BACKGROUND OF THE LINGUISTIC THEORIES (ESPECIALLY OF THE SIGN) IN FERDINAND DE SAUSURRE: FROM CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY TO THE XIX CENTURY

In this study, it is our objective to carry out a historical tour of the main antecedents that we can find on the linguistic theories in Ferdinand de Saussure, with special emphasis on the influences he took for the elaboration of his theory of the sign. To do this, given the philosophicalrationalist nature that supports his theoretical conceptions, we are going to study the hypotheses preceding his, which had a logical-speculative nature. In this sense, we will start with Classical Antiquity focusing on the contributions made by the main Greek philosophers (Socrates, Platon and Aristotle) on the language / thought duality and the origin motivated or not of linguistic signs. Next, we will address the medieval theories of scholasticism and its conception of language as a syntactic and paradigmatic system in which agreement and rection were of fundamental importance, as Saussure would explain centuries later, categorizing language as a formal and functional system. Next, we will carry out an overview of the rationalist linguistic thought conceived by El Brocense in the 16th century and made explicit in his Minerva. From him, Saussure would take the conception that reason was above any use or linguistic norm that tried to limit language. Later, already located in the seventeenth century, we will study the general and reasoned Grammar of Port-Royal and its influence on Ferdinand de Saussure, especially with regard to the conception of the two faces of the linguistic sign (meaning and signifier). Finally, we will review some of the late nineteenth century theories that influenced Saussure and that were basically those conceived by the Kazan and Moscow schools and by the thought of the American linguist W. D. Whitney. Finally, we will expose some of the fundamental concepts contained in Ferdinand de Saussure's General Linguistics Course in which he presented his linguistic theories

Passion Project Journaling in the EFL Classroom

Judith Kambara Reference Data: Kambara, J. (2020). Passion project journaling in the EFL classroom. In P. Clements, A. Krause, & R. Gentry (Eds.), Teacher efficacy, learner agency. Tokyo: JALT. https://doi.org/10.37546/JALTPCP2019-45 Journaling activities in EFL classrooms, often based on prescribed journal prompts, are designed to elicit targeted grammar and vocabulary; however, prescribed prompts can be problematic because they lack a basis in reality and limit language structures available for use. After observing lackluster results with student journals based on prescribed topics, I introduced what I have termed passion project journaling in my 1st-year university English classes for general listening and speaking. Students were asked to journal extensively about topics in which they had a deep interest for the second of two 8-week terms in a semester-long course. Results showed marked increases in the average number of words per journal entry, range of language structures used, and topic engagement. Based on these results, I propose utilizing passion project journaling to increase students’ sense of self-efficacy and to grant learners the agency to acquire new vocabulary and language structures in meaningful contexts. 英語学習コースにおけるジャーナル活動は，通常、教員が決めたジャーナル・トピックに基づき，学習目標である文法や語彙を引き出すように設計されている。しかし，このようなジャーナル活動は，現実性を欠き，使用される言語構造も制限してしまう問題がある。筆者は，精彩を欠いたジャーナル活動を鑑み，筆者が担当している大学1年次のリスニング・スピーキングクラスに『パッション・プロジェクト・ジャーナリング』を導入した。これは，学生各々が強く興味をもつトピックで，学期の後半8週間，各自のジャーナルをまとめていく活動である。その結果，１ジャーナル当たりの使用語数，言語構造の幅が増加し，トピックについて積極的に関与する姿勢を示すように改善された。筆者は，『パッション・プロジェクト・ジャーナリング』を，学生達の目標達成意欲向上や、有意義な文脈で新しい語彙や文の構造を学ぶ主体的学習者とするために活用することを提唱する。

Religion and the Limits of Metatheatre in Our Town and Sunday in the Park with George

This essay explores theatrical drama alongside aspects of religious dimensionality David Tracy analyzes in terms of limit experience, limit language, and limit questions. The claim is that metatheatrical forms can correlate with limit dimensions, a correlation which may prove as pertinent as ritual for linking drama with religious experience, thought, and practice. Here, metatheatre and limit dimensions are further defined in respect to Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play, Our Town, and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s 1984 musical, Sunday in the Park with George. The essay identifies distinct though often overlapping forms of metatheatre: plays or performances that (1) explicitly refer to themselves, or (2) represent theatrical or theatre-like works within their stories and expressed worlds (e.g., plays within plays), or (3) dramatize theatre-like and performative aspects of ordinary life. Just as Wilder foregrounds metatheatrical relations to create an impression of the eternal, Sondheim and his collaborators reflect on their work’s ontological conditions of possibility by bringing to life another work, a painting, at distantly separated moments in time. Our Town and Sunday in the Park invite us to enter social and ritualized spaces inhabited by commonplace yet archetypal persons; they culminate in moments where the audience is to discern past, present, and future in simultaneous proximity; and with their different contents and forms, they prove good plays for elaborating relations among theatre, limit experience, and religious dimensionality.

Brian Massumi and Communication Studies

Brian Massumi (1956–) is a contemporary political theorist of communication, critical and cultural studies, philosophy, political theory, science, and aesthetics. One of the foremost thinkers of “radical empiricism,” he is responsible for enabling the widespread use of Deleuzean philosophy in communication and inaugurating the so-called “affective turn” in the theoretical humanities. Massumi is Professor of Communication at the Université de Montréal and a collaborator with the experimental art and activism lab SenseLab, founded by Erin Manning. His most well-known translation is Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus (1987), and he is the author of ten books, including the widely influential Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (2002). Massumi’s radical empiricist approaches concern the aesthetics of communication and power in the context of global capitalism. He opens the field of communication to the study of relationality, what he calls “being-in-becoming,” which he describes in terms of Gilles Deleuze’s “the actual” and “the virtual.” His critical embrace of becoming reframes the concept of “the event” as a processual unfolding of forces of expression, or experience. Instead of remaining wedded to communication models that limit language to designation, manifestation, and signification, Massumi’s focus on becoming calls for accounts of the extra-linguistic. Three key concepts include expression, affect, and perception. Through creative and experimental dispositions, Massumi position the fields of communication, critical and cultural studies, philosophy, political theory, science, and aesthetics toward vibrant scenes of relations-already-underway, or how feeling, thinking, and being begin, again, in the middle of something already underway—a “happening doing.”

Pragmatic dimensions of Prospect Series: A textbook evaluation

The development of pragmatic and sociolinguistic competence is very important for language users as failure to have adequate competence can cause miscommunications. Textbooks can play a significant role in equipping learners with pragmatic competence in EFL contexts where enough exposure to the target language is not possible. This paper investigates the pragmatic dimensions of Prospect Series, Iranian high school textbooks, and the extent to which these books can be reliable sources for developing language learners’ pragmatic competence. To do so, Cohen’s (1996) and van Ek and Trim’s (1998) taxonomies of speech acts and functions were employed to manifest whether the books are pragmatically suitable. The data analyses revealed that all types of speech acts were present, although unequally, throughout the series, except Declaratives which has been ignored in the conversations of Prospect1, 2, and 3. Lack of Declaratives as being reportedly a frequently-used speech act in everyday conversations is a big disadvantage. Additionally, all kinds of language functions were present in the textbooks but rather erratically and unevenly. The findings seem to imply that lack of Declaratives, and unequal distributions of language functions and speech acts may limit language learners’ pragmatic competence, which can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunications. To compensate the drawbacks, several implications were provided.

Dream-Work of Dispossession

Essentially a cinema of occupation and dispossession, Palestinian cinema disrupts standard notions of national cinema, complicating conventional expectations of national aesthetics or national dreams. As the borders of Palestine's historical territory are continuously under erasure, so too are the symbolic boundaries of its language, which is flexible and inventive; the language of Palestinian cinema is a limit-language. No one has expressed this “limit condition” more succinctly than Elia Suleiman, whose cinematic language exemplifies a poetics of dispossession that depicts the asphyxiating spaces and truncated temporalities of Palestinian life with tragic humor and bold fantasy in defiance of narrative simplicity. Suleiman's films run counter to the conventional representation of Palestinian existence and are arguably the sharpest expressions of what can be deemed to be the dream-work of that existence against its conventional representation.

A New Relation of Second Order Limit Language in Simple and Semi-Simple Splicing System

Splicing system, which is an abstraction of operations on DNA molecules, can be modelled mathematically under the framework of formal language theory and informational macromolecules. The recombinant behavior of the set of double-stranded DNA molecules under the influence of restriction enzyme and ligase further lead to the cut and paste phenomenon in splicing system. The theoretical study of splicing language has contributed to a new type of splicing language known as a second order limit language, which is an extension of limit language. Some types of splicing system can produce second order limit language. Y-G splicing system is chosen among other models to model the DNA splicing process as this model preserves the biological traits and presents the transparent behavior of the DNA splicing process. In this paper, the relation between second order limit language with simple splicing and semi-simple splicing system are presented.

A Comparison of Second Order and Non-Second Order Limit Language Generated by Yusof-Goode Splicing System

DNA splicing process is a study on the recombinant behavior of double-stranded DNA molecules with the existence of restriction enzyme and ligase. Head introduced the first mathematical model of splicing systems by using the relation of informational macromolecules and formal language theory. In addition, a few laboratory experiments have been conducted in order to verify certain types of splicing language called inert/adult, transient and limit language. Previously, researchers have focused on those types of splicing languages. Recently, an extension of limit languages namely second order limit language has been introduced. In this paper, the difference between second order limit languages and non-second order limit languages is depicted in some examples. Then, the formations of second order limit language in Yusof-Goode splicing system are investigated.