Breaking Down the Codes: A Study of the Nonverbal Emblems and Regulators Used in International B-Boy Competitions

This study explored the use of nonverbal emblems and regulators in international b-boy competitions. Using semiotics, a lexicon of the emblems and regulators was recorded. Then the dimensions from a theory of semantics of dance were applied to understand how b-boy crews (dance teams) from around the world use gesture to communicate with the audience, judges, and other crews. The study analyzed how culture influences the use of emblems and regulators in the intercultural exchange that occurs during the international b-boy competitions, such as Battle of the Year (BOTY) and R16 World Series. Four videos from the 2013 and 2014 BOTY and 2015 R16 were analyzed. The study concluded that cultural dimensions such as collectivism and indulgence influences emblem selection, intensity, and frequency. These nonverbal elements exhibit an overall impact on the battle and the determination of the winner. The paper upon which this poster was based was written for the Senior Seminar course in Communication Arts. The paper was competitively selected for presentation at the Northwest Communication Association Conference in April 2016

Emblemata: The emblem books of Andrea Alciato

A study of the life and works of the legal scholar and humanist, Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), the originator of the emblem book. The nature of the emblem is elucidated and placed in its historical, intellectual and artistic contexts, with special attention paid to the many and varied published manifestations of Alciato???s emblems from 1531 to 1621.published or submitted for publicationnot peer reviewe

Teaching learners to communicate effectively in the L2: Integrating body language in the students\u2019 syllabus

In communication a great deal of meaning is exchanged through body language, including gaze, posture, hand gestures and body movements. Body language is largely culture-specific, and rests, for its comprehension, on people\u2019s sharing socio-cultural and linguistic norms. In cross-cultural communication, L2 speakers\u2019 use of body language may convey meaning that is not understood or misinterpreted by the interlocutors, affecting the pragmatics of communication. In spite of its importance for cross-cultural communication, body language is neglected in ESL/EFL teaching. This paper argues that the study of body language should be integrated in the syllabus of ESL/EFL teaching and learning. This is done by: 1) reviewing literature showing the tight connection between language, speech and gestures and the problems that might arise in cross-cultural communication when speakers use and interpret body language according to different conventions; 2) reporting the data from two pilot studies showing that L2 learners transfer L1 gestures to the L2 and that these are not understood by native L2 speakers; 3) reporting an experience teaching body language in an ESL/EFL classroom. The paper suggests that in multicultural ESL/EFL classes teaching body language should be aimed primarily at raising the students\u2019 awareness of the differences existing across cultures

Communicating hands: ERPs elicited by meaningful symbolic hand postures.

Meaningful and meaningless hand postures were presented to subjects who had to carry out a semantic discrimination task while electrical brain responses were recorded. Both meaningful and control sets of hand postures were matched as closely as possible. The ERPs elicited by meaningless hand postures showed an anteriorly distributed N300 and a centro-posteriorly distributed N400 component. The N300 probably reflects picture-specific processes, whereas the N400-effect probably reflects processing in an amodal semantic network. The scalp-distribution of the N400-effect, which is more posterior than usually reported in picture processing, suggests that the semantic representations of the concepts expressed by meaningful hand postures have similar properties to those of abstract words

Nonverbal communication in EFL teaching

XXI Jornades de Foment de la Investigació de la Facultat de Ciències Humanes i Socials (Any 2016)In recent years a number of researchers have stressed the importance of nonverbal communication – especially Kinesics – in the teaching and learning of languages (Bernsen, 2002; Jung, 2003; González, 2004; Querol-Julián and Belles-Fortuño, 2010; Surkamp, 2014). This paper aims to investigate the importance of gestures in the communication process and how the appropriate use of nonverbal communication enhances classroom interaction and contributes to conveying meaning. EFL language teaching can benefited from nonverbal communication when this is used in an effective way. The paper examines a small corpus of two videos taken from YouTube in which EFL teachers’ discourse and co-speech gestures (McNeill, 1992) were analysed. Results suggest that teachers used primarily iconic hand movements, which in turn enhanced students’ acquisition of the target language (TL). Finally, a section of pedagogical implications will focus on the appropriate use of gestures in a number of interactive activities

Emblematic Arches – Contributions to Reading a Hapsburg Festival

In 1619 Philip III of Spain (II of Portugal) enters into Lisbon, in what was to be the culmination of a long awaited and extensively planned royal entrée into his Portuguese kingdom, in the context of the Iberian Dual Monarchy. Between the initial discussions for this journey nearly twenty years earlier and the journey itself, the political landscape of parts of remainder Hapsburg empire had changed, perchance none more so than in the religious and political schisms in the Low Countries, as evidenced in the Festival itself. The Lisbon festival featured various arches and ephemera, described and illustrated in Lavanha’s account (1622), and to which festival the ‘nação flamenga’ contributed with an arch. Lavanha’s account of this arch in particular simply provides a description of the arch and messages therein inscribed, in much the same way he does of the remainder events and ephemeral architecture. However, this particular arch sends a strong political message to Philip himself through applied devices which, when read in the context of their emblem book sources and their known readership in Portugal, Spain and, crucially, the Low Countries, reveal the full impact of the demand imposed on the king. In effect, the message conveyed by the arch goes well beyond the obvious Latin dedications translated by Lavanha. The interaction of the emblems with the Latin dedications and, crucially, with the mechanical apparatus of the arch, creates a strong and spectacular demand on the king, in which process he is, nonetheless, forced to participate. In effect, it will be the very own presence of the king that triggers the conclusion, thus publicly acquiescing to the demands of the Flemish in Lisbon. Our contribution addresses how the readership of a festival can be multisensory and multidirectional – to the public, to the addressee, to the dedicatee, and though mostly in static displays of ephemeral art, they convey political movement. However, the experience of the festival is also the stage for the redefinition of nationhood in 17th-century Habsburg Spain. Alongside trade guilds, whole nations performed in this public political arena to assert, defend and promote a unilateral concept of nationhood. Willingly or not, by reading together the various elements of the arch, crucially connected by emblems and mechanical contraptions, the king finds himself participating in a public display that commits him politically to resolve the schism of the Low Countries

Juan Baños de Velasco y Acevedo - Emblems in Everyday Life

A research note on a new acquisition for the Stirling Maxwell Collection of Emblem Books, held at the Special Collections department of the University of Glasgow. This was part of a round table on various other items in this recent acquisition. This research note explores different perspectives that add value to this work, namely the close association of this Spanish work with D. Juan de Austria (its dedicatee) and Portugal

Principali Accordi Internazionali

Testi dei principali Accordi Internazionali in materia di proprietà industriale disponibili in Italiano e Ingles

The Embodiment of Teaching the Regulation of Emotions in Early Modern Europe

Teaching the regulation of emotions to support parents in educating their children to come of age properly was part of a missionary movement in late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe. This movement was inspired by the belief in the power of education from the northern European Renaissance and by the emphasis on catechism by the Reformation. Its mission resulted in an impressive and varied supply of (emblem) books on family and child-rearing advice. This article focuses on the embodiment of the teaching of the regulation of emotions represented in emblems that use the combined power of images and text. Based on a framework resulting from an analysis of the discourse on the classification and the regulation of emotions in early modern Europe, a sample of seventeenth-century emblems from one of the most popular books of the Dutch seventeenth-century republic, Mirror of the Ancient and Modern Time by Jacob Cats, was analysed by looking at the embodiment of teaching in relationship to the emblem’s text. Most emotions named by philosophers and theologians in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were also expressed in those emblems. The emblems carry the message that behavioural mistakes belong to the phase of youth. Teaching children to control their emotions could be done through fun. One of the most popular books in seventeenth-century Holland, many people, both Protestants and Roman Catholics, bought and read Cats’ work, evidence for the conclusion that a majority of Dutch burghers shared the messages in the emblems

Boston University Wind Ensemble, April 26, 2001

This is the concert program of the Boston University Wind Ensemble performance on Thursday, April 26, 2001 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts. Works performed were Celtic Hymns and Dances by Eric Ewazen, Emblems by Aaron Copland, Serenade in D Minor for Winds, Op. 44 by Antonín Dvořák, Three Merry Marches, Op. 44 by Ernst Krenek, Songs of Earth, Water, Fire and Sky by Robert W. Smith, and Music for Prague 1968 by Karel Husa. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund