What Were the Processes and Outcomes of Offering Shared Reading as an Intervention for Veterans in Prison?

The charity Reading Force encourages Forces families to read together in order to build social, emotional, and mental well-being and offset the impact of the changes and separations routine in military life. They distribute reading scrapbooks and free books and encourage families to work on them together. It was suggested that a version of the project might usefully be developed for veterans in prison, whose families experience many of the same issues. Scrapbook Dads was developed for veterans housed in the Endeavour Wing at Parc Prison, South Wales. The materials were adapted for use by prisoners and their families. They had just been distributed when the pandemic struck, visiting and social/educational activities were cancelled, and the prison went into lockdown. With the materials readily available, the project was heavily used by prison staff to seek to maintain prisoner morale and support family connectivity. This paper charts the process, comments on what was learned, and makes recommendations for how shared reading can be used in prisons in future.

Posted to Germany: Early Cold War Canadian Military Policy and Its Impact on One Family’s Experience

In the summer of 1954, military surgeon Major Robert Elliott was posted to the British Military Hospital in Iserlohn, Germany, to provide medical care to Canadian soldiers, members of the 5,500-strong Canadian Brigade that had earlier been stationed there as part of Canada’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Like many other military families, Elliott’s family had to remain behind until suitable accommodation for them could be found. Based on the letters that Elliott wrote home to his wife during their eight-month separation, this article provides a glimpse of how both old and new Canadian military policies during the early Cold War period had an impact on his work and his family. The Canadian government’s decision to place the Brigade under British control reflected, in part, the long-standing attachment to Britain, but Elliott was often frustrated with how imperial/colonial relations played out in the hospital setting. And the military’s initial reluctance to officially allow dependents to join their loved ones overseas, a new phenomenon in Canadian military life, undoubtedly contributed to his confusion and anxiety over when family quarters would finally be finished.

TYPOLOGY OF SOCIAL CONFRONTATION IN THE IDIOMATIC IMAGE OF MILITARY LIFE

Постановка задачи. В статье рассматриваются способы организации плана выражения фразеологизмов на материале военного жаргона, используемого в вооруженных силах США. Отнесение социолексем к разряду фразеологических сочетаний языка автор объясняет с опорой на общеизвестные признаки фразеологизма - устойчивость, образность, идиоматичность, воспроизводимость. Автор говорит о возможности классификации фразеологизмов указанной группы в социокультурном ключе, а именно: выделение темы скрытого противоборства представителей военного ремесла и связанной с ней закономерности в построении образа фразеологизма. Результаты. Установлено, что фразеологизмы военной тематики транслируют тему межличностного противоборства между представителями армейской профессии. Доказано, что образ фразеологизмов, созданный на основе военного жаргона, содержит символико-социальную референцию к фактам армейского бытия и формирует карикатурное представление о тех или иных представителях рода войск. Выводы. Исследование показало возможность более детально рассмотреть социальную составлявшую плана выражения фразеологизма военной тематики, отметить важную роль представителей узкопрофессиональной сферы в иерархизации свойственных им коммуникативно-поведенческих стратегий. Statement of the problem. The article discusses the ways of organizing the figurative basis of phraseological units based on the material of military jargon used in the US armed forces. The author explains the attribution of sociolexemes to the category of phraseological combinations of language based on the constitutional features of phraseology - stability, imagery, idiomaticity, reproducibility (in this case, the military environment). The author speaks about the possibility of classifying the phraseological units of this group in a socio-cultural way, namely: highlighting the topic of latent (to a greater extent, imaginary) confrontation between representatives of the military craft and the associated regularity in the construction of the image of phraseology. Results. It is established that the phraseological units of military subjects clearly convey the theme of interpersonal confrontation between representatives of the army profession. It is proved that the image of phraseological units, created on the basis of military jargon, contains a symbolic, mythological, social reference to the facts of life and forms a caricature representation of certain representatives of the armed forces. Conclusions. The study showed an opportunity to examine in more detail the social component of the figurative basis of idiom-jargon, to note the important role of representatives of the narrow professional sphere in the hierarchy of their characteristic communicative and behavioral strategies.

Jim Crow in Uniform

Chapter 6 examines the military’s black-white boundaries in the context of troops’ training and stateside service during World War II. These boundaries, the handiwork above all of military officers and leaders, wended their way through nearly every aspect of military life, creating a dense and powerful structure of white domination and black subordination—or in the words of one wartime commentator, “Jim Crow in Uniform.” In the eyes of its creators, this version of Jim Crow was necessary both to win a war for freedom overseas and to shore up faltering white supremacy at home, faltering in part because of the military’s own unwitting actions. As with its civilian cousin, Jim Crow in uniform generated extensive protest, which managed to blur a small but important number of black-white lines. The number would have been higher had protesters not faced formidable opposition in the White House, in Congress, in the courts, and among military leaders.

Leksikograficheskii komponent v sovremennom polikul'turnom obrazovanii (elektronnyi mnogoiazychnyi slovar' voennykh terminov)

The work is devoted to the problem of intensification of teaching Russian as a foreign language in the process of formation and development of lexical competence of students. The Electronic multilingual dictionary, created on the basis of ABBYY Lingvo software for teaching Russian to foreign students of military universities, is presented. His vocabulary includes a special lexicon describing various segments of military activity (weapons, equipment, commands, military life, etc.). For each word there are translations into European languages (boi – English batttle, combat; French combat (m); Portuguese combate) and some Asian languages (boi – Laos ຍິງ). The role of the electronic translated multilingual thesaurus in the formation of speech professional competence, which ensures the removal of language barriers in the study of military-technical sciences by foreigners, is determined. The universality of the vocabulary, created taking into account the national mentality of students, providing opportunities for the redistribution of classroom and independent work of students, is characterized. Its effectiveness has been proven as a tool for modern interactive, multilingual and multicultural education.

Examining the Moderating Effect of Mindfulness on the Relationship between Soldiers’ Perceived Stress and Hopelessness

Mindfulness is a type of meditation in which one consciously pays attention to being fully present in the moment. Research has shown that mindfulness can lower anxiety, stress, and hopelessness. This fact may also apply to people in special circumstances, such as those in the military. Therefore, we examined the relationship between perceived stress, mindfulness, and hopelessness among military soldiers. Specifically, we verified the moderating effect of mindfulness on the relationship between perceived stress and mindfulness. We surveyed 309 Korean military soldiers and a total of 257 data were analyzed through descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, and regression analysis. Our results showed that perceived stress, mindfulness, and hopelessness are interrelated, and that mindfulness moderated the influence of perceived stress on hopelessness. In other words, the lower the level of mindfulness, the greater the hopelessness when the perceived stress increased. This study suggests that conducting mindfulness training for soldiers can benefit soldiers’ adaptation to military life.