The Construction of Insider - Outsider in Anglophone Writings from Northeast India

The works of three writers from northeast India, Temsula Aos These Hills Called Home , Mamang Dais Stupid Cupid and Anjum Hasans Lunatic in my Head that cover the problem of identity in relation to the insider - outsider politics in the region are examined. The northeast India is in many ways a miniature India because it houses people from various ethnicity and linguistic groups. However, much of the immigration took place after the East India Company annexed the northeast region starting from 1826. The extraction of the resources and subjugation of the people in this region by the colonisers and later by successive Indian governments has left an indelible mark of cultural imperialism triggering social haemorrhage. This changing position of the insider - outsider is not only a part of the political discourse but also the literature that is produced in this region. The analysis of the writings of Temsula Ao, Mamang Dai, and Anjum Hasan allows to look at the problem from two perspectives: the indigenous population experiencing anxiety and leading various violent campaigns to expel so-called outsiders, and the northeasterners facing similar racial prejudices when visiting mainland India and being subjected to derogatory racial slurs.

Plurilingual literary spaces

In this article, I define the notion of a plurilingual literary space. While drawing from Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, I adopt a critical stance towards the highly autonomous, territorialized, and monolingual French case that he studied. Even though language is the material that the writers work with, the legitimate representation of the nation remains the major issue for non-central literary spaces, among which are plurilingual spaces. I elaborate on a typology of plurilingual literary spaces, which are heavily related to the political structure and language policies of the state. Then I concentrate on one of the types, that of plurilingual literary fields, where the language issue is the most significant. I argue that tensions or collaborations between the different linguistic groups depend on the symbolic balance of power between them as well as on official language policies. The most autonomous writers do not always desire to build bridges across language barriers, and they would sometimes rather create identity walls. I distinguish between unitarian policies that lead some linguistically dominated writers to reject collaborations and monolingual policies which lead the autonomous writers to reject the linguistic divisions.

Establishing a Sprachbund in the Western Lingnan region: conceptual and methodological issues

It is well-known that Tai-Kadai languages have affected the typological profiles of Southern Sinitic varieties. For example, compared with their northern sisters, Southern Sinitic varieties display a stronger tendency towards head-initial structures, as in the N–N compounds for expressing the sex of animals and in post-verbal temporal adverbs. Given that the Tai-Kadai languages in China have been in contact with Sinitic for over two millennia, it is quite natural to find signs of Sinitic influence therein. Most remarkably, pre-verbal adjunct phrases and pre-nominal relative clauses, which are extremely atypical of VO languages but distinctive of Sinitic, are attested in some Tai-Kadai languages in Southern China. The prevalence of such typologically unusual traits among different linguistic groups in the Lingnan region of Southern China provides strong support for its status as a linguistic area. Devising and adopting a ‘mutualist’ approach, we analyse the typological data of over 280 language varieties, which we believe illustrates and strongly supports the idea that Western Lingnan qualifies as a linguistic area in its own right according to criteria widely recognized by areal linguists. The approach proposed in this study can be applied to other putative linguistic areas around the world to study the mechanisms and outcomes of contact-induced change under a specific set of ecological conditions.

Collective teacher efficacy beliefs: testing measurement invariance using alignment optimization among four cultures

PurposeCollective teacher efficacy (CTE) is a promising construct for understanding how schools can foster student achievement. Although much of the early research on CTE took place in North America, researchers from other parts of the world are now delving into this topic. The current study explores whether these powerful collective beliefs function similarly across diverse cultural and linguistic groups: Arab and Jewish teachers in Israel, and teachers in Turkey and the USA.Design/methodology/approachParticipants included 4,216 teachers from Israel, Turkey and the USA, representing four cultures: Arab, Jewish, Turkish and American. We tested configural invariance using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (AMOS) and alignment optimization (Mplus) to identify the groups in which specific parameters are noninvariant, and to compare the latent factor means.FindingsConfigural invariance showed adequate fit of the model structure across the four groups. Based on invariance tests, using the alignment optimization method, CTE scales held different meanings for specific items across the four cultures, where the USA and Arab cultures were the sources of these differences. Furthermore, in comparing the two-dimensional CTE belief scale across the four groups, latent means revealed the highest mean ranking for the USA and the lowest for Turkey.Originality/valueThis research makes a significant theoretical contribution by examining and comparing the concept of teachers' collective efficacy in multiple cultures. This comparison can also contribute to instructional teaching practices worldwide.

Fraseologismi con la componente somatica cuore nella lingua croata e italiana. Approccio contrastivo

The article provides a cognitive analysis of phraseological units with the heart component in comparative terms. The purpose of the analysis is to show the similarities and differences in expressing emotions (positive, neutral and negative) between two languages originating from different linguistic groups: the Croatian language (South Slavic group) and the Italian language (from the group of the Romance languages). Phraseological units are analysed on the basis of three criteria: identical in both languages; partially adequate in both languages; idiomatic for one language. The research presents the motivation of phraseologisms and aims to prove that the heart is related to human emotional life and is a container for feelings.

Restoring (Old) Questions of Sovereignty under the Cover of Minority Protection?

Minority groups are often the subject of studies dealing with sovereignty and European integration. A now also common topic in political science is the rise of populist movements. Scholars study both of these issues extensively, but little research has been done on their nexus. Against this background, this article looks at the current sovereignty discourse in the minority area of South Tyrol. Even though three linguistic groups peacefully co-exist in the Italian province, various calls for dual citizenship have arisen. The possibility of acquiring an Austrian passport became a salient topic, especially since the övp/fpö government of Austria. Using the discourse-historical approach, the authors contextualize medial discourses with social-cultural context information. Results suggest that local media are disseminating a discourse regarding dual citizenship that largely differs from the opinion of the majority of the population, but corresponds to that of the populist actors who seem to fuel the issue.

Multilingualism in Cameroon: An Expression of Many Countries in One Country

Cameroon is a country with many languages interacting together. The languages have a complex history reflecting its complex culture. This paper focuses on some of these complexities and demonstrate how people belonging to different linguistic groups construct and deconstruct the concept of country using local languages. I will expand on the feeling of belonging to the country when a local language is used. The paper will set the context, provide a historical background of Cameroon, explain the language situation and settle on how the multiple languages spoken in Cameroon make village and ethnic entities countries within a country. It may not be possible to discuss the possible interactions between the multiple languages but levels of interaction of these languages will be established. The notion of country will be explained through the use of the languages and linked to the complexity in the governance process undermining the unity of the people of Cameroon.

Genetic continuity of Indo-Iranian speakers since the Iron Age in southern Central Asia.

Since prehistoric times, South Central Asia has been at the crossroads of the movement of people, culture, and goods. Today, the Central Asia's populations are divided into two cultural and linguistic groups: the Indo-Iranian and the Turko-Mongolian groups. Previous genetic studies unveiled that migrations from East Asia contributed to the spread of Turko-Mongolian populations in Central Asia and the partial replacement of the Indo-Iranian population. However, little is known about the origin of the latter. To shed light on this, we compare the genetic data on two current-day populations - Yaghnobis and Tajiks - with genome-wide data from published ancient individuals. The present Indo-Iranian populations from Central Asia display a strong genetic continuity with Iron Age samples from Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. We model Yaghnobis as a mixture of 93% Iron Age individual from Turkmenistan and 7% from Baikal. For the Tajiks, we observe a higher Baikal ancestry and an additional admixture event with a South Asian population. Our results, therefore, suggest that in addition to a complex history, Central Asia shows a remarkable genetic continuity since the Iron Age, with only limited gene flow.

Construcción identitaria de la inmigración en el paisaje madrileño: Lavapiés y San Diego

This article explores comparatively the strategies of construction and identity negotiation that the new ethnic and linguistic groups have reflected in Lavapiés and San Diego, two areas characterized by the highest percentage of international immigration, within Madrid. After the social and historical contextualization of both territories —to provide a more complete picture of its evolution— two collections of images or cartographies containing samples related to diversity in each territory will be analyzed from a methodological approach based on the exploratory analysis of the linguistic landscape. These parcours will allow to analyze the construction of multiculturality and otherness, which also goes hand in hand with seemingly opposite phenomena: from gentrification to a new definition of folk identity.

The Mitochondrial DNA Landscape of Modern Mexico

Mexico is a rich source for anthropological and population genetic studies with high diversity in ethnic and linguistic groups. The country witnessed the rise and fall of major civilizations, including the Maya and Aztec, but resulting from European colonization, the population landscape has dramatically changed. Today, the majority of Mexicans do not identify themselves as Indigenous but as admixed, and appear to have very little in common with their pre-Columbian predecessors. However, when the maternally inherited mitochondrial (mt)DNA is investigated in the modern Mexican population, this is not the case. Control region sequences of 2021 samples deriving from all over the country revealed an overwhelming Indigenous American legacy, with almost 90% of mtDNAs belonging to the four major pan-American haplogroups A2, B2, C1, and D1. This finding supports a very low European contribution to the Mexican gene pool by female colonizers and confirms the effectiveness of employing uniparental markers as a tool to reconstruct a country’s history. In addition, the distinct frequency and dispersal patterns of Indigenous American and West Eurasian clades highlight the benefit such large and country-wide databases provide for studying the impact of colonialism from a female perspective and population stratification. The importance of geographical database subsets not only for forensic application is clearly demonstrated.