Dehumanization Revisited Lazovic, Vesna
Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik,
01/2021, Letnik:
46, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Media reports have the power to change the opinions of the readership on any topic simply by repetitively using certain wording and structures. In certain cases, the reader may be prevented from ...forming an objective stance and unprejudiced perspective, which can prove dangerous if the topic in question is highly sensitive. Ever since the European refugee crisis in 2015, newspaper articles in the UK press have frequently used a range of dehumanizing language. This paper attempts to examine the issue by both quantitatively and qualitatively comparing the structures used to describe refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and immigrants in two consecutive years (2015 and 2016 respectively). Three British online newspapers were selected for this purpose: The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Independent. Through a combination of conceptual metaphor theory, critical discourse analysis (CDA) and corpus linguistics, this paper examines and analyzes the common collocations and metaphors used in media reports to refer to refugees at the outset of the crisis, and then again during the referendum year. The comparison between different periods is crucial, in that it can reveal whether expressions recur over time, especially because the media reports initially provided general information about the refugees such as their number and origins, but later also discussed the impact of the crisis on European countries. This analysis centres around the frequent use of dehumanizing language, which has not weakened over time, despite appeals from the UN Refugee Agency and numerous non-governmental organizations, who have sought to remind the press that words do matter in the migration debate. The findings show that dehumanization is recurrent and ubiquitous in this context, resulting in the reinforcement of inhumane media treatment of this vulnerable group.
Based on a corpus comprising online bank advertisements shown in the UK and Serbia, this paper aims at describing the most frequent ways of creating puns and classifying them based on their ...predominant structure. The function of puns in advertising is explained from the perspective of Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory (1995) and the behavioural AIDA model. This paper also tries to reveal whether the formal and semantic aspects of lexical units are exploited in British and Serbian bank offers, and whether there are any language- and culture-specific features in terms of punning.
By analyzing language use in online newspaper articles, this paper focuses first on the heated discussion regarding the appropriate term to be used in order to refer to these people, in particular, ...whether they are migrants or refugees and whether that issue matters at all. Further, it speculates about the importance of specific wording in these texts, since the language itself often influences our attitudes and the way of thinking, but also evokes mixed feelings, in this case empathy and intolerance. Finally, the paper concludes with recurrent metaphors used to describe refugees and their influence on our perception of the crisis.
Task difficulty is an important but complex phenomenon in Applied Linguistics, for which there is relatively little empirical research. This article discusses approaches to defining task difficulty ...and focuses on objective task difficulty derived from ratings of performances and on difficulty derived from an error count in the performances, thus taking errors as indicators of writing task difficulty. Errors are described in terms of the Scope–Substance error taxonomy in writing performances from the Slovene General Matura examination in English. The most frequent errors are located at word and phrase level. Generally, error frequency decreases as writing proficiency increases, but some error types do not conform to this trend. This is the case for punctuation errors, which gain prominence at higher levels of mastery. The results of this study are relevant for assessment, particularly for rating scale development or revision, and for rater training. They are equally relevant for teaching, since knowing sources of difficulty in tasks is a prerequisite for effective pedagogical action. More generally, if applied to performances based on a wider range of tasks, viewing errors as indicators of difficulty can lead to a better understanding of difficulty‐generating task features.
Povzetek
Težavnost nalog je pomemben, a zapleten pojav v uporabnem jezikoslovju, o katerem je razmeroma malo empiričnih raziskav. Prispevek obravnava pristope k opredeljevanju zahtevnosti nalog pri preverjanju pisnega sporočanja. Osredinjen je na njihovo objektivno zahtevnost, ki izhaja iz točkovnih ocen pisnih izdelkov in iz števila napak v izdelkih, kar pomeni, da napake obravnava kot kazalec zahtevnosti nalog. Napake opredeli po taksonomiji obseg‐vsebina in jo uporabi za ocenjevanje pisnih izdelkov na izpitu iz angleščine na slovenski splošni maturi. Najpogostejše napake se pojavljajo na ravni besed in besednih zvez; večinoma se njihova pogostnost zmanjša z naraščanjem pisne zmožnosti, vendar nekatere vrste napak ne sledijo temu trendu. Tak je primer napak v rabi ločil, ki so pogostejše na višjih ravneh znanja. Rezultati študije so pomembni za ocenjevanje, predvsem za razvoj in prenovo ocenjevalnih lestvic, pa tudi za usposabljanje ocenjevalcev. Dognanja so pomembna tudi za poučevanje, saj je razumevanje razlogov za zahtevnost predpogoj za učinkovito pedagoško delo. Širše gledano lahko napake uporabimo kot kazalec zahtevnosti tudi pri drugih vrstah nalog in s tem izboljšamo prepoznavanje in razumevanje tistih lastnosti nalog, ki prispevajo k njihovi zahtevnosti.
Metafore imajo moč strukturiranja naših zaznav in razumevanja, njihova večkratna uporaba v medijskem diskurzu pa lahko vpliva na ustvarjanje bralčevih negativnih sodb. To medijsko orodje je izjemno ...močno pri spreminjanju ideoloških prepričanj in sistemov, saj lahko medijska obravnava ranljivih skupin globoko ukorenini negativne implikacije in negativna stališča do teh ljudi. Kljub temu, da so na to problematiko opozarjale številne študije, se nehumana obravnava ranljive skupine beguncev ni spremenila, čeprav je minilo že kar nekaj let od začetka begunske krize leta 2015. V prispevku kvalitativno analiziramo poročanje o beguncih od junija do septembra 2018 v treh angleških spletnih časopisih: The Guardian, The Telegraph in The Independent. Analizirali smo 30 naključno izbranih člankov, ki so poročali o različnih dogodkih v zvezi z begunci in begunsko krizo. Namen te analize je ugotoviti, kako so o različnih dogodkih v tem časovnem obdobju poročali omenjeni angleški časopisi ter katere metafore so pri tem najpogosteje uporabljali. Rezultati kažejo, da so medijska poročila še vedno negativno obarvana in da se negativne metafore še vedno uporabljajo. Poleg široko razširjene vodne metafore, so se pojavljale tako vojne metafore kot tudi metafore, ki opisujejo begunce kot živali in kot blago oz. predmete. Označevanje in prikazovanje beguncev kot grožnje je zelo nevarno, saj se na ta način razvijajo in spodbujajo negativne družbene podobe ter tudi legitimizirajo zatiralske nacionalne prakse. Raba nestrpnega jezika lahko povzroča negativne podobe beguncev v javnosti, hkrati pa spodbuja ksenofobijo, marginalizacijo in diskriminacijo, zato bi bilo treba retoriko o beguncih in begunski krizi čimprej spremeniti.
Metafore imajo moč strukturiranja naših zaznav in razumevanja, njihova večkratna uporaba v medijskem diskurzu pa lahko vpliva na ustvarjanje bralčevih negativnih sodb. To medijsko orodje je izjemno ...močno pri spreminjanju ideoloških prepričanj in sistemov, saj lahko medijska obravnava ranljivih skupin globoko ukorenini negativne implikacije in negativna stališča do teh ljudi. Kljub temu, da so na to problematiko opozarjale številne študije, se nehumana obravnava ranljive skupine beguncev ni spremenila, čeprav je minilo že kar nekaj let od začetka begunske krize leta 2015. V prispevku kvalitativno analiziramo poročanje o beguncih od junija do septembra 2018 v treh angleških spletnih časopisih: The Guardian, The Telegraph in The Independent. Analizirali smo 30 naključno izbranih člankov, ki so poročali o različnih dogodkih v zvezi z begunci in begunsko krizo. Namen te analize je ugotoviti, kako so o različnih dogodkih v tem časovnem obdobju poročali omenjeni angleški časopisi ter katere metafore so pri tem najpogosteje uporabljali. Rezultati kažejo, da so medijska poročila še vedno negativno obarvana in da se negativne metafore še vedno uporabljajo. Poleg široko razširjene vodne metafore, so se pojavljale tako vojne metafore kot tudi metafore, ki opisujejo begunce kot živali in kot blago oz. predmete. Označevanje in prikazovanje beguncev kot grožnje je zelo nevarno, saj se na ta način razvijajo in spodbujajo negativne družbene podobe ter tudi legitimizirajo zatiralske nacionalne prakse. Raba nestrpnega jezika lahko povzroča negativne podobe beguncev v javnosti, hkrati pa spodbuja ksenofobijo, marginalizacijo in diskriminacijo, zato bi bilo treba retoriko o beguncih in begunski krizi čimprej spremeniti.
Moodle educational platform, which is based on socio-constructivist epistemology, is no longer a novelty in university-level teaching. The question is, however, to what extent the potential of the ...platform for collaborative work and the transfer of the central role from teachers to students has been operationalized in practice. Given that a significant part of the curricula of the philological academic courses involves writing texts, encouraging interaction among students on these tasks, which are usually performed independently, can be quite challenging. In this paper we examine the current practices in using Moodle at philological studies, in order to: identify the types of tasks used for achieving different teaching objectives, (b) analyze the reasons why other types of tasks are neglected and (c) determine the extent to which the platform is used for encouraging active participation and interaction among students. We present the results of the online questionnaire distributed to 44 teachers and associates at six universities from Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia during the summer semester of 2017/2018. As the obtained data are both quantitative and qualitative, we applied a combined data processing method – descriptive analysis and nonparametric tests: chi-square test, McNemar's test, and Kruskal-Wallis test. According to the results, Moodle is used in philological courses for faster communication, more transparent access to teaching materials, and monitoring students' activities, therefore, more as a support to predominantly transmissive than collaborative teaching. To make Moodle more widely used as a support to teaching based on socio-constructivist epistemology, training in its application should include learning about the benefits of this approach to teaching. The obtained results indicate that there is a need to develop and test new activities which support peer cooperation on textual tasks.
Increasingly, advertising examples are being analyzed and used as yet another form of communication, on account of their ubiquity (e.g. billboards, Internet, television, magazines). Designed to ...compel us to purchase products, advertisements have the potential to greatly impact our lives. They show current trends in social preferences, they reveal cultural values and norms of the target audience and, finally, they can be the mirror of the times people live in. The purpose of this paper is to give a brief overview of the findings in previously carried–out research relating to cross–cultural content analysis of advertisements. The reports have addressed both linguistic and extra–linguistic features and trends in advertising and emphasized language– and culture–specific elements. This paper also gives ideas for future studies, since nowadays, due to international marketing and increasing globalization there are more cultural transfers to be explored, as cultures are coming in contact far more frequently.
One of the advantages of using learning management systems is that they can enable autonomous online interaction (AOI) among students; however, in practice, this interaction generally does not take ...place. This paper presents and compares the attitudes of students who used Moodle (N=48) and Edmodo (N=28) during a translation course from the English Studies programme at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, in the spring semester of academic year 2016-2017. The goal of this research was to obtain student views on the usefulness, user-friendliness and user satisfaction for both platforms, in order to determine whether the lack of AOI within a course could be related to the platform used. Data collection was performed by means of a Likert-scale, open-ended and closed questionnaires. The quantitative data thus obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics, a t-test for unpaired samples, and a Mann-Whitney U-test for comparing groups. While the translation course was taking place, AOI on both platforms was analysed to ascertain whether the possibility of posting direct comments within Edmodo leads to a higher AOI than with Moodle, which does not offer this facility. Analysis showed no statisticallysignificant differences between the two groups for any of the variables. The combined questionnaire showed that, when questioned about what they saw as the most important benefits, both groups attached lowest value to the opportunity to communicate with their peers, and this is reflected in the absence of this type of interaction throughout the study period across both platforms. The paper presents possible reasons why this might be the case, and suggestions for encouraging more of this type of interaction.
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