Seventeen years ago Gloria Ladson-Billings (1995) published the landmark article "Toward aTheory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy," giving a coherent theoretical statement for resource pedagogies that ...had been building throughout the 1970s and 1980s. I, like countless teachers and university-based researchers, have been inspired by what it means to make teaching and learning relevant and responsive to the languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students across categories of difference and (inequality. Recently, however, I have begun to question if the terms "relevant" and "responsive" are really descriptive of much of the teaching and research founded upon them and, more importantly, if they go far enough in their orientation to the languages and literacies and other cultural practices of communities marginalized by systemic inequalities to ensure the valuing and maintenance of our multiethnic and multilingual society. In this essay, I offer the term and stance of culturally sustaining pedagogy as an alternative that, I believe, embodies some of the best research and practice in the resource pedagogy tradition and as a term that supports the value of our multiethnic and multilingual present and future. Culturally sustaining pedagogy seeks to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling. In the face of current policies and practices that have the explicit goal of creating a monocultural and monolingual society, research and practice need equally explicit resistances that embrace cultural pluralism and cultural equality.
The aim of this paper is to carry out a review –albeit not exhaustive or definitive –of the main discussions in the field of translation theory on issues of identity and alterity, issues that are ...useful for understanding the debates on domestication and exoticization in the work of the translator. For this purpose, we focus on issues involving the language/culture interface inherent to the translation process.
This paper provides an overview of the features of caregiver input that facilitate language learning across early childhood. We discuss three dimensions of input quality: interactive, linguistic, and ...conceptual. All three types of input features have been shown to predict children's language learning, though perhaps through somewhat different mechanisms. We argue that input best designed to promote language learning is interactionally supportive, linguistically adapted, and conceptually challenging for the child's age/level. Furthermore, input features interact across dimensions to promote learning. Some but not all qualities of input vary based on parent socioeconomic status, language, or culture, and contexts such as book-reading or pretend play generate uniquely facilitative input features. The review confirms that we know a great deal about the role of input quality in promoting children's development, but that there is much more to learn. Future research should examine input features across the boundaries of the dimensions distinguished here.
The study explores the integration of linguistic landscapes into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) instruction within the context of contemporary Serbia, aiming to expand language awareness, ...lingua-pragmatic competence, and critical thinking among learners. Against the backdrop of Anglo-globalisation, the study seeks to establish a model applicable to foreign language teaching, with a focus on language contacts and their impact on the linguistic landscape. The research employs a comprehensive sociolinguistic analysis of the linguistic landscape in Serbia, investigating the anglicisation of official names of entities such as companies, shops, and agencies. The study scrutinises the corpus of linguistic landscapes to identify patterns and socio-linguistic phenomena, developing a model for integrating these landscapes into ESP instruction. The methodology encompasses qualitative and quantitative analyses, drawing on language data and sociolinguistic observations. The key research questions concern the identification of distinctive features within the sociolinguistic landscape of contemporary Serbia, particularly in relation to English language influences, the effective utilisation of linguistic landscapes as a teaching resource in ESP courses to cultivate language awareness and lingua-pragmatic competence, and the implications that the incorporation of linguistic landscapes has on cultivating critical thinking regarding language contacts in the broader sociolinguistic context. The research has identified significant instances of anglicisation in the linguistic landscape of Serbia, having highlighted the pervasive influence of English in specialised fields and popular language culture. The model proposed for ESP instruction has demonstrated the potential of linguistic landscapes in enhancing language competencies, language awareness, and creative thinking among learners. The findings suggest that linguistic landscapes serve as a valuable resource for language educators, particularly in ESP contexts as they provide a dynamic platform for language instruction. Incorporating linguistic landscapes can contribute to preserving language standards, addressing the challenges posed by language contacts, and nurturing critical thinking skills among learners. The study’s model offers a paradigm applicable to teaching various foreign languages, promoting a better understanding of language influences in the contemporary multilingual world.
As an important carrier of culture, poetry plays a significant role in deepening language learners' understanding of the target language culture as well as enhancing their language skills; however, ...the effect of the target language culture on language learners' enjoyment of poetry remains unclear. The study served as an attempt to shed light on the point of whether the target language culture has different effects on high- and low-level Chinese Arabic learners' fondness for Arabic poetry with the use of pictures related to Arabic culture and those not related to Arabic culture. In the current study, 40 Arabic learners (20 high-level and 20 low-level) scored the Arabic poem line based on their fondness for it after viewing two kinds of picture with electroencephalogram (EEG) recording. Frontal alpha asymmetry index as a correlate of approach and avoidance related motivation measured by EEG power in the alpha band (8-13 Hz) was calculated for examining whether the behavioral results of Arabic learners' fondness for poetry are in line with the results of changes in the related EEG components. Behavioral results illustrated that low-level subjects showed significantly less liking for Arabic poetry after viewing pictures related to Arabic culture compared to those not related to Arabic culture. The high-level subjects did not show a significant difference in the level of liking for Arabic poetry between the two cases. FAA results demonstrated that low-level subjects presented a significant avoidance-related responses to Arabic poetry after viewing pictures related to Arabic culture in comparison to viewing pictures not related to Arabic culture; while the FAA values did not differ significantly between the two cases in high-level subjects, which is in line with behavioral results. The findings of this research can benefit teachers in motivating students to learn poetry in foreign language curriculum and also contribute to the literature on the effect of target language culture on language learners' enjoyment of poetry.
Our study aims to analyze the concept of happiness in terms of their semantic content and verbal implementations. Linguistic analysis is tied to the lexicosemantic approach and fits into the modern ...directions of diachronic linguoculturology, and axiology. The transformations of happiness from the Archaic era through Christian culture to the present day are presented.
The fluidity of communicative practices in current intercultural communication research raises difficult questions about how we understand core concepts in the field. Links between linguistic ...resources, other modes, and cultures are created in situ suggesting that relationships between 'named' languages and cultures cannot be taken for granted. We frequently see emergent cultural practices and references which are neither part of any one culture or, crucially, necessarily in-between cultures. Thus, the traditional metaphor of 'inter' for intercultural communication is no longer adequate and such communication is better approached as transcultural communication where borders are transcended, transgressed and in the process transformed.
Abstract
In gesture studies, the adjective ‘recurrent’ has developed to distinguish a range of semiotic and conceptual
phenomena concerning the nature of meaningful bodily movements. This article ...begins with a brief and recent history of recurrent
gesture studies. We raise ongoing debates concerning the position of recurrent gestures on the so-called Kendon’s continuum, the
relation between gestures and practical actions, and the interplay between gesture’s cultural specificity and universality. A
selection of findings from previous research on recurrent gestures then acquaints readers with characteristics of these gestures:
their form-function pairings and context-variation, linguistic organization and multimodal constructions, and community-specific
typologies (from cultural, situational, as well as individual perspectives). Proposing to help build recurrent gesture theory, the
paper then recognizes that recurrency goes hand-in-hand with
diversity
– both in the ways these gestures exist
for members of a community and their role in the styles, habits, and creations of individuals.
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