Malaysia’s linguistic landscape and language practices in Chinese private clinics

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 60-89
Author(s):  
Xiaomei Wang ◽  
Jin Zhuo Lee ◽  
Yi Chern Koh
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Medical Service ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
Chinese Patients ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Existing Problems ◽  
Patient Interaction ◽  
Klang Valley ◽  
Language Environment

Abstract This paper reports on the organization of Malaysia’s linguistic landscape and the implications of this situation for contacts between providers of medical service and patients. The main purpose of this study is to clarify the position of Chinese private clinics in Malaysian society and to better understand language use between Chinese medical personnel and Chinese patients. The fieldwork focused on clinics in the Klang Valley, Malaysia and was carried out between December 2016 and March 2017. The results reveal the complex linguistic situation in the medical domain reflecting the general hierarchical social structure in Malaysia. Chinese patients have different wishes as regards their preferred language environment in these clinics, but generally prefer to use Mandarin Chinese for interaction with doctors. Medical staff also tend to prefer the use of Mandarin Chinese but also understand the need for dialect based interactions to create a feeling of harmony and belonging. The data are used to clarify existing problems in doctor-patient interaction and contribute to the debate of communication discordance in the healthcare domain.

English-dominated Chinatown

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 273-289
Author(s):  
Hui Zhang ◽  
Ruanni Tupas ◽  
Aman Norhaida
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Considerable Influence ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Quantitative Investigation ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Multilingual Societies ◽  
English Dominant

Abstract The current study reports a quantitative investigation of the linguistic landscape (LL) in Singapore’s Chinatown. The database of the study comprises a total of 831 instances of signs in the form of photographs that were collected in Chinatown. The study finds that English dominates the LL while Mandarin Chinese is ranked as the second frequently used language. The study also identifies significant differences in LL features between top-down and bottom-up signs. Specifically, these differences include what languages are used; monolingual, bilingual and multilingual compositions; code preference; and forms of Chinese scripts. The present study suggests that English now dominates the linguistic landscape of Chinatown. Even though many scholars have described the sociolinguistic situation in Singapore as being ‘English-knowing’, the data shows a shift towards being ‘English-dominant’, suggesting a gradual but sustained dilution of its multilingual ethos. The study also complicates our understanding of the dominance of English in multilingual societies such as Singapore, where a competing dominant language (Mandarin Chinese) may be seen to continue to exert considerable influence on the dynamics of English-dominant language use but, at the same time, whose main function is shifting towards the symbolic rather than communicative.

Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian: Inherent Translanguaging in the Linguistic Landscape of Sarajevo

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Tankosić ◽  
Jason Litzenberg
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Common Core ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Primary Language ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Southeastern Europe ◽  
Linguistic Identity ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Balkan Region ◽  
Town Center

Abstract Language in the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe has a complex and turbulent history, acutely embodied in the tripartite and trilingual state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in which Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs all make claim to their own mutually-intelligible varieties of local “languages”. This study utilizes a linguistic landscape methodology to consider language use in Sarajevo, the capital of BiH, approximately 20 years after a brutal war that led to the establishment of the country. Data originate from three municipalities within the Sarajevo Canton – namely, Old Town, Center, and Ilidža – because of their representation of the region’s diversity and history. Signs were classified according to the three primary language varieties, i.e., Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian; BCS, representing a common core among the three varieties, as well as English, other languages, and mixed languages. The application of BCS uniquely positions the present research in comparison to other studies of language use in the region and allows for a more nuanced, less politically and ethnolinguistically fraught analysis of the communicative tendencies of users. More specifically, data indicate that actors in the linguistic landscape transcend the boundaries of their national, ethnic, and religious identities by tending towards the more neutral BCS, suggesting an orientation towards more translingual dispositions than previous variety-bound approaches have indicated. Thus, instead of the divisiveness of linguistic identity politics, the linguistic landscape of Sarajevo indicates a tendency toward inclusion and linguistic egalitarianism.

scholarly journals LANGUAGE VARIATIONS IN DEPOK: A STUDY OF LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE AND DIALECTOLOGY

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sri Munawarah ◽  
Frans Asisi Datang
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Regional Variation ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Language Varieties ◽  
Language Variety ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Public Landscapes

Written languages are present in various media in public landscapes, such as notice boards, banners, or bumper stickers. Studying these simple signs is the starting point in observing how a language variety exists and interacts with other languages. It is interesting to study how the instances of written texts found in public landscapes can be an indicator of what language variety is actually used by the inhabitants of Depok. Based on its history and its geography, a hypothesis states that many speakers of Betawi language and Sundanese reside in Depok. The study is aimed at demonstrating the written language varieties found in Depok public landscapes based on written evidence which are compared with language varieties based on the regional variation (dialectology). This qualitative study used the sociogeolinguistic approach combining sociolinguistics, linguistic landscape, and dialectology (geolinguistics). The results show there are two language use distributions in Depok, the Sundanese and the Betawi language. From the landscapes, Betawi language is used in billboards, restaurant signboards, and local government banners. The study is useful for the local government in their efforts to confirm the identity of Depok people.

Factuality lens

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danjie Su
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Talk Show ◽  
Passive Construction

Abstract Why do speakers choose the Mandarin Chinese unmarked passive construction (UP) in conversation when they have other grammatical alternatives with roughly the same semantics? From the perspective of subjectivity, this study identifies the Factuality lens, a lens through which a situation is presented as a “fact” or a “truth” regardless of reality. My analysis of a video corpus of spontaneous talk show conversations using the discourse adjacent alternation method reveals that speakers tend to choose UP over other constructions to present a transitive event through the Factuality lens by emphasizing the factuality of a fact or making a non-fact appear as a fact – either deceivingly or openly in a fictitious narrative or a joke. The findings reveal that grammatical constructions can linguistically recreate a situation different from reality. The conclusion that Factuality lens is a factor that could influence speakers’ grammatical choice casts light on pragmatic consequence of grammatical choice and subjectivity in language use.

Special Reports

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1948 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 528-530
Keyword(s):  
School Health ◽  
Medical Service ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
Team Work ◽  
Nursing Services ◽  
Medical Facilities ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
School Health Programs ◽  
State And Local

Two of the greatest weaknesses of school health programs are involved in serious controversies that have interfered with obtaining federal legislation for meeting needs where state and local funds are inadequate for satisfactory services. First, there has been a failure in team work between educators and public health personnel, "Doctors are told what they should do by people who do not know what a doctor can do." Medical and nursing services have failed in their educational objectives. Educators and medical personnel have worked independently on the same children as if each child was sharply divided into mind and body. Very little joint planning has been done by the two professions to solve the problems of children and their development. This failure in team work has been the result largely of a continued rivalry over jurisdiction as to who will spend the money, who will have the power, and who will receive the credit. The two great professions of education and medicine have only occasionally, here and there, learned how to use the great resources of the two professions to serve children. Second there has been the frequent failure to get something done for the children in need of medical service. Often the trouble is merely a failure to use the medical facilities that are available in the community. Not infrequently the trouble has had its origin in inadequate education as to how to use those facilities. But the big controversy has been over the question of whether all medical services will be free to all children regardless of ability to pay, or whether a prepayment plan for medical care will be compulsory or voluntary, and whether the federal government will control the funds and pay the physician or whether each community will work out their own plan for making medical service available to all. These problems, of course, can not be divorced from the aims and efforts of the medical profession to improve the knowledge and skill of the physician and the development of laboratory and special diagnostic facilities so that they may be available as needed. Any progress made in extending medical facilities to care for those who might benefit and in the improvement of the quality can come only through agreement rather than through continuing the controversy. Your Committee on School Health has indicated one important way that the work of the physician in the schools can contribute to pediatric health supervision and post graduate medical education.

Mapping cosmopolitanisms in Taipei: toward a theorisation of cosmopolitanism in linguistic landscape research

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 (228) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Curtin
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Chinese Characters ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Bona Fide ◽  
Landscape Research

AbstractWhile frequently referenced in linguistic landscape (LL) research, the notion of “cosmopolitanism” has generally been under-theorised in the field. This article, in keeping with the call for an ethnographically grounded, multi-centric understanding of different varieties of cosmopolitanism, traces the emergence of a “bona fide cosmopolitanism” in the LL of Taipei, Taiwan. This overarching cosmopolitanism is cumulatively indexed via orthographies employed in several domains of the LL: (1) traditional Mandarin Chinese characters and Romanisation systems thereof; (2) non-Chinese scripts in official and unofficial domains; and (3) graffiti. Furthermore, each domain contributes to several varieties of cosmopolitanism. Drawing upon theorisations of social indexicality, distinction and transgressive semiotics, these varieties have been given the working labels of “presumptive, distinctive and transgressive cosmopolitanisms”. This article thus demonstrates that cosmopolitanism in the LL is best apprehended as multi-centric and recursive, as well as highly situated.

scholarly journals Peter the Great is the founder of the military medical education in Saint Petersburg

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-267
Author(s):  
N V Milasheva ◽  
V O Samoilov
Keyword(s):  
Medical Service ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
Medical Personnel ◽  
General Hospitals ◽  
Military Medical Academy ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Russian Military ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Military

The study is dedicated to the founding date of medical (medical and surgical) schools at the General hospitals of St. Petersburg, which are the historical foundation of the Medical and Surgical (Military Medical) Academy. Archival documents from the funds of the Russian State Archive of the Navy, as well as published sources prove and confirm that Peter the Great is the founder of medical (medical and surgical) schools at the General hospitals of St. Petersburg. According to the ingenious converter of Russia, the establishment of medical schools in the military and naval capital of the Russian Empire was part of state reform plans, it was extremely necessary and mandatory for the development of domestic medicine. A historical review of Russian military legislation of the era of Peter the Great is presented, where issues of medicine are touched. Particular attention is paid to archival documents. The reports (programs) of the first archivist and president of the Medical Chancellery and the entire medical service of Russia, Robert Erskine, and his successor, archivist Ivan Lavrentievich Blumentrost, to the president of the Admiralty Board, General Admiral Count F.M., were examined and analyzed in detail. Apraksin on bringing the medical unit in the fleet in proper condition. In the report I.L. Blumentrosta dated December 3, 1719 explicitly said about the already established medical school at the Admiralty Hospital of St. Petersburg and about the conduct of training sessions in it. The submitted documents developed a plan for the organization of marine hospitals, calculated the staff of medical personnel in the hospital and navy, reflected the plan for training medical students and preparing doctors, proposed solutions to other issues of organizing a medical service. The «Regulations on hospitals and on the positions of commissioners, doctors, clerks and others identified by them» of 1722, compiled on the basis of the programs of R. Erskine and I. L. Blumentrosta. This Regulation was the Russian hospital charter until the approval of the new law - the «General Regulation on Hospitals» (1735), which included 40 paragraphs of the Regulation 1722.

scholarly journals What is an image schema? Looking for an answer in Latvian and Mandarin Chinese

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 142-158
Author(s):  
Marija Nikolajeva ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Concept Image ◽  
Image Schemas ◽  
Concept Location ◽  
Semantic Frames ◽  
Image Schema ◽  
Functional Units ◽  
The Relationship

Image schema is one of the key notions in the discussions of the semantics of spatial adpositions. The diversity of related topics and the abundance of literature on these conceptual primitives makes the concept image schema difficult to grasp. The aim of this article is to clarify this notion by explicating on some important aspects of the schematization and representation of spatial scenes using the CONTAINMENT schema as an example. The article also demonstrates that the cross-linguistic comparison of an image schema is an effective method employed to better understand the universal cognitive processes underlying language use. The article contains a comparison of the spatial functional units that express the CONTAINMENT schema in Latvian and Mandarin Chinese, a discussion of the blurriness of the boundary between the concepts containment and support and their relation to the concept location. The relationship between image schemas and semantic frames, the factors that influence schematization and the phenomenon of parallel usage of locative units are discussed too. Image schema transformations are characterized as the mechanism of extending the meanings of spatial phrases.

scholarly journals Language use and tourism in Yogyakarta; The linguistic landscape of Malioboro

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 295
Author(s):  
Anna Marietta Da Silva ◽  
Yassir Nasanius Tjung ◽  
Sri Hapsari Wijayanti ◽  
Christiany Suwartono
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Landscape

scholarly journals Language Use and Social Inclusion in International Retirement Migration

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Gustafson ◽  
Ann Elisabeth Laksfoss Cardozo
Keyword(s):  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Retirement Migration ◽  
Civic Integration ◽  
International Retirement Migration ◽  
Everyday Communication

The migration of older people in search for improved quality of life has become an important form of human mobility, and popular retirement destinations are often highly multilingual settings. This article explores language use and social inclusion in international retirement migration through a case study of Scandinavian retirees in the Alicante province in Spain. It examines the linguistic landscape they meet, their language use and their inclusion in their new home country. Interviews with retired migrants and key local individuals show that many migrants try to learn the host country language, but that these attempts are often not very successful. As a result, they frequently use either their native language or English for everyday communication. This article elaborates on three theoretical and political notions of inclusion—assimilation, multiculturalism and civic integration—and discusses how retired migrants’ language use can be interpreted in the light of these notions.

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