No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Language and Agency
Abstract
This review describes and critiques some of the many ways agency has been conceptualized in the academy over the past few decades, focusing in particular on practice theorists such as Giddens, Bourdieu, de Certeau, Sahlins, and Ortner. For scholars interested in agency, it demonstrates the importance of looking closely at language and argues that the issues surrounding linguistic form and agency are relevant to anthropologists with widely divergent research agendas. Linguistic anthropologists have made significant contributions to the understanding of agency as it emerges in discourse, and the final sections of this essay describe some of the most promising research in the study of language and gender, literacy practices, and the dialogic construction of meaning and agency.
... This perspective emphasized the importance of recognizing the subjectivity of student participation and acknowledging the specific contextual factors that shape student learning agency (Jääskelä et al., 2017). Similarly, Ahearn (2001) considered agency as the socioculturally mediated capacity to act. Therefore, conceptualizing the student agency should take into account not only the individuals' impact on social structures but also the specific socio-cultural contexts that resource and constrain their agency. ...
... Students should adhere to principles of ethical technology use, ensuring their engagement with generative AI is responsible (Bettayeb et al., 2024;Noroozi et al., 2024;Perera & Lankathilaka, 2023). Additionally, the cultivation of learning agency cannot be separated from its socio-cultural context (Ahearn, 2001;Jääskelä et al., 2017); thus, students should maintain communication with teachers and peers to promote social-emotional learning. ...
While generative artificial intelligence (AI) empowers students in their learning, it may also have the potential to undermine their learning agency. Understanding student learning agency in the generative AI-supported contexts (SLA-GAI) has become critical for educators. However, student learning agency is a domain-specific construct, current scales neglect the specific generative AI situations. Therefore, current scales are considered inapplicable for measuring SLA-GAI. This study aims to conceptualize the student learning agency and develop and validate the SLA-GAI scale. We conducted an exploratory sequential design with two stages. In the first stage, a literature review and group interview with experts were conducted to conceptualize the student learning agency and generate initial items. 268 valid samples from university students were then collected and exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was employed to adjust the initial items. In the second stage, 425 valid samples were collected and randomly split into two subsamples (n1 = 268, n2 = 245) to conduct EFA and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), respectively. The findings indicate that the SLA-GAI scale includes ten factors with 34 items. Four of these – self-cognition, goal setting, self-adjustment and self-reflection – represent the key ability dimension of the SLA-GAI scale. The other three factors – selective action, responsible action and participative action represent the active action dimension of the SLA-GAI scale. Finally, self-efficacy and volition present the essential mental characteristics of the SLA-GAI scale. The developed SLA-GAI scale can reflect the latest and abundant meaning of the student learning agency in generative AI-supported contexts. It can help educators assess and develop student learning agency in the generative AI-supported contexts and explore related theories.
... One of the most-widely circulated definitions in Applied Linguistics is that of Ahearn (2001, p. 112) for whom agency is "the socioculturally mediated capacity to act". Ahearn's (2001) discussions were considered a milestone in underscoring the sociocultural nature of the agency. Aligned with Ahearn's (2001) position, Lantolf and Thorne (2006) consider that agency is socioculturally mediated and dialectically exercised. ...
... Ahearn's (2001) discussions were considered a milestone in underscoring the sociocultural nature of the agency. Aligned with Ahearn's (2001) position, Lantolf and Thorne (2006) consider that agency is socioculturally mediated and dialectically exercised. This implies that within a specific timeframe and spatial context, certain limitations and affordances make some actions probable, possible, and even impossible. ...
The potential of mobile phones as a resource to mediate teaching and learning opportunities has been the subject of research in the educational context. However, the role of these devices in teacher education, especially regarding the exercise of teacher agency, has been insufficiently investigated. The concept of agency has been discussed from different perspectives, and many studies in this area share the idea that agency is one of the characteristics of human behavior. In this paper 1 , we attempt to discuss the concept of agency through the lens of the ecological approach and complexity, perspectives that shed light to the way human beings’ exercise of agency emerges as agents who can influence and be influenced by their context. The aims of this study were to identify: i) instances of agency in the actions of pre-service teachers; ii) actions mediated by the use of mobile phones by these teachers; and iii) intrapersonal issues that can influence the agency of these teachers. Data was collected through a semi-structured questionnaire in undergraduate classes on the use of digital technologies in language teaching and learning. The data was then processed and coded using Atlas-TI software, and the analysis and discussion of the data was based on the characteristics of agency as a complex system. With this study, we hope to demonstrate the multifaceted nature of the concept of agency as these mobile technologies are integrated into teaching practices and to underscore its importance for language-teacher pre-service initial education.
... Second, this capacity to act is mediated by social and cultural processes in circulation. Following from the second point, Ahearn (2001) rejects both theses of agency as free will and agency as resistance. ...
If language policy produces space – from nations to workplaces – is this simply a process ‘from pen to land’? Is language policy strictly an institutional practice? Additionally, is language policy solely a matter of ‘language(s)’?
Taking an ecological perspective, the thesis develops a spatial approach to language policy. It argues that language is regulated not primarily in institutional planning (policy texts and defined managers). Rather, regulation is formed in the entanglement of political, cultural, economic, social and natural processes circulating in the sociolinguistic ecology. The thesis proposes a spatial ontology of language policy through the notion of spatialisation (the formation and de-formation of territories) and the Deleuzo-Guattarian concepts of rhizome (the open flow of semiotic processes) and assemblage (the shifting territories created in the entangling semiotic processes).
Guided by ethnographic and discourse analytic approaches, the thesis examines the case of business incubation (the industry nurturing early-stage companies) in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) in South China. The region is of interest for its timeliness (as one of the most recent initiatives of regionalisation in a leading economy) and sociolinguistic (especially intra-lingual) diversity. The focus on business incubation practices offers insight into a scarcely studied domain. It complements the primary focus on multi-national corporations in the established literature by presenting the sociolinguistic environment from which start-up and early-stage businesses are grown. The case taps into the potential future of business language policy and practices in the changing political and economic orders within the region and beyond.
The study brings two implications. First, language policy functions as spatial assemblage in producing territorial spaces that are enclosing but remain radically open with the ecological flows. This sheds light on indeterminacy functioning on the ontological level beneath practical uncertainties in the regulation of language. Second, language is regulated in interactions between material practices and discursive ideologies bound by affective relations. The thesis shows that institutional interventions are themselves regulative effects emerging from broader ecological processes, offering a more holistic approach to understanding the regulation of language.
... The idiosyncratic ways in which students with ld navigate their lived experiences are not captured by how research, theory, policies, practices and praxis have positioned this student group. These master narratives present a homogeneous group of students that are largely stripped of any agency (Ahearn 2001(Ahearn , 2013. Students' with ld perspectives are hardly taken seriously to disrupt our common-sense assumptions about who they are and to critically examine the notion of ld. ...
In this conceptual framework paper, I critically chronicle the historiography, policy, and scientific literatures of learning disabilities ( ld ) and provide a conceptual framework for reframing these as master narratives. I defined master narratives as the pre-existent sociocultural forms of interpretation. I interrogated the a) cultural-historical; b) the federal definition of ld within idea , c) the educational-professional academic and focused on, the d) social and emotional literature of ld . The master narratives from these literatures included: a) ld as a boy who struggles with reading, ld as a symbolic complex, and the legacy of the term “feebleminded”, d) assumptions about learning, ab/normality, difference, communication, dis/ability, culture and diversity, and issues of representation of student voice, e) a medical-psychological deficit oriented neurological, cognitive and instructional master narratives that assume dis/Ability within their neurology. These framings ignore the intersectional discursive, emotive and cultural-historical material contexts of students’ lived experiences.
... Agency considers a person's capability to influence the achievement of desired outcomes [13]. Among the bulk of social science theories tackling this concept (e.g., [6,32,89,93]), arguably the most influential one was proposed by Bandura [10,13]. His social cognitive theory emphasizes that people are not merely onlookers of what happens to them but active contributors to the world they live in [11]. ...
AI systems and tools today can generate human-like expressions on behalf of people. It raises the crucial question about how to sustain human agency in AI-mediated communication. We investigated this question in the context of machine translation (MT) assisted conversations. Our participants included 45 dyads. Each dyad consisted of one new immigrant in the United States, who leveraged MT for English information seeking as a non-native speaker, and one local native speaker, who acted as the information provider. Non-native speakers could influence the English production of their message in one of three ways: labeling the quality of MT outputs, regular post-editing without additional hints, or augmented post-editing with LLM-generated hints. Our data revealed a greater exercise of non-native speakers' agency under the two post-editing conditions. This benefit, however, came at a significant cost to the dyadic-level communication performance. We derived insights for MT and other generative AI design from our findings.
... Estrictamente hablando, no existen estudios de socialización lingüística mapuche. 5 Por agencia acá entenderemos "la capacidad de actuar mediada socioculturalmente" (Ahearn, 2001). 6 Las citas en inglés fueron traducidas por el autor de este artículo. ...
[ACEPTADO PARA PUBLICACIÓN EN: BOLETÍN DE FILOLOGÍA]
Se presenta una caracterización etnográfica de la situación sociolingüística y de los niveles de transmisión intergeneracional (TIL) del chedungun en cinco familias pewenche de una comunidad precordillerana del sur de Chile. Sobre la base de entrevistas a padres y madres y grabaciones de conversaciones intrafamiliares se muestra que las políticas lingüísticas familiares, los familectos y los niveles de TIL en estas familias deben ser comprendidos en relación con diferentes tipos de posición discursiva parental respecto de las lenguas, las prácticas lingüísticas, y los participantes en ellas. Estas posiciones interactúan con ideologías lingüísticas y determinados cronotopos que actúan como trasfondo para comprender las complejidades y los múltiples significados de los procesos de TIL en estas familias, desde sus propias perspectivas y en línea con los cambios que han experimentado. Mediante este enfoque, se busca superar el descriptivismo imperante y la reducción de la TIL mapuche a discursos exógenos en torno al desplazamiento o vitalidad de la lengua.
Palabras clave: transmisión intergeneracional; chedungun; pewenche; políticas lingüísticas familiares; posición discursiva
An ethnographic characterization of the sociolinguistic situation and the levels of intergenerational transmission (ILT) of Chedungun in five Pewenche families from a community in southern Chile is presented. Based on interviews with parents and recordings of intrafamily conversations, it is shown that family language policies, familylects and levels of ILT in these families must be understood in relation to different types of parental stance-taking regarding languages, linguistic practices, and the participants in them. These acts of stance-taking interact with language ideologies and certain chronotopes that act as a background to understand the complexities and multiple meanings of the ILT processes in
En este artículo examino el encuadre de la agencia personal en las narrativas oníricas de los mayas tzotziles. Basándome en enfoques lingüísticos, psicodinámicos y fenomenológicos contemporáneos, analizo los recursos léxicos y semánticos característicos del discurso onírico maya. Mi objetivo es ilustrar cómo estos recursos se emplean para negociar pragmáticamente cuestiones de volición y responsabilidad autoral en relación con la experiencia onírica. El estudio muestra que, al situar las experiencias a cierta distancia del hablante, dicho encuadre ofrece un recurso expresivo para gestionar-mitigar, difuminar o incluso rechazar-la responsabilidad agentiva por los eventos o vivencias descritos. Esto resulta particularmente evidente en narrativas con implicaciones significativas para el estatus social o la autodefinición. Concluyo con una reflexión sobre el potencial interpretativo de un enfoque "psicodinámico cultural" integrador, que sintetiza métodos y teorías del análisis del discurso, la etnografía y el psicoanálisis para enriquecer nuestra comprensión de subjetividades culturales complejas.
Different units of international politics, such as states or the church, cannot be present in their entirety during international interactions. Political rule needs to be represented for international actors to coordinate their activities. Representants (i.e. maps, GDP, buildings, and diplomatic and warfare practices) establish collective understandings about the nature of authority and its configuration. Whilst representants are not exact replica, they highlight and omit certain features from the units they stand in for. In these inclusions and exclusions lies representants' irreducible effect. This book studies how representants define the units of the international system and position them in relation to each other, thereby generating an international order. When existing representants change, the international order changes because the units are defined differently and stand in different relations to each other. Power is therefore defined differently. Spanning centuries of European history, Alena Drieschova traces the struggles between actors over these representations.
This paper explores the concept of agency for social transformation and its mobilization through a participatory action research project developed with students from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Spain. The research, which was longitudinal and employed ethnographic and participatory approaches, was based on critical pedagogy to raise awareness about the role of language in reproducing social inequalities. The students who participated mobilized agency through projects that addressed the lack of social recognition and unequal access to resources and rights due to linguistic hierarchies, intercultural differences, and discrimination. These efforts culminated in the students/researchers’ effective implementation of concrete actions to address these inequalities, including doing posters, workshops, support programs, discussion groups, and proposals for public institutions. In this article, we identify key factors that enabled students/researchers to develop concrete transformative actions to tackle sociolinguistic inequalities, such as students’ social positioning, available resources, the scaffolding provided by the researchers/facilitators, and the crucial role of accompaniment. These dynamics co-constructed three dimensions of agency—reflexive, critical, and distributed—whose interweaving defines this agency as transformative. Finally, we examine the project’s impact, both on a personal and collective level for the students/researchers and researchers/facilitators, as well as its effects on the contexts where the various actions were implemented.
Pertaining to goal orientation and achievement, agency is a fundamental aspect of human cognition and behavior. Accordingly, detecting and quantifying linguistic encoding of agency are critical for the analysis of human actions, interactions, and social dynamics. Available agency-quantifying computational tools rely on word-counting methods, which typically are insensitive to the semantic context in which the words are used and consequently prone to miscoding, for example, in case of polysemy. Additionally, some currently available tools do not take into account differences in the intensity and directionality of agency. In order to overcome these shortcomings, we present BERTAgent, a novel tool to quantify semantic agency in text. BERTAgent is a computational language model that utilizes the transformers architecture, a popular deep learning approach to natural language processing. BERTAgent was fine-tuned using textual data that were evaluated by human coders with respect to the level of conveyed agency. In four validation studies, BERTAgent exhibits improved convergent and discriminant validity compared to previous solutions. Additionally, the detailed description of BERTAgent’s development procedure serves as a tutorial for the advancement of similar tools, providing a blueprint for leveraging the existing lexicographical data sets in conjunction with the deep learning techniques in order to detect and quantify other psychological constructs in textual data.
This contribution examines how sociolinguistic and political forms of collective agency have emerged, oriented towards the linguistic planning of a minority language (Galician) in a participatory research project developed in a Secondary School in Galicia. The Critical Linguistic Awareness approach (García, 2016) vertebrates the ethnographic process in which students became co-researchers to analyze the linguistic landscape of their community (Cenoz and Gorter, 2008; Zas and Prego, 2018). The ethnographic process has stimulated the agentive capacity of these young people who acted as legitimate political agents in the transformation of the linguistic order. As a result, the students demanded that Google maps corrected the name of their town as it appeared with the Castilianized form of the same: "Arteijo", instead of the Galician official form "Arteixo". In this sense, the students demanded compliance with the Linguistic Normalization Law, which requires the use of official place names in the Galician language throughout Spain. These junior researchers, accompanied by their professor and University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) researchers, asked the city council to take appropriate measures to support them in their claim against Google. As a result, a form of collective agency was reinforced. This agency promoted linguistic citizenship (Stroud, 2015) by taking a stand against Google's non-compliance with the Law of Linguistic Normalization. The students took the initiative to mobilize and asked for support from the local administration to resolve this situation and move towards a more egalitarian and inclusive sociolinguistic order for the Galician language in the global space.
The Basque revitalisation process is going through a crucial moment which has mobilised policy makers and language activists alike in efforts to boost the social use of the minority language. The great increase in the knowledge of Basque in the last 40 years has not been followed by a proportional increase in the use of the language. This has called for urgent action towards what has been termed in Basque sociolinguistics and grassroot movements as ‘activation’ in favour of Basque, a concept intimately related to the notion of linguistic muda (Pujolar & González, 2013), which refers to significant changes in an individual’s linguistic repertoire, also impacting in their social identity. The Participatory Action Research project discussed in this article attempts to contribute to the present challenges in the current revitalisation scenario in the Basque Country by studying processes of linguistic mudas of Basque university students. The study of mudas have proven an interesting angle from which to explore forms of agency through language. Indeed, developing agency has been crucial for participants to better understand their own subjectivities as speakers, unveil the unequal sociolinguistic order surrounding them, and make the move towards action in order to enact the changes they desired in their linguistic practices. In this article we will explore the different ways in which agency has revealed itself in our study. In doing so, we aim to shed some light on what it means to exercise agency from the perspective of speakers in contexts of ethnolinguistic minorisation.
This study examines the manifestations and mediating factors of agency for research among four Chinese university foreign language teachers through an activity theory lens. Using a multiple case study approach, data from interviews, journals, documents, and profiles were analyzed via the constant comparative method. Findings reveal teacher agency for research manifests through three interconnected dimensions: agency beliefs, agency practice, and agency disposition. Second, these manifestations of teacher agency for research were mediated by various elements within the research activity system. Specifically, at the subject level, university foreign language teacher agency for research was mediated by research competency and motivational factors. The mediational tools comprised social interactions, cultural artifacts, and activity structures. Object-oriented mediation was evidenced through the enhancement and cultivation of teacher agency for research via evolving objectives across different research activities. Furthermore, the institutional rules, community dynamics, and division of labor collectively constituted the socio-cultural context that mediated teacher agency for research. The study contributes to understanding how EFL teachers navigate dual teaching-research roles in higher education contexts where research productivity is increasingly emphasized and substantively to the existing body of knowledge on teacher agency.
Medium of instruction (MOI) policy often takes form in diverse and creative ways. In the primary schools of the Aran Valley, Spain, Aranese (a variant of the minoritized language Occitan) is the official MOI, in coexistence with the other official languages of the region: Catalan and Castilian Spanish. In such cases of language revitalization, much of the agency for effecting sociolinguistic change is assigned to educators, who are expected to be linguistic models for students and families. What does this agency mean as it pertains to teachers' determination of MOI practices in a plurilingual context with two minoritized languages? This paper posits this agency as a distributed force among the policy assemblage at play, which encompasses official texts and the human and non-human actors of a given policy space. Through an analysis of official policy discourse, classroom observations and interview data, this article shows how educators at an Aranese primary school constructed MOI policies through their sociomaterial interactions, alignments and positionings within the policy assemblage. An understanding of language-in-education policy as agential enactments in situated learning spaces can shed light on the processes that result in discrepancies between official policy outcomes and everyday classroom realities.
In this paper, we examine the underexplored topic of language teacher educator (LTE) emotions and intersectionality through our individual counternarratives to show how intersectionality and emotions have shaped our own experiences, trajectories, and ideologies as LTEs. We also propose some larger ideas and themes in the form of a grand counternarrative as and for LTEs through the cumulative threads of our individual and local counternarratives. The three themes or dimensions we offer for a grand counternarrative are that of the importance of our raciolinguicized bodies, our gendered identities, and intersectional advocacy as LTEs. We demonstrate how intersectionality enables us to individually and collectively work through our storied emotions that empower us or hold us back and conclude the paper by underscoring the importance of hyper‐reflexivity for LTEs to reflect on what may be missing in our and others' counternarratives and a grand counternarrative.
In this chapter the local context focus is Italian higher education (HE) and the aim here, in fact, is twofold. Primarily, the background of EMI will be described, with reference to Italian universities in general, and, in particular, regarding EMI teacher training courses at Verona University. This development has been studied through the lens of participant perceptions over the course of these programmes which began in 2016 and were taught regularly until 2019, when issues such as the pandemic caused an interruption. Secondly, the learning design which resulted from the study of participant perceptions and then was applied in these courses will be presented in the hope that it may inform the work of practitioners in wider contexts.
Background: Teacher learning from professional development (PD) remains undertheorized. Most PD studies focus on its content or structure to gauge learning, leaving substantive gaps in our understanding of teacher learning processes and the role of contexts. Therefore, we investigate teachers' learning as they take practices from PD and adapt them to their own settings. Methods: Using ethnographic methods and taking a situative perspective, we offer an in-depth comparative case study of two teachers' PD learning over time and across contexts. Findings: We find that teachers' learning was shaped in the process of recontextualizing practices from PD into their classrooms through agen-tic synthesis of these practices with contextual particulars: namely, salient problems of practice, learning in other contexts, idealized teacher identities , contextually situated goals, challenges of implementation, and other related affordances and constraints. Through this synthesis, they developed what we call personally meaningful practices, which may or may not reflect the intent of the original PD practice. Contribution: Our work contributes to theory of how teachers' learning occurs by illuminating agentic synthesis as a core process resulting from teachers recontextualizing practices from PD. Our findings underscore the roles of teachers' agency, reasoning, and contexts in learning.
Voice-based, spoken interaction with artificial agents has become a part of everyday life in many countries: artificial voices guide us through our bank’s customer service, Amazon’s Alexa tells us which groceries we need to buy, and we can discuss central motifs in Shakespeare’s work with ChatGPT. Language, which is largely still seen as a uniquely human capacity, is now increasingly produced—or so it appears—by non-human entities, contributing to their perception as being ‘human-like.’ The capacity for language is far from the only prototypically human feature attributed to ‘speaking’ machines; their potential agency, consciousness, and even sentience have been widely discussed in the media. This paper argues that a linguistic analysis of agency (based on semantic roles) and animacy can provide meaningful insights into the sociocultural conceptualisations of artificial entities as humanlike actors. A corpus-based analysis investigates the varying attributions of agency to the voice user interfaces Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant in German media data. The analysis provides evidence for the important role that linguistic anthropomorphisation plays in the sociocultural attribution of agency and consciousness to artificial technological entities, and how particularly the practise of using personal names for these devices contributes to the attribution of humanlikeness: it will be highlighted how Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri are linguistically portrayed as sentient entities who listen, act, and have a mind of their own, whilst the lack of a personal name renders the Google Assistant much more recalcitrant to anthropomorphism.
The article examines the issues of ritualization and symbolization in the representation of war within the Ukrainian media landscape through a specific genre of emergency air raid alert notifications as well as its expansion to other media genres based on the analysis of two Ukrainian Telegram channels. The main focus of the article is to identify the discursive, cognitive, semantic, communicative, and pragmatic characteristics of the media framing of the alert genre as well as multimodal, primarily linguistic, means of their expression. The article explores not only the alert genre and its components, along with their symbolic load and ritual potential, but also highlights their importance in establishing a genre network in the coverage of war in Ukraine. The conducted research on ritual theories, encompassing the anthropological and sociological approaches to studying ritual as a universal cultural phenomenon, as well as the study of the specifics of media ritual and its framing tools, allowed to lay the foundations for developing a multidisciplinary approach to the study of ritualized practices within the media coverage of war.
In this article, we present our vision of a transformed second language acquisition and teaching (SLA/T) disciplinary community that approaches second language (L2) education through four pillars. The first pillar is praxeology (i.e., the study of human action) to highlight the sociocontextually emergent nature of L2 competence. It locates the emergence of L2 grammar and interactional competence in humans acting conjointly with others with and through their L2 across a large variety of social situations and transnational, transcultural, and translingual spaces. The second pillar, humanism, calls for a complex dynamic systems theory–informed understanding of individual differences, with learner agency as a central driving force. The third pillar is equity to confront the field with the recognition that language learning is profoundly inequitable and that most present forms of inequity and injustice, including language‐related inequities, are rooted in coloniality, a matrix of power invented in the late 15th century by European White settlers to ensure the success of colonial domination. Mixed methods research, the fourth pillar, emphasizing emic perspectives, can make findings generalizable and transferrable for practitioners and policymakers, while also revealing the nuanced voices of underrepresented language learner populations. We close by illustrating our vision with the vignette of a language learner and calling researchers to use these four pillars in collaborative pursuits of this SLA/T synergy.
Fibromyalgia lacks a coherent illness and treatment model, which includes a set of conceptual ideas shaping individuals’ perceptions and understandings of pain, its causing and maintaining factors, and management strategies. Developing personalized illness models that can guide treatment plans and alleviate feelings of uncertainty, is of crucial importance. This study investigates how individuals with fibromyalgia develop a personal illness and treatment model while navigating the current healthcare system and explore their experiences during this process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 cis women with fibromyalgia, which were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis produced two themes, each including two subthemes. The first theme encompassed the difficulty of developing a comprehensive illness model due to the biomedical perspective of the healthcare system; the second theme described the importance of participants (re)gaining ownership and agency over their pain management, by constructing their own illness and treatment model. Most women in this study got stuck in the biomedical healthcare web not being provided with a clear illness and treatment model. Consequently, most women gained ownership of this process by developing their personal illness and treatment model (self-empowerment). Conversely, a few women felt powerless and paralyzed. This study underscores the importance of promoting patient empowerment in chronic pain management. Agency is undervalued in the treatment of fibromyalgia and warrants more thorough examination. Increasing knowledge about agency could enhance treatment effectiveness.
The topics of awareness and control have been investigated for decades in sociolinguistics, but they have been approached in different ways, both theoretically and methodologically, in different corners of the subdiscipline. This has resulted in confusing and sometimes contradictory terminology, as well as divergent theoretical perspectives on what, exactly, is meant by these terms. As our understanding of the relationships between various social and cognitive systems has become more detailed and sophisticated, it has become increasingly urgent to untangle the overlapping and at times contradictory ways of understanding these concepts. For this reason, this Thematic Series responds to a need for further and more coherent development of the concept of awareness ‐ and for coordination between different subfields of (socio)linguistics as we do so.
The EquiLing project aims at contributing to sociolinguistic justice by understanding language-mediated social inequalities and facilitating the conditions through which to challenge and transform these situations. In order to do so and following a Freirean approach and a Participatory Action Research methodology, we created conscientization spaces in two university sites in Bilbao and Madrid. In these conscientization spaces, researchers and students (or co-participants, as we term them here) engaged collaboratively in group dynamics to develop critical sociolinguistic awareness and foster transformative actions to challenge the sociolinguistic inequalities within each context. Students, when sharing these experiences, often evoked the external spaces they transit through in their daily lives, in which they faced situations that show lack of recognition, unequal distribution of resources and/or participation. Space appeared as a key element in the articulation of their narratives and experiences due to it usually being configured and constructed through hegemonic (in our case, sociolinguistic) ideologies and practices, which can leave speakers falling outside this normativity in situations of sociolinguistic injustice. In reaction to this, in our conscientization spaces, we (researchers and co-participants) have challenged these dynamics interactionally in joint reflection and practice by cultivating a safer space. In this sense, we have tried to foster counter-hegemonic practices in our spaces, facilitating in some cases a bridge to other spaces. This has shown that space is a central element in the configuration of a sociolinguistic order and that it is dynamic, socially constructed, and in continuous transformation, which also creates possibilities for resistance.
Since its introduction by Anthony Giddens in the early 1980s, the use of the concept of “agency” as a way to accommodate an irreducible element of voluntarism into sociological explanations has grown exponentially in the literature. In this chapter, we examine the most prominent theoretical justifications for adopting the notion of “agency” as an integral part of such explanations. We distinguish three broad sets of justifications: the meaningfulness/intentionality of social action, the need for “agency” to explain change in social structures, and the link between agency, social accountability, and human dignity. We find that none of these provides a convincing rationale for the analytical utility of agency. This raises the question of what work it actually does perform in the sociological literature.
The identity construction of hard-of-hearing language learners has received limited attention in educational research. This study examined how two Chinese English learners navigated hearing impairment and constructed identities in a mainstream educational context. Using positioning theory as a conceptual framework, the study explored their cognitive and behavioural engagements within daily interactions. The findings revealed that these learners actively shaped their identities through purposeful self-positioning, highlighting two distinct patterns: (1) behavioural engagement often triggered subsequent cognitive engagement, directly influencing self-positioning and identity construction; and (2) learners strategically initiated behavioural engagement to create conditions conducive to cognitive engagement, thereby advancing their identity formation. These findings unveil the proactive strategies and agency demonstrated by hard-of-hearing learners in navigating challenges and constructing their identities. This study contributes to understanding identity construction in marginalised groups, emphasising the dynamic interplay between agency, engagement, and identity formation.
In L2 writing education, the topic of L2 writing teachers, who play critical roles in nurturing and shaping students' L2 writing abilities across diverse educational and social contexts, has received proliferating research attention over the past decades. Despite the accumulated studies in the investigation of L2 writing teachers, nonexistent studies have provided a holistic and comprehensive picture of L2 writing teachers in terms of their unique identities and complex experiences of teaching and learning to teach (Hirvela & Belcher, 2007; Lee, 2010). Therefore, this position paper reports discourses from the published literature on L2 writing teachers by addressing the ten key questions in this area, respectively, on L2 writing teachers' roles, beliefs and perspectives, identities, writing teaching, feedback giving, assessment, received education, and expertise development. These ten questions respond to the “what” in L2 writing teachers (such as roles, identity, and beliefs), and the “how” of L2 writing teachers, including how they instruct, provide feedback, assess, and develop professional expertise. This conceptual paper sheds light on multiple dimensions of L2 writing teachers to reveal a holistic and comprehensive picture of L2 writing teachers in terms of their beliefs, practices, and experiences of teaching and learning to teach.
Co-creation constitutes a novel pedagogical approach for enhancing teaching and learning in higher education. When students and staff collaborate to improve curriculum, pedagogical resources, and the development of students’ roles as peer-mentors or teaching assistants, it has led to increased learning outcomes, more inclusive practices, empowered students, and improved relationships between students and staff. In this conceptual systematic review of 222 research articles, we investigate characteristics of research on co-creation and analyse how the interactions constituting co-creation have been conceptualised. We identified dialogue, positioning, agency, and voice as core concepts describing co-creational interactions. These concepts are highly interconnected and were examined both as products of co-creation and as vital elements for co-creation to be productive. Based on these findings, we developed an analytical framework serving (a) to inform analyses of co-creational interaction and (b) as a model for educators designing co-creational activities. We further contribute to the theoretical underpinning of co-creation by discussing how dialogic theories can inform investigations of co-creational interactions in future research. We argue that there is a range of research questions related to the interactions constituting co-creation that are not sufficiently investigated. We suggest that future research should be directed towards observational studies of these interactions to develop knowledge on how educators can interact inclusively with students, fostering agency and positioning students as significant contributors to educational processes in higher education.
This qualitative ethnographic study investigates students’ agency of a language policy in a Colombian public university. Participants were 85 undergraduate students, and data collection involved document analysis, non-participatory observation, a questionnaire, and a portfolio. Three categories emerged from the analysis: acceptance, rejection, and ignoring. Regarding acceptance, the findings suggest that some students agreed with including English in the curriculum. Some other students expressed rejection related to the English class, the methodology, the evaluation proposal, and the course material. Other students ignored elements regarding their own role in the program, extra-class activities, and participation and attendance in class. Conclusions indicate that students are not passive recipients of language policies because they exercise agency differently at the micro level.
Drawing on the perspective of critical sociolinguistics, this article presents preliminary reflections on the debate on agency in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology. It draws upon three studies inspired by the Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology, conducted in various contexts in the Spanish state: (i) a university setting of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, characterized by a high linguistic diversity that remains largely invisible; (ii) a cultural organization in Catalonia, whose objective is to overcome social and linguistic forms of segregation by fostering contact between recent migrants and the local population; (iii) sport clubs in the Basque Country, where young people are encouraged to use Euskara (the Basque language) and resist the tendency to resort to the more dominant Spanish language. We discuss diverse approaches to the notion of agency, while also offering an innovative perspective grounded in field experience: agency emerges as a “doing-together”, as a dialogic-collaborative process resulting from the interaction of researchers and participants. The outcomes of our interactions in the field extend beyond the confines of research studies, revealing the inherent political dimension of the project. This realization compels us, as researchers, to engage in ongoing reflection both within and beyond the context of fieldwork.
How much of everyday language use takes place on autopilot, how much are speakers aware of, and how do their attitudes relate to this? In particular, how do these factors together account for variation between speakers? Limburgian, a regional language within the Netherlands, is under pressure from Dutch in an intensive language contact situation. The use of a non-feminine subject pronoun for women is a Limburgian feature which is not shared with Dutch. Limburgian speakers show a large range of variation regarding this feature, both when it comes to its use, and how it is perceived. By studying speakers’ self-reports of three concepts – automaticity, attitudes, and metalinguistic awareness – as well as how these together relate to self-reported language use (N = 405), this paper investigates to what extent speakers have control over their own language use. Our findings suggest that self-reported automaticity is the driving force in the use of the non-feminine pronoun, but also that this autopilot may be curbed by metalinguistic awareness and attitudes. Importantly, speakers vary considerably on all three concepts, highlighting once more that language users are not a monolith, and that individual speakers may react differently in a language contact situation.
This narrative case study explores ways a Japanese learner of English utilised multiple silences as an interactional resource, enhancing collaborative second language (L2) interaction beyond the classroom while studying abroad in the United Kingdom. The concept of ‘multi-contextual silences’ in this study involves the idea that multi-faceted silences play an integral, harmonious role in creating collaborative interaction in new socio-cultural contexts. Drawing on the concept of global cross-cultural competence, which nurtures all-inclusive views on diverse interactional styles, this study examines a learner’s multi-faceted use of silence enhanced through her unique individual network of practice (INoP) as a social network theory (Zappa-Hollman, Duff, 2015) involving learners’ initiation of agency for social interaction in language socialisation. It should be noted that this study adopts the revised INoP framework, incorporating learner agency enhanced through self-reflection. Its data includes a questionnaire survey and six in-depth interviews on the use of silence and talk during a year-long sojourn. It specifically sheds light on the learner’s facilitative use of silence, manifested in solitude, creative silence in affinity space, sharable co-learning space, and the learner’s use of silence as an active listener in L2 turn-taking practices originating in her emic and culturally oriented interactional perspectives. While challenging perceptions of silence as loneliness or coexistent with interactional struggles, this study illustrates ways in which, from a learner’s perspective, facilitative silence was highly signified and jointly, equally, responsible in talk-in-action. This study suggests the importance of opening up the space L2 learners need to enable them to initiate agency and deepen self and mutual understanding of the multiple roles silence plays in creating interactional opportunities in cross-cultural interaction as seen from diverse viewpoints.
Equity‐focused calls for elementary education reform recognize the importance of student and teacher translanguaging, yet nuances of how this process unfolds in early childhood science is an underexplored area. This study examines young plurilingual children's participation in science investigations, with a view toward understanding how open‐ended pedagogical structures supported their communication and engagement as related to science learning. We examine the work of 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds as they participated in a 3‐week unit exploring worms and draw upon translanguaging theoretical perspectives to interpretively analyze their interactions in science. Situated in the multilingual national context of Luxembourg, the study examines the interactions of these plurilingual children and their teacher as they investigated worms in varied open‐ended pedagogical structures. Schools are trilingual in Luxembourg, yet approximately half of the students in the country's elementary schools do not come to school with proficiency in any of the three languages of instruction. Issues of equity in schooling are thus heavily bound in languages. The robust dataset incorporating video data were examined using multimodal interaction analysis, and three vignettes zoom in on children's actions, utterances, and materials in open‐ended science learning spaces, providing rich examples of classroom structures that support meaningful translanguaging through students' agentic science communication. Young students' communication and science engagement are inseparable, and this study shows that these intertwine through translanguaging, in a process which is emergent when children are able to agentically draw upon diverse resources to make meanings.
This chapter summarizes the transfer process of supranational policies regarding the creation of a European space for HE through the enhancement of ICTs to promote a culture of LLL and inclusion, by the reconstruction of the main steps which accompany the emergence of the “digital university” idea in practice. Furthermore, it tries to offer an overview of the idea of digital transformation, according to the lens of the institutional actors at the meso-level, and the related digital challenges from an organizational perspective at micro level.
This article examines the linguistic landscapes (LL) of two communities in Beijing, China, to investigate the agency and structure embodied in them. A geosemiotic and discursive approach is employed to the collected data based on geosemiotics and discursive frame. It reveals the LL in the surveyed communities in Beijing can be mainly divided into three discursive frames: the civic frame, the promotional frame, and the livelihood frame, each with its own exclusive geosemiotic characteristics of agency and structure. A separate examination of each frame reveals the specific representations of and interactions between agency and structural factors within each one. Furthermore, a longitudinal analysis of these three frames indicates the existence of a concrete dynamic equilibrium relationship between agency and structure. It can be summarized that one of the existing landscape construction modes in the communities in Beijing is characterized by the balanced agency-structure dynamics, which can serve as a reference for LL construction and research in other regions.
The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the global shift to online education at all levels, presenting dramatic changes and challenges. For foreign language teaching (FLT) in particular, the need to tackle difficulties and improve teaching requires a re-examination of teacher agency from an ecological perspective, especially the evolving and ever-changing roles undertaken by teachers at different stages of the teaching process. This study systematically reviews existing research on online FLT at the college level during the pandemic, aiming to develop a comprehensive model of teacher agency based on teachers’ roles and identities that proved effective during this period. After conducting a keyword search among Web of Science database in four categories (SSCI, SCI-Ex, A&HCI, and ESCI) and following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Protocol (PRISMA-P 2020) and the clustering techniques of VOSviewer, we selected 39 peer-reviewed publications for this study. Our findings suggest that effective online FLT requires teachers to integrate multiple roles at different stages: before, during, and after online teaching. Specifically, six critical roles were identified, including technician, designer, motivator, communicator, assessor and facilitator, which as a whole contribute to the ecology of teacher agency. This review provides a model for understanding teacher agency during the pandemic, offering key insights for future research on online FLT.
We explore the transformative potential of generative language-based technologies in educational reform, moving beyond traditional cognitive transmission towards a more holistic and relational learning paradigm. Through Humberto Maturana's theoretical lens, we examine how generative AI can facilitate dynamic, learner- centred environments that emphasize relational understanding and structural coupling. We critique the prevailing focus on cognitive training and advocate for integrating the embodied, interactive nature of learning—encompassing both verbal and non-verbal communication—into educational practices. Generative language-based technologies are positioned as key tools for reshaping educational practices, enabling learners to transcend the constraints of present educational paradigms and foster a more integrated understanding of knowledge. By emphasizing social interactions and environmental engagement, generative language-based technologies promote more meaningful communication and connections. We also address significant challenges these technologies present, including risks to educational equity, ethical concerns, and the potential erosion of cognitive autonomy through over-reliance on AI tools.
Although the concept of agency has been explored across various academic disciplines, the lack of a clear definition and theoretical foundation for (teacher) agency can hinder knowledge building and creation. This chapter addresses this gap by introducing key theories on (teacher) agency that support the development of an initial analytic framework. It then provides an overview of the ecological perspective on agency to emphasize contextuality. The chapter concludes by detailing the components and dimensions of an ecological perspective on teacher agency in CLIL at both individual and collective levels, drawing on Priestley et al.’s (Teacher agency: An ecological approach, Bloomsbury, 2015a) framework and incorporating insights from Carspecken in Four scenes for posing the question of meaning and other essays in critical philosophy and critical methodology, Peter Lang, 1999a and Lin and Motha in Curses in TESOL: Postcolonial desires for colonial English. In R. Arber, M. Weinmann, &J. Blackmore (Eds.), Rethinking languages education: Directions, challenges and innovations, pp. 15–35, Routledge, 2021 with a focus on the roles of identity agency.
The global whim to introduce EMI policy in higher education is often accompanied by neoliberal discourses without considering the emotional effects on stakeholders. Following a critical post-structuralist lens, this qualitative study examines how the implementation of EMI impacts the emotions and agency of international
students in Southwest China. The findings revealed that despite the neoliberal ideals of EMI leading to international students’ emotions of hope, pride, and expectation about their future employment and academic pursuits, they encountered many emotional struggles resulting from institutional classroom segregation, English
insufficiency, and high-stake exams. To empower themselves and alleviate those emotional challenges, international students, as entreprenurial subjects, adopted agencies by exploiting digital space, seeking peer support and utilizing the local linguistic learning resources. The study closes with implications to promote students’
emotional awareness in policy making and implementation, calling for creating inclusive and supportive learning environments that optimize students’ academic success and overall well-being.
Excerpted reprint of Hall (1995) published in Deborah Cameron's (1998) The Feminist Critique of Language.
This paper examines the phenomenon of ergativity and its relation to patterns of surface grammar and information flow in discourse. Corresponding to the grammatical pattern of ergativity (exemplified in the A vs. S/O distribution of verbal cross-referencing morphology in Sacapultec Maya) there is an isomorphic pattern of information flow: information distribution among argument positions in clauses of spoken discourse is not random, but grammatically skewed toward an ergative pattern. Arguments comprising new information appear preferentially in the S or O roles, but not in the A role-which leads to formulation of a Given A Constraint. Evidence from other languages suggests that the ergative patterning of discourse extends beyond the ergative type to encompass accusative languages as well. Given the linguistic consequences of a type-independent Preferred Argument Structure, it is argued that language-internal phenomena as fundamental as the structuring of grammatical relations can be shaped by forces arising out of discourse, viewed as the aggregate of instances of language use.
Although Bourdieu’s theory of practice has drawn widespread attention to the role of the body and space in social life, the concept of habitus is problematic as an explanatory account of dynamic embodiment because it lacks an adequate conception of the nature and location of human agency. An alternative model is presented which locates agency in the causal powers and capacities of embodied persons to engage in dialogic, signifying acts. Grounded in a non-Cartesian concept of person and ‘new realist’, post-positivist philosophy of science, vocal signs and action signs, not the dispositions of a habitus, become the means by which humans exercise agency in dynamically embodied practices. Ethnographic data from the communicative practices of the Nakota (Assiniboine) people of northern Montana (USA) support and illustrate the theoretical argument.
Every year, around the time of the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the New York Times asks a Big Name anthropologist to contribute an op-ed piece on the state of the field. These pieces tend to take a rather gloomy view. A few years ago, for example, Marvin Harris suggested that anthropology was being taken over by mystics, religious fanatics, and California cultists; that the meetings were dominated by panels on shamanism, witchcraft, and “abnormal phenomena”; and that “scientific papers based on empirical studies” had been willfully excluded from the program (Harris 1978). More recently, in a more sober tone, Eric Wolf suggested that the field of anthropology is coming apart. The sub-fields (and sub-sub-fields) are increasingly pursuing their specialized interests, losing contact with each other and with the whole. There is no longer a shared discourse, a shared set of terms to which all practitioners address themselves, a shared language we all, however idiosyncratically, speak (Wolf 1980).
This work presents landmark research concerning the vital dynamics of childhood psychological development. It’s origin can be traced to the late 1970s, when several psychologists began to challenge existing notions of cognitive development by suggesting that such functioning is bound to specific contexts and that cognitive development is based on the mastery of culturally defined ways of speaking, thinking, and acting. About the same time, several translations were made available in this country of the seminal work of Vygotsky, the noted theoretician, offering a conceptual base on which these workers could build. This volume, with contributions from many of the scholars who pioneered this area and translated the work of Vygotsky, looks at the complex mechanisms by which children acquire the cultural and linguistic tools to carry out cognitive activities and explores the implications of this research for education. The book is organized around three main parts: Discourse and Learning in Classroom Practice, Interpersonal Relations in Formal and Informal Education, and The Sociocultural Institutions of Formal and Informal Education. An afterword by Jacqueline Goodnow suggests new directions for sociocultural research and education. The intended audience is composed of developmental, educational, and cognitive psychologists, along with advanced students in developmental and educational psychology.
Queerly Phrased is a groundbreaking collection of previously unpublished essays that examine the relationship between language and the construction of gender and sexuality. Bridging the gap between sociolinguistics and gay studies, the contributors draw on traditional models of language analysis as well as recent developments in gender theory to show how language plays a crucial role in the creation of culture and its representation.
Language ideologies are cultural representations, whether explicit or implicit, of the intersection of language and human beings in a social world. Mediating between social structures and forms of talk, such ideologies are not only about language. Rather, they link language to identity, power, aesthetics, morality and epistemology. Through such linkages, language ideologies underpin not only linguistic form and use, but also significant social institutions and fundamental nottions of person and community. The essays in this new volume examine definitions and conceptions of language in a wide range of societies around the world. Contributors focus on how such defining activity organizes language use as well as institutions such as religious ritual, gender relations, the nation-state, schooling, and law. Beginning with an introductory survey of language ideology as a field of inquiry, the volume is organized in three parts. Part I, “Scope and Force of Dominant Conceptions of Language,” focuse on the propensity of cultural models of language developed in one social domain to affect linguistic and social behavior across domains. Part II, “Language Ideology in Institutions of Power,” continues the examination of the force of specific language beliefs, but narrows the scope to the central role that language ideologies play in the functioning of particular institutions of power such as schooling, the law, or mass media. Part III, “Multiplicity and Contention among Ideologies,” emphasizes the existence of variability, contradiction, and struggles among ideologies within any given society. This will be the first collection of work to appear in this rapidly growing field, which bridges linguistic and social theory. It will greatly interest linguistic anthropologists, social and cultural anthropologists, sociolinguists, historians, cultural studies, communications, and folklore scholars.
Talk is crucial to the way our identities are constructed, altered, and defended. Feminist scholars in particular have only begun to investigate how deeply language reflects and shapes who we think we are. This volume of previously unpublished essays, the first in the new series Studies in Language and Gender, advances that effort by bringing together leading feminist scholars in the area of language and gender, including Deborah Tannen, Jennifer Coates, and Marcyliena Morgan, as well as rising younger scholars. Topics explored include African-American drag queens, gender and class on the shopping channel, and talk in the workplace.
Talk is crucial to the way our identities are constructed, altered, and defended. Feminist scholars in particular have only begun to investigate how deeply language reflects and shapes who we think we are. This volume of previously unpublished essays, the first in the new series Studies in Language and Gender, advances that effort by bringing together leading feminist scholars in the area of language and gender, including Deborah Tannen, Jennifer Coates, and Marcyliena Morgan, as well as rising younger scholars. Topics explored include African-American drag queens, gender and class on the shopping channel, and talk in the workplace.
Starting with the premise that Europe was made by its imperial projects as much as colonial encounters were shaped by events and conflicts in Europe, this book investigates metropolitan–colonial relationships from a new perspective. The fifteen chapters demonstrate various ways in which “civilizing missions” in both metropolis and colony provided new sites for clarifying a bourgeois order. Focusing on the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, they show how new definitions of modernity and welfare were developed, and how new discourses and practices of inclusion and exclusion were contested and worked out. The chapters argue that colonial studies can no longer be confined to the units of analysis on which it once relied; instead of being the study of “the colonized,” it must account for the shifting political terrain on which the very categories of colonized and colonizer have been shaped and patterned at different times.
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
This chapter highlights that for contemporary Modern English, the structural category of gender fits into an expected and universal typology of categories of noun phrases. It is one from among the set of different but consistent ways that certain semantic configurations are expressible in language form. The traditional grammatical category of gender, or gender classes of noun phrases, for example, is a formal distinction from the analytic perspective of reference and predication. In fluidly stratified societies in particular, Labov and others have discovered robust results of just this sort of statistical variability. Feminist theory of language, and its analysis and prescription for linguistic reform, seems correctly and accurately to perceive the pragmatic metaphorical relationship between gender identity and status, though much is cast into the rhetoric of power in a more abstract and less culturally situated form. The linguistic change to be considered has resulted in the contemporary configuration of a different aspect of the structure of Modern English, that of so-called person and number.
This paper is an attempt to grasp the social structure guiding naturally occurring talk among some children and their teacher. Although many (most strikingly Saussure) have called for language to be understood as a social institution, in the formulation of units and procedures of analysis, the institutional accomplishments of talk have been investigated largely as an afterthought. By focusing on collusion, this paper directs an analysis towards the identification of the efforts participants must make to preserve their conversation as an appropriate moment within the life of an institution. The consequences, from the point of view of Linguistics, of using this starting point is briefly outlined, and the particular brand of formal analysis emerging from artificial intelligence is criticized as being methodologically insensitive to the social structuring of language.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Historical works on Hitler and Stalin or on specific aspects of their regimes reveal how historians differ in their treatment of individual agency. Historians' practices are examined in the light of W. H. Dray's findings about historians' concepts of causation and A. Giddens's structuration theory. Marxist and revisionist historians rejected approaches that endowed Hitler and Stalin with immense power and personal control over events. Works by Isaac Deutscher, A. J. P. Taylor, and J. Arch Getty exhibit historians' methods for reducing or nullifying agential power. Robert C. Tucker's work on Stalin offers a different approach to the problem of the interaction of structure and individual agency. Allan Bullock may be correct in his view that historians are now less likely to exaggerate or underestimate either individual agency or structure when dealing with Hitler and Stalin; and Christopher Lloyd may be correct to say that historians' practices suggest a tacit acceptance of structuration theory in some form, but it does not follow that historians are now more likely to agree about the agential power of individuals. The assessment of agential power still requires interpretation, and it is doubtful that consensus about structuration theory would affect the range of interpretation very much. However, theories of cultural evolution and comparative investigation of the "selection" of political-cultural "genes" at certain historical junctures might provide a useful frame-work for studying how individuals like Hitler and Stalin acquire an unusual degree of power and authority.
Although there is only one ergative language in Europe (Basque), perhaps one-quarter of the world's languages show ergative properties, and pose considerable difficulties for many current linguistic theories. R. M. W. Dixon here provides a full survey of the various types of ergativity, looking at the ways they interrelate, their semantic bases and their role in the organisation of discourse. Ergativity stems from R. M. W. Dixon's long-standing interest in the topic, and in particular from his seminal 1979 paper in Language. It includes a rich collection of data from a large number of the world's languages. Comprehensive, clear and insightful, it will be the standard point of reference for all those interested in the topic.
Literacy and Development is a collection of case studies of literacy projects around the world. The contributors present their in-depth studies of everyday uses and meanings of literacy and of the literacy programmes that have been developed to enhance them. Arguing that ethnographic research can and should inform literacy policy in developing countries, the book extends current theory and itself contributes to policy making and programme building. A large cross-section of society is covered, with chapters on Women's literacy in Pakistan, Ghana, and Rural Mali, literacy in village Iran, and an 'Older Peoples' Literacy Project. This international collection includes case studies from: Peru, Pakistan, India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Mali, Nepal, Iran, Eritrea, Ghana.
An eminent anthropologist examines the foundings of the first celibate Buddhist monasteries among the Sherpas of Nepal in the early twentieth century--a religious development that was a major departure from "folk" or "popular" Buddhism. Sherry Ortner is the first to integrate social scientific and historical modes of analysis in a study of the Sherpa monasteries and one of the very few to attempt such an account for Buddhist monasteries anywhere. Combining ethnographic and oral-historical methods, she scrutinizes the interplay of political and cultural factors in the events culminating in the foundings. Her work constitutes a major advance both in our knowledge of Sherpa Buddhism and in the integration of anthropological and historical modes of analysis.At the theoretical level, the book contributes to an emerging theory of "practice," an explanation of the relationship between human intentions and actions on the one hand, and the structures of society and culture that emerge from and feed back upon those intentions and actions on the other. It will appeal not only to the increasing number of anthropologists working on similar problems but also to historians anxious to discover what anthropology has to offer to historical analysis. In addition, it will be essential reading for those interested in Nepal, Tibet, the Sherpa, or Buddhism in general.
This text offers an understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical and engineering practice, and the production of scientific knowledge. The author presents an approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the number of factors - social, technological, conceptual and natural - that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another - "mangled" together in ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a greater understanding of scientific work both past and present. He examines the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice - the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory and the interrelation of machines and social organization.
This paper examines the effect of gender on how young children construct the texts that embody their everyday social interactions with peers. The analysis focuses on conflict talk among 3‐year‐old friends playing in same‐sex triads at their day‐care center. The gendered aspects of two disputes are made visible by interpreting them in terms of two models. Maltz and Borker's anthropological linguistic model characterizes feminine language style as affiliative and masculine style as adversarial. Gilligan's psychological framework, describing gender differences in reasoning about moral conflicts, characterizes the feminine orientation as focusing on the relationship and the masculine as focusing on the self. The two dispute sequences studied are also consistent with predictions made by Miller, Danaher, and Forbes (1986) and Leaper (1988), that boys’ conflict process is more heavy‐handed and their discourse strategies more controlling, whereas girls’ conflict is more mitigated and their discourse strategies more collaborative. The study demonstrates the gendered nature of children's peer talk at as young as 3 years of age.