Striving for a common language: A white feminist parallel to Indigenous ways of knowing and researching

In Striving Towards a Common Language I outline an innovative methodology which consists of three strands encompassing an Indigenous-centred approach based on Indigenous Self-determination (participatory action research), relationship as central to socio-cultural dynamics, and feminist phenomenology. This methodology - which I call Living On the Ground was created in direct concert with 13 Indigenous women elders who were my hosts, teachers and walytja (family) as we worked together to create a dynamic cultural revitalisation project for their community, one of Australia's most remote Aboriginal settlements. I explain the processes I went through as a White Irish-Australian woman living with the women elders and their 11 dogs in a one room tin shed for two years, and tell of how the nexus of land, Ancestors, and the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) combined with White cultural practices came to inspire a methodology which took the best from Indigenous and (White) feminist ways of knowing and of being. (c) 2005 Z. de Ishtar. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Syntactic complexity measures and their relation to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language

The study reported in this article is a part of a large-scale study investigating syntactic complexity in second language (L2) oral data in commonly taught foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, and Spanish; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, in preparation). In this article, preliminary findings of the analysis of the Japanese data are reported. Syntactic complexity, which is referred to as syntactic maturity or the use of a range of forms with degrees of sophistication (Ortega, 2003), has long been of interest to researchers in L2 writing. In L2 speaking, researchers have examined syntactic complexity in learner speech in the context of pedagogic intervention (e.g., task type, planning time) and the validation of rating scales. In these studies complexity is examined using measures commonly employed in L2 writing studies. It is assumed that these measures are valid and reliable, but few studies explain what syntactic complexity measures actually examine. The language studied is predominantly English, and little is known about whether the findings of such studies can be applied to languages that are typologically different from English. This study examines how syntactic complexity measures relate to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language. An in-depth analysis of speech samples from 33 learners of Japanese is presented. The results of the analysis are compared across proficiency levels and cross-referenced with 3 other proficiency measures used in the study. As in past studies, the length of T-units and the number of clauses per T-unit is found to be the best way to predict learner proficiency; the measure also had a significant linear relation with independent oral proficiency measures. These results are discussed in light of the notion of syntactic complexity and the interfaces between second language acquisition and language testing. Adapted from the source document

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.

Leximancer concept mapping of patient case studies

Quantitative databases are limited to information identified as important by their creators, while databases containing natural language are limited by our ability to analyze large unstructured bodies of text. Leximancer is a tool that uses semantic mapping to develop concept maps from natural language. We have applied Leximancer to educational based pathology case notes to demonstrate how real patient records or databases of case studies could be analyzed to identify unique relationships. We then discuss how such analysis could be used to conduct quantitative analysis from databases such as the Coronary Heart Disease Database.

Cross-language Perception of Word-final Stops by Native Vietnamese Listeners: Preliminary Results on the Role of Specific, Non-native Phonetic Experience

This study examined the discrimination of word-final stop contrasts (/p/-/t/, /p/-/k/, /t/-/k/) in English and Thai by 12 listeners who speak Vietnamese as their first language (L1). Vietnamese shares specific phonetic realization of stops with Thai, i.e., unreleased final stop and differs from English which allows both released and unreleased final stops. These 12 native Vietnamese (NV) listeners’ discrimination accuracy was compared to that of the two listener groups (Australian English (AE), native Thai (NT)) tested in previous studies. The NV group was less accurate than the native group in discriminating both English and Thai stop contrasts. In particular, for the Thai /t/-/k/ contrast, they were significantly less accurate than the AE listeners. The present findings suggest that experience with specific (i.e., unreleased) and native phonetic realization of sounds may be essential in accurate discrimination of final stop contrasts. The effect of L1 dialect on cross-language speech perception is discussed.

Language, respect and the power of protest: Linguistic stereotyping and people with disabilities in Japan

Discriminatory language became an important social issue in the west in the late twentieth century, when debates on political correctness and minority rights focused largely on the issue of respect in language. Japan is often criticized for having made only token attempts to address this issue. This paper investigates how one marginalized group—people with disabilities—has dealt with discriminatory and disrespectful language. The debate has been played out in four public spaces: the media, the law, literature, and the Internet. The paper discusses the kind of language, which has generated protest, the empowering strategies of direct action employed to combat its use, and the response of the media, the bureaucracy, and the literati. Government policy has not kept pace with social change in this area; where it exists at all, it is often contradictory and far from clear. I argue that while the laws were rewritten primarily as a result of external international trends, disability support groups achieved domestic media compliance by exploiting the keen desire of media organizations to avoid public embarrassment. In the absence of language policy formulated at the government level, the media effectively instituted a policy of self-censorship through strict guidelines on language use, thereby becoming its own best watchdog. Disability support groups have recently enlisted the Internet as an agent of further empowerment in the ongoing discussion of the issue.