The Trans Theory Case for Translation: Language, Gender, and Distributed Knowledge

For the world community UNESCO has developed international standards of media information literacy, which have been adopted by all UNESCO member countries. In Central Asia, Kazakhstan was the first to deal with these issues 10 years ago. The group of scientists of the Kazakh National University named by al-Farabi is working on studying this issue. Most of the scientific works on media education are aimed at justifying the need for media education in modern society and its value. The purpose of the article is the development of methodological materials on the formation of literacy in the field of media and information literacy for training target groups and informing the public. The authors of this article apply the methodology of comparative historical research, the methodology and technique of sociological research, the systemic and structural-functional approach in combination with comparative historical method and statistical data analysis, as well as the study of official documents characterizing the policy of international community and Kazakhstan. Also, content analysis and qualitative documents analysis, as well as comparative research methods, were used. As a result of the research, it was concluded that any conceptual design, scientific paradigm suffers to some extent with idealization and the conceptual approach of UNESCO discussion formed the basis for this review, causing positive expectations. However, media is not always socially-oriented tool. It is clear that in this scenario, it is not necessary to rely solely on the consciousness of journalists and self-censorship of editors. However, understanding the principal approaches of UNESCO and following the recommendations developed can control risks and contribute to the development of a full-fledged civil society. Practical significance of the research lies in the possibility of using its results in the field of media, psychology, pedagogy, culture, history, journalists, political scientists, social engineers, teachers, students and post-graduate students of universities. The results of the research can be integrated into the educational and upbringing processes. It is necessary to train target groups for the further dissemination and training of media and information literacy and to address the issues of forming a civic position in Kazakhstan.

There is an established association between neurodivergence and gender variance, with growing documentation of the challenges and inequities faced by those who exist at this intersection. This paper contributes a critical analysis of interviews with 24 autistic adults in the U.S. about their gender experience; yielding three themes: “gender divergence?”, “gender socialization on crip time”, and “either/or: whose intolerance for ambiguity?”. Results suggest that gender variance—if it is best understood as such—among those on the spectrum emerges through a complex set of relationships between participants’ bodyminds (e.g., sensory and cognitive styles); dominant cultural concepts of gender; and ableist and heterocissexist social relations. Neuronormative ways of knowing gender, institutionalized through biomedical research, healthcare, and social policy, emerge as a normalizing discourse contributing to the oppression and marginalization of participants as neurodivergent people. Justice implications of accounting for the epistemology of the neurodivergent bodymind and decentering neuronormative ways of knowing are discussed.

Transgender studies has emerged from a series of debates that have produced internal tensions, border wars and rifts. The rift I examine here concerns the politically volatile questions of how to think about and how to live gender variance. While some feminist, queer and transgender theorists have come to celebrate the critical potential of the allegedly more transgressive expressions of trans theories and lives, many transsexual theorists read this celebration as devaluing their lives and work. After outlining the transsexual critique, I examine to what extent their concerns are justified through an analysis of two key texts. I discuss strategies for challenging this rift, and argue that the potential for transforming it will depend on dismantling existing hierarchies and revaluing diverse forms of gender variance.

As the rhetoric of gender and trans theory has made its way into Shakespeare studies, critics and practitioners increasingly reach for “trans” as a lens through which to read and produce Shakespeare. This chapter points out that although both Shakespearean performance and criticism rely on the rhetoric of trans people and their bodies, actual trans people and bodies are predominantly absent from discourse and performance. This essay looks to readings of the “transgender” in Shakespeare as a way of grappling with both historicist and presentist methodologies, asking us to look beyond “the pants” of cross-dressed heroines to more subtle signifiers of gender nonconformity. The essay then tracks some ways in which education and outreach departments can engage trans and gender-nonconforming communities at the level of production.

To English readers, Chinese academic prose can appear insubstantial, a perception that scholarly discussion has often reduced to impressionistic views of interlingual difference. This perception fuels a “deficit” view prevalent in language pedagogy, which persistently characterizes Chinese academic authors without identifying a root cause beyond intercultural rhetorical patterns. This article argues that this “deficit” view rests on biased epistemological foundations that prioritize center languages over peripheral ones. Through a semiotic reappraisal of blankness – using examples from scholarly translation and cross-linguistic writing – this study recasts features typically deemed deficient as strategic omissions. Deconstructing disciplinary meaning-making with blank-sign theory, the analysis demonstrates that these features function as polysemantic relational markers whose interpretation depends on discursive norms and the reader’s situated knowledge. The study concludes that such a reappraisal is crucial for situating academic authors within the authentic socio-cultural context that shapes their choices. Integrating output features with authors’ linguistic backgrounds, this approach enables a more just and informed understanding of multilingual academic writing. The discussion offers an alternative to mainstream approaches, providing a linguistically neutral perspective to support pedagogical innovations aimed at fostering mutual understanding and reciprocal learning in intercultural scholarly communication.

The purpose of this study was to determine the differences in mathematical reasoning ability (KPM) based on gender variation (VG) and mathematical self-efficacy (SEM). Quantitative research was chosen to answer the research question. The research design used comparative causality on 75 students at a State University in Mataram City. Data collection was based on gender variance in the selected sample (51 women and 24 men, KPM test scores consisting of 5 items, and a 20-point SEM questionnaire, which were further categorized into 3 levels (low, medium and high). Analysis The data used two-way ANOVA with a 3 x 2 factorial design. The post-anava follow-up test used the turkey test. The results showed that male KPM was better than female KPM. Based on SEM category, student KPM at high SEM was better than student KPM at low SEM This finding emphasizes the importance of instructors being able to observe the characteristics of self-efficacy and gender variations that have an impact on the mathematics learning process.

In health law, notions of normality continue to shape legal frameworks in ways that do not always align with medical knowledge and social realities. Gender-sensitive medicine has long highlighted differences in symptoms and treatment effects, posing challenges for the statutory health insurance system. Further issues arise from gender variance, particularly regarding access to gender-affirming medical interventions. Legal rules on assisted reproduction are likewise shaped by normative assumptions and raise new questions in light of reproductive rights. This volume brings together interdisciplinary contributions from a conference hosted by INEGES.

The role of grammar in numerical development, and particularly the role of grammatical number inflection, has already been well-documented in toddlerhood. It is unclear, however, whether the influence of grammatical language structure further extends to more complex later stages of numerical development. Here, we addressed this question by exploiting differences between Polish, which has a complex grammatical number paradigm, leading to a partially inconsistent mapping between numerical quantities and grammatical number, and German, which has a comparatively easy verbal paradigm: 151 Polish-speaking and 123 German-speaking kindergarten children were tested using a symbolic numerical comparison task. Additionally, counting skills (Give-a-Number and count-list), and mapping between non-symbolic (dot sets) and symbolic representations of numbers, as well as working memory (Corsi blocks and Digit span) were assessed. Based on the Give-a-Number and mapping tasks, the children were divided into subset-knowers, CP-knowers-non-mappers, and CP-knowers-mappers.Linguistic background was related to performance in several ways: Polish-speaking children expectedly progressed to the CP-knowers stage later than German children, despite comparable non-numerical capabilities, and even after this stage was achieved, they fared worse in the numerical comparison task. There were also meaningful differences in spatial-numerical mapping between the Polish and German groups.Our findings are in line with the theory that grammatical number paradigms influence.the development of representations and processing of numbers, not only at the stage of acquiring the meaning of the first number-words but at later stages as well, when dealing with symbolic numbers.

Gender variance confronts widely held assumptions that children born as males will act like ‘boys’ and children born as females will act like ‘girls’. This imposed binary has the effect of perpetuating negativity towards people who express themselves with gendered variations in attire, behaviour or preferences. Despite the existence of gender-variant individuals in every culture and throughout time, many people are unaware that diversity in gender expression and sexual formation is a naturally occurring phenomenon. This qualitative study aimed to establish the needs of gender-variant children and their parents in order to inform education programmes, policies and clinical approaches to gender variance. Three Internet surveys were conducted to explore the experiences of parents raising gender-variant children, the childhood experiences of transgender adults and the views of professionals who work with the transgender community. The needs of gender-variant children emerged in terms of the need for information, peer contact, personal gender expression, safety, and to be heard and accepted by their parents. The most common needs for parents were for information (stories from other parents, research and guidelines; peer support) and educational resources for schools, professionals and local communities. The paper provides comparisons between the three participant groups and recommendations for future research.

This paper critically synthesizes leading edge scholarship on neurodiversity, arguing that sociology could expand its account for the relationship between self and society through attention to the (a)social practices of those constructed as neurologically disabled. Autistic scholar‐activism birthed the neurodiversity paradigm, which claims respect for neurological diversity and its social manifestations. Sexual and gender variation are among those. I review research on the confluence of neurological, sexual, and gender variance, pointing to opportunities for documenting the roles of social institutions in constructing and regulating divergent bodyminds, as well as new intersectional identities and social movements. Next, I synthesize nascent literature developing neuroqueer theory. “Neuroqueer” articulates the queer nature of neurodivergence and examines the entwinement of the two. Centering the epistemic authority of bodyminds problematized as lacking self‐control/intent, perspective‐taking, and reliance on the social symbolic, neuroqueer scholars forward (a)social ways of knowing, communicating, communing, and being human. Focusing on neuronormativity, interdependent with better‐recognized normativities (e.g., gender, ethnicity, etc.), neuroqueer theory offers fresh perspective on how dominant concepts and relations render some bodyminds problematic—legitimate objects of exclusion, marginalization, and “rehabilitation.” In doing so, it troubles sociological ideas about agency, sociality, communication, and what it means to be/have a (social) self.

This methodological article presents the research approach of semi-comparisons and describes how it could be applied in the field of media and communication studies. The point of departure is that cross-national collaborations do not necessarily always have to result in full-fledged comparative studies, but can “go halfway”, i.e. stay at the semi-comparative level. This is exemplified in terms of an ongoing long-term collaboration between Swedish and Ugandan researchers, focusing on sustainable communication involving the role of media as a provider of relevant information in the case of the climate change issue. The semi-comparative approach – here characterized by: 1) cross-national research connectivity, 2) activities in which one “puts one’s own nation in a wider context” and 3) spontaneous, cross-national research influences – enables the generation of knowledge about the universalism and particularism within the dimensions of mediated climate communication, which would not have been possible with a regular cross-national comparative study. Keywords : climate change, media, cross-national comparative research, semi-comparative approach, sustainable communication, universalism, particularism.

Turban and Ehrensaft (2018) have provided a thoughtful review of transgender identity in children and adolescents, emphasizing the benefits of the affirmative approach in maintaining positive psychological health in transgender individuals. The review reveals significant gaps in our understanding of gender identity regarding its nature, development, plasticity, causes, and links with other aspects of gender, and of the long-term benefits and costs of childhood social transitions. A full understanding of transgender identity requires studying cisgender identity too, and recognition that gender identity is continuous, develops across time and is not synonymous with gender expression or variations in gender-typed characteristics. Considerable evidence is needed before we can be confident that we are providing optimal treatment for children who are gender variant.

Many speech and language therapists work in a multilingual environment, making cross-linguistic studies of speech disorders clinically and theoretically important. To investigate the effect of listeners' linguistic background on their perceptual ratings of hypernasality and the reliability of the ratings. The speech samples were nine Cantonese non-nasal sentences produced by 22 speakers (20 speakers with hypernasality and two speakers with normal resonance). Twenty-four non-expert listeners (twelve Cantonese and twelve English) rated the speech samples using direct magnitude estimation. The Cantonese listeners gave significantly higher ratings to the female speech samples (mean = 76.02) than the English listeners (mean = 59.24; t = 3.189, p<0.05). The difference in direct magnitude estimation ratings between the Cantonese (78.57) and English (70.83) listeners was not significant for the male samples (t = 2.097, p>0.05). Despite the difference in numerical ratings between the two groups of listeners, the high correlations between their ratings indicated that they ranked the speech samples in terms of hypernasality severity similarly. Both groups of listeners showed high inter-judge reliability but low intra-judge reliability for rating the two sets of speech samples. There was a significant difference in intra-judge reliability between the Cantonese (r = 0.55) and English (r = 0.39) listeners for the male samples (t = 2.125, p<0.05). Generally, the non-expert Cantonese and English listeners ranked the Cantonese samples in terms of hypernasality in a similar way. The reliability of ratings by non-expert listeners was moderate. The need for further cross-linguistic studies into perceptual evaluations of speech disorders is highlighted.

In the present cross-linguistic study two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of age and linguistic background on response tendencies of preschoolers toward forced-choice questions. A total of 163 2- to 5-year-old children, including 63 Persian speakers, 57 Kurdish speakers and 43 English speakers, were asked a set of forced-choice, two option questions about familiar and unfamiliar objects. The results showed that, regardless of their linguistic background, children displayed a recency tendency in response to forced-choice questions. In addition, younger children exhibited a stronger tendency and this tendency was more pronounced when children were asked questions about unfamiliar objects. The findings suggest that recency tendency is a universal phenomenon. However, it grows weaker as children’s age increases. The mechanism of a recency tendency along with implications of the use of forced-choice questions with children is discussed.

The media in Europe have radically changed since 1990. But even within Europe, the processes or mechanisms of “oversight” varied according to individual political and cultural traditions. In effect a major element of the European media has been that they have been characterized by great diversity. The media in Europe are not only different media systems between the West and the East but also among the southern, central and the northern European countries. Hallin and Mancini, in their seminal work Comparing Media Systems, have suggested three models which describe the media systems in mainly “old” Western Europe. At the same time, their model has served as a theoretical landmark for most of comparative media systems studies and can still provide a useful framework for current comparative research on the media field. In effect, we consider that theoretical approach envisioned by Hallin and Mancini might still be a place for the concept of media systems among comparative studies in the digital era considering the new developments in the media systems. The latter are not simply a consequence of processes of globalization but also outcomes of technological change, policy making and economics and the Europeanization process which help give shape to the new world and to the media order. This book is based on some of the historical findings of a larger project entitled “European Media Platforms: Assessing Positive and Negative Externalities for European Culture” funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101004488. It aims to present an account of the contemporary media field focusing on the trends as well as on the problems the national media systems within the European Union face.