The Concept of Emancipation as Political Action (Marx, Arendt, Rancière)

The text attempts to rethink the concept of emancipation and how it is structured as political action, while describing its historical origins and how it is further understood by the three important political philosophers: Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt, and Jacques Rancière. All three of them – specifically and with substantial differences – understand politics as a space for political action that leads to emancipation in the name of equality. In order to determine the historical origin of the concept in more detail, the argumentation of the text rely upon its elaboration within the school of “conceptual history”, which deals with the historical semantics of terms and sees the etymology of and the change in the meaning of terms as forming a crucial basis for a contemporary cultural, conceptual, and linguistic understanding, and afterwards it links this “pre-history” with Marx’s, Arendt’s, and Rancière’s understanding of the concept of emancipation, and see how they differ and are related to each other, considering what theoretical conclusions about the concept of emancipation we can take from these relations. Particular interest is aimed at how the concept of emancipation is perceived today, who the subject of emancipation is, what the method and final goal of emancipation is, and, finally, how these understandings can help us in the present time when it seems that we need emancipation more than ever.

Building Bridges: A Conversation between Friends, about Language, Laziness, and Long-distance Running

This conversation took place in a shared Google Doc over several occasions in April and early May 2021, between friends and colleagues, artists and writers, Hannah Clarkson and Matilda Tucker, in the context of an ongoing experiment in collaborative writing. In their individual and collective practices, Clarkson and Tucker explore potential embodiments in language(s) of thinking and dwelling in the ‘here and elsewhere’ of places and spaces they may not physically be in, across cultural, geographical and/or emotional distance. They are interested in how language can be employed as a tool for empathy beyond concrete linguistic understanding; how translation as method opens up to modalities of fictioning and collective storytelling; and writing as an experiment in sharing everyday struggles and building collective narratives of care. An attempt to bridge gaps between the here and elsewhere of Stockholm, Berlin and all the other places that in this time of pandemic we cannot be, the text below is not a conclusion but a conversation. It is a thinking out loud - or rather, on screen - together, on themes of language and translation; belonging and resisting; work and laziness; former and formless selves.

Definiteness in Laki: Its interaction with demonstratives and number

This article investigates definiteness and its interactions with demonstratives and number in Laki (Northwestern Iranian). By the examination of demonstratives and building upon previous proposals, I argue for two types of definite DPs in Laki, namely anaphoric and deictic. I show that the patterns of definite and number marking are sensitive to the type of the DP. In particular, I argue that double definiteness, resulting from an Agree relation between D and N, and head movement of Num to D both are obtained only in anaphoric definite DPs for feature-checking requirements. Overall, this study highlights the contributions of anaphoricity to the DP internal structure. The present proposal can account for similar phenomena in other Iranian languages (i.e., Sorani and Kermanshahi Kurdish). The divergence of Laki definiteness from similar attested patterns (i.e., Scandinavian double definiteness) contributes to our cross-linguistic understanding of definiteness and its interactions with other nominal elements.

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE: ABOUT SUBJECTIVITY LANGUAGE TIME

The article summarizes the experience of philosophical and linguistic understanding of time in general and the concepts "past", "present" and "future" in particular. Special attention is paid to the subjective nature of time in language.

Immigrant workers in the construction sector in italy: impact on safety and health

The profound changes that have taken place in Italian society have led to very strong changes in the labor market which is segmented, heterogeneous, outsourced and characterized by the growth of medium and medium-small businesses where the implementation of current legislation on safety in the workplace is often neglected and occupational risks are underestimated. The disadvantage in which immigrant workers find themselves is greater than Italian workers for various reasons, as well as for social issues also due to problems of linguistic understanding. Understanding security measures is also a purely linguistic fact and this is certainly a crucial aspect especially in the early stages of job placement and in job changes, the perceived difficulties at the level of linguistic communication are particularly felt by immigrant workers, not by chance. the request for information in the original language appears widespread. It would be advisable to build training courses tailored to the needs of immigrants, compulsory language preparation courses, specific courses connected in particular to the risk sectors in which they find themselves and aimed at making their culture of safety at work dialogue with the Italian one.

The importance of language and culture to the growing Sino-Caribbean commercial relationship

Language and culture play a critical role in international commercial relations. Since the 19th century, the English language has undeniably held the prominent position as the global lingua franca to facilitate communication between nations. However, China’s contemporary re-emergence as an economic superpower has expanded its global influence. Consequently, awareness of Chinese culture and language is becoming important not only globally, but also in the Caribbean, where China’s economic footprint has expanded considerably in recent years. This article conceptually explores the important role of language and culture within the growing Sino-Caribbean commercial relationship. Specifically, it discusses the potential impact of language on the trade and tourism sectors, which are two key industries that drive the economies of English-speaking Caribbean small island developing states. It does this by charting the development of the English and Chinese languages as dominant languages. It then briefly looks at the current level of Chinese engagement with the region in trade and, more contemporarily, the potential of greater Chinese tourism in the Caribbean. It discusses the value of deeper cultural and linguistic understanding in nurturing and expanding these relationships. Finally, the article concludes by providing meaningful recommendations on ways to mitigate cultural and linguistic barriers in order to promote deeper Sino-Caribbean trade and tourism.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>Language and culture are two important factors in commercial relationships, especially trade and tourism.</li><br /><li>This article adds to the growing literature on budding Sino-Caribbean relations by exploring the importance of linguistic and cultural understanding to nurturing this relationship.</li><br /><li>It argues that Caribbean countries cannot take for granted that English will always be the lingua franca for Chinese-Caribbean relations given China’s expanding global footprint.</li><br /><li>The article makes recommendations on ways to mitigate linguistic and cultural barriers in order to deepen Sino-Caribbean commercial ties.</li></ul>

The concept “military/armed conflict” in terms of foreign language teaching methods

Armed conflicts occurring in the world should be analyzed from different points of view including linguistic understanding of the concept “military/armed conflict”. The objective of the study is to find the ways to develop university students’ skills to model the concept “military/armed conflict”. The process of teaching students to construct the concept involves three stages: 1) shaping the topical sphere of the concept with the help of scientometric analysis of journal articles and media texts; 2) demonstrating the procedure of concept modelling; 3) collecting the lexical units from media texts, analyzing their meanings for making concept model; comparing the structure and the content of German and Russian concepts. The scientometric method implied to the concept analysis allows figuring out the most general topics connected with the concept. Political issues, international relations, society, education, religion, health and medical problems, history, security are the most frequent general topics connected with the concept under study. The continuous sampling method is used to select and collect the language means related to the concept “military/armed conflict”. To construct the concept the modelling method is employed. In the concept structure the core, semicore and peripheral zones are distinguished.