool for psychiatrists and other mental health providers to begin a sensitive and helpful conversation with patients of all backgrounds and a way to explore their own cultural identities. As our nation becomes increasingly diverse, providers are expected to understand how a patient’s cultural identity impacts the presenting problem and, ultimately, treatment. In addition, an ever-present opportunity remains for mental health professionals to explore their own cultural identity and how it may be involved in conscious and unconscious biases, which, in turn, also impact how they interpret, treat, and manage care. We explore key aspects of diversity with the goal of cultivating a deeper level of insight and awareness among psychiatrists in training and those currently in practice when caring for patients with diverse backgrounds. The guidelines offer a starting point toward delivering culturally competent care and, coupled with a commitment to lifelong learning from psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, can help minimize the stigma of traditionally marginalized groups.  This review contains 7 tables, and 67 references.  Key words: aging, diversity, LGBTQ, psychiatry, race, religion 

“We care about others”: discursive constructions of corruption vis-à-vis national/cultural identity in Indonesia’s business-government relations

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kanti Pertiwi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Government Function ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Government Relations ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Local Discourses ◽  
Global And Local ◽  
Discursive Constructions

Purpose This paper aims to problematize existing conceptualization of corruption by presenting alternative perspectives on corruption in Indonesia through the lens of national/cultural identity, amidst claims of the pervasiveness of corruption in the country. In so doing, the paper also sheds light on the micro-processes of interactions between global and local discourses in postcolonial settings. Design/methodology/approach The study applies discourse analysis, involving in-depth interviews with 40 informants from the business sector, government institutions and anti-corruption agencies. Findings The findings suggest that corruption helps government function, preserves livelihoods of the marginalized segments of societies and maintains social obligations/relations. These alternative meanings of corruption persist despite often seen as less legitimate due to effects of colonial powers. Research limitations/implications The snowballing method of recruiting informants is one of the limitations of this paper, which may decrease the potential diversity and lead to the silencing of different stories (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2013). Researchers need to contextualize corruption and study its varied meanings to reveal its social, historical and political dimensions. Practical implications This paper strongly suggests that we need to move beyond rationalist accounts to capture the varied meanings of corruption which may be useful to explain the limited results of existing anti-corruption efforts. Social implications This study calls for a greater use of qualitative methods to study broad social change programs such as anti-corruption from the perspective of the insiders. Originality/value This paper contributes to the discussion of agency at the interplay between the dominant and alternative discourses in postcolonial settings. Moreover, the alternative meanings of corruption embedded in constructions of national identity and care ethics discussed in this paper offer as a starting point for decolonizing (Westwood, 2006) anti-corruption theory and practice.

Syntax: Autonomous or Meaning Motivated?

1994 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter H. Hirtle
Keyword(s):  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Physiological Process ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Northrop Frye ◽  
Linguistic Means ◽  
The Way

… on ne peut rien savoir de scientifiquement valable concernant les actes d’expression si l’on n’a fait préalablement l’étude des actes de représentation dont ils émanent. (Gustave Guillaume 1954:28)Perhaps the most remarkable trait of human language is the way it adapts spontaneously to the particular experience the speaker wants to express. Thanks to our mother tongue, the linguistic means are available to render more or less faithfully whatever we intend to communicate regardless of the particular nature or quality of the message. This is remarkable first of all because, in itself, raw experience is strictly private and incommunicable, a fact Northrop Frye (1971:124) depicts quite vividly in the following passage: … it is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.

scholarly journals Greek education and cultural identity in Greek-speaking Judaism: The Jewish-Greek historiographers

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 217-228
Author(s):  
Marieke Dhont
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Second Temple ◽  
Language Usage ◽  
Second Temple Period ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Hellenistic World ◽  
Hellenistic Judaism

The style of the Jewish-Greek historiographers Eupolemus and Demetrius has often been evaluated as “bad Greek.” This is generally seen as evidence of their lack of education. The negative views on the language of Demetrius and Eupolemus are illustrative of a broader issue in the study of Hellenistic Judaism: language usage has been a key element in the discussion on the societal position of Jews in the Hellenistic world. In this article, I assess the style of the historiographers in the context of post-classical Greek, and conclude that their language reflects standard Hellenistic Greek. The linguistic analysis then becomes a starting point to reflect on the level of integration of Jews in the Greek-speaking world as well as to consider the nature of Jewish multilingualism in the late Second Temple period.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document