A Linguistic Analysis of Spanglish: Relating Language to Identity.

According to the 2000 census, 35.3 million Hispanics live in the United States. This number comprises 12.5% of the overall population rendering the Latino community the largest minority in the United States. The Mexican community is not only the largest Hispanic group but also the fastest growing: from 1990 to 2000, the Mexican population grew 52.9% increasing from 13.5 million to 20.6 million (U.S. Department of Commerce News, 2001). The influx of Mexican immigrants coupled with the expansion of their community within the United States has created an unparalleled situation of language contact. Language is synonymous with identity (cf. Granger, 2004, and works cited within). To the extent that this is true, Spanish is synonymous with being Mexican and by extension, Chicano. With the advent of amnesty programs such as Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), which naturalized millions of Mexican migrants, what was once a temporal migratory population has become increasingly permanent (Durand et al., 1999). In an effort to conserve Mexican traditions and identity, the struggle to preserve the mother tongue while at the same time acculturate to mainstream Americana has resulted in a variant of Spanglish that has received little attention. This paper will examine the variant of Spanglish seen in the greater Los Angeles area and liken it to the bi-national identity under which these Mexican Americans thrive.

Multilingualism and identity

The term “multilingualism” is most often used to refer to a state of linguistic knowledge, environments, or speakers in relation to which a minimum of three languages are implicated.

Perspectives on the specification of Building Integrated Photovoltaic (BIPV) technology in construction projects

Innovative, low carbon technologies are already available for use in the construction of buildings, but the impact of their specification on construction projects is unclear. This exploratory research identifies issues which arise following the specification of BIPV in non-residential construction projects. Rather than treating the inclusion of a new technology as a technical problem, the research explores the issue from a socio-technical perspective to understand the accommodations which the project team makes and their effect on the building and the technology. The paper is part of a larger research project which uses a Social Construction of Technology Approach (SCOT) to explore the accommodations made to working practices and design when Building Integrated PhotoVoltaic (BIPV) technology is introduced. The approach explores how the requirements of the technology from different groups of actors (Relevant Social Groups or RSG's) give rise to problems and create solutions. As such it rejects the notion of a rational linear view of innovation diffusion; instead it suggests that the variety and composition of the Relevant Social Groups set the agenda for problem solving and solutions as the project progresses. The research explores the experiences of three people who have extensive histories of involvement with BIPV in construction, looks at how SCOT can inform our understanding of the issues involved and identifies themes and issues in the specification of BIPV on construction projects. A key finding concerns the alignment of inflection points at which interviewees have found themselves changing from one RSG to another as new problems and solutions are identified. The points at which they change RSG often occurred at points which mirror conventional construction categories (in terms of project specification, tender, design and construction).

On identity reformation and local transition: a case from Poland

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore and understand the process of successful introduction of total quality management (TQM) in Poland and the way in which it impacted on identity of Polish managers. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on a combination of ethnographic research and repertory grid interviews. Findings – The process of TQM introduction and implementation is examined through the application of translation as a model incorporating cultural and socio-economical dimensions in addition to individual and organizational levels that shaped the development of TQM in Poland. It then draws on the idea of fantasy as theorized in Lacanian psychoanalysis in order to incorporate the unconscious element of translation process which is missing from Latour’s theorization and which forms an important aspect of adoption of new technology and the emergence of a new post-transition generation of managers in Poland. The paper argues that a complex combination of contextual factors, amongst them the notion of fantasy shaped the process of translation of TQM to Poland, the identity formation of Polish managers and to the emergence of a new post-transition generation of managers in Poland. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the literature on the post-command transition by illustrating this process through the fantasy of total quality management explored in a specific socio-cultural and geographical context and by combining the idea of Latour’s translation with Lacanian fantasy.

Human resource allocation management in multiple projects using sociometric techniques

This article describes a new application of key psychological concepts in the area of Sociometry for the selection of workers within organizations in which projects are developed. The project manager can use a new procedure to determine which individuals should be chosen from a given pool of resources and how to combine them into one or several simultaneous groups/projects in order to assure the highest possible overall work efficiency from the standpoint of social interaction. The optimization process was carried out by means of matrix calculations performed using a computer or even manually, and based on a number of new ratios generated ad-hoc and composed on the basis of indices frequently used in Sociometry.

Children’s literature: sexual identity, gender and childhood

On the twenty-third of May 2015, Ireland became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage by popular vote. This event reversed a large part, if not all, of Ireland’s reputation for a Catholic-led conservatism concerning sexual and gender identities. I argue in this article that we can see a parallel-in-miniature to this momentous shift in something of a reversal of children’s literature’s views in this respect too, and I will concentrate on exploring what is at stake in the ways that childhood, sexual and gender identities are constructed in some recent children’s literature criticism in the light of these shifts. My interest is to consider: what is the ever-burgeoning interest in the gay, queer, cross-dressing, transsexual or transgender child precisely about? I ask this question on the grounds of not assuming that this interest in these identities arises necessarily simply out of a self-evident, progressive, liberatory impulse, and, alongside this, I also do not assume that ‘identities’ are essential, self-organised traits awaiting revelation and liberation.

Functional identity and diversity of animals predict ecosystem functioning better than species-based indices

Drastic biodiversity declines have raised concerns about the deterioration of ecosystem functions and have motivated much recent research on the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem functioning. A functional trait framework has been proposed to improve the mechanistic understanding of this relationship, but this has rarely been tested for organisms other than plants. We analysed eight datasets, including five animal groups, to examine how well a trait-based approach, compared with a more traditional taxonomic approach, predicts seven ecosystem functions below- and above-ground. Trait-based indices consistently provided greater explanatory power than species richness or abundance. The frequency distributions of single or multiple traits in the community were the best predictors of ecosystem functioning. This implies that the ecosystem functions we investigated were underpinned by the combination of trait identities (i.e. single-trait indices) and trait complementarity (i.e. multi-trait indices) in the communities. Our study provides new insights into the general mechanisms that link biodiversity to ecosystem functioning in natural animal communities and suggests that the observed responses were due to the identity and dominance patterns of the trait composition rather than the number or abundance of species per se.