Twin Skin of Raza Learners: Race, Language, and Mathematics

Through a composite counter-story from the perspective of fifth-grade Raza learners, the authors show how race and language play a role in the mathematics classroom.

Lesbian at the vanguard

This tribute considers the work of linguist and novelist, Anna Livia (1955–2007). Anna was a noted fiction writer before becoming a linguist and much of her work considered language play in literature. Anna brought her experience as a lesbian activist to queer linguistics, where she played an important role in establishing the field. Her work continues to be an important example of linguistic research on lesbians, an area that continues to be underrepresented in the field.

THE CONCEPT OF ANXIETY / ANXIOUSNESS IN THE PRIVATE SPHERE OF SERHIY ZHADAN’S NOVEL CHARACTERS («MESOPOTAMIA», «BOARDING SCHOOL»)

The article focuses on the study of artistic ways of expressing the types of human anxiety that is manifested in private experiences of the characters of Serhiy Zhadan’s novels «Mesopotamia» and «Boarding School». It is established that the prose writer embodied various types of anxiety – basic, catastrophic, neurotic – which arise in crisis life situations of the characters and are related primarily to the unconscious protective mechanisms of their psyche. It was found out that the private anxieties of Zhadan’s novel characters are most often expressed in intrinsic impulses of aggressive or sexual nature (Romeo, Oleg), past experiences, fear of responsibility, inferiority complex (Pasha, Yura), fear ofpunishment (Mario) or threats from the environment (Yura), a neurotic desire to compensate for one’s own inferiority in the sphere of personal ambitions (Bob) or power over others (Marat). As one of the most prominent artistic embodiments of the psychology of anxiety, the reasons for its emergence and the reflection of the subjective mechanisms of its development, the author of the article identifies the structure of the characters: Marat and Sonya – as the embodiment of a whole bunch of neurotic anxieties, involving the existence of internal conflict, disruption of interpersonal relationships with a clear manifestation of aggressive (criminal or sexual) behavior;Yura, whose behavior reveals symptoms of catastrophic anxiety where his feeling of threat from everywhere leads to his own existence being threatened; children (Sasha and Pasha in the memories of their childhood from the «Boarding School», Dasha’s son from «Mesopotamia») as carriers of basic anxieties arising from childhood due to a number of misunderstandings with the adult world, which further provokes the feelings of their personal inferiority, behavioral anomalies etc. It is emphasized that the nature of the characters’ anxiety and anxiousness is somewhat irrational, that it is always «intrinsic», and that bodily symptoms – the visible «body language» – play a significant role in the reflection of the «invisible language» of feelings.

A sociolinguistic study of address terms in a Nigerian university’s staff club

This article explores the sociopragmatic functions of address terms in social interactions at the University of Calabar Senior Staff Club. It takes into perspective the metalinguistic categories of address terms, their motivations, and the cultural and sociolinguistic parameters that determine their choice among Club members. The study is rooted in social identity theory and community of practice (CoP) analytical framework as are theorized in contemporary sociolinguistic literature. The study identifies nicknames, titles, acronyms, formulaic appellations, clipped personal names and extended personal names as the primary types of address terms in the Club, and articulates that the use of address terms is a social construction of identity that enacts intimacy, fosters collective belonging, and enhances solidarity. Conversely, address terms can also reinforce social division and inequality given the hierarchical structure of the Club which does not license reciprocal use of some address terms. The study concludes that address terms are a site of highly creative use of language which is reflexively framed through humour, clipping, lengthening, language play and other linguistic devices. Generally, address terms provide mechanisms for members to bond socially and adapt flexibly to the socio-academic environment of the Club.

Walter Benjamin

Cultural theorist and political philosopher Walter Benjamin (b. 1892–d. 1940) reflected on the thought processes and imaginative life of the child both in dedicated writings and, tangentially, in his major works. As a young man Benjamin wrote essays critical of high school education, and he was a supporter of the German Youth Movement until he became disillusioned with its nationalist tone. Subsequently Benjamin’s engagement shifted toward early childhood and took many forms: he collected antique children’s books; recorded the sayings and opinions of his infant son; made radio broadcasts for children; composed a memoir of his own childhood years in Berlin; and devoted a number of prose fragments to aspects of drama for young people, play, toys, and the numinous qualities of childhood reading. Influenced by the German Romantic view of the purity of a child’s vision that removes the subject-object barrier, Benjamin suggests in these works that in the course of developing an intense relationship with its immediate locality the child simultaneously absorbs and animates the innate qualities of the natural or manufactured object. Benjamin also regarded language play, witnessed in the utterances of his young son and the magical resonance of his own childhood misunderstandings, as essential to the formation of memory images and the imagination. He does not, however, present an idealized vision of childhood, since children are engaged in a cycle of destruction as well as renewal, and play with the detritus of daily life is essential to the growth of the child’s autonomy—as indeed are acts of mimesis and an immersion in the imaginative world of the book and its illustration. Alongside these observations on the child’s intellectual and imaginative development, Benjamin assumes the role of mentor in broadcasts for children that seek to encourage a historical and political consciousness in the young. He returns to his student interest in education in essays on the nature of colonial and proletarian pedagogy, and in a manifesto on proletarian children’s theater. Initially, little critical attention was paid to Benjamin’s writings on childhood in the English-speaking world, partly because of their gradual appearance in English translation. It is only in recent decades that the significance of Benjamin’s illuminating reflections on childhood, play, and education has become apparent, and that the autobiographical Berlin Childhood around 1900) has gained recognition as an expression in serial “thought-images” of the speculation on memory and materialist historiography that is essential to his philosophy.

Experiences and attitudes of Setswana speaking teachers in using an indigenous African language on an online assessment platform

Education in the 21st century must have a vision that will support and empower teachers to face the demands of the digital age. The use of information communication technology (ICT) in education can serve this end but ensuring access to digital resources will not address the digital disparity. Culture and language play an equally important role in exacerbating and maintaining the digital disparity as the traditional factor of access. In the study reported on here we investigated the experiences and attitudes of Setswana-speaking teachers in 3 primary schools in the North West province, South Africa, as they were exposed to online software in Setswana, an indigenous African language. Purposive sampling was used to select 7 teachers for the study. Two research questions were answered using systematic self-observation (SSO) instruments, the participant observation (PO) instrument and the in-depth interview (IDI) instrument to determine the experiences and attitudes of the teachers. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data. It was found that accuracy of translation was key for adopting and using software in an African language. The teachers felt that English was the language of ICT and that African languages were not intellectual languages and did not have the capacity to be used in ICT. It is, therefore, recommended that more must be done to translate software into African languages and an effort must be made to raise the status of African languages in academic and technical fields.

University Students’ Preferable Types of Teacher Humor in English Classes

The current study aimed to explore what types of teacher humor EFL students prefer in their classes. The study was designed as a mixed-method approach, using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to collect data in two different Vietnamese universities. One hundred fifty-eight university students responded to the survey, and eight out of them were recruited as the participants for the interviews. The study results revealed that the types of jokes (M=4.41), riddles (M=4.08), and language play (M=4.15) were most favored. Besides, the participants' demographic information, including their gender and majors, affected their preferable types of teacher humor. Specifically, males showed more positive attitudes towards teacher humor than their counterparts. In terms of students’ majors, there were differences between non-English majors and English-majored students’ perceptions of irony, teasing, language play, visual and physical humor. Regarding the students’ positive attitudes towards teacher humor, EFL teachers should learn more about valuable strategies for using teacher humor in their classes due to the fact that they do not need to have a sense of humor to use it effectively.

Creative Opportunities of the Language in Online Communication

The paper reports the findings of the study of the implementation of the creative function of language in Internet communication. This research perspective allows to consistently describe the functioning of language online and to explain the visible and controversially viewed by academics (as innovative or as destructive) processes in the language system, occurring under the influence of the Internet environment. The revision of traditional standards of communication when communicating via Internet occurs, first of all, due to extralinguistic factors (primarily, digital transformation) and, secondly, due to the Internet interlocutors’ (both the speaker and the listener) attitude towards creative use of the language. The new extralinguistic conditions of language (multimedia, non-linear nature, its modules, hypertextuality, etc.) primarily release its creative potential as the novelty is inherently creative and requires the updating of traditional, familiar, and already studied forms of communication. The influence of the creative function of the language can be traced both at the micro levels of the language system (especially at the phonetic and lexical levels) and at the macro level of the whole text (the emergence of new genres). At the phonetic level, influenced by the creative function, the language of the Internet acquires a special spoken-written character. Moreover, the imitation of orality in Internet communication is aimed not only at achieving maximum similarity of online communication to offline conversation, but also at the language play, emotionalism, updating the graphic code with emoji (for example, the use of emoji as ending punctuation marks, i.e., instead of period, exclamation mark, etc.). At the lexical level, the creative function of the language is evident in the emergence of proper Russian neologisms and borrowings for more accurate, sometimes more succinct denotation of the new reality. At the textual level, the study, e.g., of the model Internet genre of multimedia history, the identification of its special narrative structure and the multimedia nature of presenting the information suggests the creative potential of new genres in the online communication.

A Cross-Cultural Genre Analysis of Firm-Generated Advertisements on Twitter and Sina Weibo

To investigate the generic features of firm-generated advertisements (FGAs) in cross-cultural contexts, this study analyzed 327 FGAs by Dell Technologies and the Lenovo Group on Twitter and Sina Weibo. Integrating affordances and multimodality into genre analysis, the study showed that the FGAs were characterized by (a) flexible move structure, (b) persuasive language, (c) visual illustration, and (d) hyperlinks, hashtagging (#), and mentioning (@) functions. The FGAs on Sina Weibo, compared with those on Twitter, tended to use more language play, emojis, and contextual product pictures and show more emphasis on the niche of products, incentives, and celebrity endorsement.