The Impact of Diglossia on Voweled and Unvoweled Word Reading in Arabic: A Developmental Study From Childhood to Adolescence

All native speakers of Arabic read in a language variety that is remarkably distant from the one they use in everyday speech. The study tested the impact of this distance on reading accuracy and fluency by comparing reading of Standard Arabic (StA) words, used in StA only, versus Spoken Arabic (SpA) words, used in SpA too, among Arabic native speakers in Grades 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 (N = 100). Pseudowords in SpA and StA were also compared. Analysis of variance results revealed significant differences in reading SpA versus StA words across all grades and in reading voweled and unvoweled words. The findings support the effect the linguistic distance between SpA and StA on word reading development.     

Mind the Generation Gap: Millennials and Boomers in the Library Workplace

As editor of On My Mind, I wanted to introduce myself and let you, the reader, know a little bit about what I intend this column to be. Primarily, I want it to be a venue for you to write about anything that has been bugging you or that you think needs to be said. This is an opinion column so please share your opinion. Maybe you want to talk about what you wished you had learned in library school. Or, perhaps you have a bone to pick with people who rely too much on using statistics in their weeding of books from the library's shelves. Whether the majority of librarians hold your opinion or not, I will try to give you a venue to express your thoughts. Also, this column is intended to be informal; feel free to use the first person. That does not mean that you cannot or should not back up statements you make with research. Please do. It does mean that personal anecdotes and stories are encouraged and make for a more interesting read. Finally, inquiries into writing for this column should be directed to me via e-mail. You will get a timely response. –Eric Jennings     

Aesthetic ruptures: viewing graffiti as the emplaced vernacular

This essay theorizes the notion of the emplaced vernacular, a type of vernacular expression that is mobilized by the production of aesthetics in particular places. I argue that 1970s graffiti in New York City emerged as an aesthetic rupture in response to the spatial exigencies of postwar urban renewal projects. Analysis of The New York Times coverage of graffiti writers “Kilroy was Here” from WWII and “Taki 183” from the 1970s demonstrates how the force of this emplaced vernacular was disciplined within dominant spatial ideologies, producing an aesthetic that continues to enable and constrain contemporary efforts of vernacular subjectification.     

Reviews

Annals of Dyslexia -     

Self-rated mental health, school adjustment, and substance use in hard-of-hearing adolescents

This survey, "Life and Health-Young People 2005," included all 15/16-year-old adolescents in mainstream schools in the county of Orebro, Sweden. Just students with a slight/mild or moderate hearing loss were included. There were 56 (1.9%) "hard-of-hearing (HH) students with multiple disabilities," 93 (3.1%) students who were "just HH," 282 (9.7%) students with some "other disability than HH," and 2,488 (85.2%) students with "no disability." "HH with multiple disabilities" reported considerably higher scores for mental symptoms, substance use, and school problems than the "no disability" group. Those with "just HH" and those with "other disability than HH" had more mental symptoms and school problems than the "no disability" group but no significant differences in substance use. In conclusion, the combination of a hearing loss and some other disability strongly increases the risk for mental symptoms, school problems, and substance use. This group, thus, is an important target for preventive measures.     

When diglossia meets dyslexia: The effect of diglossia on voweled and unvoweled word reading among native Arabic-speaking dyslexic children

Native Arabic speakers read in a language variety that is different from the one they use for everyday speech. The aim of the present study was: (1) to examine Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA) voweled and unvoweled word reading among native-speaking sixth graders with developmental dyslexia; and (2) to determine whether SpA reading ability among children with dyslexia predicts StA reading fluency in the two orthographies: voweled and unvoweled. A comparison was made to three age groups of typically developing children: a group matched by chronological age, a group of children who are two years younger, and a group of children who are 4 years younger. Findings show that diglossia has a strong impact on reading ability in dyslexic children. Moreover, vowelization plays a pivotal role in the reading ability of Arabic-speaking children with dyslexia in both SpA and StA. This role is evident in the different performance patterns of dyslexic participants as compared with controls on word-reading accuracy and fluency for SpA versus StA. Finally, StA word-reading fluency appears to depend on and to be reliably and powerfully predicted by SpA word-level reading ability. These results underscore the role of diglossia and vowelization in the manifestation of dyslexia in Arabic-speaking children.     

Taming Noisy Women

This paper focuses on women who worked at Bell Telephone Company in the USA during 1930s and 1940s as telephone operators, and the training programmes they went through. Transmission of information depended on their actions because they had to facilitate the switchboards, and therefore held a crucial position as part of the communication channel. Thus, Bell felt they should tune their ‘bad’ behaviour which embodied noise in their systems. In order to maintain equilibrium, Bell enmeshed Michel Foucault’s disciplinary and biopower forms of governmentality and developed a hybrid form. This combination was seen in their flagship training programme, A Design for Living, where Bell penetrated operators’ bodies and minds, inside and outside work. When the operators revolted, Bell realised power should be exercised through automated dial machines. This would then become an inspiration for cybernetics who aimed to control communication systems that constructed information’s correct behaviour, and consequently users.