An examination of the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes

This study draws upon cultivation theory, acculturation theory, and works on intergroup relations to examine the effects of print media exposure and contact on subjective social reality and acculturation attitudes of Chinese immigrants in Australia. Data was gathered via a survey administered to 265 respondents with Chinese origin. Results indicate that exposure to mainstream newspapers is only positively related to one indicator of subjective reality, namely, outgroup perception whereas exposure to ethnic newspapers was not significantly related to any of the indicators of subjective reality. Acculturation attitudes, on the other hand, are more closely related to group perception and contact but not closely associated with exposure to print media. These findings have again challenged the direct effect assumption of cultivation theory, paved the ground for combining mediated communication variables with interpersonal communication variables in acculturation research and suggested policy implications for interethnic coexistence. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Locating whiteness in the academic production of "I Philosophy" in and of time and place

This review will critically evaluate two recent texts by white academics working across disciplines of cultural studies, history and anthropology and published by UNSW Press, which share a focus on the relationship between Aboriginality, Philosophy, Place and Time in Australia. I write from the position of a queer white academic committed to engaging politically and intellectually with the challenge of Indigenous sovereignties in this place while also aware that my position as a middle class white woman and intellectual imposes limits on what it is possible for me to know about Indigenous epistemologies (see Moreton-Robinson, 2000). In the course of this review I will demonstrate how anthropology's tendency to fix its objects of study within a circumscribed space of 'difference' limits the capacity of texts produced within this discipline to account for racialized struggles over sovereignty. While these struggles are equally embedded in the ethnographic context and the nation's constitution and political institutions, we will see that Muecke and Bird Rose confront problems in analysing the relationship between the intimate space of the 'field', in which one's research subjects quickly become one's 'friends' and/or 'classificatory kin'—on one hand—and the public space of the nation within which statements about Aboriginality by white academics circulate and are vested with an authority that escapes individual intentions and control—on the other.

Antipodas: Journal of Hispanic and Galician Studies

Special title: De La Mancha a Nueva Nurcia. Imágenes de identidad en viejos y nuevos mundos: From La Mancha to New Nurcia. Images of identity in old and new worlds. In memory of Ben Haneman, doctor of medicine and friend, who contributed to the spread of quixotic ideals in Australia.

Reduplication and word stress in Vietnamese

In this paper acoustic properties of two types of reduplicative compound (full and tone sandhi reduplications) were examined to show acoustic evidence of assymetrical prominence relations (van der Hulst, 2005), in support of a hypothesis that Vietnamese reduplications are phonetically right headed and that tone sandhi is a reduction phenomenon occurring on prosodically weak positions (Shih, 2005). The results show phonetic evidence of prosodic constituency at the level of the bisyllabic word in Vietnamese.

An examination of the factors that influence identification and acculturation

This paper investigated the effects of print media exposure and intergroup contact on ethnic identification and acculturation attitudes of Chinese immigrants. Data was gathered from a survey participated by 265 respondents of Chinese origin. Findings indicated that exposure to the print media did not have a significant effect on ethnic identification and/or acculturation orientation. However, when the factor of intergroup contact was taken into consideration, differences began to occur. Specifically, for respondents from low intergroup contact group, ethnic identification increased with the desire to integrate into the large culture. For respondents from high intergroup contact group, opposite trends were found, i.e. as ethic identification increased, the tendency to adopt integration orientation decreased. Findings from this study suggested the need to combine factors of both interpersonal and mediated communication in the examination of ethnic identification and acculturation. This paper also drew some implications for the media industry and government policies.

An examination of the relationship between social locations of Chinese immigrants and their ethnic newspaper dependency

This study drew upon media system dependency theory (MSD) and social identity theory to examine the relationship between social locations of Chinese immigrants and their dependency on Chinese ethnic newspapers. Data was obtained from a survey participated by 265 respondents with Chinese origin but currently residing in Australia. Results indicated that among the three indicators of social location, age appeared to be a strong positive predictor of the dependency on ethnic newspapers for information. Respondents who stayed longer in the host country tended to be more frequent readers of ethnic newspapers as well. Education did not appear as a significant predictor of ethnic newspaper dependency. These findings suggested the need for us to further investigate the impact of ethnic print media on ethnic minorities in the age of various information sources offered by new technologies.

Campfire culture and computer culture: Museums of the present

In Australia indigenous peoples have never had a treaty with the dominant cultures; and their on-going marginalisation is some testimony to this. However, they have not languished entirely in a policy free environment: media is one area where some policy advances have been made; but media policy development has experienced a number of problems. It has tended to be monolithic in a situation demanding multi and complex treatments. And funding, as always, never seems sufficient to meet those multi and complex needs. This paper examines a small remote community on the island of Milingimbi off the northern coast of Arnhem Land in Australia's far north. People in East Arnhem Land refer to themselves collectively as Yolngu. This community is not typical of many documented cases of media relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples; however, the fact that it tends to overturn much of the conventional scholarship surrounding indigenous peoples and the media, helps shed new light on the inadequacy of not only monolithic media policy, but the inadequacy of media-only approaches to policy. Arguably, the significance of the media in Milingimbi is part of a 'triangulated' relationship between indigenous and dominant cultures. That triangulation also involves appropriate forms of government and education, which coupled with appropriate media appear to offer new ways of seeing self-government alongside relative cultural and economic autonomy.

The predicate marker li in Mauritian Creole

There is a morpheme 'li' in Mauritian Creole (MC), which is homophonous with the 3sg pronoun, and which, in the early creole, occurs frequently between the subject and the predicate in affirmative, present tense clauses. I propose that that 'li' may have originated as a resumptive pronoun, co-referential with the subject, but following the grammaticalization of new determiner elements to mark the semantic contrasts of [±definite] and singular vs. plural, 'li' has now grammaticalized into a predicate marker. Its presence is sensitive to both the nature of the predicate, and to the definiteness and specificity features of the subject NP. My analysis is within the framework of Truth Conditional Semantics, where indefinite NPs are analyzed as variables that get introduced into the discourse, and must be bound by an operator to yield a closed proposition, with a truth value. Drawing on a comparison with a cognative morpheme 'i' in Seychellois Creole, I claim that its path to grammaticalization is linked to that of the specificity marking 'la'.

How to unravel and solve soil fertility problems

This book provides a way for farmers in developing countries to benefit from scientific knowledge on plant nutrition and soil fertility. Specifically, it will help farmers recognise and deal with shortages or excesses of chemical elements.