Dialogicality and ethics

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger D. Sell

Now that linguists are beginning to see an element of dialogicality in all language use, there is more scope for a humanized dialogue analysis with ameliorative goals. This can divide its labour between a communicational criticism dealing with the ethics of address, and a mediating criticism dealing with the ethics of response. In the present article, I outline the distinctive features of such an approach, and by sketching a communicational theory of literature (cf. Sell 2000) draw particular attention to the dialogicality arising between literary writers and their audience. From this starting-point, I then examine instances of four different literary genres for the light they can throw on the general ethics of address. Key terms here are “genuine communication”, by which I mean any manner of communication which respects the autonomy of the human other, and “negative capability”, defined by Keats (1954 [1817]: 53) as the capability of “being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”.

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.O. Klar

The thesis of a single pillar or axis around which the longer Medinan suras are structured has been highly influential in the field of sura unity, and scholarship on the structure and coherence of Sūrat al-Baqara has tended to work towards charting the progress of a dominant theme throughout the textual blocks that make up the sura. In order to achieve this, scholars have divided the sura into discrete blocks; many have posited a chain of lexical and thematic links from one block to the next; some have concentrated solely on the hinges and borders between these suggested textual blocks. The present article argues that such methods, while often in themselves illuminating, are by their very nature reductive. As such they can result in the oversight of important elements of the sura. From a starting point of the Adam pericope provided in Q. 2:30–9, this study will focus on the recurrence of a number of its lexical items throughout Sūrat al-Baqara. By methodically tracing the passage of repeated, loosely Fall-related, vocabulary, it will attempt to widen the contextual lens through which the sura's textual blocks are viewed, and establish a broader perspective on its coherence. Via a discussion of the themes of ‘gardens’, ‘parable’, ‘prostration’, ‘covenant’, ‘wrongdoing’ and finally ‘blindness’, this article will posit ‘garments’, not as a structural pillar, but as a pivot around which many of the repeated lexical items of the sura rotate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Kyriaki Topidi

Multiculturalism is continuously and relentlessly put to the test in the so- called West. The question as to whether religious or custom- based legal orders can or should be tolerated by liberal and democratic states is, however, by no means a new challenge. The present article uses as its starting point the case of religious legal pluralism in Greece, as exposed in recent European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) case- law, in an attempt to explore the gaps and implications in the officially limited use of sharia in Western legal systems. More specifically, the discussion is linked to the findings of the ECtHR on the occasion of the recent Molla Sali v. Greece case to highlight and question how sharia has been evolving in the European legal landscape.


Author(s):  
María-Cristina Martínez-Bravo ◽  
Charo Sádaba-Chalezquer ◽  
Javier Serrano-Puche

The following research has as its starting point the previous existence of different approaches to the study of digital literacy, which reflect a specialisation by area of study as well as connections and complementarity between them. The paper analyses research from the last 50 years through 11 key terms associated with the study of this subject. The article seeks to understand the contribution of each term for an integrated conceptualisation of digital literacy. From the data science approach, the methodology used is based on a systematized review of the literature and a network analysis using Gephi. The study analyses 16,753 articles from WoS and 5,809 from Scopus, between the period of 1968 to 2017. The results present the input to each key term studied as a map of keywords and a conceptual framework in different levels of analysis; in these, we show digital literacy as a central term that connects and integrates the others, and we define it as a process that integrates all the perspectives. The conclusions emphasise the comprehensive sense of digital literacy and its social condition, as well as the transversality to human life. This research aims to understand the relationships that exist between the different areas and contribute to the debate from a meta-theoretical level, validating meta-research for this interdisciplinary purpose.


Author(s):  
Sri Munawarah ◽  
Frans Asisi Datang

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.


Author(s):  
Ioana CECOVNIUC ◽  

The aim of this paper is to briefly review the work of three contemporary Romanian poets from an ectopic point of view. Consequently, the starting point will be from Tomás Albaladejo Mayordomo’s definition of “ectopic literature” (2011), seen as the literature that is produced by an author who changes his usual topos (physical, socio-cultural and linguistic background) for an initially odd or peculiar one. Distinctive features of “ectopic literature” as well as significant factors - such as autobiographical data and main themes - are earmarked to be applied to the work for subsequent analysis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-176
Author(s):  
Joachim Schaper

Abstract Amongst Hebrew Bible scholars the question of the understanding of biblical key terms and concepts pertaining to the human condition has attracted a fair amount of interest. And amongst those key terms and concepts it is the concept of nefeš that has proved to be particularly attractive and challenging. New light is thrown on the biblical concept by the recent discovery of the Katumuwa stele in Zincirli. The present article examines the evidence and draws conclusions with regard to the history of the concept of nefeš in the Hebrew Bible and in North-West Semitic literature and religion generally.


Global Jurist ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Silvestri

Abstract Taking as its starting-point Guido Calabresi’s latest book – The Future of Law and Economics – the present article aims to explore the often neglected issue of value judgments and normativity in Law and Economics. I will show the importance of enquiring Calabresi’s methodological distinction between Law and Economics and Economic Analysis of Law and the related bilateralism thesis in order to understand the problematic relationship between methodological value judgments and ethical value judgments, the ‘distance’ between Calabresi and Posner and the problematic notion of reformism. Then I will try to introduce a different notion of normativity. I will also show the existence of an unresolved tension in Calabresi’s methodological discourse between a positive approach, which seems to be privileged in this book, and his insistence on the inevitability of value judgments in economic analysis. Finally, I clarify the reasons for the ‘ignorance’ of values by the economist by distinguishing between economists’ “lack of self-awareness”, economists’ idolatry and the economists’ lenses.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 98-111
Author(s):  
David Lowe

Abstract I ask in this article whether the legacies of Australia’s nuclear past, including the great secrecy surrounding testing of weapons in the 1950s and 1960s, and subsequent clean-ups, have impacted in particular ways that have ongoing ramifications for policy relating to uranium mining and nuclear energy. My starting point is the sustained examination of the pros and cons of developing the nuclear fuel cycle in Australia, a Parliamentary Committee Inquiry from 2006. Contrasting the submissions and discussions of this committee with exhibition and educational materials relating to the legacies of atomic testing, I suggest that one of the biggest opportunities for constructive policy conversation on nuclear energy suffered from the absence of trust among different groups. This derived, in good measure, from distinctive features in popular remembering of Australia’s atomic past. In 2006, it fed the exasperation of nuclear advocates who did not, and perhaps still do not, appreciate that the neat separation of uranium mining and energy generation from Australia’s earlier encounters with the atom is very hard. Relatedly, I argue that the secrecy around governments’ involvement in atomic testing, and its legacies, is likely to be seized on regularly; and likely to sustain what is a reservoir of public mistrust of government policy.


1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dafydd Gibbon

The linguistic domain of idiomaticity poses many problems for the study of language form, use, and variation. With selected aspects of idiomaticity as a starting point, I will attempt in this paper to develop a description of the use of idioms as a segment of a more general theory of language use. Evidence for this approach is drawn from international amateur radio talk (IART) in English.


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-58
Author(s):  
Péter Hajdu

AbstractBeginnings of fictional narratives apply various strategies to introduce their readers to the represented world, and even if they select a starting point in the flow of events as definitive, they tend to tell something about how the starting situation has been constituted by earlier events and circumstances. Some literary genres represent fictional worlds so different from the readers’ that a general description of the former is also needed in the beginning. A sequel may seem free of the burden of a descriptive introductory beginning, since readers (if they have read the previous work or works) have sufficient information to be able to cope with in medias res beginning. However, long series of many sequels have to be accessible for new readers as well, therefore they offer introductions for a double audience. The paper analyses several beginnings from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. I show how the early novels use the description of the Discworld as a formal feature to begin the narrative; those descriptions fulfil the double purpose of introducing new readers and entertaining the trained ones by new ways of elaboration and adding some new traits.


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