Ecological distribution of stream macroalgae in different spatial scales using taxonomic and morphological groups

We examined the ecological distribution of macroalgal communities in streams using species groups (taxonomic units = algal phyla, and morphological = morphological types) with similar structures and functions instead of the species themselves. The study was conducted from June to July/2007 in two drainage basins located in mid-southern region of Paraná State , Brazil. Evaluations of macroalgal communities took into consideration the following spatial scales: the drainage basin (the Pedras river and Marrecas river basins), shading regime (open and shaded stream segments), mesohabitats (riffles and pools), and microhabitats (sampling units of 0.05m2). A total of 29 taxa (23 subgeneric, one generic, and five vegetative groups) were identified. On these, 12 taxa belong to Chlorophyta, 11 to Cyanobacteria, four to Heterokontophyta, and two to Rhodophyta. The proportions of morphological types were: 24% free filaments, 17.25% mats, tufts, gelatinous colonies, and gelatinous filaments, 7% crusts. In terms of spatial scales, we observed a predominance of Chlorophyta in open stream segments and Cyanobacteria in shaded stream segments, reflecting the loss of competitive advantage of green algae in sites with low energy availability. In the mesohabitats, the morphological types recorded in pools were predominantly poorly adapted to fast currents (free filaments), while those found in riffles (mats, tufts and gelatinous filaments) were highly resistant to fast water flows. As such, the use of species groupings based on algal taxonomy associated with morphological characteristics proved to be useful to understanding the distributions of these organisms in lotic environments.

Nichesourcing The Uralic Languages For The Benefit Of Linguistic Research And Lingual Societies

The emerging technologies have recently challenged the libraries to reconsider their role as a mere mediator between the collections, researchers, and wider audiences (Sula, 2013), and libraries, especially the nationwide institutions like national libraries, haven’t always managed to face the challenge (Nygren et al., 2014). In the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages, the National Library of Finland has become a node that connects the partners to interplay and work for shared goals and objectives. In this paper, I will be drawing a picture of the crowdsourcing methods that have been established during the project to support both linguistic research and lingual diversity. The National Library of Finland has been executing the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages since 2012. The project seeks to digitize and publish approximately 1,200 monograph titles and more than 100 newspapers titles in various, and in some cases endangered Uralic languages. Once the digitization has been completed in 2015, the Fenno-Ugrica online collection will consist of 110,000 monograph pages and around 90,000 newspaper pages to which all users will have open access regardless of their place of residence. The majority of the digitized literature was originally published in the 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union, and it was the genesis and consolidation period of literary languages. This was the era when many Uralic languages were converted into media of popular education, enlightenment, and dissemination of information pertinent to the developing political agenda of the Soviet state. The ‘deluge’ of popular literature in the 1920s to 1930s suddenly challenged the lexical orthographic norms of the limited ecclesiastical publications from the 1880s onward. Newspapers were now written in orthographies and in word forms that the locals would understand. Textbooks were written to address the separate needs of both adults and children. New concepts were introduced in the language. This was the beginning of a renaissance and period of enlightenment (Rueter, 2013). The linguistically oriented population can also find writings to their delight, especially lexical items specific to a given publication, and orthographically documented specifics of phonetics. The project is financially supported by the Kone Foundation in Helsinki and is part of the Foundation’s Language Programme. One of the key objectives of the Kone Foundation Language Programme is to support a culture of openness and interaction in linguistic research, but also to promote citizen science as a tool for the participation of the language community in research. In addition to sharing this aspiration, our objective within the Language Programme is to make sure that old and new corpora in Uralic languages are made available for the open and interactive use of the academic community as well as the language societies. Wordlists are available in 17 languages, but without tokenization, lemmatization, and so on. This approach was verified with the scholars, and we consider the wordlists as raw data for linguists. Our data is used for creating the morphological analyzers and online dictionaries at the Helsinki and Tromsø Universities, for instance. In order to reach the targets, we will produce not only the digitized materials but also their development tools for supporting linguistic research and citizen science. The Digitization Project of Kindred Languages is thus linked with the research of language technology. The mission is to improve the usage and usability of digitized content. During the project, we have advanced methods that will refine the raw data for further use, especially in the linguistic research. How does the library meet the objectives, which appears to be beyond its traditional playground? The written materials from this period are a gold mine, so how could we retrieve these hidden treasures of languages out of the stack that contains more than 200,000 pages of literature in various Uralic languages? The problem is that the machined-encoded text (OCR) contains often too many mistakes to be used as such in research. The mistakes in OCRed texts must be corrected. For enhancing the OCRed texts, the National Library of Finland developed an open-source code OCR editor that enabled the editing of machine-encoded text for the benefit of linguistic research. This tool was necessary to implement, since these rare and peripheral prints did often include already perished characters, which are sadly neglected by the modern OCR software developers, but belong to the historical context of kindred languages and thus are an essential part of the linguistic heritage (van Hemel, 2014). Our crowdsourcing tool application is essentially an editor of Alto XML format. It consists of a back-end for managing users, permissions, and files, communicating through a REST API with a front-end interface—that is, the actual editor for correcting the OCRed text. The enhanced XML files can be retrieved from the Fenno-Ugrica collection for further purposes. Could the crowd do this work to support the academic research? The challenge in crowdsourcing lies in its nature. The targets in the traditional crowdsourcing have often been split into several microtasks that do not require any special skills from the anonymous people, a faceless crowd. This way of crowdsourcing may produce quantitative results, but from the research’s point of view, there is a danger that the needs of linguists are not necessarily met. Also, the remarkable downside is the lack of shared goal or the social affinity. There is no reward in the traditional methods of crowdsourcing (de Boer et al., 2012). Also, there has been criticism that digital humanities makes the humanities too data-driven and oriented towards quantitative methods, losing the values of critical qualitative methods (Fish, 2012). And on top of that, the downsides of the traditional crowdsourcing become more imminent when you leave the Anglophone world. Our potential crowd is geographically scattered in Russia. This crowd is linguistically heterogeneous, speaking 17 different languages. In many cases languages are close to extinction or longing for language revitalization, and the native speakers do not always have Internet access, so an open call for crowdsourcing would not have produced appeasing results for linguists. Thus, one has to identify carefully the potential niches to complete the needed tasks. When using the help of a crowd in a project that is aiming to support both linguistic research and survival of endangered languages, the approach has to be a different one. In nichesourcing, the tasks are distributed amongst a small crowd of citizen scientists (communities). Although communities provide smaller pools to draw resources, their specific richness in skill is suited for complex tasks with high-quality product expectations found in nichesourcing. Communities have a purpose and identity, and their regular interaction engenders social trust and reputation. These communities can correspond to research more precisely (de Boer et al., 2012). Instead of repetitive and rather trivial tasks, we are trying to utilize the knowledge and skills of citizen scientists to provide qualitative results. In nichesourcing, we hand in such assignments that would precisely fill the gaps in linguistic research. A typical task would be editing and collecting the words in such fields of vocabularies where the researchers do require more information. For instance, there is lack of Hill Mari words and terminology in anatomy. We have digitized the books in medicine, and we could try to track the words related to human organs by assigning the citizen scientists to edit and collect words with the OCR editor. From the nichesourcing’s perspective, it is essential that altruism play a central role when the language communities are involved. In nichesourcing, our goal is to reach a certain level of interplay, where the language communities would benefit from the results. For instance, the corrected words in Ingrian will be added to an online dictionary, which is made freely available for the public, so the society can benefit, too. This objective of interplay can be understood as an aspiration to support the endangered languages and the maintenance of lingual diversity, but also as a servant of ‘two masters’: research and society.

The interconnections between customer loyalty, employee engagement and business performance

The interconnections of customer loyalty, employee engagement and business performance have been separately examined in several previous studies but actually a coherent study combining all of these components together has been lacking. This thesis aims to study all of these components and their interrelations at the same time in order to understand the organization as a one whole. The thesis includes an encompassing review of the previous studies related to customer loyalty and employee engagement. The theory presents both the theoretical approaches and the empirical findings from the earlier literature and builds therefore a strong fundament for the empirical part of this thesis. The empirical data in this thesis was provided by three case companies of a Nordic group operating in a business-to-business professional services branch and it used the Net Promoter Score method for measuring both customer loyalty and employee engagement. The thesis left interesting research questions open and provides therefore an intriguing study field for the future researches.

Nichesourcing for the benefit of linguistic research and native speakers

The National Library of Finland is implementing the Digitization Project of Kindred Languages in 2012–16. Within the project we will digitize materials in the Uralic languages as well as develop tools to support linguistic research and citizen science. Through this project, researchers will gain access to new corpora 329 and to which all users will have open access regardless of their place of residence. Our objective is to make sure that the new corpora are made available for the open and interactive use of both the academic community and the language societies as a whole. The project seeks to digitize and publish approximately 1200 monograph titles and more than 100 newspapers titles in various Uralic languages. The digitization will be completed by the early of 2015, when the Fenno-Ugrica collection would contain around 200 000 pages of editable text. The researchers cannot spend so much time with the material that they could retrieve a satisfactory amount of edited words, so the participation of a crowd in editing work is needed. Often the targets in crowdsourcing have been split into several microtasks that do not require any special skills from the anonymous people, a faceless crowd. This way of crowdsourcing may produce quantitative results, but from the research’s point of view, there is a danger that the needs of linguistic research are not necessarily met. Also, the number of pages is too high to deal with. The remarkable downside is the lack of shared goal or social affinity. There is no reward in traditional methods of crowdsourcing. Nichesourcing is a specific type of crowdsourcing where tasks are distributed amongst a small crowd of citizen scientists (communities). Although communities provide smaller pools to draw resources, their specific richness in skill is suited for the complex tasks with high-quality product expectations found in nichesourcing. Communities have purpose, identity and their regular interactions engenders social trust and reputation. These communities can correspond to research more precisely. Instead of repetitive and rather trivial tasks, we are trying to utilize the knowledge and skills of citizen scientists to provide qualitative results. Some selection must be made, since we are not aiming to correct all 200,000 pages which we have digitized, but give such assignments to citizen scientists that would precisely fill the gaps in linguistic research. A typical task would editing and collecting the words in such fields of vocabularies, where the researchers do require more information. For instance, there’s a lack of Hill Mari words in anatomy. We have digitized the books in medicine and we could try to track the words related to human organs by assigning the citizen scientists to edit and collect words with OCR editor. From the nichesourcing’s perspective, it is essential that the altruism plays a central role, when the language communities involve. Upon the nichesourcing, our goal is to reach a certain level of interplay, where the language communities would benefit on the results. For instance, the corrected words in Ingrian will be added onto the online dictionary, which is made freely available for the public and the society can benefit too. This objective of interplay can be understood as an aspiration to support the endangered languages and the maintenance of lingual diversity, but also as a servant of “two masters”, the research and the society.

Nutritional value and antioxidant capacity of "cocoa honey" (Theobroma cacao L.)

Cocoa honey is considered as the liquid portion of cocoa pulp that is released from the fruit soon after it is cut open and can be used before fermentation by simple extraction due to its nutritional characteristics. The objective of the present study is to determine the biochemical characteristics of a cocoa by-product, "cocoa honey" (CH), produced in the State of Bahia-Brazil. The biochemical characterization was conducted to determine reducing sugars, total sugars, vitamin C, total dietary fiber, flavonoids, and total antioxidant activity using an EC50. It was observed that cocoa honey can be considered a source of bioactive compounds, can be consumed in natura or processed, and used as an ingredient in the chocolate industry and in other food products. However, it is necessary to use complementary methods, such as HPLC, to quantify the phenolic compounds of this by-product.

Collectiveness within startup teams – Leading the way to initiating and managing collective pursuit of opportunities in organizational contexts

While traditional entrepreneurship literature addresses the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities to a solo entrepreneur, scholars increasingly agree that new ventures are often founded and operated by entrepreneurial teams as collective efforts especially in hightechnology industries. Researchers also suggest that team ventures are more likely to survive and succeed than ventures founded by the individual entrepreneur although specific challenges might relate to multiple individuals being involved in joint entrepreneurial action. In addition to new ventures, entrepreneurial teams are seen central for organizing work in established organizations since the teams are able to create major product and service innovations that drive organizational success. Acknowledgement of the entrepreneurial teams in various organizational contexts has challenged the notion on the individual entrepreneur. However, considering that entrepreneurial teams represent a collective-level phenomenon that bases on interactions between organizational members, entrepreneurial teams may not have been studied as indepth as could be expected from the point of view of the team-level, rather than the individual or the individuals in the team. Many entrepreneurial team studies adopt the individualized view of entrepreneurship and examine the team members’ aggregate characteristics or the role of a lead entrepreneur. The previous understandings might not offer a comprehensive and indepth enough understanding of collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams and team venture performance that often relates to the team-level issues in particular. In addition, as the collective-level of entrepreneurial teams has been approached in various ways in the existing literatures, the phenomenon has been difficult to understand in research and practice. Hence, there is a need to understand entrepreneurial teams at the collective-level through a systematic and comprehensive perspective. This study takes part in the discussions on entrepreneurial teams. The overall objective of this study is to offer a description and understanding of collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams beyond individual(s). The research questions of the study are: 1) what collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams stands for, what constitutes the basic elements of it, and who are included in it, 2) why, how, and when collectiveness emerges or reinforces within entrepreneurial teams, and 3) why collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams matters and how it could be developed or supported. In order to answer the above questions, this study bases on three approaches, two set of empirical data, two analysis techniques, and conceptual study. The first data set consists of 12 qualitative semi-structured interviews with business school students who are seen as prospective entrepreneurs. The data is approached through a social constructionist perspective and analyzed through discourse analysis. The second data set bases on a qualitative multiplecase study approach that aims at theory elaboration. The main data consists of 14 individual and four group semi-structured thematic interviews with members of core entrepreneurial teams of four team startups in high-technology industries. The secondary data includes publicly available documents. This data set is approached through a critical realist perspective and analyzed through systematic thematic analysis. The study is completed through a conceptual study that aims at building a theoretical model of collective-level entrepreneurship drawing from existing literatures on organizational theory and social-psychology. The theoretical work applies a positivist perspective. This study consists of two parts. The first part includes an overview that introduces the research background, knowledge gaps and objectives, research strategy, and key concepts. It also outlines the existing knowledge of entrepreneurial team literature, presents and justifies the choices of paradigms and methods, summarizes the publications, and synthesizes the findings through answering the above mentioned research questions. The second part consists of five publications that address independent research questions but all enable to answer the research questions set for this study as a whole. The findings of this study suggest a map of relevant concepts and their relationships that help grasp collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams. The analyses conducted in the publications suggest that collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams stands for cognitive and affective structures in-between team members including elements of collective entity, collective idea of business, collective effort, collective attitudes and motivations, and collective feelings. Collectiveness within entrepreneurial teams also stands for specific joint entrepreneurial action components in which the structures are constructed. The action components reflect equality and democracy, and open and direct communication in particular. Collectiveness emerges because it is a powerful tool for overcoming individualized barriers to entrepreneurship and due to collectively oriented desire for, collective value orientation to, demand for, and encouragement to team entrepreneurship. Collectiveness emerges and reinforces in processes of joint creation and realization of entrepreneurial opportunities including joint analysis and planning of the opportunities and strategies, decision-making and realization of the opportunities, and evaluation, feedback, and sanctions of entrepreneurial action. Collectiveness matters because it is relevant for potential future entrepreneurs and because it affects the ways collective ventures are initiated and managed. Collectiveness also matters because it is a versatile, dynamic, and malleable phenomenon and the ideas of it can be applied across organizational contexts that require team work in discovering or creating and realizing new opportunities. This study further discusses how the findings add to the existing knowledge of entrepreneurial team literature and how the ideas can be applied in educational, managerial, and policy contexts.

Second Welland Canal - Book 2, Survey Map 6 - Locks 19, 20, 21 and 22 in Grantham

Survey map of the Second Welland Canal created by the Welland Canal Company showing south Merritton along the boundary between the Grantham and Thorold Townships. Identified structures associated with the Canal include Locks 19, 20, 21, and 22, Lock Tenders House, and the towing path. The surveyors' measurements and notes can be seen in red and black ink and pencil. Local area landmarks are also identified and include streets and roads (ex. Pine Street and Macadamized Road), J. Brown Cement Mill, W. B. Hendershot Saw Mill, W. Parnall Spoke and Sash Factory, W. Beatty Saw Mill, W. Beatty Tannery, a number of structures (possibly houses) belonging to: Mrs. Aikins, J. Battle, and E. Keefer, and a foundry, smithy, and machine shop (all of which possible belonged to J. Dobbie). Properties and property owners of note are: Concession 10 Lots 9 and 10, W. C. Loan Company, P.H. Ball, and J. Keefer. Two small properties belonging to W. B. Hendershot and W. Beatty exist and are outlined in red. A half acre property reserved for a lock lot exists and is outlined in blue. An additional property reserved for a quarry is also identified, but not outlined.

Educational Technology Decision-Making: A Case Study on Technology Acquisition for 746,000 Ontario Students

Very little research has examined K–12 educational technology decision-making in Canada. This collective case study explores the technology procurement process in Ontario’s publicly funded school districts to determine if it is informed by the relevant research, grounded in best practices, and enhances student learning. Using a qualitative approach, 10 senior leaders (i.e., chief information officers, superintendents, etc.) were interviewed. A combination of open-ended and closed-ended questions were used to reveal the most important factors driving technology acquisition, research support, governance procedures, data use, and assessment and return on investment (ROI) measures utilized by school districts in their implementation of educational technology. After participants were interviewed, the data were transcribed, member checked, and then submitted to “Computer-assisted NCT analysis” (Friese, 2014) using ATLAS.ti. The findings show that senior leaders are making acquisitions that are not aligned with current scholarship and not with student learning as the focus. It was also determined that districts struggle to use data-driven decision-making to support the governance of educational technology spending. Finally, the results showed that districts do not have effective assessment measures in place to determine the efficacy or ROI of a purchased technology. Although data are limited to the responses of 10 senior leaders, findings represent the technology leadership for approximately 746,000 Ontario students. The study is meant to serve as an informative resource for senior leaders and presents strategic and research-validated approaches to technology procurement. Further, the study has the potential to refine technology decision-making, policies, and practices in K–12 education.

Instagram, Social Media, and the "Like": Exploring Virtual Identity's Role in 21st Century Students' New Socialization Experience

Personal technologies and social media use have changed the socialization experience of our 21st century learners. As learners have a new, embodied, virtual identity that is an omnipresent force within their social interactions, this study sought to examine how virtual identity influences student relationships both within and outside of a school context. This study also explored how personal technologies and social media use have influenced learners’ perceptions of their own 21st century learning. Using a qualitative inquiry, purposeful sampling was employed to recruit 6 participants between the ages of 15 to 19 to examine their social networking site use and education experience. Data were collected from single, one-on-one semi-structured interviews in which participants discussed their experiences using social media. Data were also collected from the teens’ personal Instagram accounts, and a personal reflexive researcher’s journal was kept for triangulation of data. Open and axial coding strategies alongside constant comparative methods were used to analyze data. Participants shared how they and their peers use social media, the pressures and expectations from other users, social media’s influence on peer relationships, and how social media influences their choices in the physical realm. All 6 participants explained that their teachers do not talk to them about their social media use, and even offered critiques of the school system itself and its inability to prepare students for the new realities of a digital world. This study concludes that while social media is very influential on students’ socialization, educators should be more concerned about the lack of guidance and support that students receive in school in terms of appropriate social media use and the navigation of virtual identity.

Volunteering and Social Capital: A Case Study of Older Hospital Volunteers in Southern Ontario

Volunteering as a form of social activity can facilitate older adults’ active aging through community engagement. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand the views on older adults’ volunteerism in a community hospital network in Southern Ontario. Utilizing in-depth interviews with 10 older volunteers (over the age of 65), document analysis, and a key informant interview, I explored their experiences of volunteering and social capital development at six hospitals in the network. Data analyses included open and axial coding, and conceptualization of the themes. Four major themes emerged from the data: reasons to volunteer, management’s influence, negative experiences of volunteering, and connections with others. The findings of this research emphasized older volunteers’ strong commitment and enthusiasm to support the hospital in their own communities, the power of volunteering to enhance the development of bonding, bridging, and linking social capital, and the influence of two major contextual factors (i.e. the Auxiliary Factor and the Change Factor) to facilitate or hinder older volunteers’ social capital development in the hospitals. Future research directions should focus on further unpacking the different degrees to which each type of social capital is developed, placing emphasis on the benefits of social capital development for volunteers in healthcare settings. The implications for practice include the targeted recruitment of older adults as healthcare volunteers while creating volunteer positions and environments in which they can develop social capital with their peer volunteers, hospital staff, patients, and people in surrounding communities. To sustain their existing dedicated long-term volunteers, in particular their Auxiliary groups, the community hospital network can enhance facilitating factors such as the Auxiliary Factor while mitigating the negative effects of the Change Factor. By developing social capital through volunteering in their own communities, older adults can engage in active aging, while participating in the development of an age-friendly community.

Altered sensory-weighting mechanisms is observed in adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis

Affiliation: Paul Allard : Département de kinésiologie, Université de Montréal

Interactions entre le sommeil, l’attention et le contrôle postural chez des sujets jeunes et âgés

Les pertes d’équilibre représentent une cause importante de blessure et de mortalité, notamment sur le milieu du travail et chez les personnes âgées. Cette thèse explore les effets du manque de sommeil sur le contrôle postural en fonction de l’âge et s’intéresse à l’influence des ressources attentionnelles, perceptuelles et motrices sur la relation entre le sommeil et le contrôle postural. Des sujets jeunes et âgés ont effectué diverses tâches posturales statiques sur des plates-formes de force après une nuit de sommeil et après 25 heures de privation de sommeil. L’étendue et la vitesse des déplacements du centre de pression ont été mesurées en gardant les yeux ouverts et les yeux fermés sous trois niveaux de charge cognitive. Les résultats montrent que la privation de sommeil a augmenté l’étendue du centre de pression dans les deux groupes d’âge et a augmenté la vitesse du centre de pression chez les sujets âgés. De plus, les effets de la privation de sommeil sur le contrôle postural étaient davantage prononcés lorsque les sujets âgés gardent les yeux fermés. L’augmentation de la charge cognitive sous privation de sommeil a poussé la majorité des sujets jeunes à adopter un contrôle postural plus statique, alors que chez les sujets âgés, les effets de la charge cognitive ne se surajoutaient pas à ceux de la privation de sommeil. Ces observations suggèrent que la privation de sommeil ait des effets déstabilisateurs sur le contrôle postural qui sont plus marqués chez les personnes âgées, surtout lorsque les informations visuelles sont altérées. Il est donc proposé que le manque de sommeil soit un facteur de risque significatif pour les chutes.

Essais sur les logiciels libres : licences doubles, effets de réseau, et concurrence

This thesis examines the microeconomic consequences of the arrival of open source in the software market. Specifically, it analyzes three features of open source software by using specific models of industrial organization. Open source software is free, and may be modified or duplicated by anyone. The first paper studies the entry of an open source software in a closed source software market. Using a model of horizontal differentiation, the analysis considers a closed source firm's investment in the quality of its software. The introduction of open source on the market reduces the firm's investment in quality and increases the price of its software. Moreover, the entry of open source software may reduce consumer welfare. Post-entry by an open source software, the reduction in market share lowers the firm's incentive to invest in quality. The second paper features vertical differentiation to study a monopolist selling supporting product to its software. The study begins by contrasting the supply of support by an open source provider and a closed source vendor. The model shows that in both cases the levels of support offered are the same. In addition, consumer welfare is higher and profit lower under an open source software. Then, the paper considers the competition in the provision of support. Here, the supply of high level support is greater than under a monopolist. Finally, the monopolist adopts a dual licensing strategy to extract more surplus from developers interested in modifying open source software and redistributing the resulting product. This technique, when the developers place high value on the source code, generates more profit if the monopolist chooses to publish as open source rather than closed source. The last paper studies how a closed source firm is affected by the introduction of an open source benefiting from contributions by users. A vertical differentiation model is used, and reveals that, when contribution of users is present, the closed source vendor may lower its price to a level where it forces the open source out of the market. The firm's lower price not only increases demand for its software, but also induces consumers into switching from open to closed source software therefore reducing the contribution of users.

The Educational Experience of Students of Chinese Origin in a French-Speaking Context : the role of school, family, and community

Cette recherche vise à documenter l’expérience scolaire des élèves québécois d’origine chinoise à l’école secondaire de langue française et à examiner les dynamiques qui influencent la réussite scolaire de ces élèves. Elle s’intéresse plus précisément aux impacts des facteurs relatifs à l’école, à la famille immigrante, et à ceux de la communauté ethnique sur l’intégration de ces jeunes dans un contexte francophone. Les données ont été principalement recueillies à travers des entretiens semi-structurés approfondis auprès d’élèves d’origine chinoise et de différents acteurs du paradigme éducatif (parents, acteurs scolaires et intervenants communautaires). D’autres instruments, tels que l’analyse du contenu de documents et de médias, ont également été utilisés afin de fournir des informations contextuelles et d’enrichir les données d’entrevues. Les données ont été analysées selon un cadre théorique ouvert et inclusif où la réussite scolaire des élèves issus de l’immigration est mesurée en mettant l’accent sur l’influence de la maîtrise de la langue d’enseignement, du capital culturel et social de la famille et de la communauté immigrante, ainsi que des facteurs systémiques au niveau de l’école. Les résultats de cette étude dans trois écoles cibles montrent qu’en général les élèves d’origine chinoise connaissent une expérience positive, surtout en ce qui concerne leur performance scolaire en mathématiques et sciences. Cependant, les nouveaux arrivants ont tendance à éprouver des difficultés dans l’apprentissage du français et pour leur intégration sociale. En effet, le processus d’intégration socioscolaire des jeunes chinois est sous l’influence des différents milieux qu’ils fréquentent. À propos de l’influence des dynamiques scolaires, les résultats de la recherche indiquent qu’une relation maître-élève positive joue un rôle important dans la réussite éducative de ces élèves. Toutefois, l’insuffisance du soutien à l’apprentissage défavorise l’intégration linguistique et sociale des élèves nouvellement arrivés. Les données de cette étude soulignent notamment le rôle de la famille immigrante et de la communauté ethnique dans l’expérience scolaire de ces jeunes. D’une part, sous l’impact des dynamiques familiales, notamment ce qui à trait au projet migratoire, à la culture chinoise et à l’expérience pré- et post-migratoire, les parents immigrants chinois s’impliquent activement dans les études de leurs enfants, malgré des barrières linguistiques et culturelles. D’autre part, afin de surmonter les effets négatifs des faibles liens entretenus avec l’école de langue française, les parents chinois ont largement recours aux ressources au sein de la communauté ethnique, tels que les médias de langue chinoise, les organismes ethnospécifiques de services aux immigrants, l’école du samedi et les institutions religieuses ethniques. Ces institutions sociales ethniques contribuent à soutenir les valeurs culturelles, échanger des informations, établir des modèles pour les jeunes et à fournir des services appropriés en matière culturelle et linguistique.

Code-Switching Between Cultures And Languages : Creative connectivity

Problème: Ma thèse porte sur l’identité individuelle comme interrogation sur les enjeux personnels et sur ce qui constitue l’identification hybride à l’intérieur des notions concurrentielles en ce qui a trait à l’authenticité. Plus précisément, j’aborde le concept des identifications hybrides en tant que zones intermédiaires pour ce qui est de l’alternance de codes linguistiques et comme négociation des espaces continuels dans leur mouvement entre les cultures et les langues. Une telle négociation engendre des tensions et/ou apporte le lien créatif. Les tensions sont inhérentes à n’importe quelle construction d’identité où les lignes qui définissent des personnes ne sont pas spécifiques à une culture ou à une langue, où des notions de l’identité pure sont contestées et des codes communs de l’appartenance sont compromis. Le lien créatif se produit dans les exemples où l’alternance de code linguistique ou la négociation des espaces produit le mouvement ouvert et fluide entre les codes de concurrence des références et les différences à travers les discriminations raciales, la sexualité, la culture et la langue. Les travaux que j’ai sélectionnés représentent une section transversale de quelques auteurs migrants provenant de la minorité en Amérique du Nord qui alternent les codes linguistiques de cette manière. Les travaux détaillent le temps et l’espace dans leur traitement de l’identité et dans la façon dont ils cernent l’hybridité dans les textes suivants : The Woman Warrior de Maxine Hong Kingston (1975-76), Hunger of Memory de Richard Rodriguez (1982), Comment faire l’amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer de Dany Laferrière (1985), Borderlands/La Frontera de Gloria Anzalduá (1987), Lost in Translation de Eva Hoffman (1989), Avril ou l’anti-passion de Antonio D’Alfonso (1990) et Chorus of Mushrooms de Hiromi Goto (1994). Enjeux/Questions La notion de l’identification hybride est provocante comme sujet. Elle met en question l’identité pure. C’est un sujet qui a suscité beaucoup de discussions tant en ce qui a trait à la littérature, à la politique, à la société, à la linguistique, aux communications, qu’au sein même des cercles philosophiques. Ce sujet est compliqué parce qu’il secoue la base des espaces fixes et structurés de l’identité dans sa signification culturelle et linguistique. Par exemple, la notion de patrie n’a pas les représentations exclusives du pays d’origine ou du pays d’accueil. De même, les notions de race, d’appartenance ethnique, et d’espaces sexuels sont parfois négativement acceptées si elles proviennent des codes socialement admis et normalisés de l’extérieur. De tels codes de la signification sont souvent définis par l’étiquette d’identification hétérosexuelle et blanche. Dans l’environnement généralisé d’aujourd’hui, plus que jamais, une personne doit négocier qui elle est, au sens de son appartenance à soi, en tant qu’individu et ce, face aux modèles locaux, régionaux, nationaux, voire même globaux de la subjectivité. Nous pouvons interpréter ce mouvement comme une série de couches superposées de la signification. Quand nous rencontrons une personne pour la première fois, nous ne voyons que la couche supérieure. D’ailleurs, son soi intérieur est caché par de nombreuses couches superposées (voir Joseph D. Straubhaar). Toutefois, sous cette couche supérieure, on retrouve beaucoup d’autres couches et tout comme pour un oignon, on doit les enlever une par une pour que l’individualité complète d’une personne soit révélée et comprise. Le noyau d’une personne représente un point de départ crucial pour opposer qui elle était à la façon dont elle se transforme sans cesse. Sa base, ou son noyau, dépend du moment, et comprend, mais ne s’y limite pas, ses origines, son environnement et ses expériences d’enfance, son éducation, sa notion de famille, et ses amitiés. De plus, les notions d’amour-propre et d’amour pour les autres, d’altruisme, sont aussi des points importants. Il y a une relation réciproque entre le soi et l’autre qui établit notre degré d’estime de soi. En raison de la mondialisation, notre façon de comprendre la culture, en fait, comment on consomme et définit la culture, devient rapidement un phénomène de déplacement. À l’intérieur de cette arène de culture généralisée, la façon dont les personnes sont à l’origine chinoises, mexicaines, italiennes, ou autres, et poursuivent leur évolution culturelle, se définit plus aussi facilement qu’avant. Approche Ainsi, ma thèse explore la subjectivité hybride comme position des tensions et/ou des relations créatrices entre les cultures et les langues. Quoique je ne souhaite aucunement simplifier ni le processus, ni les questions de l’auto-identification, il m’apparaît que la subjectivité hybride est aujourd’hui une réalité croissante dans l’arène généralisée de la culture. Ce processus d’échange est particulièrement complexe chez les populations migrantes en conflit avec leur désir de s’intégrer dans les nouveaux espaces adoptés, c’est-à-dire leur pays d’accueil. Ce réel désir d’appartenance peut entrer en conflit avec celui de garder les espaces originels de la culture définie par son pays d’origine. Ainsi, les références antérieures de l’identification d’une personne, les fondements de son individualité, son noyau, peuvent toujours ne pas correspondre à, ou bien fonctionner harmonieusement avec, les références extérieures et les couches d’identification changeantes, celles qu’elle s’approprie du pays d’accueil. Puisque nos politiques, nos religions et nos établissements d’enseignement proviennent des représentations nationales de la culture et de la communauté, le processus d’identification et la création de son individualité extérieure sont formées par le contact avec ces établissements. La façon dont une personne va chercher l’identification entre les espaces personnels et les espaces publics détermine ainsi le degré de conflit et/ou de lien créatif éprouvé entre les modes et les codes des espaces culturels et linguistiques. Par conséquent, l’identification des populations migrantes suggère que la « community and culture will represent both a hybridization of home and host cultures » (Straubhaar 27). Il y a beaucoup d’écrits au sujet de l’hybridité et des questions de l’identité et de la patrie, toutefois cette thèse aborde la valeur créative de l’alternance de codes culturels et linguistiques. Ce que la littérature indiquera Par conséquent, la plate-forme à partir de laquelle j’explore mon sujet de l’hybridité flotte entre l’interprétation postcoloniale de Homi Bhabha concernant le troisième espace hybride; le modèle d’hétéroglossie de Mikhail Bakhtine qui englobent plusieurs de mes exemples; la représentation de Roland Barthes sur l’identité comme espace transgressif qui est un modèle de référence et la contribution de Chantal Zabus sur le palimpseste et l’alternance de codes africains. J’utilise aussi le modèle de Sherry Simon portant sur l’espace urbain hybride de Montréal qui établit un lien important avec la valeur des échanges culturels et linguistiques, et les analyses de Janet Paterson. En effet, la façon dont elle traite la figure de l’Autre dans les modèles littéraires au Québec fournisse un aperçu régional et national de l’identification hybride. Enfin, l’exploration du bilinguisme de Doris Sommer comme espace esthétique et même humoristique d’identification situe l’hybridité dans une espace de rencontre créative. Conséquence Mon approche dans cette thèse ne prétend pas résoudre les problèmes qui peuvent résulter des plates-formes de la subjectivité hybride. Pour cette raison, j’évite d’aborder toute approche politique ou nationaliste de l’identité qui réfute l’identification hybride. De la même façon, je n’amène pas de discussion approfondie sur les questions postcoloniales. Le but de cette thèse est de démontrer à quel point la subjectivité hybride peut être une zone de relation créatrice lorsque l’alternance de codes permet des échanges de communication plus intimes entre les cultures et les langues. C’est un espace qui devient créateur parce qu’il favorise une attitude plus ouverte vis-à-vis les différents champs qui passent par la culture, aussi bien la langue, que la sexualité, la politique ou la religion. Les zones hybrides de l’identification nous permettent de contester les traditions dépassées, les coutumes, les modes de communication et la non-acceptation, toutes choses dépassées qui emprisonnent le désir et empêchent d’explorer et d’adopter des codes en dehors des normes et des modèles de la culture contenus dans le discours blanc, dominant, de l’appartenance culturelle et linguistique mondialisée. Ainsi, il appert que ces zones des relations multi-ethniques exigent plus d’attention des cercles scolaires puisque la population des centres urbains à travers l’Amérique du Nord devient de plus en plus nourrie par d’autres types de populations. Donc, il existe un besoin réel d’établir une communication sincère qui permettrait à la population de bien comprendre les populations adoptées. C’est une invitation à stimuler une relation plus intime de l’un avec l’autre. Toutefois, il est évident qu’une communication efficace à travers les frontières des codes linguistiques, culturels, sexuels, religieux et politiques exige une négociation continuelle. Mais une telle négociation peut stimuler la compréhension plus juste des différences (culturelle ou linguistique) si des institutions académiques offrent des programmes d’études intégrant davantage les littératures migrantes. Ma thèse vise à illustrer (par son choix littéraire) l’identification hybride comme une réalité importante dans les cultures généralisées qui croissent toujours aujourd’hui. Les espaces géographiques nous gardent éloignés les uns des autres, mais notre consommation de produits exotiques, qu’ils soient culturels ou non, et même notre consommation de l’autre, s’est rétrécie sensiblement depuis les deux dernières décennies et les indicateurs suggèrent que ce processus n’est pas une tendance, mais plutôt une nouvelle manière d’éprouver la vie et de connaître les autres. Ainsi les marqueurs qui forment nos frontières externes, aussi bien que ces marqueurs qui nous définissent de l’intérieur, exigent un examen minutieux de ces enjeux inter(trans)culturels, surtout si nous souhaitons nous en tenir avec succès à des langues et des codes culturels présents, tout en favorisant la diversité culturelle et linguistique. MOTS-CLÉS : identification hybride, mouvement ouvert, alternance de code linguistique, négociation des espaces, tensions, connectivité créative