Cultural Mosaic Research Articles

Sustainability from Social Commitment to Tourist Attraction: Terminological Approach to European Green Capitals Brochures

The tourism industry currently represents a relevant sector of the international market and a fundamental resource for countries like European ones, which offer a heterogeneous mosaic of histories and cultures. Such sector is, however, characterized by an ever-changing nature depending on the constantly evolving needs, habits, and awareness of different types of travelers. Far from investigating the largely discussed concept of sustainable tourism, this article aims to examine from a linguistic perspective the concept of urban sustainability as a tourist attraction in the context of the European Green Capitals Award (EGCA) and the relative terminological effects on the language of tourism. A corpus-driven approach was used to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the terminology used in the brochures of the European Green Capitals selected from 2010 to 2021, which are included in the section Environment of the European Commission website. Following a quantitative analysis of the data, a qualitative analysis was conducted to interpret the meaning and the degree of technicality of the sustainability-related terms used in the corpus and their potential employment in the field of tourism. The corpus analysis was intended to provide evidence of those new linguistic structures used in texts like EGCA brochures which, being addressed to a wide range of readers, may directly or indirectly influence tourist interests and tourism promotional language as well.

Sustainability from Social Commitment to Tourist Attraction: Terminological Approach to European Green Capitals Brochures

The tourism industry currently represents a relevant sector of the international market and a fundamental resource for countries like European ones, which offer a heterogeneous mosaic of histories and cultures. Such sector is, however, characterized by an ever-changing nature depending on the constantly evolving needs, habits, and awareness of different types of travelers. Far from investigating the largely discussed concept of sustainable tourism, this article aims to examine from a linguistic perspective the concept of urban sustainability as a tourist attraction in the context of the European Green Capitals Award (EGCA) and the relative terminological effects on the language of tourism. A corpus-driven approach was used to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the terminology used in the brochures of the European Green Capitals selected from 2010 to 2021, which are included in the section Environment of the European Commission website. Following a quantitative analysis of the data, a qualitative analysis was conducted to interpret the meaning and the degree of technicality of the sustainability-related terms used in the corpus and their potential employment in the field of tourism. The corpus analysis was intended to provide evidence of those new linguistic structures used in texts like EGCA brochures which, being addressed to a wide range of readers, may directly or indirectly influence tourist interests and tourism promotional language as well.

SİİRT YÖRESEL YEME İÇME KÜLTÜRÜNÜN ALTERNATİF TURİZM POTANSİYELİ AÇISINDAN DEĞERLENDİRİLMESİ

The changing socio-economic conditions in the world have also changed the demands and expectations from the tourism sector. For this reason, alternative tourism activities, which have been developing rapidly since 1980, have emerged. These activities were primarily used in areas where tourism is well developed, to spread tourism throughout the year by using the existing tourism infrastructure. Alternative tourism activities have turned into great opportunities to bring tourism to areas that have not met tourism before. Turkey has numerous geographical locations, cultural and social landscapes that can be evaluated in terms of alternative tourism resources. The unique eating and drinking culture of almost every city in Turkey has also revealed great potential for "gastronomy tourism", which is one of the alternative tourism activities. However, it cannot be said that this potential has been sufficiently evaluated yet. The research area is located in the Dicle Section of the Southeastern Anatolia Region. In Siirt, which has hosted many cultures throughout history, the culture of foodways is quite diverse. The natural geographical features and human texture of the settlement are effective in the emergence of this culture. Turkish, Arab, Kurdish and Armenian cultures are the stakeholders that shape the traditional foodways culture of Siirt. The existence of materials and traditional dishes such as “Büryan”, “Severkitel”, “Kitel” proves the cultural mosaic. There are some ritualized behaviors in the preparation of traditional dishes in Siirt. Especially in the production of labor-intensive local dishes, there are "imece" behaviors that are on the verge of extinction in most of Anatolia. The foodways culture of the region has been effective in the emergence of the local architecture. Especially in “Cas houses”, there are functional spaces designed for foodways culture. In the research area, the development of the foodways culture is also observed in the commercial life of the city. Especially the excess of places that are expressed as "buryanist" can be shown as proof of this. There has been an increase in the number of establishments that make other local dishes in recent years. This situation will become more widespread if Siirt is included in the itineraries of gastronomic tours to the Southeastern Anatolia Region.

Exploring Autism, Culture, and Immigrant Experiences: Lessons from Sri Lankan Tamil Mothers.

Background: Canada is home to a mosaic of cultures with immigrant communities from a wide range of countries, but there are significant variations in how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be understood across different immigrant groups, including Sri Lankan Tamils. Such gaps in knowledge may present challenges for immigrant families that are trying to access appropriate care for their child, including occupational therapy services. Purpose: This descriptive qualitative study aimed to better understand the experiences of immigrant Sri Lankan Tamil parents of children diagnosed with ASD in Southern Ontario, Canada. Method: Interviews were analyzed using an in-depth content analysis. Findings: Results demonstrated parents’ perceived supports and barriers towards ASD intervention planning, and indicated that parents were generally satisfied by the level of cultural competence in current ASD systems. However, families may still experience significant immigrant-related barriers that are not fully addressed. Implications: Recommendations to improve cultural awareness among occupational therapists utilizing ASD interventions are suggested.

Chimeric chromosome landscapes of human somatic cell cultures show dependence on stress and regulation of genomic repeats by CGGBP1

Genomes of somatic cells in culture are prone to spontaneous mutations due to errors in replication and DNA repair. Some of these errors, such as chromosomal fusions, are not rectifiable and subject to selection or elimination in growing cultures. Somatic cell cultures are thus expected to generate background levels of potentially stable chromosomal chimeras. A description of the landscape of such spontaneously generated chromosomal chimeras in cultured cells will help understand the factors affecting somatic mosaicism. Here we show that short homology-associated non-homologous chromosomal chimeras occur in normal human fibroblasts and HEK293T cells at genomic repeats. The occurrence of chromosomal chimeras is enhanced by heat stress and depletion of a repeat regulatory protein CGGBP1. We also present evidence of homologous chromosomal chimeras between allelic copies in repeat-rich DNA obtained by methylcytosine immunoprecipitation. The formation of homologous chromosomal chimeras at Alu and L1 repeats increases upon depletion of CGGBP1. Our data are derived from de novo sequencing from three different cell lines under different experimental conditions and our chromosomal chimera detection pipeline is applicable to long as well as short read sequencing platforms. These findings present significant information about the generation, sensitivity and regulation of somatic mosaicism in human cell cultures.

Текст-игра: интертекстуальность киноискусства как отражение сознания эпохи (на примере фильма А. Штерс «Мадам»)

Rationale. Interest in the knowledge of the art language essence, the search for different models of its description and study are typical not only for modern science in general, but also for cognitive approach in culture studies in particular. This explains the publication relevance, that is expressed in the accumulative function of language and culture, connecting the outside world objects and human consciousness, providing a systematic and orderly reality image. The article aim is to objectify the problem of correlation between the understanding the real world principles and the modeling artistic reality principles on the example of the film “Madam” (2017) directed by A. Sthers. To reach this purpose is possible by the solution of such research objectives: - Analysis of the film intertextual nature, given the European cultural experience - from the medieval farces and Shakespeare's theatre to the postmodern novel, from the Leonardo da Vinci's frescoes to D. Buren's conceptualism. The key element of this cultural mosaic is the Baroque tradition with its gameful nature. - Designation of the author image status in the text: the film plays out the situation when the writer's artistic reflection goes beyond his individual consciousness, modeling the real situation and at the same time objectifying itself in the verbal text. There is a subtle image of the subjective process of the modeling “second reality” beneath the outwardly unpretentious comedy film plot. - Actualization the games category. The associations freedom and the wide scope of combining meanings constitute the Baroque combinational game essence - the game as the creative thought manifestation, as the human culture essence. There are surprisingly witty (in the Baroque sense) parallels with the L. Carroll's “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through The Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There”, V. Nabokov's “Luzhin's Defense”, S. Zweig's “Chess Novella”. The analysis of these “chess” texts reveals their semantic commonality with the film artistic organization. The setting objectives led to the useing of three research methods: the structural semiological, the intertextual and the hermeneutic methods of the filmtext research. The study found that the inner film semantic core includes the following oppositions: truth and lie; freedom and unfreedom; emptiness and fullness. Overall, A. Sthers playing a kind of “the glass bead game” party, in which she makes actual the Baroque artistic thinking, given the postmodern discourse experience and using associative links with a variety of culture periods and culture texts. The neo-Baroque character of the modern worldview is determined largely by the problems of human knowledge possibility limits, of the illusory nature of the hypothesis about the world that human consciousness constructs - the problems that were first put with the greatest clarity in the Baroque era. This same era affirms the universality of the moral world foundations, loyalty to which allows you to escape from the illusions world.

The Representation of the “Other” in the Turkish TV Advertisements

Turkey, which has a rich cultural mosaic, consists of the combination of many ‘Others’, including cultural, religious and ethnic the ‘Others’; the ‘Other’ as a gender role; as refugees, emigrants, etc. In such a multicultural climate, our research aim is to identify the stereotypes that represent the ‘Other’ in TV advertisements on Turkey’s mainstream channels. For this purpose, we examined 101 prime-time TV commercials that were broadcast on the five most watched mainstream TV channels between September and December 2020.
 Having conducted the quantitative and qualitative content analysis of TV commercials, we revealed the symbolic annihilation of the ‘Others’ in the Turkish advertising environment, which is accordance with the conservative perception of the country. In line with the international research, we came to the conclusion that the white Turkish men with medium-high socioeconomic status were heavily represented in the prime-time Turkish TV advertising. Nevertheless, it was also revealed that gendered visibility of the others as well as women portrayals were considered only as the ‘Other’ in the Turkish TV ads. Besides, our research findings overwhelmingly reflect the hegemonic culture and highly traditional views on gender roles.

Fragmentary coverage of Roma traditions in Romanian interwar periodicals

This study identifies 25 Roma traditions, fragmentarily represented in 10 texts, which were discovered by the author in Romanian interwar periodicals. Traditions are an integral part of the Roma identity (in addition to the Romani language and the Romani crafts); they are used by the Roma only in the Romani environment, in a specific historical, socio-economic and territorial context. The author conventionally divides the Roma traditions into 5 functional compartments: 1) traditions that regulate the way that Romani crafts are fulfilled; 2) traditions that regulate everyday social relations within the Romani community; 3) traditions that regulate the relations between Roma and government authorities; 4) traditions that reveal the way the Roma express themselves towards the variety of external natural and social phenomena; 5) traditions that regulate the development of the marriage ceremony among the nomadic Roma community. The main objective of this study is focused on the partial disclosure and variable description of Roma traditions, applied in a specific historical, socio-economic and territorial context, to facilitate the process of building the cultural mosaic of the Roma, which is part of the European cultural mosaic.

ЕТНОЛИНГВИСТИЧЕН ПОГЛЕД КЪМ ЛЕКСИКАТА НА ТРАДИЦИОННАТА НАРОДНА КУЛТУРА НА БЪЛГАРИТЕ МЮСЮЛМАНИ ОТ КСАНТИЙСКО/AN ETHNOLINGUISTIC VIEW OF THE LEXIS OF THE TRADITIONAL FOLK CULTURE OF THE MUSLIM BULGARIANS FROM XANTHI

The article examines individual fragments of the traditional folk culture and the corresponding dialect vocabulary of Muslim Bulgarians from Northern Greece, Xanthi, through the prism of ethnolinguistics. The author, who is a representative of the Moscow Ethnolinguistic School founded by academician N. I. Tolstoy, explores culture as an overall picture of the world in the unity of all its forms – verbal (dictionary and folk-lore texts), actional (rituals) and mental (beliefs). On the basis of expedition materials collected personally in 2018–2019, the author sketches the current cultural and linguistic situation in the region, which is characterized by multilingualism. Special attention is paid to the terminology belonging to the sphere of calendar customs and folk mythology. So far, the author has come to the conclusion that the analyzed customs and beliefs, as well as their vocabulary, are a multi-layered and multicultural phenomenon including archaic linguistic relics and Christian and Muslim representations and symbols, which interact with each other, creating the unique cultural mosaic of the Southern Rhodopes. Keywords: ethnolinguistics, dialect vocabulary, folk culture, Muslim Bulgarians, Northern Greece

Multicultural Little Italy: A Literary Comparison of Canadian and US Urban Enclaves

Drawing on Paul Moses’ An Unlikely Union: The Love-Hate Story of New York’s Irish and Italians (2015), this article explores the history and literary reflection of multicultural cities. Particularly, Louisa Ermelino’s novel The Sisters Mallone (2002) challenges accepted views of certain urban enclaves as ghettos. This assumption obscures cross-cultural relations and renders superficial the term multicultural as only a mosaic of discrete cultures living together. In this respect, a comparison to official multiculturalism in Canada discusses the complex nature of identity and belonging. A unique case study is Quebec, as is reflected in the position of the trilingual writer and the affiliation to world literature. This article is divided into two parts. Firstly, it analyzes a literary text that looks at US ethnic relations beyond conflict and segregation. The second part, using Italian/Canadian literary history, reflects on Canada as a multicultural country characterized by cultural diversity yet where cultural difference entails unequal power relationships such as regarding migrants and migrant literature.

China's imaginary of ecological civilization: A resonance between the state-led discourse and sociocultural dynamics

The field of science, technology and society (STS) calls for greater geographical diversity that draws attention to ‘the rich mosaic of non-Western cultures.’ This perspective provides cultural insights into the construction of the imaginary of ecological civilization in China. From the lens of sociotechnical theory, this perspective presents the discourses and practices constitutive of ecological civilization. We argue that ecological civilization operates as an imaginary that builds on both state-led environmental narratives and sociocultural traditions. In particular, the Chinese perception of human-nature relationships, represented by the principle of “Unity of Man and Nature,” constitutes a key cultural feature in the collective vision of a desirable life of Chinese people. The perspective piece shows how sociocultural roots might mediate or antagonize relations between national and community aspirations. Moreover, ecological civilization extends beyond any single sector or technology, and the unified diversity projected by the imaginary is a co-production of local knowledge with the normativity embedded in ecological civilization.

Review and Synthesis of the Early Neolithic Cultural Development in Fars, Southern Iran

After the eve of domestication of some wild species of cereal grains as well as sheep, goat, and pig in the Iranian central Zagros Mountains in the 2nd half of the 8th millennium BC, the process of Neolithization and sedentism began with earnest outside of this core region. This initial Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) phase appeared in Lowland Susiana, in the province of Khuzestan, southwestern Iran, and in highland province of Fars around 7200 BC. While the Pottery Neolithic (PN) phase in Susiana developed into a set of regionally uniform material culture, the contemporary PN landscape in Fars developed into a mosaic of regional cultures with both related and unrelated ceramic tradition. Yet, from the onset of PN, these early communities had inter-regional connection, as the presence of Persian Gulf shells, copper, and obsidian in many of these early settlements indicate. This mosaic of different ceramic traditions eventually developed into two distinct pottery traditions with specific geographic distribution in northern and southeastern Fars.

Poesia chinesa clássica em co-tradução: horizontes desde a torre da cegonha

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, the course “Poetics of Translating - mosaic of cultures” took place, during which emerged a co-translation project of the poem a€Sc™»e¹³e›€ae¥¼a€‹ by Wang Zhihuan (cŽ‹a¹‹ae¶£) (688─ 742), Chinese poet from the Kaiyuan Era of the Tang dynasty. The description of the collective process of interpretation and rewriting aims to problematize the reach of the gaze in the face of a conceptual regime of imagination so distant in time and space, exploring linguistic and poetic potentialities of Portuguese.

Cultural mosaics, social structure, and identity: The Acheulean threshold in Europe

The period between 600 and 400 ka is a critical phase for human evolution in Europe. The south and northwest saw a dramatic increase in sites, the spread of handaxe technology alongside bone and wooden tool manufacture, efficient hunting techniques, and the use of fire. Lithic assemblages show considerable variation, including the presence/absence of handaxes and tool morphology. To explain this variation, we propose the Cultural Mosaic Model, which suggests that there is a range of expressions of the Acheulean, with local resources being instrumental in creating distinct material cultures with or without handaxes. We argue that if typologically and technologically distinct assemblage types are regionally distributed, chronologically separated, and persistent over time, then they are unlikely to be caused purely by raw material constraints or functional variation but rather reflect populations with different material cultures. We initially assess the model using British data. Britain was a northwestern peninsula of Europe, and oscillations in climate led to episodic occupation. The terraces of the pre-MIS 12 Bytham River provide a framework for dating occupation to MIS 13 and 15, while during MIS 11, archaeological sites with rich environmental records can be dated to substage level. We suggest there are six chronologically and typologically distinct assemblage types that reflect a series of population incursions into Britain. We review the broader European lithic record, which is consistent with the Cultural Mosaic Model. In developing the model, we suggest that during stable climate, localized cultures developed, while climatic change led to shifts in population, with increased knowledge exchange and gene flow. We suggest that group expression through material culture was an important stage in social development by promoting group cohesion, larger group size, better cooperation, improved knowledge transfer, and enabling populations to survive in larger foraging territories in northern Europe.

Medical Cultures, Therapeutic Properties, and Laws in Global History

Medical Cultures, Therapeutic Properties, and Laws in Global History

Adverse perinatal outcomes of intimate partner violence during pregnancy

Purpose This study aims to conduct to determine the adverse perinatal outcomes of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy in Kurdistan, Iran. Design/methodology/approach In a prospective cohort study, 1,080 pregnant women were categorized into 433 and 647 women, respectively, exposed and unexposed to IPV followed by 48 h post-delivery. The values of incidence rate, relative risk and corresponding 95% confidence interval were calculated for interesting outcomes. Findings There was a statistically significant association between IPV exposure during pregnancy and perinatal mortality, pre-term birth (PTB), intra uterine growth restriction (IUGR), premature rupture of membranes (PROM), placental abruption and low birth weight (LBW). Social implications Iran is a developing country with a mosaic of different ethnicities and cultures. It seems that the less developed regions of Iran, such as Kurdistan, are also culturally different from most other regions of Iran. Based on a systematic review study, the prevalence of domestic violence is estimated to be 66% (CI 95%: 55–77) in the general population of Iran. This value was 75% (CI 95%: 56–94) in western Iran, the geographic area of the study, and higher than other parts of the country. IPV during pregnancy can result in many adverse outcomes for mothers and children. Originality/value According to the results of this study, the occurrence of prenatal mortality, PTB, IUGR, PROM, placental abruption and LBW was significantly higher in pregnant women exposed to IPV during pregnancy compared with unexposed women. Strategies such as training the skills needed for health system staff to identify female victims of violence, counseling, treatment and referral to related specialized centers are suggested.

A genomics resource for genetics, physiology, and breeding of West African sorghum.

Local landrace and breeding germplasm is a useful source of genetic diversity for regional and global crop improvement initiatives. Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) in western Africa (WA) has diversified across a mosaic of cultures and end uses and along steep precipitation and photoperiod gradients. To facilitate germplasm utilization, a West African sorghum association panel (WASAP) of 756 accessions from national breeding programs of Niger, Mali, Senegal, and Togo was assembled and characterized. Genotyping-by-sequencing (GBS) was used to generate 159,101 high-quality biallelic single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), with 43% in intergenic regions and 13% in genic regions. High genetic diversity was observed within the WASAP (π = .00045), only slightly less than in a global diversity panel (GDP) (π = .00055). Linkage disequilibrium (LD) decayed to background level (r2 < .1) by ∼50 kb in the WASAP. Genome-wide diversity was structured both by botanical type and by populations within botanical type with eight ancestral populations identified. Most populations were distributed across multiple countries, suggesting several potential common gene pools across the national programs. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of days to flowering (DFLo) and plant height (PH) revealed eight and three significant quantitative trait loci (QTL), respectively, with major height QTL at canonical height loci Dw3 and SbHT7.1. Colocalization of two of eight major flowering time QTL with flowering genes previously described in U.S. germplasm (Ma6 and SbCN8) suggests that photoperiodic flowering in West African sorghum is conditioned by both known and novel genes. This genomic resource provides a foundation for genomics-enabled breeding of climate-resilient varieties in WA.

Raptors Vs. Bucktees: the Somali influence on Toronto Slang*

ABSTRACT Bucktee is one of several lexical items associated with ‘Toronto Slang’ – the emically-given name for an enregistered set of lexical items associated with Multicultural Toronto English (MTE), a multiethnolect spoken by young people in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), originating in the many and varied multicultural and multilingual areas of the conurbation – that is borrowed from Somali. This paper contextualises the influence of Somali on Toronto Slang and MTE: despite being spoken by a relatively small number of Torontonians, intersecting cultural discourses of race, place, gender, and more imbue words borrowed from the language with a desirable value. These cultural discourses and their links are described and mapped in an indexical field. Due to its desirable value and eventual place-based meaning, bucktee has spread well-beyond its source speech community and, in doing so, has undergone indexical bleaching of its ethnoracial origins. This has led to a tension between discourses of pride, the Canadian cultural mosaic, representation, and cultural appropriation.

Seljuks Inherit to Anatolia; Caravanserais

The history of Anatolia intertwined and layered manner is composed of many historical mosaic of culture. In this chronology, we see the Anatolian Seljuk State in the administration of the era when Turkish identity was set up in Asia Minor. This state has become an important force especially in the 11th and 13th centuries, even if it is not absolute in commercial, military and economic. At that time, the continuity of the state union was due to the intense trade and lack of scarcity in the country. The Seljuks were aware of this. With the expansion of Anatolian Seljuk State borders, which gives importance to the trade, new road networks have been formed and the existing ones have been strengthened. Old Anatolian cities such as Konya, Kayseri, Sivas and Erzurum have become important trade centers. It is necessary to ensure the safety of the roads and caravans in all of this commercial activity in the country. Caravanserais and khans were constructed on the roads to meet the needs of the caravans in order to stay and to continue their way. These buildings, which have an enclosed architecture with thick masonry walls, look like a castle and have become a power show. Anatolian Selcuklu period caravanserais show different features than the previous accommodation structures. In this study, the change of the commercial activities and accommodation during the history and the spatial organization, plan typologies and functions of the Anatolian Seljuk Caravanserai constructions are discussed.

Three Short Case Studies of Non?Religious Spiritual Care

Unlike Western countries with a majority of Protestant citizens, initiatives in the field of spiritual care provision in Israel have involved mostly lay leadership and secular individuals from their very inception, rather than clergy and religious adherents. This religiously neutral position made it easier for spiritual care to be accepted across the varied sub-populations that compose the unique mosaic of Israeli culture. Adhering to a religiously neutral approach led to the use of a broader set of tools in order to reach people in their time of distress. Currently, there are about 130 certified spiritual caregivers in Israel who graduated from four accredited training programs. This article describes three short case studies, in which we can see the benefits of three such neutral approaches – connecting with nature, gentle touch, and non-theistic personal prayer.