Gastromaniac. How (food) influencers create trust

In the first part of the paper, I shall offer a brief overview of a hypothesis developed in another publication, which explores the relationship between the primordial feeling of trust that each person’s face elicits to varying degrees and how this represents a type of capital for influencers. In the second part of the paper, I shall develop this model using theoretical know-how from the field of brand management, where a beneficial link between the influencer communication model and that of legendary brands emerges. Thus, for an influencer to build invaluable trust capital with his/her followers in the first place, he/she must start from the position of some passion or sacred beliefs which give authenticity to the core expertise underlying the influence being exerted. In this model, the communicative performance of the influencer and the quality of his/her narrative take centre stage. Credibility depends on the synchrony between these elements and the extent to which the constructed public influencer’s character is true to itself in its various manifestations. An explicitly or implicitly defined lifestyle is always present in the system. It provides concreteness and makes it easier for followers to compare and imitate.

EXPRESS: Federal Employees or Rogue Rangers: Sharing and Resisting Organizational Authority through Twitter Communication Practices

On January 24, 2017, the Trump administration tried to censor various science-related federal agencies, most notably, the National Park Service. This case study presents the emergence of “alternative” National Park Service Twitter accounts that subverted the ban and explores how “rogue rangers” share in and resist organizational authority through communicative practices we interpret as dis/attributing communicative action to various figures to do so. Through qualitative analysis of textual and non-textual data pertaining to the accounts, we demonstrate that organizational members create ambiguity through communicative dis/attribution to do and say more things than authorized, while maintaining a link to their organization, for it is as members that their actions and words are authoritative. The study concludes by theorizing three contributions to the literature on authority and resistance, in particular in the context of social media: 1) it shows that authority and resistance are at play even outside of conventional organizations, which conversely means that social media activity can display a level of organizationality; 2) it demonstrates that the communicative performance of authority and resistance rests on membership ambiguity; and 3) it extends current conversations on the communicative performance of authority by showing that the same practices can also perform resistance.

TEACHING ONLINE INTERACTION IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE: THE LATEST CEFR IMPLICATIONS

Covid-19 pandemic has brought about sweeping changes to the whole education system, language teaching being no exception. In this article the author touches upon new challenges and opportunities that online language teaching implies. In particular, the article touches upon the latest CEFR descriptors to the aspects of communicative competence that refer to online interaction and suggests some implications for EFL teaching that are to enhance students’ communicative performance in this regard.

Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) Image Management In The 2019 Election

Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) is one of the largest Islamic-based parties in Indonesia. Ahead of the 2019 general election, PKS received an internal solidity endurance test and externally as the government's opposition. PKS requires communicative performance to improve its image in the 2019 election. Departing from these problems, researchers are interested in knowing how the PKS communicative performance in the 2019 legislative elections and the PKS Political Public Relations Approach in the 2019 elections. This research uses the main theories of communicative performance, which Michael Pacanowsky and Nick O'Donnell-Trujillo and the concept of Public Relations Politics to explain the management of the PKS image in the 2019 legislative elections. This study uses qualitative research methods, with library studies, documentation, and interviews. Besides, this research also uses the Norman Fairclough critical paradigm approach. The object of this research study is the board of the Central Prosperous Justice Party (DPP PKS) Board of Representatives and PKS Legislative Members in the Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR). The findings of this research indicate, Communicative Performance of PKS in the 2019 Election in Ritual Performance, each party's decision making is collective. Political Public Relations Approach is not maximized in a political marketing approach, and it needs its management to improve the image of PKS. The results of this study indicate that PKS is weak in issue management, and PKS Communicative Performance in the 2019 elections is quite good even though the performance of persuasion is less effective. Also, the Persuasive Political approach is less effective for PKS.Keywords: Image Management, Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), 2019 Elections

Foreign Language Anxiety and Communicative Performance

The current study investigates foreign language anxiety among Kurdish EFL students and its consequences on their communicative performance. An investigative quantitative approach was used to conduct this study. A Total number of two hundred (200) EFL learners with different language proficiency levels from three different universities; University of Halabja and Sulaimani university in Iraqi Kurdistan Region, and University of Kurdistan in Iran, were selected to participate in this study. For the purpose of obtaining necessary information and data, a face-to-face assessment, in small groups of 4 was conducted during students’ class time in which their communicative performance based on accuracy, fluency, vocabulary, and pronunciation was evaluated and recorded. Additionally, Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) questionnaire was adapted and the target population were requested to respond to the statements presented in the questionnaire. The findings of the research taken from a structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that all components of Communicative Performance were in a negative and significant correlation with anxiety.

Vision and Video. Marian Apparition, Spirituality and Popular Religion

The chapter demonstrates that spirituality and popular religiosity are built into the Marian apparitions, thus turning them into a contemporary ‘modern’ phenomenon. The study refers to a series of apparitions which happened during 1999 in Marpingen, a German village close to the Western border with France. This village was the setting for a series of Marian apparitions back in the 19th century. These earlier apparitions have recently been subjected to a very thorough study by British historian David Blackbourn (1993). Whereas Blackbourn based his analysis on written documents mostly stored in archives, the authors had not only access to written documents, newspapers and books, but also the exceptional chance to collect video-tape records from the event, and they could also rely on audio-taped statements by the seers. These data, supported by ethnographic field data, are subject to a fine-grained video-analysis provided in the chapter. In Marpingen, it was Marion who began to have visions on May 17 and 20 near the chapel (built by the above-mentioned association) where the earlier apparitions had happened. Thereafter, the three women together had various apparitions near the chapel, mostly in the company of an increasing number of pilgrims. The sixth apparitions on June 13, 1999, was already witnessed by about 4,000 visitors, and on the ninth day of the apparitions, on July 18, 12,000 visitors turned up. The final apparitions were said to be at- tended by 30,000. As a hundred years before, the incident not only attracted masses, there was also some turmoil accompanying the apparitions: television stations turned up and reported critical- ly on the event, the Church prohibited any proclamation by the seers, the seers were threatened and, finally, the village administration and the chapel association got into a conflict. The authors pointed out that when talking about the apparition, we must be aware of the fact that this notion refers not only to a subjective experience by the seers. In order to become an apparition, it needs to be communicated. The communication of the apparition does not only draw on the verbalisation by which the apparition is being reported, i.e. reconstructed. In addition, the apparition is also being performed by the body of the seers who form part of the setting which includes the visitors in relation to the seers and the spatial constellations of other objects. Thus, the authors interpret apparition as a communicative performance of religious action. However, the verbalisation of the cited vision is not, as in other cases, reconstructed after the vision. On the contrary, the seer (Marion) talks into a dictograph which is held by another visionary – Judith – while having the vision. In this way, the apparition is turned into a live report. It may be no accident that this kind of live report is not directly addressed to the live audience. Rather, it is recorded so to be accessible to a larger media audience via audio tapes, transcripts of the visions and a number of books based on these reports. According to Auslander (1999: 39ff.), it is the ‘techno- logical and aesthetic contamination of live performance’. The authors noted that the media are not only added to the event but are imparted in the event to such a degree that they transform it into something different. Thus, the use of the dictograph results in a format of the ‘live report’ on the inner visions. The microphone allows coordinating the actions of the seers with those of the crowd – a phenomenon that was virtually impossible at earlier apparitions. According to the authors, the Marian movement is not only a static remnant of earlier periods but also a form of modern expression against rationality and secularism. The Marian apparition in question, according to the authors, is an example for the modernity of this form of religion by exhibiting the essential features of popular religion. It is not that religion has changed its contents: it is still the realm of the transcendent as the subject matter of religion. However, this subject matter is not an element of cognitive or moral belief; it is something to be experienced subjectively, the reasserting subject being the major instance and locus of religiosity. This way, the analysis of Marian apparitions is a case for the thesis of the modernity of religion and a case that demonstrates what is modern about religion.

Reinforcing the teaching of translation in Beninese Secondary Schools: A new challenge for EFL teachers

This paper dealt with, after the scrutiny of advanced learners’ translation skills, the necessity of reinforcing the teaching of translation skills as a potentially effective method of teaching/learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL)in Benin high schools. In fact, the Beninese EFL learners study English for almost about seven years (four years in the first cycle and three years in the second) before joining university. For the last three years, they are exposed to translation skills during evaluation. Unfortunately, the designed curriculum has nowhere mentioned the teaching/learning/evaluation of translation. This paper then examined, through a well-established methodology based on field research investigation and questionnaires, some translation excerpts by EFL learners and hypotheses that no translation techniques are taught by teachers before evaluation. It finally concludes that the poor grades the learners culled are due to the lack of practice with their teachers who, in turn, have received no professional training in the matter. Key Words: translation, evaluation, techniques of translation, communicative performance, source language, target language.

“Stories that are worth spreading”

The present study aims to provide a conceptualization of how narratives function in TED talks. It uses Bamberg’s positioning theory as a theoretical framework to build a communicative model of TED Talk narratives. TED narratives are “small stories” that are told, indeed performed, in the presence of an audience and designed to accomplish particular rhetorical aims. The model specifically investigates (1) how genre features affect the design and rhetorical aims of TED talk narratives, (2) TED speaker’s narrative positioning and multi-modal narrative performance, (3) evidence of the audience’s engagement in the narrative and finally, (4) TED narratives as a scaffold for potential individual and social change. Using a multi-modal discourse analysis approach, the model is applied to the narratives used in Guy Winch’s TED Talk (Winch, 2015). The model provides an analytical tool for investigating the dynamic interaction and semiotic signaling involved in the communicative performance of TED Talk narratives.