Search results for "ta612"

Negations and negativity as linguistic devices in policy discourse of intercultural cities

2015

International audience; Intercultural cities – a joint initiative launched in 2008 by the European Commission and the Council of Europe – aims to develop a model supporting intercultural integration within diversified urban communities. This article examines, using methods of applied linguistics and discourse analysis, how intercultural urban policy is linguistically produced in the initiative. The examination indicates that the intercultural urban policy in the initiative is ‘negative politics’: the policy rhetoric commonly outlines the content of interculturalism by describing what is not included in it and what the policy is not about. The language used in the intercultural urban policy …

Semiotics of pride and profit: interrogating commodification in indigenous handicraft production

2014

This study investigates the shifting terrain of pride, profit and power relations in minority language communities under contemporary globalisation. While “pride” associates linguistic-cultural heritage with identity and preservation, “profit” views these as sources of economic gain. In contemporary late capitalism, “pride” seems to be increasingly giving way to “profit”. Arguing that this transformation needs to be interrogated in terms of complexity and that a detailed, multilayered semiotic analysis can open a privileged window for such an inquiry, this study combines critical multimodal discourse analysis and an ethnographic approach to analyse processes of semiotic commodification in h…

Multilayered perspectives on language policy in higher education : Finland, Estonia, and Latvia in comparison

2016

This article analyses language policies in higher education (HE) in Finland, Estonia, and Latvia, as well as the European Union (EU). We take a multilayered approach to language policies in order to illuminate the intertwined nature of local, national, and international language policies in HE. We are particularly interested in the construction of national language(s) and the language(s) of internationalisation in our case countries. Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share common features as relatively small non-Anglophone countries in the Baltic region, while simultaneously having somewhat differing political and cultural histories. The results of our discursive analysis indicate that while the…

Dialogicality and spiritual quest in Christian metal lyrics

2013

Abstract: Christian metal (CM) music provides a good example of how religious discourse is undergoing change in today’s world. CM merges religion with popular cultural forms and ways of expression, thereby also transforming the meaning of religion and religious practice. However, the phenomenon has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention; most writers have treated CM as yet another example of North American Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). The present article takes a detailed look into what is “said” by Finnish CM groups with a particular focus on religious ideology in a context outside the original national and religious context of the genre. Drawing on the sociology of langu…

“I be da reel gansta”—A Finnish footballer’s Twitter writing and metapragmatic evaluations of authenticity

2015

This article explores the ways in which ‘gangsta’ English features are deployed, evaluated and adopted in two types of social media, the web forum and Twitter, within the domains of hip hop culture and football (soccer) culture, from the dual perspective of authenticity and normativity. Empirically, we aim to break new ground by investigating the intricate interconnections between two social media formats and combining two highly popular but previously seldom connected cultural forms—football and hip hop. Our theoretical aim is to contribute to the current debate on authenticity, normativity, popular culture and social media, and the complex ways in which they are connected. We focus, first…

Multimodal accomplishment of alignment and affiliation in the local space of distant meetings

2017

Technology-mediated (i.e. distant) meetings are complex settings that involve distributed participation frameworks and the coordination of actions in multiple interactional spaces. This paper examines how problems with hearing, speaking, or understanding in the overall meeting space enable the negotiation of alignment and affiliation by co-present participants in the same local meeting space. Conversation analysis is used to investigate the local accomplishment of alignment and affiliation achieved through the sequential and temporal organization of verbal, embodied, and material resources of interaction in three types of situations: during technological trouble, silences, and disagreements…

An exploratory study on the attitudes of elderly Finns towards Russian-speaking minorities

2018

Research has shown Russian speakers in Finland are often victims of prejudice and discrimination. Utilizing integrated threat theory, this study investigated the extent to which threats are signifi...

The foreign language teaching profession in Finnish and Japanese society: a sociocultural comparison

2016

The social basis of a teaching profession is created through behavioural and cultural patterns, specific artefacts, and their connection to certain institutional practices. The purpose of this study is to discover the conditions that structure the teaching profession in a cultural context and to find out what it is to be a foreign language (FL) teacher in Finland and Japan. Both countries have high educational equality but with contrasting patterns of management policies that are manifested in their teacher education curricula. Educational policy documents as well as teacher interviews and classroom observations were conducted in both countries and the findings compared by one Japanese and …

Authenticity, normativity and social media

2015

Narrative Tools for Games : Focalization, Granularity, and the Mode of Narration in Games

2015

This article looks at three narratological concepts—focalization, granularity, and the mode of narration—and explores how these concepts apply to games. It is shown how these concepts can be used as tools for creating meaning-effects, which are understood here as cognitive responses from the player. Focalization is shown to have a hybrid form in games. This article also explores the different types of narrators and granularities in games, and how these three concepts can be used to create meaning-effects. This is done by discussing examples from several games, for example, Assassin’s Creed III, Skyrim, Fallout: New Vegas, and Civilization.