Safety assessment of traditional Plaisentif cheese

Traditional foods are gaining more and more market due to consumers’ increasing willingness to buy products linked to national cultures: among these products, cheese plays an important role. Plaisentif is a traditional Piedmont cheese, only made during violets blooming season. The aim of this work is to evaluate the safety of this cheese, taking into account the EU Regulations. Microbiological hazards as well chemical, biogenic amines and mycotoxins, analysis were investigated. Salmonella spp. and Listeria monocytogenes were never detected in cheeses after ripening. Biogenic amines were present in very low quantities. Ochratoxin A was never detected and patulin was detected in over one cheese during the two years of sampling. This is the first attempt to characterize traditional Plaisentif cheese from a safety point of view. All the information acquired can be held as a necessary basis for reinforcing the culture of traditional products, for economic opportunities in mountainous regions and for safeguarding traditions and cultural identities.

SLANG LANGUAGE AS REPRESENTATIVES OF SOCIAL CULTURE IDENTITY IN FILM STEP UP 2 THE STREETS

Slang is an innovation of language change created by a group of people in highlighting their group. Speakers build a cohesive identity and a separate social class that becomes a culture in society. The purpose of this study was to gain an in-depth understanding of slang as a manifestation of a person's social-cultural identity in the community group in the film Step Up 2 The Street. The method used is descriptive qualitative. Data was collected using documentation. The data is in the form of utterances in the dialogue of film players that contain slang words. Data analysis through the stages of data reduction, presentation and concluding. The results of the study conclude that the use of slang in the film Step Up 2 The Street shows the diversity of social and cultural identities in people's lives. The group of slang users refers to the context of similarity in the race, kinship or group, level of intimacy, group localization, and social culture that characterizes each group.

Culinary Inclinations as a Reflection of Identity in Joanne Harris’s ‘Chocolat’

“Tell me what you eat, I’ll tell you what you are.” : Brillat-Savarin. Literature has always been the mode of reflecting human psyche representing the language of people’s culture and traditions. The culture of food is age old and it shapes the individuals as well as a society’s culture. Complex human issues have been analysed using food images on a metaphoric level to represent cultural identities. Importance of food in literature and the role it played in gender studies asserting women’s suppressed individuality and identity is an upcoming area of study. Apart from observing that women are reduced as a kitchen maker, in today’s society kitchen and cooking are a means of expressing one’s identity before the world and is well expressed in various literary forms. Food and its related concerns with feminine identity and domesticity patriarchal oppression, and repressed sexual desire. have been given a central place in many works of women’s literature. One such English writer who used culinary art in her work is Joanne Harris who’s novel Chocolat deals with the magical powers of chocolate and how it works on the people of a particular town attacking the cultural and traditional beliefs of that place rewriting a cultural identity.

Identity and Identity Politics in Nigeria: A Reflection on the Indicators

Nigeria is a nation with plural ethnic, religious, lingual and cultural identities that are constantly exploited by the political class to promote their selfish interest. Although not a determinant forconflict, diversity in Nigeria has unjustifiably sparked identity-based conflicts which necessitateseparatism, insurgency and ethnic restiveness – among others, which threatens to drive the country to a perpetual state of fragility. This paper thence sought to assess Nigeria’s tortuous experience with identity and identity politics with particular reference to ethnic, religious, and lingual challenges. The paper furthers the discussion on identity politics in Nigeria to proffer practicable solutions. It argues that identity consciousness has overtaken national consciousness and engendered a relationship characterized by domination, superiority and hegemony by the various groups. It reveals that the currency of politics is an ethnic-hegemony-rivalry sentiment that threatens national integration. The paper reviews available literature on the subject matter from peer-reviewed journal articles, reports of reputable international organizations, working papers and newspaper articles. It concluded that identities have become powerful manipulative instruments in the hands of the political elites used to divide the Nigerian populace. It recommended the promotion of justice, equity and fairness in governance to ameliorate the chances of identity dissension and identity-based conflicts.

Traditional Songs of Ìlọrin: Enacting Identities, History, and Cultural Memories

Ìlọrin is a distinct community and a melting pot where people of diverse ethnic and cultural identities came together to form a settlement in the 17th century. These ethnic groups include Yorùbá, Haúsá, Fúlàní, Núpé, Kànnìké, Kéńbérí, Bàrùbá, and Malians¸ Arabs, among others. However, despite these ethnic and cultural diversities of Ìlọrin and the Fúlàní political hold on it, Yorùbá language is the lingua franca of the community. How these ethnic groups fnd their voices and articulate their historical and cultural identities within this unified framework becomes a source of concern. As a response to this concern, traditional songs of Ìlọrin like dàdàkúàdà, bàlúù, agbè, wákà, kèǹgbè, orin ọlọ́mọ-ọba Ìlọrin, among others sung in Yorùbá language become a site of contestation of ethnic and cultural identities. Te focus of this essay is to analyze Ìlọrin traditional songs as they portray and contest ethnic identities, reconstruct history, and revitalize cultural memories of indigenes. The paper argues that given such a diverse ethnic and cultural origins, performance of Ìlọrin traditional songs become a reminder of family histories, origins, political structure, hegemonic influences, myths, legends, Islamization of Ìlọrin, and a way of ensuring harmony and bridging generational gaps among the various groups in a state that is known as the “State of Harmony”.

Multilingual Practices and Identity Negotiation among Multilingual Heritage Language Learners in New Zealand

<p>While heritage languages (HLs) have been receiving much research attention, there is still a scarcity of studies conducted on local HL communities. However, researchers in New Zealand have been actively engaged with various community languages for over four decades, providing rich insights into the dynamics of language maintenance and language shift within these communities. Although New Zealand sociolinguistic scholarship has covered a wide range of languages and ethnicities, there is no known study on the Indian Hindi community, whose HL is the fourth most spoken language in the country (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). Additionally, previous research has traditionally examined the functional aspects of language use and language attitudes in determining whether language can be preserved, viewing HL communities often as homogeneously formed. In contrast, current trends in the field of sociolinguistics aim to examine the connections between individuals and their languages (i.e. identity), taking multilingualism as a norm and focusing on dynamism in intraspeaker and interspeaker language use. This thesis addresses these issues by exploring how the realities that heritage language learners (HLLs) live connect to identity negotiation and development in social interaction. In particular, this thesis focuses on a group of learners of Hindi as a heritage language in New Zealand – a group that is under-explored. Grasping the relationship between the HLLs’ experiences and how they develop and negotiate heritage-related identities necessitates a micro-level analysis of language use by casting an eye on language practices in the language maintenance school and the home, for they constitute two key spaces of exposure to the HLs and cultures. Moreover, examining how HLLs draw upon indexicality to conceptualise their languages provides rich insights into their identity negotiation and development. The primary data for the analyses is mobilised in three dimensions adopting an ethnographic approach. The first dimension includes limited-participant observations for one school term, making a total of 20 hours of observation out of which 12 hours were recorded. The observations look at language practices in a multi-site Hindi School (HS) where families of Indian descent from various linguistic, ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds come together forming a constellation of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998b) to stay connected with their Indian heritage. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with eight parents and stakeholders in the HS to enrich the analysis and check my interpretations of the observed and recorded practices. The second dimension embraces recordings of home interaction within three families with the aim of exploring language practices in the home. A total of eight hours of recorded data were collected in different conversational encounters (e.g. in the car, at the dining table and playtime). The families participating in this research have unique characteristics in terms of their heterogeneous configuration. The first family exemplifies a transnational adoptive family which is a unique family structure that has not been researched in New Zealand. The other two families reflect multicultural New Zealand Indian families where the parents do not speak the same HL. Finally, the data in the third dimension comes from the learners through linguistic reflection drawings (Krumm & Jenkins, 2001; Seals, 2017b). Twenty HLLs participated in the drawing activity which aims at examining how they process meaning-making through the use of language-colour association and views the linguistic repertoire as embodied (Bucholtz & Hall, 2016; Krumm & Jenkins, 2001). By employing the concept of communities of practice during in-depth discourse analysis, the HS data suggests that the shared practices within the school contribute to the construction of the learners’ multilingual and national/cultural identities, emphasising the Indian identity as an overarching one (i.e. Indianness), rather than privileging other regional, national or religious identities. Additionally, the analysis of the home data suggests that no matter how committed community members are, the HL is not always actively used at home. Rather, the three families in this study take part in a wide range of language practices that index their Indian identities. They introduce aspects of the Indian culture, which is mostly indexed via music, food and cultural lexical items in their discourse (Friesen, 2008; Shah, 2013). While HL literacy skills (e.g. numeracy and the reading of literary texts) were elicited, English linguistic features that are often associated with Indian English were used to construct Indian identity. However, at times multiple memberships became problematic because it contradicted other socially constructed identities, depending on the membership that is activated in the interaction settings. The analysis offers insights into the complexities of discursive identity negotiation within the home and the intricate relationship between identity negotiation and multiple memberships. Finally, the analysis of the HLLs’ linguistic reflection drawings through an indexical lens (Ochs, 1993) reveals that the participants use their languages as direct indices to display forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), which in turn are discursively used to index national and cultural identities. Likewise, some participants used their multilingual identities as a resource to negotiate national and/or cultural identities. Overall, this thesis sheds light on the complexities of identity negotiation and development in heterogeneous communities where community members have multiple heritage languages. As this research is the first to present non-traditional language school and family configurations in the New Zealand context, it will hopefully enrich the understanding of the dynamics of heritage language education and identity negotiation in such superdiverse settings.</p>

Multilingual Practices and Identity Negotiation among Multilingual Heritage Language Learners in New Zealand

<p>While heritage languages (HLs) have been receiving much research attention, there is still a scarcity of studies conducted on local HL communities. However, researchers in New Zealand have been actively engaged with various community languages for over four decades, providing rich insights into the dynamics of language maintenance and language shift within these communities. Although New Zealand sociolinguistic scholarship has covered a wide range of languages and ethnicities, there is no known study on the Indian Hindi community, whose HL is the fourth most spoken language in the country (Statistics New Zealand, 2013). Additionally, previous research has traditionally examined the functional aspects of language use and language attitudes in determining whether language can be preserved, viewing HL communities often as homogeneously formed. In contrast, current trends in the field of sociolinguistics aim to examine the connections between individuals and their languages (i.e. identity), taking multilingualism as a norm and focusing on dynamism in intraspeaker and interspeaker language use. This thesis addresses these issues by exploring how the realities that heritage language learners (HLLs) live connect to identity negotiation and development in social interaction. In particular, this thesis focuses on a group of learners of Hindi as a heritage language in New Zealand – a group that is under-explored. Grasping the relationship between the HLLs’ experiences and how they develop and negotiate heritage-related identities necessitates a micro-level analysis of language use by casting an eye on language practices in the language maintenance school and the home, for they constitute two key spaces of exposure to the HLs and cultures. Moreover, examining how HLLs draw upon indexicality to conceptualise their languages provides rich insights into their identity negotiation and development. The primary data for the analyses is mobilised in three dimensions adopting an ethnographic approach. The first dimension includes limited-participant observations for one school term, making a total of 20 hours of observation out of which 12 hours were recorded. The observations look at language practices in a multi-site Hindi School (HS) where families of Indian descent from various linguistic, ethnic, cultural and national backgrounds come together forming a constellation of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998b) to stay connected with their Indian heritage. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with eight parents and stakeholders in the HS to enrich the analysis and check my interpretations of the observed and recorded practices. The second dimension embraces recordings of home interaction within three families with the aim of exploring language practices in the home. A total of eight hours of recorded data were collected in different conversational encounters (e.g. in the car, at the dining table and playtime). The families participating in this research have unique characteristics in terms of their heterogeneous configuration. The first family exemplifies a transnational adoptive family which is a unique family structure that has not been researched in New Zealand. The other two families reflect multicultural New Zealand Indian families where the parents do not speak the same HL. Finally, the data in the third dimension comes from the learners through linguistic reflection drawings (Krumm & Jenkins, 2001; Seals, 2017b). Twenty HLLs participated in the drawing activity which aims at examining how they process meaning-making through the use of language-colour association and views the linguistic repertoire as embodied (Bucholtz & Hall, 2016; Krumm & Jenkins, 2001). By employing the concept of communities of practice during in-depth discourse analysis, the HS data suggests that the shared practices within the school contribute to the construction of the learners’ multilingual and national/cultural identities, emphasising the Indian identity as an overarching one (i.e. Indianness), rather than privileging other regional, national or religious identities. Additionally, the analysis of the home data suggests that no matter how committed community members are, the HL is not always actively used at home. Rather, the three families in this study take part in a wide range of language practices that index their Indian identities. They introduce aspects of the Indian culture, which is mostly indexed via music, food and cultural lexical items in their discourse (Friesen, 2008; Shah, 2013). While HL literacy skills (e.g. numeracy and the reading of literary texts) were elicited, English linguistic features that are often associated with Indian English were used to construct Indian identity. However, at times multiple memberships became problematic because it contradicted other socially constructed identities, depending on the membership that is activated in the interaction settings. The analysis offers insights into the complexities of discursive identity negotiation within the home and the intricate relationship between identity negotiation and multiple memberships. Finally, the analysis of the HLLs’ linguistic reflection drawings through an indexical lens (Ochs, 1993) reveals that the participants use their languages as direct indices to display forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986), which in turn are discursively used to index national and cultural identities. Likewise, some participants used their multilingual identities as a resource to negotiate national and/or cultural identities. Overall, this thesis sheds light on the complexities of identity negotiation and development in heterogeneous communities where community members have multiple heritage languages. As this research is the first to present non-traditional language school and family configurations in the New Zealand context, it will hopefully enrich the understanding of the dynamics of heritage language education and identity negotiation in such superdiverse settings.</p>

Text, context, affect and effect: Fairy tales in the UNICEF advertising campaign against paedophilia

By conveying traditions and moral values fairy tales constitute an important part of our lives and cultural identities. Fairy tale motifs and allusions have been repeatedly employed for commercial and non-commercial purposes by advertisers around the world. This paper looks at the UNICEF anti-sexting advertising campaign that features two classic fairy tales, Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. Sexting is a growing problem among young people these days. According to the recent EU Kids Online 2020 survey carried out in 19 European countries, 22 percent of children aged 12-16, on average, have had some experience with receiving sexual messages or pictures. Through an analysis of the visual and verbal content of selected advertisements, the present study investigates how the advertisers creatively make use of the famous fairy tales to raise public awareness of the issue.