title: Cry, baby, cry: A dialogic response to emotion

authors: White, Elizabeth Jayne

abstract: This article challenges traditional approaches to emotion as a discreet biological or dialectic process in the early years. In doing so the proposition is made that emotion is an answerable social act of meaning-making and self-hood. Inspired by Bakhtinian philosophy, which resists separating emotion from cognition or the individual from their social milieu, the dialogic interplay that takes place between an 18-month-old infant, adults, and peers in a New Zealand Education and Care setting is explored from an emotional volitional standpoint. Drawing on eleven hours of polyphonic split-screen video footage taken from the visual perspective of the infant and those around her, language acts and their interpretive aftermath are presented as intersubjective and alteric (i.e., altering) communicative acts. Taken together they recaste infant emotionality as a highly strategic socially oriented process of embodied performance through selective employment of genres that "speak" to the adult. The article argues that such a renewed appreciation of infant emotion has potential for understanding very young children as strategically acting upon as well as responding to the environment that surrounds them. As such there is potential to view emotional acts as answerable performance, with revealing implications for those who share in infant experience.

text: Cry, baby, cry: A dialogic response to emotion This article challenges traditional approaches to emotion as a discreet biological or dialectic process in the early years. In doing so the proposition is made that emotion is an answerable social act of meaning-making and self-hood. Inspired by Bakhtinian philosophy, which resists separating emotion from cognition or the individual from their social milieu, the dialogic interplay that takes place between an 18-month-old infant, adults, and peers in a New Zealand Education and Care setting is explored from an emotional volitional standpoint. Drawing on eleven hours of polyphonic split-screen video footage taken from the visual perspective of the infant and those around her, language acts and their interpretive aftermath are presented as intersubjective and alteric (i.e., altering) communicative acts. Taken together they recaste infant emotionality as a highly strategic socially oriented process of embodied performance through selective employment of genres that "speak" to the adult. The article argues that such a renewed appreciation of infant emotion has potential for understanding very young children as strategically acting upon as well as responding to the environment that surrounds them. As such there is potential to view emotional acts as answerable performance, with revealing implications for those who share in infant experience.

year: 2013

title: Response to George Parker

authors: van Zyl, Liezl

abstract: George Parker quite rightly claims that the focus of the debate about ARTs needs to be on women’s health, rather than on abstract philosophical questions regarding for instance the personhood of embryos, as this is a central moral concern that is not always taken as seriously as it should be when it comes to surrogate motherhood and egg donation. We also think reproductive justice is a helpful framework for evaluating current practices in these matters. In particular, we share Parker’s concerns about the import of gametes from less regulated jurisdictions. The risk that the gametes have been gained in coercive or exploitative situations is a real one. The right of any child born of donated gametes to know his or her genetic origins also precludes sourcing anonymous gametes. Willing, registered donors are required regardless of whether gametes are imported or donated locally. It may be possible to extend the range of potential donors beyond New Zealand borders if a similarly regulated system was willing to export gametes.

text: Response to George Parker George Parker quite rightly claims that the focus of the debate about ARTs needs to be on women’s health, rather than on abstract philosophical questions regarding for instance the personhood of embryos, as this is a central moral concern that is not always taken as seriously as it should be when it comes to surrogate motherhood and egg donation. We also think reproductive justice is a helpful framework for evaluating current practices in these matters. In particular, we share Parker’s concerns about the import of gametes from less regulated jurisdictions. The risk that the gametes have been gained in coercive or exploitative situations is a real one. The right of any child born of donated gametes to know his or her genetic origins also precludes sourcing anonymous gametes. Willing, registered donors are required regardless of whether gametes are imported or donated locally. It may be possible to extend the range of potential donors beyond New Zealand borders if a similarly regulated system was willing to export gametes.

year: 2015

title: Te Tuhirau i Rehu i Ringa: Translating Sacred and Sensitive Texts: An Indigenous Perspective

authors: Tipene, Jillian

subjects: translation

abstract: This thesis centers on translator cognition. Through a series of interviews and think-aloud protocols (Chapters 3 – 5), it explores the ways in which a sample of translators (both Māori and non-Māori) negotiate the complex issues involved in translating between a local, Indigenous language (Māori) and an international one (English) and, in particular, how they approach the definition and translation of texts that could be regarded as being ‘sacred’ and/or ‘sensitive’. In their definitions of ‘sacred’ texts and ‘sensitive’ texts, all of the participants exhibited a peculiarly postmodern positioning, focussing primarily on perspective rather than on any absolute concept of truth or reality. With the exception of the Māori participants’ traditional definition of, and approach to texts deemed to be ‘tapu’ (see Chapter 3), all of the participants expressed beliefs about the translation process which were largely structurally-orientated. They emphasized the importance of respecting the cultural context out of which texts emerged and of attempting, in translation, to reflect the meanings deemed to reside in the source texts by virtue of the intentions of their authors. As witnessed in their think-aloud protocols, however, when involved in the actual process of translation the translators did not always adhere to the views expressed in their interviews, with translation procedures ranging from one that was primarily modernist and structural in orientation (but also reflecting the careful attention to co-text and cohesion that is characteristic of much recent research on discourse analysis) to one that was primarily postmodern and post-structural in orientation, being highly personal, autonomous and individualistic.  

In the absence of any clear agreement about translation theory in the literature on translation (see Chapter 2), and at a time when pre-modern, modern and postmodern positioning and structural and post-structural perspectives vie for acceptance, each of the participants in this research project appears to have found his or her own way of traversing the complex terrain of translation practice without necessarily being fully aware of the way in which the decisions they made positioned them theoretically. What this suggests is the need for a type of training that introduces novice translators in an explicit way to a variety of theories about human language and communication and the ways in which they can impinge upon translation practice, thus creating a context in which translators are able to make critically informed decisions about how they will proceed in any particular instance, why they will proceed in these ways, and what is required in order to ensure that their beliefs about translation are in accord with their actual practices. Critical awareness of these issues is likely to be particularly important in the case of those involved in translating between international languages such as English and more localized, Indigenous languages such as Māori, where discontinuity in the transmission of the language has occurred and where, therefore, texts that are deemed to be of particular significance would otherwise be unavailable to those for whom the texts form part of their cultural heritage.

text: Te Tuhirau i Rehu i Ringa: Translating Sacred and Sensitive Texts: An Indigenous Perspective This thesis centers on translator cognition. Through a series of interviews and think-aloud protocols (Chapters 3 – 5), it explores the ways in which a sample of translators (both Māori and non-Māori) negotiate the complex issues involved in translating between a local, Indigenous language (Māori) and an international one (English) and, in particular, how they approach the definition and translation of texts that could be regarded as being ‘sacred’ and/or ‘sensitive’. In their definitions of ‘sacred’ texts and ‘sensitive’ texts, all of the participants exhibited a peculiarly postmodern positioning, focussing primarily on perspective rather than on any absolute concept of truth or reality. With the exception of the Māori participants’ traditional definition of, and approach to texts deemed to be ‘tapu’ (see Chapter 3), all of the participants expressed beliefs about the translation process which were largely structurally-orientated. They emphasized the importance of respecting the cultural context out of which texts emerged and of attempting, in translation, to reflect the meanings deemed to reside in the source texts by virtue of the intentions of their authors. As witnessed in their think-aloud protocols, however, when involved in the actual process of translation the translators did not always adhere to the views expressed in their interviews, with translation procedures ranging from one that was primarily modernist and structural in orientation (but also reflecting the careful attention to co-text and cohesion that is characteristic of much recent research on discourse analysis) to one that was primarily postmodern and post-structural in orientation, being highly personal, autonomous and individualistic.  

In the absence of any clear agreement about translation theory in the literature on translation (see Chapter 2), and at a time when pre-modern, modern and postmodern positioning and structural and post-structural perspectives vie for acceptance, each of the participants in this research project appears to have found his or her own way of traversing the complex terrain of translation practice without necessarily being fully aware of the way in which the decisions they made positioned them theoretically. What this suggests is the need for a type of training that introduces novice translators in an explicit way to a variety of theories about human language and communication and the ways in which they can impinge upon translation practice, thus creating a context in which translators are able to make critically informed decisions about how they will proceed in any particular instance, why they will proceed in these ways, and what is required in order to ensure that their beliefs about translation are in accord with their actual practices. Critical awareness of these issues is likely to be particularly important in the case of those involved in translating between international languages such as English and more localized, Indigenous languages such as Māori, where discontinuity in the transmission of the language has occurred and where, therefore, texts that are deemed to be of particular significance would otherwise be unavailable to those for whom the texts form part of their cultural heritage.

year: 2014