602 research outputs found
Construction & deconstruction of linguistic otherness: conflict & cooperative code-switching in (English/) bilingual classrooms
Get PDFThe socio-cultural settings of English-language and Englishmedium classrooms are intrinsically bi/multilingual and bi/multicultural as both learners and teachers bring their multiple identities and home-community languages and sociolinguistic practices into the classroom.
However, more often than not in such contexts, monolingual ideologies are the guiding principle for the top-down language education policies of “one-language only” which often create conflict and tension. In a post-colonial context, this paper looks at how monolingual ideologies and policies construct L1 as “the linguistic other” in face-to-face interaction in English classrooms which are defined as “English-only”. It also shows how the essentialisation of the English classroom’s socio-cultural spaces as non-local is met with resistance through the use of L1 which is informed by the local/national ideologies and constructs English as “the other”. Against such a conflict scenario, it finds that code-switching is employed by the participants in some classrooms to achieve pedagogical goals and to resolve the tension which also deconstructs the positioning of both English and L1 as “the linguistic other”. The paper employs multilayered analyses and draws on data from ethnographic research based in the classroom and community contexts. The data includes, amongst other, transcripts of classroom interactions and opinions of teachers and students about their language choices in such interactions. The findings of the paper suggest that an appreciation of the potential of the positive power, the constructive resistance and the resource argument of L1 use in English classrooms can lead to deconstructing the
essentialist meanings of “the linguistic other”
Neelam Saxena Chandra: A Literary Luminary Bridging Languages and Genres
Get PDFNeelam Saxena Chandra, a prolific bilingual author, discusses her journey in poetry, literary influences, and creative process. She reflects on poetry as a medium for emotional expression and social change, sharing insights into her works, inspirations, and thoughts on gender sensitization and evolving poetic forms in contemporary literature
Marketing rural tourism: Experience and enterprise
No full textGunjan Saxena seeks to encourage a fuller understanding of rural tourism marketing by uncovering the lived experiences and enterprise of different actor groups as they respond to the impact of tourism on their communities and cultural identities. In so doing, the author makes a key contribution to the wider marketing discourse that circulates around place marketing and rural destinations
Lifestyle Diglossia and Mobile
No full textThis chapter proposes to chart the development of understanding of literacy as a practice, which is now digital in nature and globally distributed, therefore digital literacy practices require new lenses and ways of research explorations. The notion of literacy has shifted from being autonomous to ideological during the last three decades. It is not seen anymore as a single unified competence, but as changing from place to place and varying in different social-cultural contexts. Despite the fact that there are different writing systems that are used in different ways in different contexts, the differences between them are no longer seen as primarily technical (Graff, 1979; Heath, 1983; Street, 1993). The differences that do exist between literacies are seen as being due to differences in cultural practices, values and ideologies. As a consequence, the methodological shift towards ethnographic research on literacy has arisen from a fundamental change in thinking about the nature of literacy and the development of the “new literacy studies” (Street, 1993: 4). Ethnographic approaches to literacy, such as those developed by Heath (1983), Street (1984), Barton (1991, 1994) and others are based on the everyday uses of written language(s) by specific groups and subgroups in a specific locality. According to Graff, these approaches to literacy provide “both new and better cases for study, opportunity for explanations, and approaches to literacy's variable historical meaning and contribution” (1986: 127). The ethnographic research on literacies in multilingual contexts (e.g. Saxena, 1994; Hartley, 1994) further contributed to the development of ‘new literacy studies' (NLS). However, with the development of mobile devices during the last decade and the allied software industries, digital literacy communication has become synonymous with globalisation and a divergence between the literacy practices in ‘regulated spaces' and ‘unregulated spaces' (Sebba, 2009) particularly among the youth is becoming a marked feature of inter-personal communication. Sebba defines ‘unregulated spaces' as places where the prescriptiveness of standardisation and monolingualism has not yet reached, or where it holds no power and practices may deviate from the prescribed norms. Such spaces open up opportunities for identity construction and group definition. </jats:p
Reconceptualising teachers’ directive and supportive scaffolding in bilingual classrooms within the neo-Vygotskyan approach
No full textThis paper reconceptualises ‘directive’ and ‘supportive’ scaffolding (Silliman and Wilkinson, 1994) within the wider neo-Vygotskyan literature to examine how these concepts could be operationalised through the triadic dialogues of IRE (initiate-response-evaluation) and IRF (initiate-response-feedback). This theoretical reconceptualisation is applied to classroom interaction in a multilingual context. The audio-recordings and transcripts of the teaching-learning events are drawn from a long-term research based in schools and communities in Brunei Darussalam, in Southeast Asia. The findings from the discussions with the class teachers, ethnographic observations of the socio-cultural contexts of the two selected classrooms, other similar classrooms and the wider society contribute towards explaining why the directive and supportive scaffolding occurs. This explanation points to the need for combining neo-Vygotskyan approach with the critical perspective for a better understanding of the micro-interaction in the bilingual classroom. It is concluded that micro-analyses of the classroom interaction alone do not provide the whole picture and a universal injunction to incorporate analyses of teachers’ talk cannot be the answer. The way forward is to draw on the linguistic ethnographic approach to study bilingual classrooms that should take into account the complex interaction between the micro-interaction in the classroom, the macro-level socio-cultural factors, as well as micro-interactional practices in the wider society
Functional relations involving generalized H-function
Get PDFA number of papers have appeared in literature in which certain functional relations associated with hypergeometric functions and Digamma function ψ(z) are derived. In order to unify and extend the existing results due to Kalla [7]. Kalla and Ross [9], Al-Saqabi and Kalla [1], Nishimoto and Saxena [12], Srivastava and Nishimoto [17] and Pandey and Srivastava [14] etc., the author establishes two functional relations between ψ(z) and generalized H -function due to Inayat-Hussain [6]. The results obtained are of general character and provide extension and unification of functional relations of various hypergeometric functions available in literature. Existence conditionsand computable representation of the H -function are also investigated.<br /
The evolving politics of labor standards in Bangladesh: taking stock and looking forward
No full textThis chapter provides a brief history of three or more decades of national and international efforts to improve labor standards for the workers in the garment industry. It concludes by looking forward to what could be done in the future. The author draws on her own research in this field to structure the wider literature on this topic. This chapter argues that any account of achievements and failures in relation to these efforts has to be embedded in the wider context in which the Bangladesh industry emerged and grew because this helps us to understand why its working conditions continue to fall short of international conventions and national regulations. While it faces the difficulties faced by any underdeveloped country with a limited history of industrialization and an industrial working class, Bangladesh has featured particularly prominently in international efforts to promote labour standards in global value chains in the garment sector. It can therefore provide an important case study of the challenges encountered by these efforts when the apparent protectionism of powerful global actors encounter the apparent intransigence of locally powerful actors
A sociolinguistic study of Panjabi Hindus in Southall Language maintenance and shift
Get PDFSIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:DXN002740 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo
- …
