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Appreciative semiotic and hermeneutic practices in the analysis of ethnic minorities

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Abstract

Socio-cultural research of ethnic minorities, is a hermeneutical process involving simultaneously the analysis of discursive strategies available to communities (ethnic),and the meta-narrative material. The type of discourse research dominant in the community, produces changes in the social pragmatics of that community. Action research study presents the discursive strategy of socio-cultural action. It emphasizes on quality characteristics of the method, which can be interpreted as a semiotic analysis of communication practices in the community, with effects in changing behavior patterns. Community development resulting from changes to the rhetoric used by the community. Understood in the manner proposed by Gergen constructionism, community is the space where there is a process of constant renegotiation of the meaning of social reality. A specific way of social pragmatics which can be used in transforming the social rhetoric of ethnic and multi-ethnic communities is the appreciative inquiry, transformative method aimed at harnessing the resources within the community by exploring the discourse level of positive experiences.

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... Appreciative intelligence is the ability of individuals to appreciate the positive, while the appreciative survey is the specific human and organizational development methodology centered on the appreciation of the positive. The appreciative intelligence was developed in the context of attempts to substantiate the appreciative practices developed from the appreciative survey: appreciative management (Checkland, 1994), appreciative evaluation (Cojocaru, 2008, Watson, 2013, leadership appreciation (Orr & Cleveland-Innes , 2015), appreciative social welfare (Bradu & Sandu, 2009), appreciative supervision (Cojocaru, 2010, Caras & Sandu, 2014, appreciative education and training (Sandu, Cojocaru & Ponea, 2010), public administration focused on appreciation (Schooley, 2008;Sandu, 2010;), appreciative parenting (Cojocaru, 2011;Cojocaru, 2015), appreciative political discourse (Rao, 2014). ...
... As a consequence, the minorities in our study have proven to have a wiser management of the economical resources they received. Another assumption of this study is based on the tendency of minorities to overcompensate so that they can counteract discrimination (Sandu, 2010). Overcompensation, as defined by Orbe, refers to making more of an effort to prove that the minority is worth at least as much as the majority peers and has often been a survival technique that minorities use in organizations in order to prove their competence (Tindall, 2007). ...
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