Biography Between Structure and Agency PDF Download

Author: Volker Berghahn
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
While bookstore shelves around the world have never ceased to display best-selling "life-and-letters" biographies in prominent positions, the genre became less popular among academic historians during the Cold War decades. Their main concern then was with political and socioeconomic structures, institutions, and organizations, or-more recently-with the daily lives of ordinary people and small communities. The contributors to this volume-all well known senior historians-offer self-critical reflections on problems they encountered when writing biographies themselves. Some of them also deal with topics specific to Central Europe, such as the challenges of writing about the lives of both victims and perpetrators. Although the volume concentrates on European historiography, its strong methodological and conceptual focus will be of great interest to non-European historians wrestling with the old "structure-versus-agency" question in their own work. Contributors: Volker R. Berghahn, Hartmut Berghoff, Hilary Earl, Jan Eckel, Willem Frijhoff, Ian Kershaw, Simone Lässig, Karl Heinrich Pohl, John C. G. Röhl, Angelika Schaser, Joachim Radkau, Cornelia Rauh-Kühne, Mark Roseman, Christoph Strupp and Michael Wildt.

Author: Britta Korth
Publisher: Peter Lang
ISBN: 9783039106059
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
Language contact between Russian and Kyrgyz speakers in the Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic and in present day Kyrgyzstan has historically been a source of conflict. With independence, the young state began its search for a new identity in which language played a crucial role. Communicative and symbolic necessities therefore had to be considered in the formulation of an adequate language policy. This book describes the sociolinguistic processes in independent Kyrgyzstan from an ethno-linguistic perspective and gives an overview of language policy in both the Soviet Union and independent Kyrgyzstan. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews and observations conducted during two years of fieldwork in Kyrgyzstan, the author explains why, in contrast to the status of titular languages in other former Soviet republics, the Kyrgyz language in Kyrgyzstan is still dominated by Russian after more than a decade of independence.

Author: Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110279819
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 2220

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Book Description
Autobiographical writings have been a major cultural genre from antiquity to the present time. General questions of the literary as, e.g., the relation between literature and reality, truth and fiction, the dependency of author, narrator, and figure, or issues of individual and cultural styles etc., can be studied preeminently in the autobiographical genre. Yet, the tradition of life-writing has, in the course of literary history, developed manifold types and forms. Especially in the globalized age, where the media and other technological / cultural factors contribute to a rapid transformation of lifestyles, autobiographical writing has maintained, even enhanced, its popularity and importance. By conceiving autobiography in a wide sense that includes memoirs, diaries, self-portraits and autofiction as well as media transformations of the genre, this three-volume handbook offers a comprehensive survey of theoretical approaches, systematic aspects, and historical developments in an international and interdisciplinary perspective. While autobiography is usually considered to be a European tradition, special emphasis is placed on the modes of self-representation in non-Western cultures and on inter- and transcultural perspectives of the genre. The individual contributions are closely interconnected by a system of cross-references. The handbook addresses scholars of cultural and literary studies, students as well as non-academic readers.

Author: Francis Jarman
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
ISBN: 1434447898
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
The informative and wide-ranging essays in this second volume of Borgo Perspectives on Intercultural Communication, by authors from Britain, Bulgaria, Germany, India, Russia and Spain, look at intercultural communication in action--whether in television or the movies, in the press, on the internet, in student life, in school, in the work of translators and interpreters, or simply in the attempt to communicate with "the Other." The seventeen pieces include: FRANCIS JARMAN: Intercultural Communication; ARIT BREEDE: Studying Abroad to Encounter the Other?; VASCO DA SILVA: Qualitative Approaches to Students' Intercultural Experience; BERENIKE KUSCHEL, ELKE BOSSE & IOULIA GRIGORIEVA: Go.Intercultural!; HELENA DRAWERT: Biographical Research; JOACHIM GRIESBAUM: Using Social Information and Communication Tools to Foster Intercultural Exchange and Learning; THOMAS MANDL: Encountering Others Online; MARIA MÖSTL, CHRISTA WOMSER-HACKER & JOACHIM GRIESBAUM: Self-Expression in Online Networks; FRANCIS JARMAN: The Hildesheim Intercultural Film Database; ANNE-KRISTIN LANGNER: Casting Shows and Culture; MANJU RAMANAN: Growing "Other"wise; DETELINA METZ & MADELEINE DANOVA: Encountering the Other; HANSJÖRG BITTNER: Words and Phrases; JESÚS BAIGORRI JALÓN & CONCEPCIÓN OTERO MORENO: Understanding the Other; FRANCIS JARMAN: Put the Signs Up, Take the Signs Down; EKATERINA SOFRONIEVA: In Quest of the Language Bridge; KLAUS SCHUBERT: Reducing Otherness. Francis Jarman has authored nine books for Borgo Press, including plays, a science fiction novel, a collection of essays, and three anthologies of essays by other writers. He lives and works in Germany.

Author: Geneviève Zarate
Publisher: Archives contemporaines
ISBN: 2813000396
Category : Language and culture
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Built around the concept of linguistic and cultural plurality, this book defines language as an instrument of action and symbolic power. Plurality is conceived here as : a complex array of voices, perspectives and approaches that seeks to preserve the complexity of the multilingual and multicultural enterprise, including language learning and teaching ; a coherent system of relationships among various languages, research traditions and research sites that informs qualitative methods of inquiry into multilingualism and its uses in everyday life ; a view of language as structured sociohistorical object, observable from several simultaneous spatiotemporal standpoints, such as that of daily interactions or that which sustains the symbolic power of institutions. This book is addressed to teacher trainers, young researchers, decision makers, teachers concerned with the role of languages in the evolution of societies and educational systems. It aims to elicit discussion by articulating practices, field observations and analyses based on a multidisciplinary conceptual framework.

Author: Claude Ozankom
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9042029692
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
Among the consequences of the all engulfing process of globalisation is the experience that not only it promotes interdependence among peoples, folks, cultures and religions, but it also creates problems and tensions. The assignment of a thoughtful and practice-oriented accompanying of this development poses itself subsequently. From this background different lectures are being conducted in different places; research initiatives as well as projects are started and executed while several publications are featuring. Visible here is the fact that although there abound rich reservoirs of knowledge, there is still no clarity as to the contents and the theoretical and methodical contrasts that are yet to be examined. Zu den Folgen des um sich greifenden Globalisierungsprozesses, zählt die Erfahrung, dass er nicht nur die Interpendenz unter Menschen, Völkern, Kulturen und Religionen vorantreibt, sondern auch Probleme und Spannungen auslöst. Diese Situation ist denkerisch und praxisorientiert aufzuschließen. Es wurden an verschiedenen Standorten Lehrveranstaltungen durchgeführt, Forschungsprojekte in Angriff genommen und Publikationen vorgelegt. Auffällig hierbei ist: Obwohl der erreichte Wissensstand bereits reichhaltig ist, besteht keine Klarheit hinsichtlich der zu untersuchenden Inhalte und der theoretischen und methodischen Gegensätze.

Author: Judith Purkarthofer
Publisher: Channel View Publications
ISBN: 1800415745
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
This book discusses salient moments of multilingual encounters and brings together contributions focused on the interplay between language use by individuals and societies, and language-related inequalities or opportunities for speakers. The chapters demonstrate how biographical and speaker-centred approaches can contribute to an understanding of linguistic diversity, how researchers can empirically account for lived experiences of languages, and how such accounts are embedded in a larger discussion on social (in)equality. Together the chapters make a powerful case for the importance of speaker-centred methodologies in multilingual and multilingualism research. The book is a rich source of theoretical and methodological reflections and will thus be a valuable resource for both experienced researchers and students beginning to explore biographical research methods.

Author: Peter Auer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134606729
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
Code Switching, the alternating use of two or more languages ation, has become an increasingly topical and important field of research. Now available in paperback, Code-Switching in Conversation brings together contributions from a wide variety of sociolinguistics settings in which the phenomenon is observed. It addresses not only the structure and the function, but also the ideological values of such bilingual behaviour. The contributors question many views of code switching on the empirical basis of many European and non European contexts. By bringing together linguistics, anthropological and socio-psychological research, they move towards a more realistic conception of bilingual conversation action.

Author: Vivian Cook
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316531201
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 969

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Book Description
How are two or more languages learned and contained in the same mind or the same community? This handbook presents an up-to-date view of the concept of multi-competence, exploring the research questions it has generated and the methods that have been used to investigate it. The book brings together psychologists, sociolinguists, Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers, and language teachers from across the world to look at how multi-competence relates to their own areas of study. This comprehensive, state-of-the-art exploration of multi-competence research and ideas offers a powerful critique of the values and methods of classical SLA research, and an exciting preview of the future implications of multi-competence for research and thinking about language. It is an essential reference for all those concerned with language learning, language use and language teaching.

Author: Achilleas Kostoulas
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030170578
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This edited collection challenges the perceptions of disciplinary, linguistic, geographical and ideological borders that run across language education. By highlighting commonalities and tracing connections between diverse sub-fields that have traditionally been studied separately, the book shows how the perspectives of practitioners and researchers working in diverse areas of language education can mutually inform each other. It consists of three thematic parts: Part I outlines the field of language education and challenges its definition by highlighting additional theoretical constructs that have tended to be viewed as separate from language education. Part II investigates curricular boundaries, showing how the language-learning curriculum can be enriched by connections with other curricular areas. Lastly, Part III looks into the challenges and opportunities associated with language education against the backdrop of globalisation.