The design of architectural dialect and local identity as Islam strategy in promoting its thought in Indonesia

The design of mosques in Indonesia uses basic principal form of Hindu temple with its roof taking the form of layered pyramid (3, 5, 7). This architectural dialect design approach was effective in promoting Islam in most regions of the Indonesian Archipelago. The detailed explanation about architectural dialect will be elaborated in my full paper. This paper discuss about a friendly approach by using Hindu Building as mosque. It has given a greatly impact to the surrounding society to Accept new religion. Such temple-styled mosques have a history dating back to 1200 AD and form the basic inspiration for mosque designs in all parts of the country. The layered pyramid mosque’s architectural dialect design proves that architecture has played significant role in promoting Islamic doctrines in Indonesia. 85% of the total Indonesian population is Muslim. Based on these statistics, it is widely evident that the use of dialect design as a political strategy by Muslim scholars was effective in introducing and promoting Islamic ideologies in Indonesia. The strategy facilitated psychological acceptance of Islam by the local populations who were initially Hindu believers and were accustomed to the temple. Additionally, the design ensured the peaceful introduction and spread of Islam in the region. Moreover, the fact that the dialect design was based on local identity, combined with local architecture that had highly recognizable building elements (roof and ornament) promoted the spread of Islam in Indonesia.

Solving problems collaboratively online : experiences of Australian and Chinese heritage university students

The research reported in this paper is part of a larger project designed to compare the online collaborative learning behaviours of Chinese Heritage Culture (CHC) university students, for whom a Chinese dialect is a first language, with Australian university students of European descent, and for whom English is a first language. The collaborative learning discussion focussed on in the research involved fellow students, rather than tutorial staff, facilitating those discussions.

The first component of the research was quantitative, comprising a questionnaire on readiness for online learning, and a quantitative analysis of student postings to a student-led collaborative problem solving task conducted online. The first component of the research (reported in Smith et at, 2005) showed no differences between the two groups in their willingness to self-manage their own learning, but did show that the CHC students were significantly less comfortable than the Australian students with online learning. Student postings to the online discussions were classified into organisational postings, social postings, and intellectual. There were substantial differences between the two groups in their patterns of online postings among those classifications, as well as differences in the length of postings made.

This paper will explore these findings in more detail through qualitative data generated through interviews with a subset of students from each group. Interview data provided further insight into the lesser comfort with e-learning among CHC students. Students from both groups felt there were inefficiencies in the online discussion, but CHC students also felt rather marginalised by the process. Australian students were more likely to evaluate the experience in terms of its capacity to achieve required learning outcomes in a time efficient way, while CHC students expressed more concern about how the process had impacted upon them personally. The interview data also indicated that a tutor sensitive to cultural difference is important for comfort among the CHC students in particular, since there is need for encouragement to those students to make reflective inputs to the discussion.

上海方言音变中社会认同的作用

This paper explores, through reporting a study on a sound change in the Shanghai dialect, the issue of social identity promoting language change. It will show that social identification by young people with a formerly undesirable variant sound in the Shanghai dialect was pivotal in pushing this sound variation into a sound change.

Weaving the web - From myth to modernity

The discovery, development or invention of new objects and phenomena by humankind, requires a new set of words to be coined or adopted to describe it. This is also true of the Information Communication Technology (ICT) world. Words are not neutral, regardless of which dialect or language they occur in. They carry with them associations and connotations based on their previous applications and alliances, and augmented by their shapes, sounds, rhymes and rhythms. The subtext that word choice creates, while often not recognised or acknowledged, is important in considering how communication operates in, and shapes Information Technology (IT) environments. Many words that are now embedded in the ICT lexicon continue to be informed by these earlier meanings, some of which, in the English lexis, are drawn from myths. The vernacular of the ICT lexis reflects its openness to new ideas, the nature of its users, its English language roots and its Western cultural origins. This contributes to a particular communication style. But such lexis can prove problematic for non-English speaking background users and/or those from different cultures. As the ICT vocabulary continues to evolve, these language and cultural underpinnings are coming under challenge, suggesting a language and cultural future very different to the past. This in turn, will create a subtext that affects all users.

Social identity and sound change : the case of Wo in Shanghainese

Research has shown that language change is driven on one hand by forces internal to language itself such as grammar-internal systematic pressure, and on the other hand by social motives such as social identity. Language contact presents new features, but why is it that some of them are incorporated as variation and evolving into language change, while others are not? This paper reports a study on a sound change in Shanghainese, a dialect of the Chinese language. Data were collected in natural contexts of conversation followed by a brief interview with informants to gain identity related information about them. It has found that previously negative perception of status attached to a new sound induced by language/dialect contact changed into a positive perception, and people started to identify positively with this new sound. Further, there were differences in various different age and gender groups in taking up the new sound. As a result, this sound has evolved from a nonnative alternative to a systematic variation and it is being established as a sound change. This study has thus further confirmed that social identity plays a pivotal role in driving language features into language variation and language change.

Cocos Malay language since integration with Australia

The Cocos (Keeling) Islands are a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean and arehome to the Cocos Malay people, who have developed a distinct dialect. It waspredicted over 30 years ago that the Cocos Malay language faced extinction, perhapseven within the timeframe of one generation. Two possible threats to the Cocos Malaylanguage were identified. It was felt that English, as the language of power, may replacethe Cocos Malay language. The other possibility was language convergence, whereCocos Malay would be subsumed by another, larger Malay dialect. With these issues inmind, I explore developments in the Cocos Malay language since the Islands’ fullintegration with Australia in 1984. Drawing from extensive ethnographic work andlinguistic research into Cocos Malay I also refer to the work of other researchers toanalyse how the Cocos Malay language has developed over the past 30 years, in a timeof great social change. I argue that integration with Australia and attempts atassimilation have resulted in social dynamics where Cocos Malay language remains adefining marker of Cocos Malay identity positioning. In this social environment, CocosMalay therefore remains viable and, despite language change, does not face immediateextinction.