scholarly journals JALEA: an authentic and personal path to JApaneseLEArning

Author(s):  
Marcella Mariotti ◽  
Giovanni Lapis ◽  
Alessandro Mantelli

This paper aims to present JALEA, an innovative web tool for the acquisition of the Japanese language dedicated to higher education learners. In particular it highlights the innovative learner-centered approach based on the self-guided discovery of grammar structures and words’ meanings through the combined use of realia (multimedia contents referring to real-life situations in Japan), hyperlinks and interactive features such as pop-up dictionary, character-writing explanations, slow-motion option in video examples, etc. Moreover, it illustrates the ICT characteristics of this web tool,permitting on the one handthe smooth working of the application on several platforms (pc, tablet and smartphone); on the other, its sustainability and maintainability thanks to the implementation of a layer accessible to maintainers (backend) with several automatization features that facilitate the addition of more content,s also by personnel with low ICT knowledge or skills.

Author(s):  
Stefan Krause ◽  
Markus Appel

Abstract. Two experiments examined the influence of stories on recipients’ self-perceptions. Extending prior theory and research, our focus was on assimilation effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in line with a protagonist’s traits) as well as on contrast effects (i.e., changes in self-perception in contrast to a protagonist’s traits). In Experiment 1 ( N = 113), implicit and explicit conscientiousness were assessed after participants read a story about either a diligent or a negligent student. Moderation analyses showed that highly transported participants and participants with lower counterarguing scores assimilate the depicted traits of a story protagonist, as indicated by explicit, self-reported conscientiousness ratings. Participants, who were more critical toward a story (i.e., higher counterarguing) and with a lower degree of transportation, showed contrast effects. In Experiment 2 ( N = 103), we manipulated transportation and counterarguing, but we could not identify an effect on participants’ self-ascribed level of conscientiousness. A mini meta-analysis across both experiments revealed significant positive overall associations between transportation and counterarguing on the one hand and story-consistent self-reported conscientiousness on the other hand.


Author(s):  
Stacy Wolf

This chapter examines the eight female characters inCompany, what they do in the musical, and how they function in the show’s dramaturgy, and argues that they elicit the quintessential challenge of analyzing musical theater from a feminist perspective. On the one hand, the women tend to be stereotypically, even msogynistically portrayed. On the other hand, each character offers the actor a tremendous performance opportunity in portraying a complicated psychology, primarily communicated through richly expressive music and sophisticated lyrics. In this groundbreaking 1970 ensemble musical about a bachelor’s encounters with five married couples and three girlfriends, Sondheim’s female characters occupy a striking range of types within one show. From the bitter, acerbic, thrice-married Joanne to the reluctant bride-to-be Amy, and from the self-described “dumb” “stewardess” April to the free-spirited Marta,Company’s eight women are distillations of femininity, precisely sketched in the short, singular scenes in which they appear.


Derrida Today ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-270
Author(s):  
Francesco Vitale

The paper aims to present a reading of the question of Testimony rising in Derrida's later works (from Faith and Knowledge to Poetics and Politics of Witnessing): the experience of Testimony as the irreducible condition of the relation to the Other, of every possible link among living human singularities and, thus, of the thinking of a community to come. This thinking is able to divert the community from the economy grounding and structuring it within our political tradition governed by the metaphysics of presence, which demands the sacrifice of the Other in its multiple theoretical and practical forms. We intend to read this proposal and to point out its rich perspectives by bringing it into the articulation of an ethical-political archi-writing. So we suggest going back to Derrida's early analyses of phenomenology and to De la grammatologie in order to present a reading of archi-writing as the irreducible condition of the relation to otherness and, thus, of the experience through which a living human singularity constitutes itself, a singularity different from the one our tradition compels us to think of within the pattern of the absolute presence to the self, free from the relation to the other.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-181
Author(s):  
Kirsten Linnemann

Abstract. With their donation appeals aid organisations procure a polarised worldview of the self and other into our everyday lives and feed on discourses of “development” and “neediness”. This study investigates how the discourse of “development” is embedded in the subjectivities of “development” professionals. By approaching the topic from a governmentality perspective, the paper illustrates how “development” is (re-)produced through internalised Western values and powerful mechanisms of self-conduct. Meanwhile, this form of self-conduct, which is related to a “good cause”, also gives rise to doubts regarding the work, as well as fragmentations and shifts of identity. On the one hand, the paper outlines various coping strategies used by development professionals to maintain a coherent narrative about the self. On the other hand, it also shows how doubts and fragmentations of identity can generate a critical distance to “development” practice, providing a space for resistant and transformative practice in the sense of Foucauldian counter-conduct.


Author(s):  
Feng Zhu

This paper aims to critically introduce the applicability of Foucault’s late work, on the practices of the self, to the scholarship of contemporary computer games. I argue that the gameplay tasks that we set ourselves, and the patterns of action that they produce, can be understood as a form of ‘work on the self’, and that this work is ambivalent between, on the one hand, an aesthetic transformation of the self – as articulated by Foucault in relation to the care or practices of the self – in which we break from the dominant subjectivities imposed upon us, and on the other, a closer tethering of ourselves through our own playful impulses, to a neoliberal subjectivity centred around instrumentally-driven selfimprovement. Game studies’ concern with the effects that computer games have on us stands to gain from an examination of Foucault’s late work for the purposes of analysing and disambiguating between the nature of the transformations at stake. Further, Foucault’s tripartite analysis of ‘power-knowledge-subject’, which might be applied here as ‘game-discourse-player’, foregrounds the imbrication of our gameplay practices – the extent to which they are due to us and the way in which our own volitions make us subject to power, which is particularly pertinent in the domain of play.


ALQALAM ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (01) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
A. ILYAS ISMAIL

Theofogicaffy, Islam is one and absolutely correct. However, historicaffy, after being understood and translated into the real life, Islam is not single, but various or plural that manifests at feast in three schools of thoughts: Traditional Islam, Revivalist Islam (fundamentalism), and Liberal Islam (Progressive). The group of Jaringan Islam Liberal (JIL) represents the fast school of thoughts. Even though it is stiff young (ten years), JIL becomes populer because it frequentfy proposes the new thoughts that often evoke controversions in the community. The reformation of thoughts proposed by JIL covers four areas: first, reformation in politics. In this context, JIL gives a priority to the idea of secularism; Second, reformation in socio-religion. Dealing with this, JIL proposes the concept of pluralism; Third, reformation in individual freedom. In this case, JIL gives a priority to the idea of liberalism both in thoughts and actions;fourth, reformation in women. Regarding this, JIL proposes the idea of gender equaliry. This reformation thought of JIL receives pro and con in the community. On the one hand,some of them panne and fulminate it; on the other hand, the other ones support and give appreciation. In such situation, JIL grows as a thought and Islamic progressive movement in Indonesia. Key Words: Islamic Thought, JIL, Secularism, Pluralism, Liberalism, and Gender Equality.


Author(s):  
Duangui Wang

Formulation of the problem. In the chamber-vocal genre, the composer exists in two images: he is both the interpreter of the poetic composition and the author of a new synthetic music and poetic composition. The experience of the style analysis of one of the best examples of Ukrainian vocal lyrics of the first third of the 20th century shows that the cycle op. 20 characterizes the mature style of the composer, which was formed, on the one hand, under the influence of European Romanticism. On the other hand, the essence of the Ukrainian “branch” of the Western European song-romance (“solo-singing”) is revealed by the prominent national song-romance intonation, filled with not only a romantic worldview, but also with some personal sincerity, chastity, intimate involvement with the great in depth and simplicity poetry line, read from the individual position of the musician. The paradox is as follows. Although Pushkin’s poetry is embodied in a “holistic adequacy” (A. Khutorskaya), and the composer found the fullest semantic analogue of the poetic source, however, in terms of translating the text into the Ukrainian language, the musical semantics changes its intonation immanence, which naturally leads to inconsistency of the listeners’ position and ideas about the style of Russian romance. We are dealing with inter-specific literary translation: Pushkin’s discourse creates the Ukrainian romance style and system of figurative thinking. The purpose of the article is to reveal the principle of re-semantization of the intonation-figurative concept of the vocal composition by V. Kosenko (in the context of translating Pushkin’s poetry into the Ukrainian language) in light of the theory of interspecific art translation. Analysis of recent publications on the topic. Among the most recent studies of Ukrainian musicology, one should point out the dissertation by G. Khafizova (Kyiv, 2017), in which the theory of modelling of the stylistic system of the vocal composition as an expression of Pushkin’s discourse is described. The basis for the further stylistic analysis of V. Kosenko’s compositions is the points from A. Hutorska’s candidate’s thesis; she develops the theory of interspecific art translation. The types of translation of poetry into music are classified according to two parameters. The exact translation creates integral adequacy, which involves the composer’s finding a maximally full semantic analogue of the poetic source. The free translation is characterized by compensatory, fragmentary, generalized-genre adequacy. Presenting the main material. The Zhitomir period for Viktor Kosenko was the time of the formation of his creative style. Alongside the lyrical imagery line, the composer acquired one more – dramatic, after his mother’s death. It is possible that the romances on the poems of A. Pushkin are more late reflection of this tragic experience (op. 20 was created in 1930). “I Loved You” opens the vocal cycle and has been dedicated by A. V. Kosenko. The short piano introduction contains the intonation emblem of the love-feeling wave. The form of the composition is a two part reprising (А А1) with the piano Introduction and Postlude. The semantic culmination is emphasized by the change of metro-rhythmic organization 5/4 (instead of 4) and the plastic phrase “as I wish, that the other will love you” sounding in the text. Due to these melodies (with national segments in melo-types, rhythm formulas and harmony) V. Kosenko should be considered as “Ukrainian Glinka”, the composer who introduced new forms and “figures” of the love language into the romantic “intonation dictionary”. In general, V. Kosenko’s solo-singing represents the Ukrainian analogue of Pushkin’s discourse – the theme of love. The melos of vocal piece “I Lived through My Desires” is remembered by the broad breath, bright expression of the syntactic deployment of emotion. On the background of bass ostinato, the song intonation acquires a noble courage. This solo-singing most intermediately appeal to the typical examples of the urban romance of Russian culture of the 19th century. “The Raven to the Raven” – a Scottish folk ballad in the translation by A. Pushkin. V. Kosenko as a profound psychologist, delicately transmits the techniques of versification, following each movement of a poetic phrase, builds stages of the musical drama by purely intonation means. The semantics of a death is embodied through the sound imaging of a black bird: a marching-like tempo and rhythm of the accompaniment, with a characteristic dotted pattern in a descending motion (like a raven is beating its wings). The middle section is dominated by a slow-motion perception of time space (Andante), meditative “freeze” (size 6/4). The melody contrasts with the previous section, its profile is built on the principle of descending move: from “h1” to “h” of the small octave (with a stop on S-harmony), which creates a psychologically immersed state, filled by premonition of an unexpected tragedy. In general, the Ukrainian melodic intonation intensified the tragic content of the ballad by Pushkin. The musical semantics of V. Kosenko’s romances is marked by the dependence on the romantic “musical vocabulary”, however, it is possible to indicate and national characteristics (ascending little-sixth and fifth intervals, which is filled with a gradual anti-movement; syllabic tonic versification, and other). Conclusion. The romances (“solo-singings”) by V. Kosenko belongs to the type of a free art translation with generalized-genre adequacy. There is a re-semantization of poetic images due to the national-mental intonation. Melos, rhythm, textural presentation (repetitions), stylization of different genre formulas testify to the rare beauty of Kosenko’s vocal style, spiritual strength and maturity of the master of Ukrainian vocal culture. Entering the “Slavic song area”, the style of Ukrainian romance, however, is differenced from the Russian and common European style system of figurative and intonation thinking (the picture of the world).


Author(s):  
Luise Li Langergaard

The article explores the central role of the entrepreneur in neoliberalism. It demonstrates how a displacement and a broadening of the concept of the entrepreneur occur in the neoliberal interpretation of the entrepreneur compared to Schumpeter’s economic innovation theory. From being a specific economic figure with a particular delimited function the entrepreneur is reinterpreted as, on the one hand, a particular type of subject, the entrepreneur of the self, and on the other, an ism, entrepreneurialism, which permeates individuals, society, and institutions. Entrepreneurialism is discussed as a movement of the economic into previously non-economic domains, such as the welfare state and society. Social entrepreneurship is an example of this in relation to solutions to social welfare problems. This can, on the one hand, be understood as an extension of the neoliberal understanding of the entrepreneur, but it also, in certain interpretations, resists the neoliberal understanding of economy and society.


Author(s):  
Yoon Sook Cha

This chapter, a reading of “L’Iliade ou le poème de la force,” considers Weil’s claim about the special character of force, that in being assumed and redeployed by those whom it subjects, flattens the relative power of humans. The chapter argues that the claim directs us to the possibility of a new relationality that forfeits sovereign modes of power without that forfeiture thereby signifying an equitable power between the self and the other, such as it is in supplication. Referencing Maurice Blanchot, it is argued that supplication establishes an “uncommon measure” between the suppliant and the one supplicated, not by virtue of any power the suppliant has, but by laying bare his human presence. In this context, one’s subjection to force offers a certain opening to the other even as it marks the precariousness of one’s own human being.


Author(s):  
Miriam Driessen

Whereas Chinese road builders are modest about improving their own lives, they are confident about their ability to transform the lives of Ethiopian others. This chapter discusses Chinese management’s attempts to fashion young Ethiopian men into industrious laborers, modeling them on the self-sacrificing worker subject that helped realize China’s economic miracle throughout the 1990s and 2000s. What Ethiopian laborers lack, in Chinese managers’ eyes, is a sense of urgency and a drive to develop the self. Yet their attempts to fashion Ethiopians into committed laborers are a double-edged sword. On the one hand, management seeks to enhance the productivity of the local workforce and speed up the building works. On the other hand, they have a fundamental interest in upholding the image of the Ethiopian worker as indolent, for it confirms Chinese moral superiority and justifies wage differentials and inequalities in employment security.


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