bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
“In the world of the tradition, I was unimagined”: Negotiation of identities in cross-cultural autobiographies
Authors: Pavlenko Aneta
Published: February 2009

The present paper focuses on an unusual linguistic minority — contemporary American writers for whom English is a second language. The study examines ways in which these writers position and reposition themselves with regard to their multiple languages and identities in autobiographic narratives. The analysis of the narratives demonstrates that five main aspects of identity may be subject to renegotiation in the process of second language socialization: linguistic, racial and ethnic, cultural, gender, and social identities. It is argued that written—and, in particular, published—texts represent ideal discursive spaces for negotiation of identities, spaces where accents may be erased and the writers' voices imbued with authority.

Furthermore, it is argued that the importance of cross-cultural autobiographies by bilingual writers is not simply in ways in which this writing allows the authors to reinvent themselves but rather in ways in which it allows second language(L2) users to assume legitimate ownership of their L2 and to provide the readers with new meanings, perspectives, and images of “being American—and bilingual” in the postmodern world.
Accessing bilingual code-switching competence
Authors: Jacqueline Toribio Almeida
Published: February 2009

The present work is inspired by an interest in the syntactic regularities that underlie language alternations in Spanish-English bilingual speech, and the methodologies that may prove most reliable and informative in this exploration. Accordingly, it attends to the conceptual and methodological issues that must be addressed and surmounted, and taking account of these concerns, presents new methodologies for gathering codeswitching data. The robust findings attest to the validity of the methodologies and of the elicited data, affording a valuable source of facts for further research.
Interactional otherness: Towards a redefinition of codeswitching
Authors: Gafaranga Joseph , Torras Maria-Carme
Published: February 2009

The concept of c odeswitching has traditionally been understood, from an external observer's perspective, to mean any occurrence of two languages within the same conversation. Our position is that language alternation should be observed from participants' own perspective. From this perspective, many distinct types of language alternation can be identified, namely “language alternation itself as the medium,” “medium repair” (Gafaranga, 1999,2000) and functional deviance from the medium. In turn, in this last possibility, two situations can be found: "medium-switching" and “medium suspension.” However, for practical reasons of research continuity, we suggest to keep the term “codeswitching” to refer to both cases for both are instances of i nteractional otherness. Thus, our “respecification” is that c odeswitching is, not any occurrence of two languages within the same conversation, but rather any instance of deviance from current medium which is not oriented to(by participants themselves) as requiring any repair .
One day in the life of a “purist”
Authors: Li David C.S. , Elly C.Y.
Published: February 2009

This paper reports on an experimental study. Twelve university students were asked (a) not to speak any English for one day (b) to record examples of English words that they wanted to use but could not; (c) to write up a two-page reflective diary; and (d) to share and discuss their thoughts, feelings and “rich” points of their experiences in a focus group interview. Before the day of the experiment, they were given training on how to record their own language date. A proforma was used to help them capture the key contextual information of a communicative event: who speaks what to whom when and where. The data are constituted by 12 reflective diaries in English and a transcription of the focus group interview conducted in Cantonese-English "mixed code." The results show that all student participants experienced communication problems and felt inconvenienced by not being able to express their ideas using English words that they were familiar with. Linguistic motivations are empirically supported: the putative Cantonese/Chinese equivalents were either nonexistent, unknown or unfamiliar to them, or perceived as semantically/stylistically infelicitous. English was used, sometimes unconsciously, despite the artificial “Cantonese-only” rule of speaking. These findings suggest that a theoretical model of code-alternation which lays claim to universal validity and explanatory adequacy would be inadequate without taking into account the bilingual's concern for referential meaning. Sociolinguistic and educational implications for the Hong Kong Speech community are briefly discussed in light of the findings.
Getting started without a system: From phonetics to phonology in bilingual development
Authors: Vihman Marilyn May
Published: February 2009

The common formulation which proposes that bilingual children enter into language production with either a single or a dual phonological system is questioned. Instead, it is suggested that implicit learning allows the child to develop considerable distributional knowledge about each of the languages to which he or she is exposed even before the first words are produced, but that explicit learning and use of particular words and phrases establishes the foundation from which more detailed phonological knowledge will be induced. Once the child has produced some 50-100 different words(initially based on “item learning”), word templates can often be identified, reflecting the individual child's development of readily accessible production patterns that may constitute a rough match to words of one or both languages. The proposed course of development is supported by analysis of early word patterns drawn from three bilingual children. The item learning of early words, which reflects “selection” of word targets with few changes, is distinguished from the templatebased later words, which may depart more radically from the targets. The word templates of the bilingual children are found to assimilate words of both languages, sometimes in contravention of adult language patterns.
The early phonological development of a Farsi-English bilingual child
Authors: Hossein Keshavarz Mohammad , Ingram David
Published: February 2009

This article addresses the issue of whether bilingual children begin phonological acquisition with one phonological system or two. Five hypotheses are suggested for the possible structure of the bilingual child's phonological system. Analyses of data from a longitudinal study of a Farsi-English bilingual infant, Arsham, supported the hypothesis that the child had acquired two separate phonologies with mutual influence; that is, he made occasional use of phonological features of Farsi in English words and vice-versa. It is suggested that this was due to the pattern of exposure to the two languages, and that other children may show a different pattern, depending on their exposure to the two languages and the role of language dominance.
/l/ production in English-Arabic bilingual speakers
Authors: Khattab Ghada
Published: February 2009

This paper reports an analysis of /l/ production by English-Arabic bilingual children. It addresses the question of whether the bilingual develops one phonological system or two by calling for a refinement of the notion of a system using insights from recent phonetic and sociolinguistic work on variability in speech. The bilingual subjects that were chosen for the study are three Lebanese children aged 5, 7, and 10, all born and raised in Yorkshire, England. Monolingual friends of the same age were chosen as controls, and the parents of all bilingual and monolingual children were also taped to obtain a detailed assessment of the sound patterns available in the subjects' environment. The bilinguals were taped in different language sessions with different interviewers. /l/ was chosen due to the existence of different patterns for clear and dark variants in its production in English and Arabic that vary according to contextual and dialectal factors. Results show that bilinguals have developed separate/l/ production patterns for each of their languages that are similar to those of monolinguals, and that the interaction between their two languages is restricted to the bilingual mode and is a sign of their sociolinguistic competence.
The Modeling Hypothesis and child bilingual codemixing
Authors: Comeau Liane , Genesee Fred , Lapaquette Lindsay
Published: February 2009

According to one explanation of child bilingual codemixing(the modeling hypothesis), bilingual children's rates of mixing are related to rates of mixing in the input addressed to them. An assumption of this hypothesisis that bilingual children are sensitive to codemixing in the input and that they can adjust their own rates on-line in accordance with the input. Despite its widespread appeal, evidence concerning its validity has been largely inconclusive. The assumption is largely noncontro versial in the case of older bilingual children, as evidenced by their adoption of the patterns of codemixing of the speech communities in which they live. However, it is not clear whether young bilingual children have the cognitive and linguistic capacities implicated by this assumption. The present study sought to examine this assumption directly. Six French-English bilingual children(average age 2;4 years) were recorded during play sessions with an assistant who engaged in relatively low(15%) or relatively high rates(40%) of mixing on three separate occasions. The results indicate that these children were sensitive to the language choices of their interlocutors and that they were able to adjust their rates of mixing accordingly; further, they appeared to do this by matching their language choice with that of their interlocutors on a turn-by-turn basis.
Multilingualism among the Penans in Brunei
Authors: Sercombe Peter
Published: February 2009

This article considers multilingualism among a group of ex-hunter-gatherers, the Penans in Brunei. Settled permanently since 1962, this small community of 55 people in habit the sparsely populated subdistrict of Sukang in southern Brunei, where they are adjacent to two other ethnolinguistic groups. The Penans constitute the smallest ethnic minority in the country. Since settling, they have undergone a number of changes, themain one being (apart from permanent settlement) their transition to rice farming (the main means of subsistence for all those living in Sukang). They have also adapted to their social environment by acquiring new codes, although they continue to lack proficiency in the national lingua franca, Brunei Malay, and remain disadvantaged economically. This article is primarily descriptive; findings suggest the language situation of the Penans is quite different from both that of their neighbors and other coastal-dwelling Bruneians. The paper, however, also tries to explain some of the reasons underlying Penans' language attitudes, as well as knowledge and patterns of language use among the Penans.
Eyewitness memory in late bilinguals: Evidence for discursive relativity
Authors: Pavlenko Aneta
Published: February 2009

Loftus and Palmer's(1974) ingenious experiments convincingly demonstrated that linguistic changes in the verbal framing of questions result in changes in eyewitness testimonies. Their findings have inspired a new line of research investigating the relationship between language and eyewitness memory. The present study expands the focus of inquiry to bilingual individuals and examines ways in which cross-linguistic differences—and second language learning in adulthood—may influence the participants' performance on memory tasks involving visual recall. The results demonstrate that in instances where availability—or lack—of certain lexically encoded concepts led to differences in narratives elicited from monolingual speakers of Russian and American English, there were also differences between the two bilingual groups. Russians who learned English as a foreign language patterned with monolingual Russians in their recall, while Russians who learned English as a second language used additional interpretive frames, privacy and personal space, available in English but not in Russian. The discussion examines these results from the perspective of discursive relativity, suggesting directions for further study of the relationship between bilingualism, memory, and cognition.
Bilingualism in the Køge Project
Authors: Jørgensen J. Normann
Published: February 2009

The Køge Project is a longitudinal study of the linguistic development of Turkish-Danish grade school children from beginning to end of their school careers. A subgroup of these children has been studied in great detail, and these students have delivered a wide range of data over the years. In the material are included pedagogical(e.g., teacher diaries and teacher questionnaires), sociolinguistic(e.g., parent interviews), and linguistic data (e.g., conversations and tests). Køge was at the time of the data collection some what more open to minorities than Denmark in general, and this is reflected in the sociolinguistic reality of the Turkish-Danes. The project has been particularly rich in bilingualism studies and second language acquisition studies, but also educational studies have been carried out. The main bulk of data consists of sound-tape-recorded conversations and corresponding transcripts. There are group conversations among students and face-to-face conversations with adults. These conversations provide a rich variety of data for codeswitching analyses.
The development of bilingual proficiency—A sequential analysis
Authors: Hansen Jesper
Published: February 2009

Codeswitching is in the following analyzed as an indication of bilingual proficiency level. By applying Auer's sequential approach to codeswitching data from a longitudinal study of a Danish-Turkish bilingual setting I establish an(implicational) hierarchy of codeswitching types. The hierarchical relations between the different types are correlated with the monolingual aspect of the informants' integrated bilingual competencies. The correlation between the development of codeswitching and the development of L2 Danish paves the way for establishing a needed method of determining relative bilingual competence. I show that the way in which the codeswitching is utilized by the informants is finely attuned to the individual's linguistic proficiency.
Making Words in Two Languages: A Prosodic Account of Japanese-English Language Mixing
Authors: Morimoto Yukiko
Published: February 2009

This paper attempts to provide an account of so-called “word-internal codeswitching,” instances where lexemes are taken from one language to combine with affix-like elements from another. Previous analyses of codeswitching at the lexical or sublexical level have focused on syntactic and morphosyntactic principles within generative grammar as well as from psycholinguistic perspectives as possible constraining factors. In this paper, based on data largely from Japanese-English bilingual utterances as well as from other language pairs, I argue that two factors determine the proper selection and combination of morphemes coming from different languages: the prosodic nature of morphological and prosodic hosts, and the selectional restrictions on bound elements.
The transition to grammar in a bilingual child
Authors: Vihman Marilyn May
Published: February 2009

Recent work on the transition into grammar in children acquiring English has pointed up the role of rote-learned "positional patterns," arguing that both nativist approaches based on Universal Grammar and constructivist approaches assuming semantic underpinnings are unnecessary or inadequate to account for the data. A close analysis of the first four months of word combinations recorded for an Estonian-English learning child suggests that meaning-based generativity must play a role in this important transition, in that mixed language utterances, sequence reversals and errors revealing early attempts at analysis provide clear evidence that distributional learning alone cannot provide a sufficient characterization of the origins of grammatical development. It is proposed, instead, that relational word use in the single word period may have provided "model learning" for syntax in a child with bilingual input and a relatively late start on word combinations.
Keep the Focus on the Family
Authors: Crawford Doreen Anne
Published: February 2009

Children’s nurses deal with the family on a daily basis. There are manytheories about the family, and there is good supporting evidence focusing on the family as it interacts with healthcare professionals.

Modern technology and the structure of today’s society haveinfluenced the way families function. This article considers some of the cornerstone theories about the family, looks at family stages, relates these to the healthcare setting and in particular examines the family under stress.

Each family is (or has the potential to be) a unique dynamic, functional system of childrearing, care and support for its members. Children are often admitted to hospital for short periods or can be discharged home while still fairly dependent. This can mean a heavy family commitment, and how the family functions results in several issues for children’s nurses to reflect on. It is too simplistic to state that standards of care depend on how the family copes under pressure, but undoubtedly this would have some influence. Children’s nurses need to be able to assess the family in order to promote coping and to equip the family to deal with the stresses of extraordinary care demands, which can result in having a sick or dependent child at home.

The aim should be to enable the family to find the caring experience a positive one and to be able to keep a balance and a quality to family life so that all the family members’ needs are met.
‘Kiss, Cuddle, Squeeze’: The Experiences and Meaning of Touch among Parents of Children with Autism Attending a Touch Therapy Programme
Authors: Cullen Lesley , Barlow Julie
Published: February 2009

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences and meaning of touch between parents and children with autism before and after attending a Touch Therapy Programme. The sample comprised 12 parents (1 father and 11 mothers) of children (1 female and 11 male) with autism. Parents were interviewed before and immediately after the 8-week programme. Pre-programme results suggested that children were controlling the experience of touch. Parents felt ‘hurt’ in response to the ‘aloof’ nature of autism, and natural parenting instincts (e.g. spontaneous cuddles) were restricted. Post-programme results suggested that children appeared totolerate touch. Parents reported that routine tasks (e.g. dressing) were accomplished more easily and that children appeared generally more relaxed. Parents reported feeling ‘closer’ to their children and felt that the touch therapy had opened a communication channel between themselves and their children.
Circumcision: A Consideration of Some of the Controversy
Authors: Crawford Doreen Anne
Published: February 2009

This article considers the procedure known as male circumcision. Thisis practised throughout the world for a variety of reasons, including medically essential reasons, health promotion, health protection, cultural, religious and aesthetic. It has been estimated that approximately one-third of the male population has been circumcized. As with some other surgical interventions its use is controversial, and there are a number of ethical and moral issues that are of interest to the children’s nurse. The anatomy and physiology of the prepuce is summarized and the practice of circumcision and some of the risks and proposed benefits of the procedure are considered. This article is intended to be culturally sensitive and it is hoped that it will inform others and provoke discussion. It may enable the children’s nurse to raise awareness of the issues among the general population.
The willingness of the executioners
Authors: Vintges Karen , Tai Eric Tjong Tjin
Published: February 2009

This article criticizes the explanatory model of Daniel Goldhagen’s study Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Goldhagen’s argument of a German eliminationist anti-Semitism as the central cause of the Holocaust is refuted as amounting to an extreme methodological individualism. His more limited claim to have analysed the motivational cause of the Holocaust is criticized by comparing it with Hannah Arendt’s study on totalitarianism and a Foucauldian point of view. It is argued that Goldhagen has described in an almost Foucauldian way how the behaviour of the perpetrators was moulded on a micro-level, which is the merit of his book, but that his explanation of behaviour in terms of choice and meaning comes close to the – flawed – theory of the early Sartre. A socially more sensitive approach allows us to see the complicated way in which Hitler’s willing executioners were formed. An important factor was the disciplinary power which was all-pervasive in the totalitarian Nazi-state, but which is present as well in a less obtrusive manner in modern western societies.. To counter the influence of panoptical power we have to turn to the ethical self-practices in the sense of the final Foucault.
On not looking German
Authors: Yue Ming-Bao
Published: February 2009

This article argues for the ideological centrality of visual practices in the cultural politics of nationalism, immigration and diaspora. Tracing the genealogy of overseas Chinese in Germany, it demonstrates that the process of racializing European identity as ‘white’ constitutes the enabling narrative movement for ongoing social and political discrimination against non-Western nationals. It concludes by arguing that new discursive categories and visual paradigms are needed to account for Germany’s multicultural society in the 1990s.
Making sense of audience discourses
Authors: Schrøder Kim Christian
Published: February 2009

This article discusses the empirical and theoretical challenges facing reception researchers in their encounter with qualitative audience data. It does so by criticizing the one-dimensional theoretical framework set up by Stuart Hall in his famous encoding/decoding article. This framework has resulted in an exclusive focus in reception studies on ideology, as study after study has asked whether audience readings accept, negotiate or oppose the hegemonic thrust supposedly inscribed in the media text. Over the years empirical audience research has demonstrated that actual readings are more complex than that, but these studies have not taken the step of developing a multidimensional model of audience discourse. The article attempts to set up an empirically based general model of media reception with six dimensions: Motivation, Comprehension, Discrimination, Position, Evaluation and Implementation. This model may help open our eyes to the complexity of actualized readings while still enabling a politically committed audience research concerned with the role of the media in processes of social reproduction and, not least, social change.
The politics of ‘new’ men’s lifestyle magazines
Authors: Stevenson Nick , Jackson Peter , Brooks Kate
Published: February 2009

The article seeks to ask some ‘political’ questions in respect of the recent publishing success of men’s lifestyle magazines. What implications does the mass popularity of such magazines have for the social construction of masculinity, and how might we account for their success among young men?

In particular we focus upon the content of the magazines, and seek to understand what is genuinely ‘new’ about them. In this respect we discuss the magazines’ visual nature, their focus upon heterosexual relationships and their use of irony and cynicism. We conclude that a ‘political’ reading of the magazines would mean that they are the cultural response to social change, rather than a backlash to feminism or harmless fun.
Building bridges
Authors: Kosnick Kira
Published: February 2009

This article examines the changing conceptions of minority programming for Turkish and other immigrant groups in public-service broadcasting in Germany. Still the major producers of foreign-language programmes on German television and radio stations, public-service broadcasters are trying to redefine their mission. As the classical format of ‘guestworker programming’ as a bridge to the home country has now been judged inadequate, new approaches aim for a different integration of minority audiences. Tracing the ongoing debates on broadcasting for minorities, the article shows the dilemmas of public-service broadcasting with regard to a public now recognized as multi-ethnic, and with regard to new media landscapes both nationally and transnationally.
Cuts and bruises and democratic contestation
Authors: Dudink Stefan
Published: February 2009

The neo-classical model of the male body held a special place in late 18th-century political culture. Its impermeability, resulting from neoclassicism’s focus on line and contour, was especially invested with political meanings. It symbolized political and moral regeneration and helped create a ‘stoic’ male political subjectivity that validated the seizure of power by revolutionary citizens. This article discusses the meanings of visual representations of mutilated, violently opened male bodies against the backdrop of the importance of the impermeable, neo-classical male body. The author argues for understanding these bodies as testifying to the indeterminacy that came with modern democratic political life. Following French political philosopher Claude Lefort, he describes democratic society as a society that cannot be represented through the organic totality of the body. Society and politics under democracy are of an open-ended nature: opened bodies testify to this and unsettle the appearance of political stability and ‘closure’ that representations of the ideal body attempt to create.
The colour of soap opera
Authors: Meijer Irene Costera
Published: February 2009

This article is a study of how producers of soap operas deal with ethnic difference. Eight repertoires were found when analysing 34 interviews. They range from the aesthetic to the moral-political. It is made clear how ethnic difference or ‘colour’ is always locally and contextually defined. Case studies of how ethnic difference is negotiated in everyday soap opera practice are discussed.
Historical returns
Authors: Johnson Richard
Published: February 2009

Questions posed by Carolyn Steedman prompted this article on what cultural studies wants from history. Two larger arguments frame some answers. The first concerns ‘transdisciplinarity’, a new context for cultural studies, created by the ‘cultural turn’ in humanities and social sciences more generally. The second addresses the need to distinguish history as a discipline from a wider range of approaches that grasp the ‘historicity’ or ‘temporality’ of human life. The work of the hermeneutic philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, helps to identify this difference and engages with the double character of historical work: part empirical study, part ‘fiction’. The article itself can be read as a narrative about history and cultural studies – a story of debts and differences, polemics and splits, convergences and renewed dialogue. The article urges us to recognize the implications for historical cultural studies of moves towards ‘culturality’ in history.
Consuming history and memory through mass media products
Authors: Baer Alejandro
Published: February 2009

The representation of the past through products of the ‘culture industry’ bears the history of a long debate between detractors and optimists. This controversy becomes especially significant in a time where commercial audiovisual media affect in unprecedented ways the content and the form in which massive audiences relate to the events of the past. Even more so in a so-called postmodern moment in which public confidence in the real is overall in decline. In this context, the debate on the representation of the history and memory of the Holocaust – the paradigmatic example of limitations and imperatives to representational practice – has become a contemporary battlefield regarding the legitimacy and propriety of mass media products. By examining contemporary Holocaust representations that are at the intersection between the world of commercial mass media and the conventional nonfiction culture and documentary tradition (such as high-tech museums and Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation), this article will reflect upon the diverse implications of the mass media–history relation.
Belongings
Authors: Morley David
Published: February 2009

This article is concerned with transformations in ideas of home, place, belonging and identity in the context of the transnational patterns of communication and mobility which increasingly characterize our contemporary, destabilized (or, according to some, deterritorialized) world. The article examines the cultural significance of the transgression of borders of various sorts which arises from these forces, and investigates how these transgressions are regulated in different circumstances. These issues are explored at both micro and macro levels, in relation to the household, the nation and the local or transnational community as ‘spaces of belonging’. The article argues for a ‘materialist’ version of cultural studies which is sensitive to both the symbolic and the material geographies within which people’s identities are formed.
Cultural identity in the community soap
Authors: Franco Judith
Published: February 2009

In Britain and Belgium home-grown community soap has proven instrumental in the public service’s wooing of the national/regional audience in terms of ratings, image building and the process of enculturation. The community subgenre, characterized by social commitment and realism, imposes itself as the public service’s privileged soap model and the culturally most specific soap model. As such Thuis/At Home, a home-grown nonexportable regional community soap, produced by the Flemish public service VRT, lends itself to an investigation of the articulation/construction of Flemishness conducted against the backdrop of a comparative study between Thuis and its British counterpart EastEnders. Through an examination of the construction of the community, social class and gender, as well as thematic preoccupations and a narrative/ideological analysis of representative storylines, I attempt to distil the unarticulated givens of Thuis’s social structure as indicative of the agenda of the society that watches the soap. Thuis’s preoccupation with conflict and crime coupled with authority-in-crisis, the influence of American soaps in terms of female stereotyping and lack of a common ground geographically, historically and in terms of class conspire to the construction of an imaginary, inward-looking community and a conservative worldview at the expense of female-centred narratives and difference. Cultural tropes and most importantly, an informal standardized language which has become the point of resistance against Dutch and French linguistic and cultural hegemony unify the heterogeneous Flemish community on and offscreen.
Global weds local
Authors: Juluri Vamsee
Published: February 2009

Globalization is frequently understood in terms of social, political, economic, and cultural processes, but there is, given the epistemological critiques raised by postcolonial theory, a need to address it as a representational practice as well. This article attempts to broaden the notion of globality in audience research and cultural studies by examining the investment media audiences make in certain kinds of meaning, and by posing the global as not only ‘what the world means’, in certain contexts, but ‘what means the world’ to viewers as well. A reception study in India of the immensely successful Hindi film Hum Aapke Hain Koun(1994), a festive celebration of weddings and family life, indicates how the family emerges as a category of such a notion of globality in the context of liberalization in India, and the broader historic context of the fragmentation of families under modernity. This article argues that, while the reception of this film indicates the articulation of consumerism and tradition in the context of the meeting of global capitalism and local forms of privilege, the audience’s investment in the family as a category of globality represents the possibility of epistemic opposition to hegemonic notions of the global. This possibility highlights the need for cultural studies to address the family as a site of struggle in modernity and globalization.
Invention, institutionalization and renewal in Uzbekistan's national culture
Authors: Adams Laura L.
Published: February 2009

Accounts of national renewal in the republics of the former Soviet Union tend to present these regions as awakening from a long slumber of cultural repression. In this paper I argue against this notion, examining the ways that Soviet cultural institutions developed some aspects of national culture in Uzbekistan while suppressing others. The effects of Soviet institutions and ways of thinking about culture are examined in the context of contemporary cultural production in Uzbekistan, specifically the production of national holiday spectacles. Based on observation of these events and on interviews with cultural elites, I outline Soviet schemas of culture and trace the effects of these schemas on the elite's conception and presentation of Uzbekistan's national culture today.
Reflections on varieties of culturespeak
Authors: Hannerz Ulf
Published: February 2009

This article discusses the various uses of culture concepts in contemporary public discourse. It notes that 'culture' is now often referred to in contexts of conflict, and that assumptions of cultural fundamentalism often become associated with xenophobia. This is one reason why some scholars are now critical of the culture concept. On the other hand, a cultural celebrationism viewing culture in esthetic and performative terms tends to disregard difficulties created by cultural difference. Huntington's 'clash of civilizations' scenario is criticized as an example of cultural fundamentalism, and a processual view of culture is proposed as an intellectual and practical resource for contemporary citizenship.
Photography, Memory, and the Construction of Identities on the Former East—West German Border
Authors: MEINHOF ULRIKE H. , GALASIŃSKI DARIUSZ
Published: February 2009

This article discusses pilot data for a major research project into the discursive construction of identity in three-generation families living in (former) border communities where each generation has experienced fundamental changes in their socio-political environment. The oral data on which the analysis is based were triggered by photographs from the communities in question, and are being analysed with discourse-analytical procedures. The article demonstrates how an innovative method of using symbolically-charged photography as triggers for oral narratives can solve a major dilemma for discourse analysts interested in oral data. It also demonstrates the processes of identity construction under highly conflictual circumstances. Using examples mainly taken from the narratives of three individuals from three different generations, living in a town on the border between the former GDR and West Germany, the article discusses the discursive means of coming to terms with different kinds of difficulties encountered by each generation in constructing for themselves an identity in the new Germany.
“Lovely”: turn-initial high-grade assessments in telephone closings
Authors: Antaki Charles
Published: February 2009

Do high-grade assessments (such as “lovely” and “brilliant”) have a use in marking episodes in mundane conversation? Inspection suggests that closing sequences in telephone conversations, when they include such embedded actions as making arrangements, have a slot which can be filled by a turn-initial high-grade assessment. I suggest that the high-grade assessment makes a special display of resuming a closing which had been suspended. I make a link between marked resumption in such mundane closings and more institutional agenda-marking, and speculate that using a resumptive high-grade assessment might display a claim to `ownership' of the closedown sequence.
Aspects of Aboriginal English oral discourse: an application of cultural schema theory
Authors: Malcolm Ian G. , Sharifian Farzad
Published: February 2009

This article examines how cultural schema theory has been employed to explore some aspects of Aboriginal English oral discourse. The merit of this approach lies in the explanatory tools provided by cultural schema theory in accounting for those features of oral discourse in Aboriginal English which are distinctive and which often impair its lucidity to non-Aboriginal speakers. In particular, we have focused on the exploration of (a) recurrent semantic and formal patterning across a large body of narratives, (b) evidence of speakers' use of indigenous schemas in associative responses as well as in processing oral narrative, and (c) schema maintenance in discourse in non-traditional settings and in the context of non-traditional subjects.
The Geneva Model of discourse analysis: an interactionist and modular approach to discourse organization
Authors: Filliettaz Laurent , Roulet Eddy
Published: February 2009

This article presents recent developments in the Geneva modular and interactionist approach to discourse organization. The first section analyses the main epistemological, theoretical and methodological properties of the Geneva Model by examining its relationship to data, communicative action, complexity and discourse organization, and then outlines the Geneva Model's modular methodology. The second section of the article focuses on a text extract from a service encounter and applies some aspects of the modular methodology to the analysis of request sequences. The authors argue that requests cannot be reduced to the utterance of single speech acts but are best described as complex discourse practices linking praxeological information, conceptual knowledge and textual competence.
Personalised revision of `failed' questions
Authors: Antaki Charles
Published: February 2009

In interviews, it may happen that a respondent gives an answer which seems well formatted, but is not receipted as acceptable by the interviewer. In this article I examine one way in which interviewers display their diagnosis of the problem and act to bring about its solution. In the cases I describe, the interviewers defer revision of the question until they have established a new, more personalized basis for it, informed by (and displaying) their knowledge of the respondents' circumstances. There are three things of interest. The first is how this actually works conversationally; it seems to be structured as an insertion sequence and played out by presequential turns which are highly projective of the respondent's agreement. The second is that the scenario that the interviewer inserts is (in these cases at least) a positive example of what would have been an answer to the `failed' original question. The third is that there is a difference between the original, general question and its subsequent, specific revision. I argue that all these features manifest interviewers' solution of their dilemma in choosing between literal and sensitive questioning.
Practice and history in archaeology
Authors: Pauketat Timothy R.
Published: February 2009

A new paradigm is emerging in archaeology herein dubbed ‘historical processualism’. A review of three contemporary approaches to the study of the past – neo-Darwinism, cognitive-processualism, and agency theory – suggests that the standard notions of ‘behavior’ and ‘evolution’ are being replaced in archaeological explanations by ‘practice’ and ‘history’. Behavioral analogies, commonly used to construct inferences about ‘why’ cultures changed, are problematic. In their place, archaeologists should substitute the study of cultural practices – what people did and how they negotiated their views of others and of their own pasts – as these were and are the actual processes of cultural change. The emphasis on practice entails the elevation of historical explanations, in the process altering the questions that archaeologists ask and the data that they must gather to address those questions. The importance of this paradigmatic shift is exemplified by contrasting contemporary explanations of Mississippian pottery and political change in the pre-Columbian American midcontinent.
The Limits of Culture in the Politics of Self-Determination
Authors: Murphy Michael
Published: February 2009

In this article, I take issue with a particular kind of liberal approach to self-determination which I refer to as culturalism. Encompassing both supporters and opponents of the right to self-determination, culturalism assumes that a normative defence of the right to self-determination stands or falls on the question of its instrumental importance to the preservation of a nation's distinctive culture. My argument, in contrast, is that in normative terms self-determination most fundamentally embodies a democratic claim. It is a nation's right to determine its own future as free as possible from external interference or domination by an external power. This is an expression of the political principle that legitimacy flows from the consent of the governed which, in this particular context, means that nations claim the right to choose how and by whom they will be governed, regardless of their cultural distinctiveness. My intention is not to construct a defence of the right to self-determination, but instead to show how culturalists obscure crucial aspects of the claim, thereby reducing our capacity to address the challenge of nationalism in a just and effective manner.
Gender remix
Authors: Prieur Annick
Published: February 2009

Values and practices regarding sex and gender are among the most fundamental constituents of a society's symbolic system, as well as of an individual's self. Gendered ways of behavior are symbolic markers of ethnicity, both in a process of labeling from the outside and in the construction of a subjective identity. Based on interviews with children of immigrants from patriarchal societies living in Norway — one of the countries in the world where gender equality has reached furthest — the article reveals the tension they experience between the ways gender issues are dealt with in their families and in the surrounding society. Their gender constructions can not be understood solely in the light of cultural influence, as if on a scale running from conformity to parents' culture to conformity to Norwegian culture. There is something really new in the making — new combinations and new creations — reflecting the particular social situation of the young people of immigrant origin. Feelings of obligations and debt toward the parents are strong, as well as the adherence to traditional family values. Still, there is clearly a tendency that ideas about individual rights, such as women's and children's rights to decide over their lives, are gaining influence.
Strategic organization of R&D: the choice of basicness and openness
Authors: Cassiman Bruno , Valentini Giovanni
Published: February 2009

Through a stylized model of the R&D process, this article shows how the strategic organization of R&D should simultaneously consider the choice of the type of R&D to be performed (basicness) and the organization of R&D, which includes the choice about the exposure of the R&D project to knowledge from outside the firm (openness).The authors identify how each of these decisions affects the expected benefits and costs (production, transaction and coordination costs) of R&D projects, and formally derive how these decisions interact.The fact that these decisions are customarily allocated to different agents with misaligned objectives pushes top management to strategically adjust the R&D strategy (i.e. the type of R&D performed) in order to affect the organization of the R&D project, an often times decentralized decision taken by a project manager. From the model, the authors develop several implications for theory, explain some observed empirical regularities in the management of R&D and derive novel testable implications.
Does Grassroots Lobbying Work?
Authors: Bergan Daniel E.
Published: February 2009

There are few reliable estimates of the effect of grassroots lobbying on legislative behavior. The analysis in this article circumvents methodological problems that plague existing studies by randomly assigning legislators to be contacted by a grassroots e-mail lobbying campaign. The experiment was conducted in the context of a grassroots lobbying campaign through cooperation with a coalition of groups lobbying a state legislature. The results show that grassroots lobbying by e-mail has a substantial influence on legislative voting behavior. The article concludes with a number of possible extensions of the study's design to other forms of lobbying and other problems in political science.
Assessment of Self-Recognition in Young Children with Handicaps
Authors: Kelley Michael F. , Sexton David , Burdg Nancy B. , Haynes Maureen D.
Published: February 2009

Thirty young children with handicaps were assessed using a series of five self-recognition mirror tasks developed by Bertenthal and Fischer (1978a, 1978b). The task data were submitted to a Guttman Scalogram. Generally, the set of items did form a reproducible scale, indicating these tasks are an appropriate measure of self-recognition in young children with handicaps. However, some general differences were noted between task performance by this sample and those reported by the authors for nonhandicapped young children, particularly, results obtained on task 1 (tactual exploration of the mirror). A partial correlation technique, controlling for chronological age, indicated that stage of self-recognition is positively and significantly related to cognitive development or mental age. Possible explanations for the observed differences are presented, along with recommendations for future research.
Pro IQ Testing
Authors: Richardson John C.
Published: February 2009

The controversy surrounding the issue of individualized intelligence testing may be entering the 500th year. Recent litigation has probably widened the gap between opponents in the controversy. This article explores six issues of that controversy: (a) questions related to the validity of the concept of intelligence and its testing (b) ethical issues, (c) legal issues, (d) racial/minority/cultural issues, (e) poor correlation between test results and teaching, and (f) alternatives proposed by various investigators. The author presents a proponent's position on the issue of individualized IQ testing and offers some suggestions to resolve the issues in each of the six areas of the controversy.
Interrater Reliability and Test-Retest Stability of the Developmental Activities Screening Inventory-II
Authors: Rose Terry L. , Calhoun Mary Lynne , Prendergast Donna
Published: February 2009

Problems using norm-referenced instruments to assess very young children with severe handicaps are significant. One alternative is to use criterion-referenced assessment instruments. While many psychometric characteristics common to norm-referenced tests are not appropriate for criterion-referenced assessment instruments, interrater reliability and test-retest stability (reliability) are appropriate, due to the formative, as well as summative, uses of these instruments. The Developmental Activities Screening Inventory II (DASI-II) was administered to a group of young ( M age = 24.1 months) children with severe handicaps. Results indicated that interrater reliability was statistically significant across raters for all scores reported by the DASI-II and that test-retest stability was statistically significant across administrations and raters.