Voices In Dialogue Research Articles

Embodying Tradition: Liturgical Performance as a Site for Interreligious Learning

Embodying Tradition: Liturgical Performance as a Site for Interreligious Learning Emma O'Donnell Theological discourse has traditionally been cognitive and verbal from start to finish; as indicated by its etymology, it communicates through the word, and these words are themselves commentary on other words. For the most part, this is also the case in interreligious theological ventures such as comparative theology, which is often based on textual studies, and in interreligious dialogue, which is generally understood to be an oral or textual communication. Yet, despite the seemingly circular entrapment of theology within propositional language, systematic verbal discourse represents only a fraction of religious faith as it is experienced by practitioners. Faith is more than intellectual assent to propositions; faith is experiential. For this reason, a theological mode or “language” that expresses a religious tradition as it is experienced may be capable of penetrating elements of faith that are not readily accessible through the traditional propositional mode of theology. A context for such a theological language is found in liturgy, where the full content of liturgical performance is not communicated by words alone, but is both formed and enacted ritually, through physical gesture, vocalization, repetition, and an engaged involvement of the person acting in time. I argue in this essay that a theological mode rooted in liturgical performance—that is, a mode that “reads” the symbolic, embodied language of liturgical performance, and that seeks to grasp and communicate its complex extra‐verbal content—has much to offer interreligious theological ventures. If liturgy is a fertile ground of religious formation and expression, it follows that situating comparative theology and interreligious dialogue in liturgy may open the door to new directions in interreligious learning. Yet, the full content of liturgy cannot be readily accessed by one outside of the religious tradition, as liturgical performance is by nature an activity bounded by tradition and the specificity of religious identity. In the pages that follow, I will talk about how this very quality paradoxically may lead to interreligious learning. The limits to understanding reveal to us something of the nature of liturgical experience, and of the incommensurability and dignity in difference of religious traditions. The implications of Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi for interreligious learning The mode of liturgical theology proposed here differs from the more widely used historical and textual methods of liturgical studies. Maintaining that the meaning of liturgical performance exceeds its verbal content, and that its full significance comes to be in the enactment of liturgy, this approach uses the experience of liturgical performance as its data. Rather than reading only the liturgical text, it reads the “text” of the performance or enactment, allowing the liturgy itself to speak theologically. The notion of letting liturgical performance speak for itself rests on the idea that liturgy does not merely express previously developed theological views, but forms these views through its enactment. This is expressed by the ancient adage lex orandi, lex credendi, originally formulated by Prosper of Aquitaine as ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi. While the adage in its original context was intended against Semi‐Pelagians and referred specifically to liturgical intercessions, in later usage, the phrase was reworded as lex orandi, lex credendi and took on a broader meaning, signifying the more general idea that belief is formed through liturgy. According to this concept, the voice of religious belief is spoken first in liturgical performance. In other words, liturgical performance forms belief and cultivates it through the enactment of believing. The adage implies that liturgy may be seen as a sort of catechism in action, and this bears an important implication for interreligious learning: if liturgy forms and speaks belief, liturgical performance may be a voice in dialogue, speaking our belief for us. The suggestion that a ritual might speak for us, or that “we” could be considered a collective that may be spoken for as a whole, may initially seem to rob the individual of uniqueness and to replace the free individual with a codified type or a mute participant. However, the idea that liturgical performance speaks belief for us implies less a loss of uniqueness than it does a sense of interconnection, through awareness of the continuity of tradition, transmitted...

Talking with voices: Exploring what is expressed by the voices people hear

Although people who hear voices may dialogue with them, they are regularly caught in destructive communication patterns that disturb social functioning. This article presents an approach called Talking With Voices, derived from the theory and practice of Voice Dialogue (Stone & Stone, 1989: Embracing our selves: The voice dialogue training manual, New York: Nataraj Publishing), whereby a facilitator directly engages with the voice(s) in order to heighten awareness and understanding of voice characteristics. The method provides insight into the underlying reasons for voice emergence and origins, and can ultimately inspire a more productive relationship between hearer and voice(s). We discuss the rationale for the approach and provide guidance in applying it. Case examples are also presented.

Global Leadership to Transform the World

Global leadership is sorely needed to transform the world, given trends such as climate change, water scarcity, and social unrest. We need leaders with multicultural sensitivity who will face paradoxes head on, invite new voices into the dialogue, and collaborate across sector and national boundaries to find more sustainable solutions. This response addresses 3 areas that garnered the most commentaries: competency models, paradoxes, and developing global leaders. We point out several neglected perspectives, including “being” and “individual uniqueness,” along with the absence of non-Western voices in the commentary dialogue. We challenge readers to raise their consciousness and shift from enabling status quo leadership to becoming change agents.

Multilingual Italian – Lithuanian Small Vocabulary Speech Recognition via Selection of Phonetic Transcriptions

The amount of resources required to incorporate a new language into an ASR system is extensive and it is usually hard to provide more than one language per system. Naturally some research groups started developing the multilingual speech recognition principles. Opposite to most of the other researchers, in this work the original recognizer was not modified as we chose to use the phonetic “language” of the recognizer – the “transcriptions”, allowing the adaption of the original ASR engine to any language if enough acoustic resources are available. The results of our experiments proved that it is quite reasonable to use these methods to provide the multilingual speech interface for the user. It was established that the recognition accuracy can be acceptable for small vocabulary grammars (~93% for Lithuanian, and ~98% for Italian), satisfying the requirements of an IVR type of application where different small vocabulary grammars with a limited number of multilingual transcriptions can be loaded for each of the different stage of the HCI voice dialog, allowing the modeling of multilingual regional self-services. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.121.5.1145

Betweeners Speak Up

While writing together, we have found a dialogical voice that has made our individual work more meaningful, grounded, and fulfilling. Together, we have found a voice that we did not have in our work alone as individuals, a voice that seems, to both of us, more vibrant, truer to our experiences as betweeners and decolonizing scholars. This writing joint-venture exemplifies the very connectedness and co-construction of meaning we advocate in any type of social science preoccupied with empowering praxis. It is also an act of resistance to the academic ranking system and the idea that better work comes from isolated individuals. We have been friends since our late teens, long before each knew what career to pursue, and we have been closely connected from that time. Writing together seems, to us at least, like another important completion of the many intersecting experiences in our lives: friendship, global migration, profession, scholarship, knowledge production, and a keen attraction to a vision of inclusiveness.

Voice-based Human-Machine Interaction Modeling for Automated Information Services

Voice based human-machine dialogs are becoming more and more important part of informative services. The implementation of voice dialogs enables to realize some of the aims of telecommunication services more successfully and efficiently. The main aim is to enable the communication according the principle "anytime-anywhere". The importance of voice dialogs is also caused by the fact that principle "anytime-anywhere" often could be realized only using mobile and portable devices. Those devices typically have small keyboards and screens and hence voice based interface has advantages over traditional keyboard and screen based interface. The paper presents the model of multimodal interface which core element is the recognition of voice commands. The model targets the informative services provided by the Lithuanian medical and social security enterprises. Paper shows that recognition accuracy of Lithuanian voice commands could be increased significantly if the foreign language which has closer to Lithuanian phonetic structure engine is adapted. Ill. 2, bibl. 11, tabl. 1 (in English; abstracts in English and Lithuanian).http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eee.110.4.300

Human Rights and the South Pacific: A New Voice in the Global Dialogue

Over the past several decades, there has been a disconnect between the international community and the South Pacific region in terms of human rights. Countries in the region have been slow to adapt international declarations and conventions and slow to implement those they do ratify. Is this lack of agreement between the global human rights movement and local leaders due to the fact that human rights are perceived differently in the South Pacific region? This article suggests some possible points of difference between the South Pacific region and the dominant vision of human rights as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related treaties.

Reclaiming the Wasteland: Samson and Delilah and the Historical Perception and Construction of Indigenous Knowledges in Australian Cinema

Reclaiming the Wasteland: Samson and Delilah and the Historical Perception and Construction of Indigenous Knowledges in Australian Cinema

Becoming Protagonists for Integration: Youth Voices from Segregated Educational Spaces

We report the preliminary findings of a community-based participatory action research project grounded in the principles of emancipatory education. Born as a grassroots response to profound racial and socioeconomic segregation between the gifted and regular learning programs, this action research collaboration was centered in a middle school. The project curriculum was built on the premise that youth have the potential to become protagonists of integration. With that in mind, the project provided a space in which to become increasingly conscious about segregation and to imagine and enact new possibilities for integration. Findings from in-depth qualitative interviews with six youth participants reveal various youth efforts toward integration in three distinct layers of consciousness that we refer to as voice: (a) reflective voice as an awareness of self in segregated places and the associated social consequences; (b) dialogic voice as communal recognition of the structural nature of segregation, solidarity in opposition to it, and a common need for healing and reconciliation; and (c) praxis voice as the commitment to transforming segregated educational spaces through a critique of segregation and demand for subdermal diversity. We discuss the implications of these findings for continued transformative action at the local site and lessons for educational pedagogies and actions in general.

Lore, Practice, and Social Identity in Creative Writing Pedagogy

The article examines the significance of lore in creative writing pedagogy discourse, the problem posed by the historical distinction between teaching craft and drawing out talent in workshops, and the role of social identity as it is rejected, theorized, or ignored in discussions on teaching creative writing. Taking into account students' subjectivity as also constituted by the dynamics of collective identities such as those suggested by the terms gender, race, ethnicity, and so forth, the essay offers examples of workshop strategies that encourage dialogic voicing.

Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages

Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages

Marian Jacobs: pioneer of child health in South Africa

Marian Jacobs: pioneer of child health in South Africa

THE DAD IN THE CHE GUEVARA T-SHIRT: NARRATIVES OF CHILEAN ENGLISH TEACHERS

Building on previous critical research regarding student resistance to English Language Teaching (ELT), this paper illustrates Chilean high-school English teachers' use of narrative to make sense of ideological challenges from students. While the government of Chile is promoting English in connection with the nation's export-oriented economic policies, this promotion of English has been resisted by leftist movements unrepresented within the current neoliberal “consensus;” coping with political resistance is a perennial challenge for English teachers. Through an analysis of dialogic voicing in narratives audiotaped during life-history interviews, the paper illustrates how Chilean English teachers make sense of their positioning within ideological struggles over the connection between ELT and global capitalism. Thus, this paper is a case study of how individuals invested in English as an international language cope with resistance to globalization within local contexts; I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for ELT pedagogy and globalization studies.

A Novice Teacher's Beliefs About Socially Just Teaching: Dialogue of Many Voices

This case study explores the reality shock experienced by a White novice teacher, committed to socially just teaching, in her first year in an urban context. The apparently successful novice held three beliefs about her practice and herself: that socially just teaching was a holistic practice; that it could and should be done “right”; and that, based on her previous levels of success, she should be able to succeed in implementing this practice. These beliefs, derived from various voices and interacting in ongoing dialogue, produced negative effects in the teacher. Implications for teacher educators preparing novice teachers are given.

Der Wirkfaktor Stimme in der Psychotherapie / in der Musiktherapie

The voice is an important, often underestimated factor in music psychotherapy, both in uncovering and in resource-oriented, body-oriented work. The article offers a survey of the influence of the voice in the therapeutic dialogue and points to opportunities for singing and sound-making in psychotherapy and music therapy. Various categories are then elaborated in greater depth, including the voice as a medium of verbal and non-verbal shaping of relationship, as a method in body-oriented music psychotherapy, as a diagnostic tool in the therapeutic dialogue, as an indicator for therapeutic transference and counter-transference, as a symptom, as a means of expression, as a means of self-healing and as a medium for trance induction. The bodily effects of singing are presented, with a focus on the specific potential of singing as the finest path.

Generous reading: Discovering dialogic voices in writing

This paper describes an approach to the assessment of EAL written composition in the primary school. It draws upon related work in literacy as social practice and socio‐linguistic approaches to language learning to develop an approach to writing assessment that builds upon students’ linguistic strengths and traces their written words to sources in the immediate context and wider world. Following Joseph Tobin (2000) this approach is described as generous reading. Generous reading references poststructuralist literary theory through a focus on close reading of texts using a multidisciplinary approach. This paper describes the purpose, theory, and methods for generous reading followed by examples and a discussion of implications for instruction and assessment.

Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds., Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages. University of Notre Dame Press, 2006

Linda Olson and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds., Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages. University of Notre Dame Press, 2006

Dialogic or dialectic? The significance of ontological assumptions in research on educational dialogue

This article explores the relationship between ontological assumptions and studies of educational dialogue through a focus on Bakhtin's ‘dialogic’. The term dialogic is frequently appropriated to a modernist framework of assumptions, in particular the neo‐Vygotskian or sociocultural tradition. However, Vygotsky's theory of education is dialectic, not dialogic. From a dialogic perspective the difference between voices in dialogue is constitutive of meaning in such a way that it makes no sense to imagine ‘overcoming’ this difference. By contrast, due to the implicit assumption that meaning is ultimately grounded on identity rather than upon difference, the dialectic perspective applied by Vygotsky interprets differences as ‘contradictions’ that need to be overcome or transcended. A case study of research on exploratory talk is used to illustrate the potential for a fruitful relationship between ‘high level’ theory and research that is relevant to classroom practice.

Multiple voices in clinical discourse and as clinical intervention

Grounded in sociocultural theories of language development and use, this paper explores the concept of dialogic voice. Building on the term 'dialogue', dialogic voice points to the fundamentally social nature of language-in-use. From this perspective, language emerges from specific histories and thus carries the multiple voices of previous speakers. People draw on these voices to think about and represent the world, communicate with others, construct their own identities, and engage in play. Prior (2001) identified three key dimensions of dialogic voicing: typified social voices, re-envoicing others' words and acts, and personalized voice. To present a theoretical framing for dialogic voice; to detail the dimensions of dialogic voice; and to offer a preliminary analysis of dialogic voicing in clinical discourse. Data consisted of ten treatment sessions for a 67-year-old man with amnesia and aphasia, using a collaborative barrier task protocol. Discourse analysis and selective coding were used to identify the three dimensions of dialogic voice in both clinician and client utterances. During this collaborative task, the client and clinician produced an array of voices, including: (1) typified social voices to display professional expertise, family identities, and shared interests; (2) re-envoicing others' words and acts in both task and non-task interactions; and (3) personalized voicing, displayed mostly in the client's discourse. Attention to dialogic voicing offers a way to see and reflect on the heterogeneity of discourse and the multiple identities that clinicians and clients alike can, and do, display in clinical settings. Tracing the complex interplay of multiple voices provides us with insights into rich communicative environments that, from a sociocultural perspective, provide opportunities for initiating change in the communicative practices of clients, their communicative partners, and ultimately clinical practice itself.

Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages

Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages