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Principles of teaching English as an international language
No full textThe paper discusses principles of teaching English as an International Language from a transcultural approach perspective. Conceptualisation of a methodological category ‘transcultural approach’ in the framework of culture-based approaches to teaching foreign languages has contributed to the shift from conventional and restrictive culture- and language-wise teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to teaching English as an International Language (EIL). Previous studies have indicated the key geopolitical and linguistic prerequisites for the emergence of transcultural approach, as well as defined and structurally analysed transcultural communicative competence as its goal. The objective of current research is to substantiate the fundamental principles of transcultural approach that determine the choice of teaching strategies. The results show that the principles stem from multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual nature of international communication, realised by means of the English language, and include: (1) the principle of cultural egalitarianism, which emphasises cultural, political, and linguistic equality of learners’ native and acquired languages and cultures; (2) the principle of empathy for the participants of transcultural communication, which is the basis for users’ multidimensional thinking formation; (3) the principle of pragmatic acceptability, which replaces the principle of normativity and implies the users’ ability to adapt to any communicative context encountered; (4) the principle of unity of universal, variable and local levels of cultural and communicative interaction. The findings presented in the paper outline further research directed at modeling a university course book based on the above-mentioned principles of transcultural approach to teaching English as an International Language
Choral voice and cultural difference in practice as research
No full textCCRD invites four distinguished Hong Kong-based speakers to share their personal journeys of experimentation with different kinds of musical practice, and to offer insights into ‘practice as research’ in music-making and performance. These diverse forms of practice as research involve voice talking to instrument, instrument reaching out to voice, and musicians being challenged by cultural difference viscerally experienced through language and melody.
In this session, John Winzenburg (Department of Music, HKBU) shares how he promotes Chinese choral music in dialogue with an international repertoire through Cantoria Hong Kong, the mixed choir that he established in 2009
Valuable Perspectives on Your Life and Career from Chinese Philosophical and Historical Texts
No full textWe will read a number of experts from famous Chinese philosophical and historical texts and discuss their profound relevance for ensuring our personal wellness, happiness, and career success.
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https://www.ln.edu.hk/sgs/chair-professor-research-sharing-webinar-03-highlight
論《群書治要》去取《史記》之敘事原則
Get PDF《群書治要》乃唐人魏徵等奉唐太宗之命而編，其用意在於“昭德塞違，勸善懲惡”。惟歷代典籍眾多，遂於群籍之中，擇其“務乎政術”者，“以備勸戒，爰自六經，訖乎諸子，上始五帝，下盡晉年，凡爲五袠，合五十卷，本求治要，故以治要爲名”。此書引用經、史、子三部之典籍共65種。其中卷一一至卷三〇爲史部，引用史部典籍六種，包括《史記》一卷半、《吳越春秋》半卷、《漢書》八卷、《後漢書》四卷、《三國志》四卷、《晉書》兩卷。其中《漢書》八卷僅存六卷，有兩卷在《治要》佚文之列也。《史記》載録三千年史事之於一事，上起黄帝，下訖漢武，共五十二萬六千五百字。《漢書》載西漢二百年史事，成八十萬字。然在《治要》之中，僅載《史記》一卷半，而《漢書》有八卷之多，比例懸殊，發人深思。本篇之撰，以《治要》所載《史記》爲根據，討論其去取《史記》之原則與精神，並見其如何體現《治要》“昭德塞違，勸善懲惡”之主旨。
Qunshu zhiyao (The Governing Principles of Ancient China) , compiled by Wei Zheng and others under the order of Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty, aimed to exhort virtues and punish vice. Qunshu zhiyao was only able to include those that were helpful to the regime. The texts as admonitions to later generations included in Qunshu zhiyao were the Confucius classics or written by ancient sages, covering the period from the Five Emperors to the Jin dynasty. “Zhiyao” in its title emphasizes the purpose of this book. Among the sixty-five classics selected into Qunshu zhiyao, Volume Eleven to Thirty are records of history, including six books of history: one and a half volumes of Shiji ( Record of the Grand Historian), half of a volume of Wu-Yue Chunqiu (Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue), eight volumes of Hanshu (Book of Han), four volumes of Houhanshu (Book of the Later Han), four volumes of Sanguo zhi (Records of the Three Kingdoms) and two volumes of Jinshu (Book of Jin). Two out of the six surviving volumes of the eight-volume Hanshu were among the lost volumes of Qunshu zhiyao. Shiji, a record of five hundred and twenty-six thousand five hundred words, covers three thousand years of history from the Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, while the eight-hundred-thousand-word Hanshu only records the history of two hundred years of the Western Han dynasty. The conspicuous contrast between the quantities of texts of Shiji and Hanshu selected into Qunshu zhiyao is the focus of this paper, which discusses Qunshu zhiyao’s principles and spirit in including and excluding the volumes of Shiji and how they demonstrate the Qunshu zhiyao’s aims to exhort virtues and punish vice
《五經文字》引石經輯考 : 兼論漢魏石經在唐代的接受
Get PDF漢魏石經至隋唐時期已十不存一，但拓本傳承有緒，藏於祕府，“相承以爲七經正字”。唐代祕書省校書郎和正字專司“正定文字”，其中大篆和八分即源出石經（古文當亦如是），國子監書學博士的專業亦有“石經三體”。作爲正字運動的重要成果之一，大曆中張參所編《五經文字》直接援引漢石經（間及魏石經隸書）作爲字頭和部首字形的重要來源之一，後在開成中與九經三傳一道雕鐫上石。這樣，唐石經之中反映了漢魏石經文字形體的部分信息。本文悉數輯出《五經文字》明確稱引石經字頭和部首字形，並略取漢魏石經殘字可與其相對應者比較互證。本文所輯石經字形可以在一定程度上擴充已知漢魏石經的數量，豐富有關漢字隸楷演變細節的認知，對於石經和文字學研究也都有一定的積極意義。
The Stone Classics (石經) of Han (漢) and Wei (魏) survived little into Sui (隋) and Tang (唐), but the rubbings were preserved and handed down in good orders as an important reference to collating the content of the Classics (經). Editors of Palace Library (祕書省校書郎) and Proofreaders (正字) in Tang were specially responsible for collating the characters, among which the big-seal (大篆) and Bafen (八分) characters originated from the Stone Classics (so was Guwen 古文). Some Erudite of Calligraphy School (書學博士) in the Directorate of Education (國子監) also majored in the three styles of the Stone Classics (石經三體). As an extraordinary book produced during the movement of collating the characters (正字運動), Wujing Wenzi (五經文字), which was written by Zhang Shen (張參) during the years of Dali (大曆, 766—779) , directly quoted the Stone Classics of Han as a source of the characters and details of these characters. It was then carved onto the stone and became a part of the Stone Classics in the years of Kaicheng (開成, 836—840) together with the Nine Classics (九經). In this way the information of characters of the Han and Wei Stone Classics are reflected in Tang Stone Classics as well. Thus, in this article, the author will collect and compile every characters and details of these characters in Wujing Wenzi claimed to be extracted and quoted from the Stone Classics, and will present some examples of characters of Han and Wei Stone Classics which are corresponded with Wujing Wenzi. This may in some extent expand the quantity of the characters patterns of the Han and Wei Stone Classics, and amplify the our understandings towards the details of the changing process from Lishu (隸書) to Kaishu (楷書), finally helping with the studies of the Stone Classics and paleography
Materialities, discourses, and entanglements in gendered decision-making and practices : an ethnographic account of ‘fish mammy’ households in Ghana
Get PDFCritical feminist scholars have challenged essentialist understandings of gender inequality and the use of discourses to categorize men as superior to women. For critics however, a focus on discourse equally limits our understanding of the role of materialities (human and non-human) in co-creating such social outcomes. Using a new feminist materialist approach, this thesis examines the factors which create opportunities for and obstacles to women’s participation in household and community-based fishery decision-making and practices in Ghana. The study adopts an ethnographic approach using multi-methods including a cross-sectional survey of 400 female fisherfolk, 48 in-depth interviews with female fisherfolk, male fisherfolk as well as community-based fishery leaders, and officials of governmental and non-governmental organisations. The study sample was drawn from three fishing communities (Axim, Sekondi and Dixcove) in the south-western coast of Ghana known for their historical and crucial contributions to Ghana’s small-scale fisheries sector. In terms of household fishery decision-making/practices, the results showed that women do more processing/trading, but less of strenuous tasks (e.g., fishing and repairs). In terms of community participation, results showed that while women attend meetings, their male counterparts dominate in terms of positions in the community-based fishery association. Multivariate linear regression revealed that women’s financial contributions, ownership of equipment and seasonality were significantly associated with their household decision-making power. However, participation in strenuous tasks (which commands high decision-making power) dampens the positive relationship between women’s financial contributions, gender role attitudes and decision-making power, such that financial contribution become insignificant. Women’s fishery decision-making varies according to the sex-typed division of labour, and those who violate it are ‘punished’ as they have to reduce their quest for equality in strenuous tasks in order to assume some level of decision-making. In-depth interviews and participant observations revealed that while discourses of masculinity and femininity were crucial in the gendering of fishery decision-making and practices, materialities (e.g., human bodies with (in)capacities in terms of strength, birthing, breastfeeding) as well as non-human objects such as canoe, the sea and its waves, and the heavy fishing net, food distributed at meetings and microphones equally mattered. The co-implication of the material, discursive, spatial, and temporal forces co-determined the extent of women’s participation in household and community-based fishery decision-making and practices. Thus, focusing on gender equality campaigns and women’s financial inclusion without attention to materialities (e.g., the physicality of activities women do) would be inadequate in explaining the complexities of their decision-making. Focusing on material-discursive co-implications highlight the physical bodily demands that women have to overcome and the how such entanglements can be reconfigured to enhance their decision-making. The current thesis calls for the need to embrace more materially engaged research, which recognizes the active role of such material forces as they intra-act with other forces in co-creating different outcomes for women
Redefining the object of semiotic studies
Get PDFSemiotics has long suffered a severe identity crisis, displaying confusions on four relationships. The crisis stems partly from our failure to distinguish three pairs of relata and partly from our poor understanding of the nature of an academic discipline. Semiotics is, first of all, a discipline. Like other academic fields, it should have a sound object of study and aim at an adequate theory. An excursion into psychology and the philosophy of science can reveal to us the necessary constituents of a proper object of study and of a good theory. Looking back, the history of semiotics has brought up a wide range of instances and types of signs. Descriptive and comparative studies of these sign phenomena offer us clues to the potential boundaries and possible unifying features of the sign. To meet the demands of a proper object of study, the sign as a phenomenon needs to be construed both in the broader sense and in the narrower sense. Signs in the broader sense, inclusive of recollective signs, indicative signs, and instituted signs, are characterized by three features: an act of recollecting or inferring, a relation between something perceptible and something not perceptible at the moment, and a revealing function. The sign thus understood qualifies as a category, but not as a good object of study, as it hardly reveals any deep-lying regularity, rule, or law worthy of special scientific efforts. By comparison, the sign in the narrower sense, focused on natural signs or instituted signs, is more reasonable. Of the two kinds of phenomena, instituted signs are characterized by a connection instituted voluntarily by some subject when it comes into being for the first time. They originate from recollective signs and indicative signs, and undergo several stages before the advent of highly arbitrary signs. They are made up of essential phenomena, supplementary phenomena, and epiphenomena. With their multiple features, instituted signs are sufficiently unique, broad, complex, and important to be a good object of study, on the basis of which a more adequate theory of instituted signs becomes possible. Semiotics based on such an object of study and theory obeys the spirit of the minimalist approach to academic researches. Semiotics thus overhauled would, hopefully, not only serve to describe and explain sign phenomena adequately, but also coordinate with adjacent disciplines in adding to overall human knowledge