Gertrudis Payás & Fabien Le Bonniec (eds): Intercultural Studies from Southern Chile. Theoretical and Empirical Approaches

Gertrudis Payás & Fabien Le Bonniec (eds): Intercultural Studies from Southern Chile. Theoretical and Empirical Approaches. Anmeldes af Torben Albertsen

Review of Sorina Chiper’s Book “Discourse Studies In Practice”

The book “Discourse Studies In Practice” is a compilation of articles on discourse, written by S. Chiper over fifteen years and published in Romania and abroad. The research of different topics has been done in the methodological framework of critical discourse analysis (CDA). This book aims at discourse researchers and students, and anyone interested in discourse and intercultural studies.

Competencias interculturales y competencias emocionales en los estudiantes de ciencias sociales y turismo de la Universidad Nacional José Faustino Sánchez Carrión

La investigación tuvo como objetivo general determinar la relación entre las competencias interculturales y las competencias emocionales de los estudiantes de ciencias sociales y turismo de la facultad de educación de la universidad nacional José Faustino Sánchez Carrión. Se realizó un muestreo censal que abarco 176 estudiantes. Se recogieron los datos para la primera variable con el cuestionario de competencias interculturales del centro de estudios interculturales UNED- España, con ligeras adaptaciones; para la segunda variable se utilizó el cuestionario sobre competencias emocionales de Daniel Goleman. Por protocolo se hizo una prueba de confiabilidad alfa cronbach a ambos instrumentos obteniendo valores de 0.937 y 0.917 respectivamente, que representan una alta confiabilidad. La correlación entre las variables fue medida por el coeficiente de correlación de rangos de Spearman. Para la correlación entre competencias interculturales y competencias emocionales se obtuvo un coeficiente de 0.578 refleja una relación moderada entre ambas variables. Para las correlaciones entre competencias interculturales con: autoconciencia; autorregulación; motivación se obtuvieron los coeficientes 0.298; 0.456; 496 respectivamente. En estos tres casis son correlaciones débiles. La correlación entre competencias interculturales con: empatía; habilidades sociales se obtuvieron los siguientes coeficientes0.521 y 0.548 respectivamente. En ambos casos son correlaciones moderadas. Estas correlaciones débiles y moderadas con 00 de error nos indican que existe una relación entre ambas variables. The overall objective research was to determine the relationship between intercultural skills and emotional skills of students in the social sciences and tourism education faculty of National University José Faustino Sánchez Carrión. One census sampling spanned 176 students was conducted. Data for the first variable with the questionnaire intercultural competence center for intercultural studies UNED Spain, with slight adjustments were collected; for the second variable the questionnaire on emotional competencies Daniel Goleman was used. By protocol was made a Cronbach alpha reliability test both instruments obtaining values of 0.937 and 0.917 respectively, representing high reliability. The correlation between variables was measured by the coefficient of Spearman rank correlation. For the correlation between intercultural skills and emotional competencies a coefficient of 0.578 reflects a moderate relationship between the two variables was obtained. For correlations between intercultural competencies: self-awareness; self-regulation; 0.298 motivation coefficients were obtained; 0.456; 496 respectively. In these three cassis are weak correlations. The correlation between intercultural competencies: empathy; social skills were obtained the following coeficientes0.521 and 0.548 respectively. In both cases are moderate correlations. These weak to moderate correlations with error 00 indicate that there is a relationship between the two variables.

The Inner Louis Vuitton Circle: Arts-Based Research into Russian Luxury

Studying luxury and conspicuous consumption in international settings presents unique challenges. Many aspects of luxury and conspicuous consumption cannot easily be put into words because they involve desires, aesthetics, and emotions, as well as taken-for-granted assumptions about social distinction and inequality. Drawing on Nicolai Eliseev’s artistic inquiry into luxury consumption in Russia, this article proposes arts-based inquiry as a suitable method for examining embodied and aesthetic knowing about luxury and conspicuous consumption, in particular in intercultural settings. The article illustrates these ideas through a series of sketches and a final artwork, by which Eliseev inquired into his experiences and tacit knowledge. The artwork incorporates a cut-up Louis Vuitton bag and references to luxury brands such as Cartier, Vertu, and Dom Perignon. The artistic form expresses the dividing effects and emotions of luxury consumption in Russian social and economic life. The article contributes to an understanding of aesthetic creation as both a method of inquiry and also a practice of resistance and innovation in relation to fashion discourses. Thus, it illustrates the potential of arts-based research methods in intercultural studies of luxury, and the social sciences more broadly.

COGNITIVE INTEGRATION IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERCULTURAL STUDIES: EDUCATIONAL EXTENSIONS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE DIRECTION OF WRITING AND THE SPATIAL REPRESENTATION OF THE CONCEPT OF TIME AS A MODEL

The concept of time has cultural characteristics, as it is the product of a symbolic communicative context that draws its characteristics from its founding group. Hence, the concept of time is shaped and represented mentally according to its socio-cultural context. Accordingly, it seems legitimate to examine its cultural specificity. This study tackles the nature of the spatial representation of the concept of time, as this latter is carried through cultural mediums, namely the oral and written language. The target group includes 32 unschooled children aged between 10 and 11. It is worth mentioning that many intercultural studies have indicated the existence of a definite, statistically significant relationship between the concept of time on the one hand and the direction of writing on the other hand. As the spatial representation of the concept of time in children of French culture is from left to right, influenced by the direction of French writing. Whereas, the spatial representation of the concept of time in children of French-Maghreb culture is in both directions (rightleft) and (rightleft), that is, in the form of congruous formula between the two directions of French writing from left to right and Arabic from right to left. The study confirms, in its third context, the spatial representation of the concept of time among uneducated children who do not know how to read and write, the results of previous studies on the concept of time in its relationship to the direction of writing. Where the space-time orientation is characterized by the multiplicity and diversity (rightleft, leftright, topbottom, topbottom...), regardless of the direction of presentation of the images by the experimenter. Studies, with their integral depth, confirm that it is a matter of cultural learning; the school institution as a social unit with symbolic and communicative contexts works to impart our concepts, including the concept of time, the characteristics of the socio-cultural context. The child, during his development and passing through socio-cultural institutions, integrates these characteristics in the framework of cognitive units that govern his subsequent cognitive functioning

A new type of pictorial database: The Bicolor Affective Silhouettes and Shapes (BASS)

We introduce the Bicolor Affective Silhouettes and Shapes (BASS): a set of 583 normed black-and-white silhouette images that is freely available via https://osf.io/anej6/. Valence and arousal ratings were obtained for each image from US residents as a Western population (n = 777) and Chinese residents as an Asian population (n = 869). Importantly, the ratings demonstrate that, notwithstanding their visual simplicity, the images represent a wide range of affective content (from very negative to very positive, and from very calm to very intense). In addition, speaking to their cultural neutrality, the valence ratings correlated very highly between US and Chinese ratings. Arousal ratings were less consistent between the two samples, with larger discrepancies in the older age groups inviting further investigation. Due to their simplistic and abstract nature, our silhouette images may be useful for intercultural studies, color and shape perception research, and online stimulus presentation in particular. We demonstrate the versatility of the BASS by an example online experiment.

A New Type of Pictorial Database: The Bicolor Affective Silhouettes and Shapes (BASS)

We introduce the Bicolor Affective Silhouettes and Shapes (BASS): a set of 583 normed black-and-white silhouette images that is freely available via osf.io/anej6. Valence and arousal ratings were obtained for each image from US residents as a Western population (n = 777) and Chinese residents as an Asian population (n = 869). Importantly, the ratings demonstrate that, notwithstanding their visual simplicity, the images represent a wide range of affective content (from very negative to very positive, and from very calm to very intense). In addition, speaking to their cultural neutrality, the valence ratings correlated very highly between US and Chinese ratings. Arousal ratings were less consistent between the two samples, with larger discrepancies in the older age groups inviting further investigation. Due to their simplistic and abstract nature, our silhouette images may be useful for intercultural studies, color and shape perception research, and online stimulus presentation in particular. We demonstrate the versatility of the BASS by an example online experiment. Available under https://gasparl.github.io/BASS/

Investigating the influence of culture on language patterns: a contrastive corpus-based study

This paper aims to explore the intrinsic relationship between language and culture. It attempts to shed light on the underlying cultural associations embedded in collocational meaning across languages. The notion of culture adopted in this study is related to how individuals perceive the world and interpret reality around them. This paper brings together the principles of Corpus Linguistics and Intercultural Studies to investigate a corpus of travelers’ reviews (English/Portuguese) and interpret results within the framework of the model of cultural orientations in Walker et al. (2003). In a study of collocations with the word staff and their equivalents in Portuguese, we demonstrate how a language pattern can also represent a cultural pattern, thus showing that cultural orientations play a role in the identification of collocational meaning across languages.

Teaching Intercultural Competences During Distance Learning

In the past year, the world of education in Slovakia went through a significant change due to the worldwide pandemic. At the universities, the subjects got transferred to the online world, and the curriculum, lectures, seminars, and activities within the seminars had to be adapted to this situation as well. This paper will introduce a learning activity that is used to develop the sociocultural knowledge of the students of intercultural studies within foreign language education. It will provide an insight into how the learning is performed when the students are in the classroom and how it had to be adjusted for online teaching. The outcomes of the learning activity will be presented within the paper as well to compare if they change based on the environment in which the learning was performed.