Senghor’s Grammatology: The Political Imaginaries of Writing African Languages

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-151
Author(s):  
Tobias Warner
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The Past ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
The Future ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Leopold Sedar Senghor

In the 1950s, linguistic research became privileged terrain for articulating political and aesthetic visions in soon-to-be independent Senegal. The poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, Senegal’s eventual first president, made the study of African languages into a source of political and artistic legitimation even as he consecrated French as the language of culture. This chapter traces Senghor’s research on African languages and explores his intellectual rivalry with Cheikh Anta Diop, the progenitor of modern Wolof writing. After independence, polemics over how to write Wolof culminated in the censorship of Ousmane Sembène’s film Ceddo, which was banned for its use of a double letter “d” in its title (a spelling convention that Senghor had made illegal). This chapter explores how debates over writing systems came to figure the stakes of decolonization—who was authorized to speak for the past and who would shape the terms in which the future would be imagined.

scholarly journals Revitalising Naxi dongba as a ‘pictographic’ vernacular script

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-67
Author(s):  
Duncan Poupard
Keyword(s):  
Future Development ◽  
Yunnan Province ◽  
Writing System ◽  
Writing Systems ◽  
Traditional Role ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Standard Chinese

A script can be a window into a language and all the culture contained within it. China’s minority peoples have a multitude of scripts, but many are in danger of falling out of use, a decline spurred by the adoption and promotion of standard Chinese across the country. Nevertheless, efforts are being made to preserve minority writing systems. This article reveals how the primarily logographic Naxi dongba script (often labelled the world’s ‘last living pictographs’), used in China’s southwestern Yunnan province to record the Naxi language, can be practically used as a modern writing system alongside its more widely known traditional role as a means of recording religious rites, and what exactly separates these two styles of writing. The efforts that have been made to achieve the goal of modernisation over the past decades are reviewed, including the longstanding attempts at Unicode encoding. I make some suggestions for the future development of the script, and employ plenty of examples from recent publications, alongside phonetic renderings and English translations. It is hoped that overall awareness of this unique script can be raised, and that it can develop into a vernacular script with everyday applications.

scholarly journals Prvih 20 godina časopisa National Security and the Future

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-52
Author(s):  
Miroslav Tuđman
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Critical Infrastructure ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Past ◽  
Clear Vision ◽  
Information Operations ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of

The author gives an overview of the history of National Security and the Future (NSF). The first editorial board accepted a clear vision and mission of the NSF. That is why the NSF had to react to the political circumstances in which the journal has operated for 20 years. In the first period, international circumstances and the policy of detuđmanization directly influenced the choice of topics and papers published in the journal. For the past five years, the NSF has paid particular attention to the security of national and European critical infrastructure. A total of 257 texts were published on more than 8,000 pages and authored by 134 authors from 25 countries. The NSF has published studies on historical forgery, information operations, production of "fake news" and contributions to the theory and methodology of intelligence activities.

I. The Augustan Historian

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 5-7
Keyword(s):  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Order ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ab Urbe Condita ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Relationship

During the past forty years the dominant preoccupation of scholars writing on Livy has been the relationship between the historian and the emperor Augustus, and its effects on the Ab Urbe Condita. Tacitus’ testimony that the two were on friendly terms, and Suetonius’ revelation that Livy found time to encourage the historical studies of the future emperor Claudius, appeared to have ominous overtones to scholars writing against the political backcloth of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Though the subject had not been wholly ignored previously, the success of the German cultural propaganda-machine stimulated a spate of approving or critical treatments. While some were hailing Livy as the historian whose work signalled and glorified the new order, others following a similar interpretation were markedly scathing.

The Lakefront Today

2021 ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Kearney ◽  
Thomas W. Merrill
Keyword(s):  
Public Trust ◽  
The Political ◽  
Boundary Line ◽  
Deep Tunnel ◽  
The South ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Trust Doctrine ◽  
The Future ◽  
Recent Developments

This chapter reviews how the political settlements and legal understandings canvassed in the account continue to affect the Chicago lakefront today. It offers brief snapshots of five more recent developments on the lakefront that reflect the influence of the past — and that may be indicative of the future. The chapter begins by recounting the boundary-line agreement of 1912 which planted the seeds of the Illinois Central's demise on the lakefront. Today, the railroad has largely disappeared from the lakefront, in both name and fact. The chapter then shifts to discuss the Ward cases, which continue to affect the shape of the lakefront. It chronicles the success of Millennium Park and the Illinois Supreme Court's demotion of the public dedication doctrine to a statutory right limited to Grant Park. The chapter also recounts the Deep Tunnel project and the challenges in the South Works site. Ultimately, it discusses the appearance of the public trust doctrine on the lakefront, being invoked by preservationist groups to challenge both a new museum and the construction of President Barack Obama's presidential library (called the Obama Presidential Center).

Social Policy in the Czech “Republic”: The Past and the Future of Reforms

2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiří Večerník
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Work Motivation ◽  
Pension System ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Scene

The article describes the development of Czech policy after 1989 and the controversies it caused. It first looks at the ambiguous nature of the communist welfare state and then proceeds to outline the theoretical alternatives. After early and energetic changes in the system, stagnation set in around the mid-1990s. Despite some problems, the current performance of the system is satisfactory, but its outlook in terms of long-term efficiency is unsatisfactory, as it will generate a rising debt into the future. In particular, the disadvantaged situation for families, the insufficient work motivation, and the frozen pension system are all causes for concern. The political shift to the right after 2006 ushered in reform measures and new reform plans. While reforms are necessary, their feasibility is uncertain owing to the fragility of the Czech political scene.

Mission, Politics and Linguistic Research

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 379-400
Author(s):  
Laura Rademaker
Keyword(s):  
Aboriginal People ◽  
Research Work ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Christian Missions ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The 1960S

Summary This article investigates the ways local mission and national politics shaped linguistic research work in mid-20th century Australia through examining the case of the Church Missionary Society’s Angurugu Mission on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory and research into the Anindilyakwa language. The paper places missionary linguistics in the context of broader policies of assimilation and national visions for Aboriginal people. It reveals how this social and political climate made linguistic research, largely neglected in the 1950s (apart from some notable exceptions), not only possible, but necessary by the 1970s. Finally, it comments on the state of research into Aboriginal languages and the political climate of today. Until the 1950s, the demands of funding and commitment to a government policy of assimilation into white Australia meant that the CMS could not support linguistic research and opportunities for academic linguists to conduct research into Anindilyakwa were limited. By the 1960s, however, national consensus about the future of Aboriginal people and their place in the Australian nation shifted and governments reconsidered the nature of their support for Christian missions. As the ‘industrial mission’ model of the 1950s was no longer politically or economically viable, the CMS looked to reinvent itself, to find new ways of maintaining its evangelical influence on Groote Eylandt. Linguistics and research into Aboriginal cultures – including in partnership with secular academic agents – were a core component of this reinvention of mission, not only for the CMS but more broadly across missions to Aboriginal people. The resulting collaboration across organisations proved remarkably productive from a research perspective and enabled the continuance of a missionary presence and relevance. The political and financial limitations faced by missions shaped, therefore, not only their own practice with regards to linguistic research, but also the opportunities for linguists beyond the missionary fold. The article concludes that, in Australia, the two bodies of linguists – academic and missionary – have a shared history, dependent on similar political, social and financial forces.

Kuria seers

Africa ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-353 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Ruel
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Predictive Ability ◽  
The Political ◽  
Literal Sense ◽  
The Past ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Personal Qualities ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Individual Success ◽  
The Military

AbstractIn pre-colonial times ‘seers’, abarooti, played an important role in the political and especially in the military organisation of Kuria, harassed as they were by neigh-bouring Maasai and other Kuria. Seers foretold and in effect planned cattle raids undertaken by warriors, but they also acted more generally to warn of impending events and thus to influence the course of political action. They were distinguished by their more public role from diviners but theirs was not a formal office and it drew upon personal qualities, individual success and local renown. Their predictive ability was identified as ‘dreaming’ (okoroota) but the term is used freely in a metaphorical as well as literal sense. Seers varied considerably in their status and field of influence. The introduced term omonaabi, ‘prophet’, was in use by the 1950s to describe the more outstanding seers of the past, and they were credited with foretelling many of the circumstances that Kuria were later to experience. But by then it was only their prophecies and not they themselves, or their role, that had survived. A short postscript comments on the circumstances and use of these terms in 1990.

scholarly journals The future of multimodal corpora

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Knight
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Future Developments ◽  
The Past ◽  
Current State ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
Multimodal Corpora ◽  
The Future ◽  
Multimodal Corpus ◽  
Critical Overview

This paper takes stock of the current state-of-the-art in multimodal corpus linguistics, and proposes some projections of future developments in this field. It provides a critical overview of key multimodal corpora that have been constructed over the past decade and presents a wish-list of future technological and methodological advancements that may help to increase the availability, utility and functionality of such corpora for linguistic research.

scholarly journals Teachers and learners in a time of big data

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Buchanan ◽  
Amy McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Digital Data ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Educational Systems ◽  
Educational Models ◽  
Technological Transformation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Educational Culture ◽  
The Future

Policy and technological transformation have coalesced to usher in massive changes to educational systems over the past two decades. Teachers’ roles, subjectivities and professional identities have been subject to sweeping changes enabled by sophisticated forms of governance. Simultaneously, students have been recast as ‘learners’; like teachers, learners have become subject to new forms of governance, through technological surveillance and datafication. This paper focuses on the intersection of the metrics driven approach to education and the political as a way to re-think the future of schooling in more explicitly philosophical terms. This exploration starts with a critical examination of constructions of teachers, learners and the digital data-driven educational culture in order to explicate the futures being generated. The trajectory of this future is explored through reference to the techno-educational models currently being developed in Silicon Valley. Drawing on Deleuze’s notion of control societies we contribute to the ongoing philosophical investigation of the datafication of education; a necessary discussion if we are to explore the future implications of schooling in a technologically saturated world. We present consideration of the past, present and future, as three ways of considering alternatives to a datafied education system. Alternative conceptualisations of the future of schooling are possible which offer ways of understanding and politicising what happens when we impose data-driven accountabilities into people’s lives.

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