Search results for "ethnic"

“Come join us, and lose your accent!” : Accent Modification Courses as Hierarchization of International Student

2021

In this article, we examine the hierarchization of international students by bringing together perspectives of linguistic legitimacy and language ideologies. Our data stems from 26 accent reduction (AR) or accent modification (AM) course descriptions and websites from US universities. Based on their analysis, we discuss the socio-political implications of the phenomenon of these courses for international students and the ways in which language-based, particularly accent-based, arguments are used to create or reinforce different categories of students. We argue that while international students are presented as having different kinds of “comprehensibility problems” that AM/AR courses are cla…

The Indulgent Parenting Style and Developmental Outcomes in South European and Latin American Countries

2013

This chapter reviews recent literature analysing relationships between parenting styles and developmental outcomes. As opposed to traditional results obtained with Euro-American samples, evidence from emergent research in South European and Latin American countries indicates that adolescents from indulgent families scored equal or even better than those from authoritative families in many key indicators of psychosocial adjustment, and that the indulgent parenting appears as the optimum parenting style in these samples. This research suggests that authoritative parenting is not always necessarily associated with optimum developmental outcomes and that relationships between parenting styles a…

Multi-Everything London

2008

Translating international gender-equality institutional/legal texts

2013

Drafting international institutional/legal texts is one of the most delicate instances of social writing, as it affects our lives at personal, social and collective levels. In an era in which full equality between the sexes is promoted, international legislative and political bodies are especially encouraged to remove any traces of racial, ethnic or sexual discrimination. In this paper my primary aim is to analyse how international gender-equality texts – carefully worded and crafted in English – are translated into Spanish, one of the world’s leading languages and one of the main doors to (international) effective gender equality. Gender-equality institutional texts are highly sensitive, a…

“Bridging Old Relations”: The (De)Construction of Ethnic Identity in the Educational Context of Bosnia and Herzegovina From the Teachers' Point of Vi…

2017

ABSTRACTThe present study focuses on an educational arrangement in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) known as “two schools under one roof.” The term refers to two different ethnic groups (Bosniaks and Croats) physically sharing the same school building, but maintaining separate administrations, teaching staff, and curricula. The purpose of the study is to explore the manner in which teachers (seven Bosniak and four Croat) from the two ethnic groups perceive and construct their group identities within this context. Findings indicate that the teachers’ sense of belonging to different ethnic groups is strong and that the use of language functions as a vital marker for expressing group identity. In …

Baltic and Finnic linguistic relations reflected in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages

2014

The article provides insight into the reflection of Baltic and Finnic language contacts in geolinguistic studies of the Baltic languages. These contacts have a rather long history, and are particularly intense between the Latvian language and Finnic languages (especially Livonian and Estonian). In Lithuanian, Finnic borrowings have mostly appeared through Latvian, and fall into the dialectal Lithuanian vocabulary. The analysed material makes it possible to distinguish several areas of Finnic influences in Latvian sub-dialects. They are as follows: 1) the territory of the Livonian dialect which originated from Latvian-Livonian contact; 2) the sub-dialects along the Estonian border; 3) the su…

Voices in discourses: Dialogism, Critical Discourse Analysis and ethnic identity

2006

In this article we attempt to combine the Bakhtinian, dialogical philosophy of language and critical discourse analysis (CDA) with our analysis of ethnic identity. The data we discuss are an interview with a Sami journalist who works in the Sami media. We analyse the interview from the points of view of dialogism and CDA to illustrate how identity must be understood as something which is both individual and social in nature.  We reject the earlier essentialist interpretations of identity which see it as purely individual and psychological in nature. At the same time, we argue that those views of identity that see it as exclusively socially constructed can be misleading as well. We aim to il…

Music video covers, minoritised languages, and affective investments in the space of YouTube

2017

AbstractWhile interest in affective processes has led to an affective turn in cultural studies, in sociolinguistics this perspective has been given less attention. This study takes up the ‘lens of affect’ and directs it on two cases exemplifying the circulation of minoritised languages in new media spaces: music video covers from two minority-language contexts, Irish and Sámi, uploaded on YouTube. Combining recent theorising on affect with insights from sociolinguistic research, the study investigates how the YouTube users’ affective investments contribute to a (re)evaluation of the two minoritised languages, their speakers, and the related ethnic/national belongings, and how these investme…

Interethnic studies of TNF polymorphisms confirm the likely presence of a second MHC susceptibility locus in ankylosing spondylitis

2000

The objective of this study was to investigate TNF promoter region polymorphisms for association with susceptibility to ankylosing spondylitis (AS). The TNF -238 and -308 polymorphisms were genotyped in 306 English AS cases and 204 ethnically matched healthy B27-positive controls, and 96 southern German AS cases, 58 B27-positive and 251 B27-negative ethnically matched controls. Additionally, the TNF -376 polymorphism was genotyped in the southern German cases and controls. In the southern German AS patients a significant reduction in TNF -308.2 alleles was seen, compared with B27 positive controls (odds ratio 0.4, P = 0.03, 95% confidence interval 0.2-0.9), but no difference in allele frequ…

Introduction: Seamus Heaney’s Europe

2016

Seamus Heaney’s Europe is a space of contradictions. On the one hand, there is his belief in the principle of the national and ethnic identity understood in essentialist terms. On the other hand, there is a vision of the European tradition as multi-layered and devoid of clear outlines and a stable centre. The two moments inform Heaney’s work and are examined in the context of literary fascinations and interdependencies.