Extending reading research with a focus on cultural understanding and research on intercultural communication: an empirical investigation in Argentina

The work presented here is an empirical study of how advanced learners of English as a foreign language in Argentina access and understand the culture-specific dimensions of literary narrative texts. It has three purposes. First, to extend research into reading in a foreign language to take account of the culture-specific content of texts. Second, to extend the focus of research on intercultural communication to include the analysis of reading processes. Finally, to introduce an approach to the analysis of the cultural dimension of the reading process using a new model of levels of cultural understanding. It is argued that cultural understanding goes beyond the quantification of prior knowledge or background knowledge in the form of idea units as evidence of the comprehension process. In this sense, the proposed model succeeds in portraying a more detailed picture of cultural understanding in this setting.     

Why Primates? The Importance of Nonhuman Primates for Understanding Human Infancy

We introduce the thematic collection by noting some striking similarities in the cognitive abilities of human infants and nonhuman primates. What are the implications of these similarities for our comprehension of human infant cognition? After providing a brief historical and conceptual background on comparative behavioral research, we discuss how work with nonhuman primates has impacted theories of core knowledge, domain specificity, and language. We conclude by previewing the articles comprising this special issue of Infancy.     

How to Do Things With Texts: A Functional Account of Reading Comprehension

We offer an account of reading comprehension that we believe will help clarify some common conceptual confusions in the relevant literature, as well as contribute to existing functional accounts. We argue that defining texts qua texts as stimulus classes, on the one hand, and equating “comprehension” with behavior (covert or otherwise), on the other, are not useful conceptual moves, especially when behavioral settings go beyond basic literacy skills acquisition. We then analyze the structure of the contingencies that usually evoke talk of “comprehension” using techniques from analytic philosophy. We show how keeping the results of this analysis in mind can help avoid the conceptual bafflement that often arises, even among behavior analysts, when defining or assessing behavioral phenomena related to reading comprehension. Using two contrasting cases (legal texts and stories), we argue that what counts as comprehension depends, not peripherally but crucially, on the shared social practices of which texts are a part. Finally, we propose a new framework for classifying reader–text contingencies by combining two dimensions: openness of setting and embeddedness of reinforcement.     

Prom Dreams and Prom Reality: Girls Negotiating “Perfection” at the High School Prom*

Adolescent girls are often assumed to be extremely vulnerable to media influences; however, this study argues that girls actually negotiate meaning from media texts. Content analysis of teen prom magazines is combined with ethnography to explore how magazine texts operate within their readers’ worlds. This article argues against two commonly accepted dictates. First, I propose that popular magazines for adolescent girls are more complicated than previously acknowledged and do not rely on a singular message of perfection derived from beauty and heterosexual romance. And second, how girls engage with the magazines is more complicated than prior research has argued; girls use “strategic selectivity” (a term proposed to explain how girls make meaning of cultural texts) to negotiate the dominant meanings found in prom magazines and other cultural texts.     

The convention of captioning: W. G. Sebald and the release of the captive image

Thesis 1: That the treatment of images in social science texts is stuck in a positivist/modernist time warp, and is out of sync with the present cultural climate.

Thesis 2: That the work of W. G. Sebald indicates how images may be more appropriately used in relation to words in post‐positivist and postmodernist texts.     

The voices people read: Orthography and the representation of non-standard speech

Combining features of matched guise tests with sociolinguistic interviewing and oral performance, this study investigates the social meanings carried by non-standard orthographies. Participant evaluations of the personas represented by non-standard orthographies showed that people connected orthography to social identities. Specifically, we found that people uncritically and spontaneously read non-standard orthographies as indices of low socioeconomic status. When we asked participants to read texts out loud, we found marked shifts in their reading performances of texts in standard versus non-standard orthographies. Through a case study analysis of participants' readings and attitudes, we identify two kinds of stances taken by participants towards stigmatized identities indexed by non-standard orthographies. Finally, we use these case studies to argue for the necessity of contextually rich qualitative research methods for the study of language attitudes.     

Native American Literature and Its Place in the Inter-American Project

Abstract

Issues of Native American literature and culture are placed in a comparative and inter-American perspective, where texts from Canada, the United States, Spanish America, and Brazil are discussed and contrasted. Native American texts are analyzed in the context of inter-American literary study, which is defined as an interdisciplinary approach to the literatures of North, Central, and South America. The argument is made that Native American literature represents the cultural and historical foundation of the entire inter-American project.     

“Drawn” into the community: Re‐considering the artwork of Latino adolescents

This qualitative study of drawings created by inner‐city, Latino, junior high school students examines how these drawings are made, how they are used, and how they are read by other Latinos as visual texts that encode and communicate culturally important information. The study is based on interviews with young Latino adults about the roles these drawings played during their adolescence. The interviews revealed that these drawings function as texts in a system of visual communication. They also illustrate how such drawings can be linked to cultural identities, and how their power derives not just from the imagery they include but from how they are used to shape and support social interaction.     

Browsing the culture: membership and intertextuality at a mormon bookstore

This paper argues that organizational and local host cultures are related through the intertextual performance of membership. It proceeds by claiming that organizations may be usefully read as intertexts, and that the relationship between organizations and their environments is enacted by speakers as they negotiate their multiple identities in talk. These claims are then used to analyze the intertextual performance of membership at a Salt Lake City, Utah bookstore owned by the Mormon church. The analysis demonstrates how: (1) organizational routines surrounding the interpretation of product serve as performances of host-cultural membership; (2) communication among and between store employees and customers clarifies types of host-cultural identity; and (3) the management of controversial texts enacts the organizational environment. The analysis is intended to mark an intersection between organizational and cultural studies by demonstrating how organizations potentially function as sites for the reproduction of interpretive communities, conducted through the use of cultural texts.     

Media and Sport: The Cultural Dynamics of Global Games

The institutions of media and sport have increasingly converged over the last century, forming a media sports cultural complex of global proportions. This development has raised concerns over whether sport has become 'mediatised' and, conversely, that the media are increasingly 'sportised'. The media sports cultural complex generates a vast array of representations of sport and the societies of which it is a part. It is important, therefore, to analyse the ways in which media sport texts reproduce or challenge prevailing ideologies of socio-cultural power in such key areas as gender, 'race', ethnicity, and sexuality. Media sport texts are especially instrumental in representing national identities and international relations in an era of intensified globalisation. In covering events of national cultural significance, they are also implicated in issues surrounding 'cultural citizenship' and in attempts by sport fan communities to exercise greater control over a fluid, dynamic and highly contested media sport environment.     

The sociology of subjectivity, and the subjectivity of sociologists: a critique of the sociology of gender in the Australian family

In this era of reflexive sociology it is commonplace that subjectivity is of great sociological concern, and that the comprehension by social researchers of their own subject position is essential. Still, old habits die hard. Focusing on selected texts in the sociology of the Australian family, this paper traces the effects of failing to focus the sociological gaze on subjectivity and its variation across society. Highlighted are some patterns of analytic misconstruction of subjectivity, especially the substitution of measurement for a theory of practice, and the projection by sociologists of their own class-specific subjectivity onto society at large. Ultimately, this misconstruction turns works like those discussed in this paper into a powerful denial of alternative subjectivities, and a reinforcement of the socially dominant perspective.     

Relationship between Listening Comprehension Strategy Use and Listening Comprehension Proficiency

This study explores the relationship between students’ listening comprehension strategy use and their listening comprehension proficiency with regard to the group, level, and degree of strategy use. Forty-four university students of an English Language teaching department comprised the study population. Three listening comprehension tests were given to participants with two-week intervals to measure their listening comprehension proficiency. To measure the students’ listening comprehension strategy use, a listening comprehension strategy inventory developed by the researcher was used. Data analysis showed a positive correlation between the level of listening comprehension strategy use and listening comprehension proficiency. When different groups of listening comprehension strategy use of learners were taken into account, there was a statistically significant difference between the students’ listening comprehension achievements in favor of the group with high metacognitive strategy use.     

Hybridising the cultural identity of Mulan from a Chinese ballad to American films

Hybridisation refers to the fusion of diverse cultural elements which generates new cultural forms that are distinct yet interconnected with one another. Previous studies affirmed that hybridisation has become part of an ongoing trend in transnational culture, emerging from a Third Space where diverse cultural elements enmesh. This study aims to explore how Mulan's cultural identity is hybridised when the folklore flows from China to America, becoming entangled within a conflict of Chinese-Western transcultural clashes. Using Jameson's cultural identity model, the paper analyses Mulan's cultural identity in three texts which are the original The Ballad of Mulan, Disney's animated movie Mulan (1998) and its subsequent life-action installment Mulan (2020). Components measuring the protagonist's cultural identity comprising vocation, class, geography, philosophy, language, biological traits with cultural aspects are compared. The findings show that the movies have particularly hybridise the protagonist's cultural identity from the aspects of geography, philosophy, and language. This results in a hybrid cultural identity with transnational markers in Mulan. The significance of the research thus lies in its contribution towards highlighting how Chinese figures are increasingly hybridised by Western influences as the Chinese culture continues to transcend transnational borders.     

Beyond economic insecurity and cultural backlash: Economic nationalism and the rise of the far right

Far‐right parties gain in electoral support across the globe. Studies describe this phenomenon either as a cultural backlash or as a reaction to growing economic inequality. The economic inequality perspective suggests that the transforming workforce in post‐industrial societies gives rise to economic insecurity among those who feel left behind. In contrast, the cultural backlash thesis argues that the increasing support for far‐right parties represents a rejection of values such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. More recent scholarship sought to show how economic and cultural factors combined increase the support for the far right. Most of these studies investigate public opinion polls, voting behaviour, and voters´ socio‐economic contexts. This paper reviews these studies and argues that the way in which far‐right political parties construct an interconnection of economic and cultural ideas in discourse is largely neglected in the existing body of literature. The paper concludes that the concept of economic nationalism captures how these two components are intertwined; economic nationalist discourse in far‐right political manifestos and speeches provides a more complete comprehension how public opinion is being shaped. This contribution offers a starting point for future studies to examine how cultural values, such as nationalism, reconstruct and influence articulation of economic policy.     

The Impact of Participation in Undergraduate Extracurricular Activities on the Transformation of Habitus among American Medical Students

Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we look at the question of whether extracurricular activities at the undergraduate level have an impact on American medical students' habitus, which we operationalize as a sense of inclusion, belonging. Using a national sample of 375 medical students and controlling for relevant variables, we find that for students from high-prestige backgrounds, being white is the major influence on sense of belonging. For students from low-prestige backgrounds, being white, multiple school acceptances, and participation in cultural activities as undergraduates are directly related to sense of belonging. The effect of participation in undergraduate cultural activities on sense of belonging illustrates the hysteresis effect. We discuss the consequences of cultural omnivorousness with its implications for a broad symbolic touch including the ability to decode a wide range of cultural texts in physician–patient communication in the context of a diverse population.     

Death and Transfiguration: The Final Hours of Muscovite Monks

The aim of this article is to draw attention to certain theological and liturgical factors that enter into the composition process of hagiography, and in particular, in the depiction of the death scenes of Muscovite monks. The monks who wrote the major portion of medieval Russian literature did so from a particular cultural context in which theological and liturgical texts played a prominent role. The article looks for evidence of this monastic culture in the memorials written to honour deceased members of monastic communities. It outlines some features of the monastic culture that produced the vitae, rehearses previous investigations into the production of Russian medieval hagiography and offers a detailed analysis of four texts from the Muscovite period. The Dormition and Transfiguration are important foundational motifs underlying death scenes in particular. Attention to liturgical and theological principles in other saints’ lives and biographical sketches will enhance our appreciation for the artistry of medieval Russian authors, who appropriate a lengthy Christian tradition in the production of their texts.     

简析中阿颜色词的文化内涵

颜色是人类对客观物质某种属性的反映，由于民族的文化不同，造成了对颜色词的理解和实际使用上的差异．分析中华民族和阿拉伯民族颜色词的文化内涵，是了解中阿文化差异的一种手段。本文通过对比分析，尝试展现中阿文中颜色词所蕴含的不同文化内涵．     

Strange Buddhas and the King of the Monks: Locating History and Community in a Muslim State

In this paper I discuss the way in which ethnic and cultural minorities articulate a sense of community through the production and negotiation of historical agency. The Thai Buddhist villagers of Kelantan live in a predominantly Malay and Muslim state along Malaysia's eastern seaboard. Although possessing few myths of common origin, these villagers use a myriad of autonomous reckonings of the past in constructing a sense of cultural distinctiveness in the modern Malaysian nation state. The past is often spoken of by Thai villagers in the guise of anecdotal stories which encapsulate the dizzying array of relationships the community is enmeshed in. My paper shows how these stories are meaning filled texts by which villagers understand their marginal identity. I conclude by arguing that anthropologists should pay close attention to the minutiae of disjunctured histories that permeate the lives of men and women everywhere as a valuable means of making sense of contemporary social realities.