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Gender And Bilinguals' Creativity, Wendy Baker
Gender And Bilinguals' Creativity, Wendy Baker
Faculty Publications
Research on the influence of gender on language across different cultures has mostly concentrated on qualitive measures of analysis. These measures demonstrate that there are differences in rhetorical and literary style across world Englishes in both the inner and outer circle. Using Biber's multidimensional analysis (1988) to examine a large corpus of world English literatures written in Indian, West African, Britain, Anglo-American and Mexican American varieties of English, this paper examines whether quantitative analyses can also be insightful and useful in the examination of the influence of gender on language and in expanding our understanding of what "bilingual creativity" entails. …
Culture As Justification, Not Excuse, Elaine M. Chiu
Culture As Justification, Not Excuse, Elaine M. Chiu
Faculty Publications
The wide discussion of cultural defenses over the last twenty years has produced very little actual change in the criminal law. This Article urges a reorientation of our approach thus far to cultural defenses and aspires to move the languishing discussion to a more productive place. The new perspective it proposes is justification. The Article asks the criminal law to make doctrinal room for defendants to argue that their allegedly criminal acts are justified acts, and not excused acts, based on the values and norms of their minority cultures. Currently, the criminal law deals with such acts of minority defendants …
Culture In Our Midst, Elaine M. Chiu
Culture In Our Midst, Elaine M. Chiu
Faculty Publications
Culture, like race, class, gender, sexual orientation and wealth is one of many ways in which the law is not neutral. Indeed, culture is a source of law. Yet, as traditional legal positivists have taught us, the law or legal doctrine can prove to be more powerful than culture, often outlasting it. The “mirror image” theory states that the laws of a particular locale reflect the culture of that locale. The law merely serves as enforcement of the common decency, propriety and morality of that culture. Not only is this understanding appealingly simple, it is often invoked by judges and …