Intercultural Phenomenon Research Articles

Translingualism and intercultural narratives in Kiana Davenport’s “House of Many Gods”

Language and culture contacts resulting from the migration of population, as well as current geopolitical and technological processes, enhance the increase of translingual works that reveal symbiotic phenomena of languages and cultures in contact. However, there are still many unsolved problems in defining the translingual discourse and linguistic devices for creating it. The article discusses intercultural narratives in a novel by Kiana Davenport, an American author of Hawaiian descent, whose literary creative translingual work is enhanced by intercultural phenomena related to the contacts of American English, Hawaiian, and Russian languages. The article aims to describe linguistic devices for creating translingualism and to characterize the processes that take place in assimilation and language alteration in contact situations. The research has revealed that translinguality characterizes not only texts that are written in a second language, as is a traditional point of view, but also writings of a bilingual with two native languages enhanced by a third one. Translinguality can be reached by various linguistic tools comprising lexical borrowings, including endonymic toponyms and culture-specific concepts, loan translations, allusions, as well as pidginization of speech and some others. The findings showed that pidginization of speech of different characters results in stylized dialogues with deviated articulation of English words, intentional grammatical deviations, set expressions from Hawaiian Pidgin and wordplay. The results of the paper expand the idea of translingualism and intercultural communication and can be used for further research into linguistic and cultural contacts.

THE COGNITIVE ESSENCE OF THE METAPHOR

THE COGNITIVE ESSENCE OF THE METAPHOR

Navigating Boundaries through Knowledge: Intercultural Phenomena in ELF Interactions

Abstract This study investigates intercultural phenomena in the process of recognizing cultural boundaries in online English as a lingua franca (ELF) video conferencing-based interactions. The recorded interactions between 20 conversational pairs were analyzed by adopting conversation analysis as an analytic framework. The participants’ intercultural perspectives are demonstrated through the action sequence of verifying the recipient’s knowledge status, informing, and complimenting, which are built by adopting category relevant knowledge of the cultural backgrounds of the recipients. The findings thus suggest that the participants employ knowledge of their own cultural repertoire in exchanges with unfamiliar cultural values as they navigate boundaries based on practical reasoning. More specifically, the participants categorize one another and use their procedural knowledge about familiar cultural practices of their own and the other’s country while displaying one’s affiliation to the recipients. This study concludes that ELF speakers’ experiences of navigating boundaries during first encounters are organized according to the method they use to negotiate and accommodate their cultural affinity, which is significant as it confirms that these practices are shared beyond a particular cultural domain.

Poly- / multicultural education in foreign language teaching

The paper considers poly- and multicultural education in foreign language (FL) teaching from the perspective of content components; and argues that the terms of polycultural’ and multicultural’ education can be used interchangeably as presented in many works by Kazakh, Armenian, Ukrainian, and other scholars from the post-Soviet countries. Thus, at large, it strives to align terminology in education and social sciences in the European and global professional academic contexts. Then, in a narrower sense, the objectives of the study aim at the description and analysis of poly- and multicultural education in foreign language teaching and methodology in connection to the class which is poly- or multicultural. The list and description of the educational components at the philosophical, professional, and methodological levels in the light of poly- and multiculturalism as psycholinguistic and intercultural phenomena in communication envelope in defining poly- / multicultural education in foreign language teaching. That results to account for the poly- / multiculture in communication via knowledge, behavior, emotional being, and leadership, to be established and cultivated as skills in a variety of in- and out-of-class activities raising students’ culture awareness and linguistic differences in the settings other than their own. Reflection as a thought provoking and insightful tool is considered to be brought to class in FL teaching through the coaching dialogue between the teacher and the student(s). It is concluded that reflection in foreign language teaching that focuses on poly- and multicultural education enables students to exercise and benefit from fast and effective language and culture code-switching, and results in well-developed hard and soft skills and competencies. Linguistic and cultural tolerance best evidences the dialogue of cultures and celebrates the thought leadership inside and outside classroom.

Glass Containers’ Aura: The Gestalt of Material Milieu

Crystal glass containers as novel artefacts in the early modern period acted out their function of containment as miraculous material events. Focusing on glass containers used to contain and constitute Buddhist objects in China's Qing dynasty (1644–1911), this essay provides historical and critical views on issues of aura and containment. Primarily, it examines the modalities and experiences of container and containment as expressed in the Qing court's material, religious and political practices. In doing so, the essay highlights the fusional relationship between matter and form, while also apprehending the metamorphosis between image and object in processes of transmedial translation and transcultural crossing or dislocation. It argues that glass containers used to simulate, animate and amplify the ‘aura’ of devotional objects manifested more general religio‐political and intercultural phenomena at that time. Those phenomena in turn invite reflections on material objects' immaterial expressions, and vice versa, in terms of the interplay between formal schema and amorphous force.

Mei Lanfang and Stanislavsky: The (De)construction of an Intercultural Myth on the International Stage

Mei Lanfang's contact with Stanislavsky during his 1935 tour in the Soviet Union and the latter's often-cited ‘appraisal’ of the acting of traditional Chinese theatre have exerted a profound and lasting influence on the Chinese understanding and evaluation of the art of their traditional theatre. Through extensive research into the related archival material, as well as contemporary records, this article investigates the historical facts and circumstances that underlie this historic intercultural moment on the twentieth-century international stage. It unweaves the historical construction of this remarkable intercultural phenomenon and exposes its political and ideological underpinnings as well as its theatrical and artistic placements and displacements. It underscores the necessity of deconstructing the creation of such an intercultural myth for today's historical understanding of the art of traditional Chinese theatre and, by implication, in a larger context, of the global making of twentieth-century intercultural theatre.

ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ ПОДРОСТКОВ, СКЛОННЫХ К ДЕВИАНТНОМУ ПОВЕДЕНИЮ: НА ПРИМЕРЕ РОССИЙСКИХ И УЗБЕКСКИХ ПОДРОСТКОВ

The study of the deviant behavior of adolescents from different cultures allows us to identify cultural differences in their psychological characteristics, as well as to determine the development tendencies of adolescents with deviant behavior. Deviant behavior of adolescents should be viewed as a social intercultural phenomenon. The formation of deviations in the sociocultural behavior of a teenager, on the one hand, can lead to destructive behavior, on the other hand, it allows teenagers to realize their innovative potential and reach a new level of their own development. Results of the research: in the opinion of the authors, the revealed high indicators on the scale of lies of Uzbek adolescents, which represent the reluctance of respondents to socially desirable answers, are interesting. This reflects the specifics of their real thinking and behavior. They have a heightened standard of moral judgment, as well as a special way of perceiving social norms. Emotionally focused coping strategies prevail among Russian adolescents in resolving conflict situations, while among Uzbek adolescents the strategy of avoidance prevails. Practical significance: The development of a psychological and pedagogical program for working with adolescents, prone to deviant behavior, will help to improve the quality of communication with them, and as a result – to improve the psychological climate in families and school collectives, reduce the level of xenophobic attitudes, increase the level of awareness and competence of parents and teachers in understanding the genesis of deviant behavior and ways to prevent it.

Этнокультурный неотрадиционализм как ресурс формирования идентичности в современных социокультурных трансформациях

This article aims to explain ethnocultural neo-traditionalism as a tool for the formation of ethnic and national identity and for identification of possible interconnection and synergy of these types of identity. The authors interpret ethno-cultural neo-traditionalism and identity problems as the global manifestation of ambiguous consequences of the contemporary socio-cultural transformations. They argue for treating it as a resource for the formation of ethnic and national identity, analyzing the problems and contradictions arising in this case. The potential possibilities of the proposed conceptual scheme are illustrated by two illustrative cases: Breton (Celtic people in France) and Selkup (Siberian people in Russia). In order to achieve this goal, besides the case study, the authors have used sociocultural approach in its authorial interpretation, which allows considering ethnocultural neo-traditionalism, first, as an inter-cultural phenomenon — the effect of interaction between different ethnocultures — and second, as an integrative policy that consolidates the potential of the ethnos in synchrony and diachrony. The analysis of Breton neo-traditionalism from the abovementioned positions allowed to reveal such features as participation in the Breton cultural movement of authentic bearers of tradition, its transmission to new generations through direct immersion in a living tradition, participation in the movement of families and its mass character, absence of borders between spectators and performers, accumulation of various modifications and local variations of cultures, enrichment of tradition with modern elements and experimentation, urban localization of holidays, formation of cultural industry, and organization of international cultural festivals, inclusive of various social and cultural practices. Such experience, presented in the Selkup cultural movement, forms and confirms a positive ethnic identity with the assistance of the state. Cultural expansion and international recognition of ethnocultural non-traditionalism practices remove the problem of local ethno-political ambitions and strengthen national identity as a prerequisite for the development of ethnic identity. Thus, the analysis shows the possibilities of cooperation, synergy of national and ethnic identities based on the implementation of the strategy of ethno-cultural non-traditionalism.

Intercultural Capital in the Development of the Postmodern World

Abstract. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1984) defined the term capital. This term denotes the stock of our cultural knowledge, and this phenomenon is also mapped into the domains of interculturality. Thus, in postmodernity, intercultural capital is increasingly talked about, which entails first acquiring intercultural knowledge and then its practice at different levels, with particular emphasis on the role of education in the process of acquiring it. This type of education entails understanding, adopting and nurturing intercultural phenomena such as intercultural communication, competences, intercultural dialogue, sensibility, etc. All of the above play a very important role in the global world we live in, directly reflecting on all its aspects, including the economic and business stability of the world.

The Big-Fish-Little-Pond Effect on Academic Self-Concept: A Meta-Analysis.

The Big-fish-little-Pond effect is well acknowledged as the negative effect of class/school average achievement on student academic self-concept, which profoundly impacts student academic performance and mental development. Although a few studies have been done with regard to this effect, inconsistence exists in the effect size with little success in finding moderators. Here, we present a meta-analysis to synthesize related literatures to reach a summary conclusion on the BFLPE. Furthermore, student age, comparison target, academic self-concept domain, student location, sample size, and publication year were examined as potential moderators. Thirty-three studies with fifty-six effect sizes (total N = 1,276,838) were finally included. The random effects model led to a mean of the BFLPE at β = −0.28 (p < 0.001). Moreover, moderator analyses revealed that the Big-Fish-Little-Pond effect is an age-based process and an intercultural phenomenon, which is stronger among high school students, in Asia and when verbal self-concept is considered. This meta-analysis is the first quantitative systematic overview of BFLPE, whose results are valuable to the understanding of BFLPE and reveal the necessity for educators from all countries to learn about operative means to help students avoid the potential negative effect. Future research expectations are offered subsequently.

Comunicação Intercultural e os Desafios do Profissional em Secretariado Executivo em Organizações Multinacionais

O fenômeno da interculturalidade manifesta-se cada vez mais nas organizações multinacionais como resultado do estreitamento das fronteiras empresariais através de um contínuo processo de globalização que permite o acesso de diferentes países ao cenário corporativo nacional e vice-versa. Nesse cenário, diversos profissionais têm contato cotidiano com diferentes línguas e culturas e novos desafios são postos aos que transitam nesses contextos. Por esse motivo, o objetivo desta pesquisa é investigar quais são os desafios que os profissionais egressos do curso de Secretariado Executivo Trilíngue de uma Universidade Federal mineira encontraram nas organizações multinacionais em relação à comunicação intercultural em sua prática profissional diária. Para tanto, buscou-se analisar como a formação acadêmica colaborou para que um grupo de profissionais lidassem com encontros interculturais em seus respectivos locais de atuação. Trata-se de um estudo qualitativo, de cunho descritivo, que se utiliza de narrativas escritas sobre experiências de formação e atuação profissional em organizações multinacionais. Como resultado, os participantes mostraram que o conhecimento a respeito de ambientes multiculturais necessita ser mais bem compreendido, debatido e explorado para que os profissionais se tornem de fato mais capacitados para lidar com os trâmites próprios da carreira em organizações multinacionais.

A Monolithic “Dead End” or a “Hybrid Exit”? Cultural Hybrids Facing National Image Construction &amp; Their Role in the History of Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication in the context of national construction is often associated exclusively with our era of globalization. But, in fact, it has been present for over 150 years, in reference to multi-ethnic regions, in particular. Therefore, the paper goes back to the origins of cultural hybridity as a historical and intercultural phenomenon, facing the emergence of national image construction, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the nature of intercultural communication and thus shed new light on our socio-cultural problems, with national and post-national backgrounds. The analysis is on one hand focused on Central European borderland, namely Austrian-Silesia, as a crown land of the Habsburg Monarchy, at the end of 19th century, and on the other, based on theories by Homi Bhabha, Wolfgang Welsch, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Martin Buber, Benedict Anderson or Miroslav Hroch.[1]

Literature: A Step in the Right Direction

Literature offers the opportunity to encounter worlds beyond one’s own circumstances, environment, and situation. As an intercultural phenomenon, literary critique and analysis without borders can only be achieved by recognising cultural borders. Reading the literature of different cultures opens literary discourses to cross-cultural dialogue, but for too long, the lack of Indigenous literature within Australian literary discourses stymied the social potential of this intercultural phenomenon. Pressure from the global literary community has necessitated a vast shift of white consciousness to actively embrace narratives of different cultural dimensions, and novels that highlight cultural borders have become a key feature of Australian literature. Invisible literary borders have become apparent through exposure to the once silent voices that now emphasise messages of difference. Indigenous writers including Alexis Wright, Sally Morgan, Kim Scott, Jackie Huggins, Anita Heiss, Larissa Behrendt and Alice Nannup have opened reader consciousness to a broad scope of Indigenous perspectives. Within the arena of literary theories, the writer, reader and novels themselves have all had moments of glory, and while particular texts or authors have been immortalised, others have slipped into oblivion. Through the first person narrative of a non-Indigenous woman, this paper reveals how an intercultural literary experience revealed the restrictions of standard literary critique practices and inspired the creation of a relational discourse to engage with Indigenous voices as part of a methodological process. This intercultural literary process has the potential to inspire cultural awareness through acceptance and understanding of difference to overcome cultural unconsciousness. Such development has the capacity to destabilise invisible borders embedding lasting change in the consciousness of Australian readers and provide a foundational and fundamental step toward sustainable outcomes for Indigenous people.

THE ECOLOGY OF MOTOR DEVELOPMENT IN COASTAL SCHOOL CHILDREN OF BRAZIL NORTHEAST

Background: The prevalence of motor delays (MD) in schoolchildren is an intercultural phenomenon which is particularly present among socio-economically disadvantaged children. Objective: to describe and explain the proximal processes for the development of fundamental motor skills (FMS) in schoolchildren from an elementary school (ES) in a coastal city in the Northeast of Brazil. the objective of this study was to describe and explain the proximal processes for the development of fundamental motor skills (FMS) in schoolchildren from an elementary school (ES) in a coastal city in the Northeast of Brazil. Methods: This was a quali-quantitative study. The quantitative aspect was characterized by the use of the Test of Gross Motor Development Edition 2 to evaluate the fundamental motor skills of 104 children from 7 to 10 years old, 56 boys (8.2±1.0 years) and 48 girls (8.3 ± 0.9 years). Regarding the qualitative aspect, the researcher ecologically placed himself in the context and used non-systematic and non-participant observations and interviews with 7 parents, representing the parents-board of the school, 7 Physical Education teachers and 11 classroom teachers from different schools. Data analysis: the qualitative data were organized using the content analysis synthesis. The quantitative data were treated using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, distribution and frequencies) and inferential statistics (Student t-test). Results: The results revealed that 95.1% of children present MD in locomotor skills and 81.7% in object control skills; girls showed poorer performance compared to boys (p < 0.001). Considering the Bioecological model the MD can be explained by the absence of physical infrastructures and material resources, lack of opportunities and poor teacher training. However, the main explanation was the absence of a pedagogical program to foster MP in schools and youth sports programs. Yet, the Bioecological model allowed us to establish that the MP interferes the way that children interact with the context. Conclusions: It can be inferred that part of the solution to the problem lies in the coordination of exosystem actions (Municipal Department of Education) and in changes to the macrosystem (educational legislation) which guarantee the microsystems (schools and social sports projects) the means to promote MP in children.

Mehrdeutigkeit und Humor in der Übersetzung

This paper is dedicated to the concept of ambiguity and humor as an intercultural phenomenon. In the first section, we introduce different concepts of the term humor in literature from the perspective of literary and cultural studies, psychology and cognitive linguistics. We attempt to show that the concept of humor and ambiguity of an intercultural and interlingual perspective may belong to the most difficult areas of translation theory. At the same time, humor and polysemy are the key concepts of a semantically and pragmatically based theory of translation. In the second section, we will briefly deal with the phenomena of humor and ambiguity from the psycholinguistic and cognitive point of view and thereby we try to analyze the difference between visuality and textuality of Shakespeare’s tragedy “Romeo and Juliet” in film and on stage. The third section of this paper is devoted to the phenomenon of interculturality and the interlingual translation of pragmatic and cognitive-semantic categories on the example of polysemy, vagueness, irony, pun, word play and joke (and its various strategies and conversational implicatures in the literary text). It is assumed that initially the validity of the Relevance criterion (Sperber & Wilson 2005) and the validity of the principle of cooperation are in play, even in a text that is commonly considered as ‘meaningless’. We want to prove the example of James Joyce’s ‘Finnegans Wake‘, demonstrating that even such a seemingly illegible or difficult text that has often been considered non transferable, in a certain pattern and its narrative potential of the storyline, in the dynamics and in the progression descends from and is determined by the VALIDITY of the criterion of relevance. In another part of this third section, we turn to the Elizabethan drama of Shakespeare and the novel Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais, Ulysses by James Joyce as well as the unforgettable Novel by Jaroslav Hašek Brave Soldier Švejk, showing how wit and irony work and can be translated.

Ashkenazi Pentateuchal Chant: A Sixteenth-Century German-Christian Interpretation

Abstract Much attention has been given to the pioneering achievements of the Christian Hebraists of the sixteenth century in transcribing the essential elements of traditional Torah chant into Western musical notation. One of these transcriptions, however, is unique. Johannes Reuchlin’s De Accentibus et Orthographia Linguae Hebraicae of 1518 contains not only the ‘accents of biblical recitation’ themselves, but also a complete four-part harmonization of these tropes by one of Reuchlin’s students, Christoph Schilling, in the German choral style of the period. Although Schilling’s arrangement of the individual accents has been mentioned in passing by numerous scholars, it has never been published in a modern edition, nor applied to the actual practice of chanting biblical texts. In this article, I discuss some of the general background to cantillation, accentuation, and the role of the German Humanists in preserving this oral tradition in written form. Comparisons between sixteenth-century and twentieth-century biblical chant are made in relation to the melodic and harmonic characteristics of Schilling’s notation, and this leads to an assessment of some of the problems concerning the realization of these raw materials for ‘live’ performance. Three short extracts from the Pentateuch are then presented as working examples based upon Schilling’s arrangement. In conclusion, the possible motives and intentions behind this intercultural phenomenon will be considered, as will its significance in the long history of Judeo-Christian syncretism in music.

The Run-up to the Beijing Olympics in Switzerland and Italy

In recent years scholars from different branches of human sciences have studied Olympic ceremonies as a modern intercultural and cross-cultural phenomenon. In our global village the efforts and results of the Olympic organization committees, along with all the publicity surrounding the games, are magnified by television – mass medium par excellence – by the Internet and by the new media as an innovative means of communication introduced during the Beijing Olympics. Focusing on the first symbolic event, the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony, which took place on 24 March at Olympia in Greece, an exploratory analysis will be presented on how the Italian and Swiss media reported and interpreted the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games by examining audiovisual material gathered from television, newspapers, the Internet and social networking websites. This study will focus on the event itself but other moments will be considered in light of their relevance for this analysis.

Publication d'auteurs roms contemporains de Russie : « l'intérieur », « l'extérieur » et le « vrai Romano »

In the introduction a brief review of the USSR Romany literature up to 1991 is given. After a short and intensive period of its writing development (1927-1938), up to 1990-s, publications were very few and issued in Russian. In the body of the article peculiarities of Romany writing development are shown by the example of the most remarkable prose publications of the recent time. Thus, they are represented with memoirs (О. Demeter-Charskaya), a fixed (written) form of spoken history (О. Petrovich), and much rarely by literary forms as such, i.e. stories, plays, poems (G. Tsvetkov). The relationship between experience of expressive work of Romanies authors in the area of music and dramatic art, their social relations in the macro society and use and development by them of written forms of literature, not typical for the Romany culture which is traditionally word-of-mouth, is shown.The natives-foreigners social dichotomy (‘Roms/not Roms’) which is a significant concept of the traditional culture influences arrangement of the Roms’ communication space divided into an inner (native) and an outer (foreign) spheres. Both, peculiarities of written literary forms functioning in this space and influence of these forms on the space itself are shown. Mutual influence of traditions and innovations is confirmed, particularly by the fact that written forms (and their authors) may be perceived as peripheral in relation to the center of an ethnic culture but they at the same time represent a special type of boundary literature, a inter-cultural phenomenon which develops at the boundary of the Romany and the macro society cultural contact.Variety of forms and trends of Roms’ written literature development is due to both peculiarities of ethnic cultures and languages of countries of their settlement and peculiarities of the language and culture of Romanies groups as such. Thus, it is possible to consider the phenomenon of Romany literature in aspect of peculiarities of Romanies literatures as part of national literatures, and in aspect of general peculiarities of the Romany literary process.In Table 1 periodization of Russian Romany literature development is given, the relationship between social processes and development of Romanies literary genres is shown.In Table 2 the relationship between literary forms and social relations of authors is given.

A patient perspective in research on intercultural caring in maternity care: A meta-ethnography

The aim of this study is to explore and describe a patient perspective in research on intercultural caring in maternity care. In total, 40 studies are synthesized using Noblit and Hare's meta-ethnography method. The following opposite metaphors were found: caring versus non-caring; language and communication problems versus information and choice; access to medical and technological care versus incompetence; acculturation: preserving the original culture versus adapting to a new culture; professional caring relationship versus family and community involvement; caring is important for well-being and health versus conflicts cause interrupted care; vulnerable women with painful memories versus racism. Alice in Wonderland emerged as an overarching metaphor to describe intercultural caring in maternity care. Furthermore, intercultural caring is seen in different dimensions of uniqueness, context, culture, and universality. There are specific cultural and maternity care features in intercultural caring. There is an inner core of caring consisting of respect, presence, and listening as well as external factors such as economy and organization that impact on intercultural caring. Moreover, legal status of the patient, as well as power relationships and racism, influences intercultural caring. Further meta-syntheses about well-documented intercultural phenomena and ethnic groups, as well as empirical studies about current phenomena, are suggested.

Ethnography and Hermeneutics in Cybercultural Research Accessing IRC Virtual Communities

This article suggests a qualitative methodological framework and a holistic-historicistic epistemological perspective that balances the sociopsychological and cultural dimensions of IRC Virtual Communities. CMC cultural research should not be focused on intercultural collision phenomena alone, but also on cultural construction from inside the Net. An ethnographic strategy discovering cybercultures together with Gadamer's hermeneutics for the interpretation of systems of meanings are the proposed tools for understanding “virtual” life and cultural production within the Net.