Does deafness lead to enhancement of visual spatial cognition in children? Negative evidence from deaf nonsigners

This study investigated whether deafness contributes to enhancement of visual spatial cognition independent of knowledge of a sign language. Congenitally deaf school children in India who were born to hearing parents and were not exposed to any sign language, and matched hearing controls, were given a test of digit span and five tests that measured visual spatial skills. The deaf group showed shorter digit span than the hearing group, consistent with previous studies. Deaf and hearing children did not differ in their performance on the visual spatial skills test, suggesting that deafness per se may not be a sufficient factor for enhancement of visual spatial cognition. Early exposure to a sign language and fluent sign skills may be the critical factors that lead to differential development of visual spatial skills in deaf people.     

试论方言研究的文化价值--青海汉话感受剳记之一

汉语方言形成的原因是错综复杂的,有社会历史的原因,也有自然地理环境的原因.方言研究不但可以为推广普通话提供可资比较的语言材料和为汉语发展史的研究提供充分的语料依据,而且因为方言是语言与文化互动的结果,是文化的接触与扩散,对于研究民族文化关系史、民族学、社会学等人文社会科学,也有着重要的论证价值.因此,方言研究不仅具有语言学价值,也有着十分重要的文化价值.     

城市户外文字的文化意义分析

城市户外文字是城市公共环境中出现在各种户外载体上的文字符号,具有视觉文化、语言文化和书法艺术等文化意义。城市户外文字作为一种视觉文化,以其图像性、空间性和碎片化特征,影响着城市户外空间的视觉审美、信息传播与多元创新;作为一种语言文化在语言规范、思想内蕴、语言修辞等方面发挥影响;在书法意义上表现为对书法艺术的历史传承、现代弘扬及对城市居民的艺术熏陶。     

留学生跨文化适应中的压力与影响因素研究

留学生的跨文化教育适应是一个动态的发展过程,留学生因为各种不同因素的影响而经历各种跨文化适应压力。文章从留学生的跨文化适应阶段入手,从语言和学术适应、教育适应和社会文化等方面讨论留学生所面临的主要跨文化适应压力,从母语文化、自我效能、动机和社会距离等方面分析影响留学生跨文化社会适应的主要因素,以期为高校留学生跨文化适应培训带来启示。     

影响儿童语言学习的外在因素:构式语法与斯金纳的对话

儿童语言学习深受外在因素的影响.构式语法认为语言学习是"基于使用"的发展过程,强调外界语言输入对儿童语言心理表征及儿童语言发展的重要作用.斯金纳在言语行为理论中认为外在因素与儿童语言学习是多重双向互动关系,儿童语言学习中的"言语事件"不是单纯的外在输入,还包括语言产出及其前因后果.与"基于使用"的语言学习理论相比,虽然言语行为理论没有说明儿童的认知发展与语言发展的关系,但是两种理论都强调了外在因素在儿童语言发展中的重要作用.外在环境中的语言频率和形式--功能一致性是儿童语言发展的基础,儿童在简单语言的基拙上通过学习逐步达到语言使用的创造性.言语行为理论为构式语法的语言学习理论提供了有益的补充,可以为构式语法将来研究不同交际任务要求与儿童内部认知能力发展之间的互动提供值得借鉴的理论框架.     

Educational Policy for the Transnational Dominican Community

The increasingly transnational character of many immigrant communities necessitates changes in educational policy. We use the Dominican neighborhoods in New York City as our local case, examining the economic, political, social, cultural, and linguistic evidence of the transnationalism of this community. Many Dominicans maintain close ties to their native country through global networks that facilitate language and cultural maintenance. In spite of discrimination, Dominicans in the United States need to maintain their Spanish and want their children to develop fluent Spanish. Neglecting the language needs of transnational children leads to serious academic and social problems. Enriched bilingual bicultural programs would promote parallel development in both languages, providing cultural as well as linguistic instruction so that students can succeed in either country.     

Learner contribution to English language learning: Chinese research students' agency and their transitional experiences in Australia

This article examines the role of agency for the English language development of three Chinese research students with high English proficiency sojourning in Australia. The focus is on the various approaches the learners employed to strengthen their sense of confidence in their language use in Australia. The data were obtained through in-depth interviews and organized into case-study reports. The findings demonstrate that in transitioning into the Australian linguistic and cultural community, all the learners actively sought different English-mediated activities and experiences in order to build the confidence necessary for a successful transition. The differences in their choices of activities were intimately linked with what they historically saw and established as significant achievement goals in and through English. In maintaining that the students' agency was an extension of their fundamental desires and goals for learning, this article provides insights into how second-language (L2) learners gain participation in the target community and the salience of their historical learning goals for L2 use and overall L2 development.     

Lexical and grammatical abilities in deaf Italian preschoolers: the role of duration of formal language experience

We evaluated language development in deaf Italian preschoolers with hearing parents, taking into account the duration of formal language experience (i.e., the time elapsed since wearing a hearing aid and beginning language education) and different methods of language education. Twenty deaf children were matched with 20 hearing children for age and with another 20 hearing children for duration of experience. Deaf children showed a significant delay in both vocabulary and grammar when compared to same-age hearing children yet a similar development compared to hearing children matched for duration of formal language experience. The delay in linguistic development could be attributable to shorter formal language experience and not to deafness itself. Deaf children exposed to spoken language accompanied by signs tended to understand and produce more words than children exposed only to spoken language. We suggest that deaf children be evaluated based on their linguistic experience and cognitive and communicative potential.     

In one's own image: ethics and the reproduction of deafness

The ethics of the use of genetic screening and reproductive technologies to select against and for deafness is presented. It is argued that insofar as deafness is a disability it is ethical to act in such a way as to avoid the conception or birth of children with genetic or congenital deafness. The discovery and recognition of signing deaf communities as cultural and linguistic communities (minorities) does not alter this basic ethical position, although the consequences of widespread application of this technology appears destined to lead to the eventual disappearance of these communities. The argument that acting to avoid deafness is unethical because it will lead to the elimination of a linguistic or cultural group (genocide or ethnocide) or conversely that acting to ensure deafness is ethical, if not praiseworthy, can only be sustained if deafness is not regarded as a disability at all. I argue that the premise that deafness is not a disability of some sort is false and thus the claim that genetic selection against deafness is unethical is untenable.     

论俄罗斯语言文化学理论的建构基础

语言文化学是通过语言与文化之间的联系建立起来的一门新兴学科,也是近几十年来语言学家研究的热门话题之一。之所以将语言与文化相联系,是因为语言具有促进民族文化形成和发展的重要能力。民族语言学、民族文化学和民族心理学的发展都是以语言和文化之间相互联系的研究为条件的,也可以说语言文化学是语言国情学理论发展和应用的基础。     

Developing Cross——Cultural Awareness in Foreign Language Education

This paper presents the view that linguistic competence isn't equal to communicative competence.language and culture are closely related to each other.Language learning is not only the process of improving the learners' linguistic ability,but also the process of developing the learners' awareness of the target culture.Based on the above view, this paper analyzes the different levels of cross—cultural awareness that the foreign language learners should achieve and provides some methods to develop the foreign language learners' cross—cultural awareness in the process of foreign language learning and teaching.     

Reflections on Deaf Education: Perspectives of Deaf Senior Citizens

Parents with deaf children face many challenges in making educational choices, developing language and a sense of belonging. Other key aspects of life including concept development and social competency are also critical decision points faced by parents. Developing language, whether it is through spoken or signed modalities, is of utmost importance during the formative years and for many families with deaf children, there are no prior experiences with deafness, American Sign Language, Deaf culture, or the deaf community. This study aims to understand the educational and familial experiences of older deaf citizens by examining the meaning of being deaf and members of biological and cultural families, and the concern for education of young deaf children as constructed by deaf senior citizens from both deaf and hearing families. For the purpose of obtaining both childhood and educational experiences of older deaf citizens and examining what advice they would offer to families of today with deaf children, a qualitative design was implemented in which 13 participants participated in focus group and individual interviews. Themes that emerged from the data include, but are not limited to, community-based learning, the value of communication, involvement with other deaf individuals, importance of family communication and signing, sibling involvement and including deaf children as true members of a family. One recommendation made by the deaf senior adults was that families with deaf children engage with deaf seniors more frequently as a valuable resource.     

汉英翻译的语内与文化探微

翻译作为跨语言、跨文化的交际活动,将一种语言文化承载的意义转换到另一种语言,不仅受到语言的言内因素影响,还受到社会、文化等诸言外因素的影响。分析语内的语言特征和言外的文化因素是翻译的关键,本文拟从篇章的语内分析和文化语境探讨汉英翻译。     

Linguistic and cultural factors in the readability of mathematics texts: the Whorfian hypothesis revisited with evidence from the South African context

South Africa is a country of many languages and cultures. Education is mostly in English which implies that about 80% of all secondary school students are second language learners. Currently many mathematical problems are posed in real-life contexts. This not only introduces more language in mathematics texts, but also more issues related to culture. When considering the influence on readability, it is difficult to disentangle the role of linguistic and cultural factors and this in turn seems to be a manifestation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The study was therefore guided by research questions such as: what linguistic and cultural factors in the ordinary language of mathematics texts influence readability? Protocol analysis was used with students aged 17–18 years to establish readability problems. Linguistic as well as cultural factors were identified and the hypothesis that improved readability of mathematics assignments improves achievement was confirmed in a number of cases. Writers of mathematics texts should therefore consider linguistic as well as cultural factors when writing for different reading audiences. Other conclusions address teaching and examination practice.     

A Bourdieusian analysis of the participation of Polish students in the ERASMUS programme: cultural and social capital perspectives

In this paper we examine the perceptions of ERASMUS agents’ of Polish students’ participation in the EP. We provide a Bourdieusian analyse of the cultural and social capital acquisition of students based on the qualitative data, collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with Erasmus agents, of a European research project. We argue that: Polish students’ participation in the EP has a positive impact on their academic achievement, cultural, social and linguistic capital, but, at the same time, it has a negative impact on degree completion of students as they get highly paid jobs, which prevent them from fully developing their cultural capital; ERASMUS Tourism has its value and place in the EP, because it provides students with the opportunity to develop their cultural, social and linguistic capital; and a Bourdieusian analysis of the experiences of ERASMUS students provides a better understanding of the impact student participation in the EP on their development.     

Processing information from screen media: A psycholinguistic approach

How do viewers derive meaning from sequenced images shown on a screen? The author attempted to determine whether methodologies employed in psycholinguistic investigation of sentence perception can be used to ascertain how screen media communicate. In the present study, techniques similar to those used to explore linguistic perception were not transferable to the examination of visual perception. However, the author believes that as researchers proceed to explore the area of screen literacy, the analogy with language will continue to be of heuristic value.     

Domain general constraints on statistical learning

All theories of language development suggest that learning is constrained. However, theories differ on whether these constraints arise from language-specific processes or have domain-general origins such as the characteristics of human perception and information processing. The current experiments explored constraints on statistical learning of patterns, such as the phonotactic patterns of an infants' native language. Infants in these experiments were presented with a visual analog of a phonotactic learning task used by J. R. Saffran and E. D. Thiessen (2003). Saffran and Thiessen found that infants' phonotactic learning was constrained such that some patterns were learned more easily than other patterns. The current results indicate that infants' learning of visual patterns shows the same constraints as infants' learning of phonotactic patterns. This is consistent with theories suggesting that constraints arise from domain-general sources and, as such, should operate over many kinds of stimuli in addition to linguistic stimuli.     

关于语言直觉与文化差异两者关系的讨论

自20世纪以来,指称理论是分析哲学讨论的中心话题,描述语理论与历史因果理论两个观点一直主导着这个领域。克里普克(Kripke)反对传统的描述语理论,并提出了自己的观点。多数哲学家们和克里普克(kripke)保持同样的观点,一般认为指称是和人们的直觉保持一致的。近来文化心理学者们通过一系列实验指出文化在人的语言直觉和认知中扮演着重要的角色。Richard Nisbett和他的同事的实验发现东亚人与西方人在认知过程(如:感知、注意和记忆)中存在许多差异,因此一些学者开始怀疑在假定情境下人们对于专名的指称的语言直觉会随着文化差异有所不同。(如:Edouard Machery,Ron Mallon,:Shaun Nichol,Stephen P.Stich.的实验)在这篇论文中,我们将会提供一些新证据来讨论语言直觉随着文化差异而有所不同。     

Content-area teachers and scaffolded instruction for English language learners

Scaffolding provides content-area teachers (CATs) with an effective means to integrate language instruction into content-area instruction for English language learners (ELLs). Data for this study were derived from 33 CAT discussions while they were pursuing professional development in an American university classroom over 32 weeks. The discussions yielded 408 scaffolding statements that were coded and analyzed. The findings identified linguistic, conceptual, social and cultural scaffolding as part of the CATs’ personal practical knowledge. Also, the findings demonstrated that CATs’ knowledge of cultural scaffolding is limited in comparison to other scaffolding strategies. The findings have an impact on the nature of ELL instruction and its effectiveness.