Taiwanese students in Malaysia and interculturality: when national identities take primacy over individualities

Using a liquid approach, the authors analyze the intercultural discourse of Taiwanese students who had taken part in a short term exchange program with a Malaysian university. The four participants were graduating in Mandarin Chinese in their home institution and were following a Chinese program in multilingual Malaysia. Data were collected through focus groups held in Mandarin Chinese and focused on their experience in the host country. The authors analyze how participants talk about themselves, Malaysians, and their adaptation to the host country. The processes of essentialization and othering that occur and put in contrast the host and the home contexts are similar to those held in Asia-to-Europe mobility and very far from an “interculturality without culture” (Dervin, 2010). If we focus on the construction of discourses, this Asia-to-Asia mobility forces us to relativize the opposition of cultures as an explanation for difficulties encountered by mobile students

Representation of 'Asian' students in French tv programmes

Over the years, East-Asian populations, especially the Chinese, have become the focus of an exotic, imagined representation of the East, and the Asian student has become a sort of euphemism for Asian communities, at least in the French-speaking context if not elsewhere. This essentialising, reductionist approach contrasts with the concept of ―fluid‖ culture (Bauman, 2004) which insists on the process of identification of individuals who are not mere cultural products as cultures and identities donot existper se (Lavanchy,Gajardo&Dervin, 2011). After addressing the concepts of culture, identity and representations in the media, I analysed in this research how Asian students are portrayed in French TV programmes: are they (still) the archetype of an imagined East or are the media moving away from a stereotyped categorisation of the East for this diasporic population? Using Fairclough‘s (1995) model for critical discourse analysis (CDA), Kerbrat-Orecchioni‘s (1999) Theory of Enunciation and Dervin‘s (2013) Mixed Intersubjectivity, eight videos on Asian students in the French media are analysed. The results show that the discourses on Asian students are edited to only stage cases of academically successful individuals excelling in all fields they participate in. Reportages overwhelmingly portray Asian families as academic elites who become the ‗Asian norm‘. The reportages create an imaginary Asian identity where Confucianism often plays a central role in the characters‘ identifications, even though most of the characters presented no longer live or have never even lived in a so-called Confucian environment. This Othering contributes to representing a community which is out of reach for non-Asian French students, who in contrast to Asian students are less successful and subsequently disempowered because they are not affiliated to the absolutely successful Asian community

Schema therapy for borderline personality disorder: A qualitative study of patients' perceptions.

Schema therapy (ST) has been found to be effective in the treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD). However very little is known about how the therapy is experienced by individuals with BPD including which specific elements of ST are helpful or unhelpful from their perspectives. The aim of this study is to explore BPD patients' experiences of receiving ST, in intensive group or combined group-individual format. Qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 36 individuals with a primary diagnosis of BPD (78% females) who received ST for at least 12 months. Participants were recruited as part of an international, multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT). Interview data (11 Australian, 12 Dutch, 13 German) were analyzed following the procedures of qualitative content analysis. Patients' perceptions of the benefits gained in ST included improved self-understanding, and better awareness and management of their own emotional processes. While some aspects of ST, such as experiential techniques were perceived as emotionally confronting, patient narratives informed that this was necessary. Some recommendations for improved implementation of ST include the necessary adjunct of individual sessions to group ST and early discussion of therapy termination. Implications of the findings are also discussed, in particular the avenues for assessing the suitability of patients for group ST; management of group conflict and the optimal format for delivering treatment in the intensive group versus combined group-individual formats