Revitalizing Eastern and Western Online Communication: A Micro-Meso-Macro Link of Temporal Digital Change

This paper explains in a de-westernized sense (Gunaratne, 2010) how internet-mediated communication changes the way we deal with and plan time both individually and culturally in Germany and China. Therefore, it blends Western and Eastern culture and media theories. The paper focuses on two distinct phenomena: temporal change due to social media, and Online journalism, as the core of Internet-mediated communication (for Germany 39% communication, media use 24% Projektgruppe ARD/ZDF-Multimedia, 2016; for China 90.7% instant messaging, 82% Internet news China Internet Network Information Center, 2017), with other temporal change via smart devices touched upon (Ash, 2018). General research on time in post modern societies, recently more focused on media’s temporal change phenomena (e.g. Barker, 2012; Barker, 2018; Castells, 2010; Eriksen, 2001; Hartmann, 2016; Hassan, 2003; Innis, 2004; Neverla, 2010a, 2010b; Nowotny, 1995; Rantanen, 2005; Wajcman, 2010; Wajcman and Dodd) has not yet linked the different societal and cultural levels of temporal change. Thus, we suggest the following to fill this research gap: For a micro perspective the notions of network theories (e.g. Granovetter, 1973; Schönhuth, 2013), media synchronicity (Dennis, Fuller, and Valacich, 2008) and the idea of permanent connectivity (Sonnentag, Reinecke, Mata, and Vorderer, 2018; van Dijck, 2013; Vorderer, Krömer, and Schneider, 2016) are linked. On a meso level, institutional change in Online journalism with a focus on acceleration is modeled (Ananny, 2016; Bødker and Sonnevend, 2017; Dimmick, Feaster, and Hoplamazian, 2011; Krüger, 2014; Neuberger, 2010). On a macro level, mediatization theory (Couldry and Hepp, 2017; Krotz, 2001, 2012) and recent acceleration theory (Rosa, 2005, 2012, 2017) is discussed. The levels are systematically linked suggesting a micro-meso-macro-link (Quandt, 2010) to then ask if and how many of the dimensions of the construct temporal understanding (Faust, 2016) can be changed through Internet-mediated communication. Temporal understanding consists of nine dimensions: General past, general future, instrumental experience (monochronicity), fatalism, interacting experience (polychronicity), pace of life, future as planned expectation and result of proximal goals as well as future as trust based interacting expectation and result of present positive behavior. Temporal understanding integrates the anthropological construct of polychronicity (Bluedorn, Kalliath, Strube, and Martin, 1999; Hall, 1984; Lindquist and Kaufman-Scarborough, 2007), pace of life (Levine, 1998) and temporal horizon (Klapproth, 2011) into a broader framework which goes beyond Western biased constructs through the theory driven incorporation of Confucian notions (Chinese Culture Connection, 1987). Finally, meta trends are laid out.

Methodology in Accent Perception Studies: A Review

Research in the field of Language Attitudes and Social Perceptions have proven associations between a speaker’s accent, and listener’s perceptions of various aspects of their identity – intelligence, socio-economic background, race, region of origin, friendliness, etc. This paper seeks to critically analyze the methodology and theories in the field of accent perception through a review of existing research literature across various disciplines that have studied it. After reviewing Social Identity Theory, Prototype theory, and theories regarding Ethnolinguistic identity, it points out various knowledge gaps and limitations of methodologies previously used. It then studies the implications for future research, in various domains, proposing a new theoretical paradigm using mixed methods studies.

Moribund Language Documentation and Preservation: A Preliminary Study on the Punan Language

This study focuses on the Punan language in Punan Bah, Belaga, Sarawak. The Punan language is a language spoken by the Punan people, one of the minority ethnic groups in Sarawak. This study is a preliminary study of the language and acts as an early step in the effort to document and preserve the language. This preliminary study is pivotal in preventing teh language from falling into an endangered phase or becoming moribund. This study also aims to resolve confusion over some terms used to refer to the Punan ethnicity and Punan language. This study was conducted as field-oriented research. The respondents were selected based on several criteria and were native speakers of the Punan language, aged forty and above, and living in the Punan Bah area. Data were collected through interviews and voice recordings. The data include the history and the background of the Punan ethnicity. The outcome of the study shows that the Punan language and ethnicity are different from the Penan language and ethnicity, and these ethnicities belong to two different categories with their own respective identities. From historical and background aspects, the Punan language is spoken in eight long houses, namely Punan Pandan, Punan Jelalong, Punan Mina, Punan Meluyou, Punan Bah, Punan Biau, Punan Sama and Punan Kakus. From a linguistics aspect, it is found that the Punan language has four main variations; daily spoken language, ukiet (folklore), u'a and setuo. Hence, this study will explore the diversity of indigenous languages in Sarawak.

Towards a Progressive Asian Linguistic and Cultural Psychology

Traditional Linguistic and Cultural Anthropology has been predicated on traditional systems of thought, such as colonialism and that the west has been a purveyor of intellectual work and its traditions. Consequently, the shaping of Asian and non-Asian academic and industrial sector have emerged to separate these two regions, though dynamically. This paper seeks to provide a new framework for Anthropologically describing Asian Linguistic and Cultural contexts, which show great contradiction. The paper builds on colonialism and post colonialism, and then draws on a comparative ethnography of Asian and non-Asian regions, to present that the symbolic typologies of each of these regions show contradiction. The paper then presents that these contradictions speak against both traditional notions of Asia and nonAsia, and that traditional Linguistic and Cultural Anthropology can become modal, and can be realigned to incorporate complex perspectives in the symbolic analysis of language and culture.

The Change Laboratory in CLIL settings: Foregrounding the Voices of East Asian Students

I propose that the Change Laboratory is an underutilized intervention research methodology that can be used to foreground the voices, needs and rights of East Asian students taking English Medium Instruction classes predicated on the Western Socratic learning habitus. In particular, I relate the Change Laboratory methodology to a specific type of EMI pedagogy known as CLIL, Content Language Integrated Learning. What separates CLIL courses from content-based language learning and other forms of EMI, is the planned integration of the ‘4Cs’ of content, cognition, communication and culture into teaching and learning practice (Coyle et al., 2010). CLIL pedagogy aims to motivate and empower students in learner-centered classrooms. However, student voices have not often been foregrounded in research. The Change laboratory (Virkkunen and Newnham, 2013) is an intervention research methodology that can empower students with regard to course design. It applies a “Vygotskyan developmental approach in real-world, collective, organizational settings” (Bligh and Flood, 2015) and is therefore in accordance with CLIL pedagogy underpinned by the constructivist ideas of Bruner, Vygotsky and Piaget. There is much potential for the Change Laboratory to be used in course design as it focuses on how “institutional forms actually unfold locally” (Bligh and Flood, 2015) and has the ability to “develop the transformative agency of marginalized voices in higher education” (Bligh and Flood, 2015). Thus, I argue that Change Laboratory interventions can reduce linguistic imperialism, or perceptions thereof, in English Medium Instruction or CLIL settings in East Asia. They can help investigate the perception of cultural habitus – Confucian and Socratic – that may affect learning dispositions and in doing so redesign courses that better fit the needs of learners.

The Malaysian Wayang Kulit, the Malay Language, and their Anthropological shifts

This paper seeks to discuss and expose the correlations between a shifting Wayang Kulit puppet performance in Malaysia and the shifting Malay language over the past half century, that is, from the late 1960s until the present time. The Wayang exhibited a patent shift in its poetics, in its use and type of symbolisms, in its social, cultural and spiritual purpose, and in its representation of community. The paper determines ways in which the Malay language experienced change by observing government mandate to 'rehabilitate' the Malay people, and to employ discourses of rehabilitation so to alter the cultural industry in Malaysia, yet to the detriment of language, social cohesion, and cultural performance in Malaysia. For this the data consists of a multi year ethnography of the Wayang both inside and outside of Kuala Lumpur, cases studies of Wayang Kulit dalangs (puppeteers), observing and conducting Wayang Kulit performances, and documenting language diachronic change. Ultimately, the paper finds that owing to language planning and policy in Malaysia, both cultural performance and language, that is, the written, the standardized, and vernacular have seen significant shift over the past half century, and that these shifts have correlated with altered ideologies in Malaysia that align with intentions to commercialize the country and to increase the mercantile efficiency of the Malay and the Malaysian people.

Chinese Language and Literature Reform in The Beginning of The 20th Century

It is difficult not to mention language reform when referring to Chinese literature modernization between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Language played a critical role in facilitating the escape of Chinese literature from Chinese medieval literary works in order to integrate into world literature. The language reform not only laid a foundation for modern literature but also contributed considerably to the grand social transformation of China in the early days of the 20th century. Chinese new-born literature was a literature created by spoken language; in Chinese terms, it was considered as a literature focusing on “dialectal speech” instead of “classical Chinese” used in the past. In international terms, it can be named as living language literature which was used to replace classic literary language in ancient books – a kind of dead language. This article will analyze how language reform impacted Chinese modern literature at the beginning of the 20th century.

What is Indian in Indian English? Markers of Indianness in Hindi-Speaking Users’ Social Media Communication

Public communication in the contemporary world constitutes a multifaceted phenomenon. The Internet offers unlimited possibilities of contact and public expression, locally and globally, yet exerts its power, inducing use of the Internet lingo, loosening language norms, and encourages the use of a lingua franca, English in particular. This leads to linguistic choices that are liberating for some and difficult for others on ideological grounds, due to the norms of the discourse community, or simply because of insufficient language skills and linguistic means available. Such choices appear to particularly characterise post-colonial states, in which the co-existence of multiple local tongues with the language once imperially imposed and now owned by local users makes the web of repertoires especially complex. Such a case is no doubt India, where the use of English alongside the nationally encouraged Hindi and state languages stems not only from its historical past, but especially its present position enhanced not only by its local prestige, but also by its global status too, and also as the primary language of Online communication. The Internet, however, has also been recognised as a medium that encourages, and even revitalises, the use of local tongues, and which may manifest itself through the choice of a given language as the main medium of communication, or only a symbolic one, indicated by certain lexical or grammatical features as identity markers. It is therefore of particular interest to investigate how members of such a multilingual community, represented here by Hindi users, convey their cultural identity when interacting with friends and the general public Online, on social media sites. This study is motivated by Kachru’s (1983) classical study, and, among others, a recent discussion concerning the use of Hinglish (Kothari and Snell, eds., 2011). This paper analyses posts by Hindi users on Facebook (private profiles and fanpages) and Twitter, where personalities of users are largely known, and on YouTube, where they are often hidden, in order to identify how the users mark their Indian identity. Investigated will be Hindi lexical items, grammatical aspects and word order, cases of code-switching, and locally coloured uses of English words and spelling conventions, with an aim to establish, also from the point of view of gender preferences, the most dominating linguistic patterns found Online.

Vietnamese Proverbs From a Cultural Perspective

Proverbs are important data depicting the traditional culture of each nation. Vietnamese proverbs, dated thousands of years ago, are an immense valuable treasure of experience which the Vietnamese people desire to pass to the younger generations. This paper aims to explore the unique and diversified world of intelligence and spirits of the Vietnamese through a condensed and special literary genre, as well as a traditional value of the nation (Nguyen Xuan Kinh 2013, Tran Ngoc Them 1996, Le Chi Que and Ngo Thi Thanh Quy 2014). Through an interdisciplinary approach, from an anthropological point of view, approaching proverbs we will open up a vast treasure of knowledge and culture of all Vietnamese generations. The study has examined over 16,000 Vietnamese proverbs and analysed three groups expressing Vietnamese people’s behaviors toward nature, society and their selves, and compared them with English and Japanese proverbs. The research has attempted to explore the beauty of Vietnamese language, cultural values and the souls and personalities of Vietnam. Approaching Vietnamese proverbs under the interdisciplinary perspective of language, culture and literature is a new research direction in the field of Social Sciences and Humanity in Vietnam. From these viewpoints, it is seen that proverbs have remarkably contributed to the language and culture of Vietnam as well as and constructed to the practice of language use in everyday life which is imaginary, meaningful and effective in communication. Furthermore, the study seeks to inspire the Vietnamese youth’s pride in national identity and to encourage their preservation and promotion for traditional values of the nation in the context of integration and globalisation. In the meantime, it would be favourable to introduce and market the beauty of Vietnamese language, culture and people to the world, encouraging the speakers of other languages to study, explore and understand Vietnam.

Polysemy of Words Expressing Human Body Parts of The Four Limb Area in Thai Language in Vietnam

The nomenclature and polysemiosis of body parts has constituted a central part of linguistics, and of Linguistic Anthropology. The ramifications of such work make inroads into our understandings of many fields, including language contact, semiotics, and so forth, This current paper identifies the structures and emerging denotations of expressions of human body parts (HBPs) in Thai language, and ways in which these dimensions reflect polysemy. The study thus applies the following methods: Field research methods of linguistics, description, comparison, and collation. As sources of data, this study surveys Thai rhymes, fairy tales, riddles and riddle songs, rhyming stories, children’s songs and linguistic data of daily speeches in the northwest of Vietnam. The paper uses theories on word meaning and the transformation of word meaning. To aid analysis, this paper applies methods of analyzing meaning components so to construct significative meaning structures of words expressing HBPs in Thai language, thus identifying the semantemes chosen to be the basis for the transformation. In the polysemy of words expressing HBPs of the four limbs, the polysemy of words expressing the following parts were studied: khèn - tay, cánh tay (arm); mễ – tay, bàn tay (hand); khà - đùi (thigh); tìn - chân, bàn chân (leg, foot). Directions of semantic transformation of words expressing HBPs in Thai language are as diversified and as multi-leveled as Vietnamese. Furthermore, in Thai language, there occur differences in the four scopes of semantic transformation, as compared with Vietnamese, including “people’s characteristics,” “human activities,” “nomination of things with activities like HBPs’ activities,” and “unit of measurement.” This study contributes to Linguistic Anthropology by suggesting that the polysemy of words expressing HBPs of the four limb area in Thai language will outline a list of linguistic phenomena which serve as the basis to understand cultural and national features, in the light of perception and categorization of the reality of the Thai minority with reference to Vietnamese.