Building rapport and a sense of communal identity through play in a second language classroom

Many teachers would recognize that a certain amount of laughter and play in a classroom is one of the signs of a socially cohesive and contented group of learners. However, on the face of it, language play in a multinational second language classroom would seem to be highly constrained by an apparent lack of common cultural reference points and, at the lower end of the proficiency spectrum, by the linguistic abilities of the learners. This paper features an investigation into language play consisting of a teacher and two low-proficiency adult learners from different professional fields and nationalities, enrolled on an intensive Business English course. The analysis is informed by Goffman’s concept of frame, by Bakhtin’s ideas about the heteroglossic and dialogical nature of language, and by Bauman and Briggs’s notion of recontextualization. It shows how the learners build a common pool of prior talk and reference points, alluding to them humorously. The data consists of a series of short episodes which together trace the development of one such shared reference point. Over two days, the learners transform an incident which highlights their shortcomings in the language into a celebratory resource that they playfully use to build rapport and to help in the construction of a shared sense of identity and culture. I argue in this paper that the language play found in the featured data is very similar in kind to that in native speaker interactions

Suicide Prevention through Spiritual Care: A Guide for United States Military Veterans

The focus of this study is to highlight the growing concern with the suicide rate among United States military veterans. This study seeks to demonstrate how spiritual care can help many veterans that are suffering from thoughts of suicide, by providing various theories of integration between psychotherapy and theology. The methods chosen for integration are the integrationist perspective, cognitive behavioral therapy, and Christian cognitive therapy. The focus of the integration is to help prevent veterans who are at risk of suicide, by focusing on a treatment plan that helps the totality of a person. The theoretical orientation provided offers insight into how to propose a holistic approach to treatment that addresses the mind, body, and spirit of the veteran client. This treatment plan of integration may also help non-veterans that are also suffering from anxiety, depression, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), grief, shame, and thoughts of suicide, but most specifically for the veteran client. The purpose of this study is to distinguish what greater role Spiritual Health Care Providers can have in the lives of veterans, by helping to prevent the overwhelming number of suicides among United States military veterans

Xavier University Newswire

https://www.exhibit.xavier.edu/student_newspaper/2799/thumbnail.jp

Children in Frank Beyer\u27s Holocaust Films

ABSTRACT CHILDREN IN FRANK BEYER’S HOLOCAUST FILMS SEPTEMBER 2016 DELENE CASE WHITE, B.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA M.A. UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH ALABAMA Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barton Byg This dissertation is about central functions children play in the Holocaust films of (East) German director Frank Beyer: Nackt unter Wölfen (Naked among Wolves, 1963), Jakob der Lügner (Jacob the Liar, 1974), and Wenn alle Deutschen schlafen (While all Germans Sleep, 1994). Beyer’s child characters contribute to resistance and challenge oversimplified ways the Holocaust and German division have often been remembered. Beyer’s films do not elide truthful representations of the Holocaust, and they avoid clichéd representations of children, Jews and Germans. Released over a 31-year span, characters in these films demonstrate increasing agency, drawing out universal humanity in people around them—even German soldiers—in the form of storytelling, play, and the desires to protect others and live ordinary, worthwhile lives. Over time, these films also reveal changes in Beyer’s filmmaking artistry, as well as his collaboration with the author Jurek Becker. I explore the intertwined evolution of Beyer’s child characters and his filmic approach in four central chapters. The Introduction sets the stage by outlining German and international films about the Holocaust and reviewing Beyer’s biography. Chapter One provides an overview of adaptation theory, moral philosophy, and methods for analyzing representations of war and the gaze of the child, as well as the biographies of Bruno Apitz and Jurek Becker, the authors whose novels Beyer adapted to film. Chapter Two examines how Naked among Wolves, which is ensconced in antifascist ideology and conventions of Socialist Realism, nevertheless challenges tenets of each, by decentering Communist heroes and focusing on a child. In discussing Jacob the Liar, which is set among Jews in a Polish ghetto and completely displaces Communists, Chapter Three explores how Beyer deploys the narrative devices of fantasy, flashbacks and flashforwards to depict how characters preserve their humanity in the midst of the Holocaust. Finally, Chapter Four shows how Beyer takes his abandonment of antifascist and social realist conventions a step further in While all Germans Sleep, which departs from fantasy and flashbacks in favor of a more objective narrative style, while challenging conventional views of the Holocaust through depictions of childhood autonomy and agency

A study of the playful use of English among learners on an intensive language course

Humorous language play is integral to the building of many relationships. Research into its role in social interactions has tended to focus on native speakers in a shared cultural context, while the humorous language play of second language learners, especially in the classroom setting, has only recently attracted attention. The limited research to date has tended to focus on discrete episodes of humorous language play, neglecting its contribution to the building of rapport and the development of an in-group culture. This thesis focuses on lower-level learners from a variety of linguistic and cultural backgrounds, and investigates the ways in which they play with English for their own social ends, despite a lack of language proficiency and common socio-cultural reference points. The setting for this investigation was an intensive English course for business people, run by a private training organisation. The participants were low-proficiency learners from various professional fields and nationalities. The classroom interactions of particular groups were audio or video recorded, with two learners being recorded over two continuous days of their three-day course. This enclosed setting allowed the opportunity to trace the role of humorous language play in the establishment and development of the learners' relationships with each other and with their teacher. Goffman's concept of frame and Bakhtin's ideas about the heteroglossic and dialogical nature of language inform the analysis of the data. Findings show that the impulse to play can overcome the linguistic and cultural challenges the learners face. In order to have fun, they exploit the ‘play’ between the interpretative frameworks that a language classroom provides. They build a common pool of prior talk and reference points, alluding to them humorously to create rapport, to shape their learning environment, and to take ownership of the target language

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia

What happens to legacies that do not find any continuation? In Estonia, a new generation that does not remember the socialist era and is open to global influences has grown up. As a result, the impact of the Soviet memory in people’s conventional values is losing its effective power, opening new opportunities for repair and revaluation of the past. Francisco Martinez brings together a number of sites of interest to explore the vanquishing of the Soviet legacy in Estonia: the railway bazaar in Tallinn where concepts such as ‘market’ and ‘employment’ take on distinctly different meanings from their Western use; Linnahall, a grandiose venue, whose Soviet heritage now poses diffi cult questions of how to present the building’s history; Tallinn’s cityscape, where the social, spatial and temporal co-evolution of the city can be viewed and debated; Narva, a city that marks the border between the Russian Federation, NATO and the European Union, and represents a place of continual negotiation of belonging; and the new Estonian National Museum in Raadi, an area on the outskirts of Tartu, that has been turned into a memory field

Mediating Catholicism – Religious Identities, Polish Migrants and the Catholic Church in Ireland

This thesis investigates the experience of Polish migrants in Ireland and how, if at all, spirituality or the church figure in terms of social and spiritual support. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with Polish migrants and clergy, participant observation and documentary materials and guided by theories of religion as resource, achieved identity, and transnational entity, I identify four major empirical findings. First, religion is not a significant factor motivating the migration of Polish migrants to Ireland and instead economic and social factors predominate. Second, there is considerable variation in migrants’ religious beliefs and practices, ranging from migrants who strongly identify with Catholicism to migrants who dis-identify with Catholic identity. Third, some Polish migrants rely on the church for various resources while others do not, depending on factors such as social networks, transnational ties and religious identity. I find that religion matters more as a marker of ethnic identity and social service resource than spirituality. In addition, the Polish chaplaincy draws on transnational resources to help some migrants maintain their religious identity and connection to Poland. Migrants, in turn, mobilise transnational networks to further support the preservation of ties to their homeland. Theoretically, this thesis gives weight to the perspective that religion and religious institutions operate transnationally, yet migrants’ relationship with religion is constantly negotiated and adapted depending on their time and context specific situations, some migrants ‘opt in or out’ of religion when ‘necessary’

NOT ALONE: DOING FIELDWORK IN THE COMPANY OF FAMILY MEMBERS

Reflecting on three case studies, this article provides an empirically grounded discussion of the challenges and opportunities that arise from doing fieldwork in the company of one’s children and spouse. The article highlights that during fieldwork, one’s private and professional lives are intermingled and the knowledge that one gains is always situated in particular ways. In this article, three female anthropologists elaborate on how they juggle multiple identity positions during fieldwork and how those negotiations and the presence and actions of accompanying family members affect the research material. Children and spouses may be useful during fieldwork but they may also disturb it or take it in unexpected directions. Acknowledging that fieldwork is part of life and that our everyday lives affect the fieldwork process is not a positive or negative thing per se; it is a part of the dynamics that can produce fruitful moments of serendipity

Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia : An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces

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