Arts and Humanities Commons^™

"Let's Go On A Gym Raid Tonight!": Video Game Affinity Spaces In English Language Instruction, Marta Dominika Halaczkiewicz

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The present article describes a study that analyzed practical applications of informal online spaces in formal instruction. It was conducted in an intermediate ESL course at an American University. The concept of affinity spaces was used to guide the research. Students in the course were instructed to play the video game, Pokémon Go as an inspiration for their writing. This qualitative study examined the types of affinity space participation, the participant attitudes toward those spaces and to using video games in formal instruction. The data sources consisted of weekly gaming journals and interview transcripts. The findings showed that the participants …

“Are You A Good Witch Or A Bad Witch?”: An Exercise In Suspending Judgment When Interacting With “Difficult” People, John S. Seiter, Christian R. Seiter

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Courses:

Interpersonal Communication, Health Communication

Objectives:

In this single-class activity, students gain awareness and practice in suspending judgments about “difficult” people in order to understand the reasoning behind certain objectionable behavior.

The Absolutist Monarch In Taïa's Le Jour Du Roi And Laroui's "Tu N'As Rien Compris À Hassan Ii": Probing The Limitations Of Reader Reception Theory, Christa Jones

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This article discusses the representation of the monarch in Abdellah Taïa’s novel Le Jour du Roi (2010) and Fouad Laroui’s “Tu n’as rien compris à Hassan II” (2004), focusing on the act of reading and the historical context of Hassan II’s reign. A close reading of Taïa’s novel and Laroui’s short story will reveal narrative strategies used to fictionalize sovereignty. Laroui uses humor and irony to criticize the regime of Hassan II, while Taïa uses oneiric elements to capture the arbitrary nature of monarchy and the notion of absolute royal power as theorized by Achille Mbembe. Both writers criticize Hassan …

Using Multilingual Literature To Enhance Multilingual Students’ Experiences In Second Language Writing Classes: An Innovative Classroom Practice, Ekaterina Arshavskaya

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Research on second language writing instruction consistently shows low levels of student engagement (Lee, 2012) in writing classes. In order to address this challenge, researchers have argued for the need to introduce various forms of expressive writing (Bilton & Sivasubramaniam, 2009), including student interpretive practice with texts (Kramsch, 1997).

Another common problem associated with second language writing instruction is lack of connection between writing and reading activities. Prominent language educators have long recognized the benefits of connecting reading and writing activities with English learners (Krashen, 1992). According to Krashen (1992), we learn to write through reading. To resolve these multiple …

Promoting Intercultural Competence In Diverse U.S. Classrooms Through Ethnographic Interviews, Ekaterina Arshavskaya

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

To meet the demands of contemporary society, students needs to develop the ability to interact effectively with people from different cultures. To advance this goal, a project involving ethnographic interviews was introduced to an intercultural communication course. Participating students' attitudes toward other cultures were measured on a Likert scale at the beginning and end of the project. The findings show that through the interviews, the students developed greater awareness of their own cultures and of themselves within their culture and deepened their knowledge of other cultures. Yet, the majority of the students did not show greater interest in learning a …

Investigating Linguistic, Literary, And Social Affordances Of L2 Collaborative Reading, Joshua Thoms, Frederick J. Poole

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This exploratory study analyzes learner–learner interactions within a virtual environment when collaboratively reading Spanish poetry in a Hispanic literature course at the college level via an ecological theoretical perspective (van Lier, 2004). The goals of the study are (a) to present empirical data that illustrate the theoretical construct of affordance in a virtual, collaborative reading environment, and (b) to investigate the pedagogical ramifications of using a digital annotation tool to involve learners in collaborative reading. Three distinct types of affordances emerged in the data: linguistic, literary, and social affordances. Our findings indicate that the number of literary and social affordances …

Animating Chinese Cinemas: A Preface, Li Guo, Jinying Li

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This preface by the guest editors provides a situated overview of the purpose, structure and methodologies of the contributing articles on Chinese animations in this special issue. Aiming to reconfigure Chinese film studies through historical and theoretical inquiries about the relationship between the animated and the cinematic, the special issue introduces a nascent perspective on Chinese animations by offering rigorous and stimulating studies on the forms, genres and materiality of animation, as well as on the technological and ontological conditions of animated moving images in the age of digital new media. The preface also provides a brief historical overview of …

The Aesthetics Of Hysteria In Feminine Melodrama; On Fang Fang's Water Under Time (2008), Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Water under Time, the novel by the reputed Chinese fiction writer Fang Fang, appropriates and reconstructs the conventions of the hysteric narrative as an affective form of feminine history telling and writing. The novel, which accounts Hankou city’s past through the heroine’s life story, illustrates how feminine hysteria provides a gendered lens of reconstructed historical authenticity via the panorama of China’s early Republican period, the anti‐Japanese War, and the present new millennium. Transcending the official historical accounts, Fang Fang’s narrative features women’s innovative reconfiguration of contesting historical discourses about the city, the community, and the nation. This study of Water …

Beyond Boundaries: Women, Writing And Visuality In Contemporary China, Géraldine Fiss, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This special issue offers explorations of women, writing, and visuality in contemporary Chinese literature and culture, following up on a previous issue titled “Nation, Gender, and Transcultural Modernism in Early Twentieth‐Century China,” which was published in Frontiers of Literary Studies in China (vol. 8, no. 1, 2014). The earlier issue addressed “the complex cultural mechanism which placed gender at the center of the nationalist discourse” in early twentieth‐century works by both male and female authors and questioned how the uncertainty of discourses on gender and nation “opens up space for creating subversive cultural imaginaries and challenging colonial discourses.” This issue …

Teacher And Student Perspectives On The Effectiveness Of First-Year Composition In Preparing L2 Students For Discipline-Specific Writing, Elena Shvidko

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The study described in this article was conducted to gather teachers’ and students’ perspectives about the effectiveness of a first-year composition course in preparing students for discipline-specific writing in college. Data were collected in a large research U.S. university through a student survey (n=32) and teacher interviews (n=5). The results show that the majority of the students and all instructors found the course effective and its assignments helpful in preparing students for writing in their university classes. In addition, all participated instructors also tried to improve the course by employing a variety of approaches and strategies, such as implementing assignments …

Make No Exception, Save One: American Exceptionalism, The American Presidency, And The Age Of Obama, Jason A. Gilmore, Penelope Sheets, Charles Rowling

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This paper explores the circumstances under which U.S. presidents have invoked the idea of American exceptionalism in major speeches to the nation and how the invocation of this concept has culminated during the Obama presidency. To explore these dynamics, we conducted a content analysis of all major domestic presidential addresses since the end of World War II. We find that U.S. presidents have become increasingly likely to invoke American exceptionalism, particularly after the end of the Cold War, and that in times of national crises, American exceptionalism becomes most pronounced in U.S. presidential discourse. Moreover, we demonstrate the overwhelming propensity …

Second Language Socialization In English Programs: Two Cases, Elena Shvidko

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Women's Wartime Life Writing In Early Twentieth-Century China, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In her article "Women's Wartime Life Writing in Early Twentieth-Century China" Li Guo discusses military diaries, prison memoirs, and autobiographical reportages. These documents offer rich insights into the political endeavors and military mobility of women. Guo analyzes Bingying Xie's 1928 war diary about the Chinese nationalists' northern expedition, Langi Hu's 1937 book about anti-Japanese activism, and Lang Bai's 1939 reportage about the Sino-Japanese War and argues that these texts allow women to reconfigure the discourse of nation through experimental life writing in order to develop the genre with tales of valor, hope, struggle, and heroism. Guo argues that contrary to …

Assessing Preparation Of Mainstream Composition Teachers Working With Multilingual Writers, Elena Shvidko

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Research on multilingual writers in first-year composition classes in U. S. universities seems to overlook the issue of professional preparation of mainstream composition instructors who work with multilingual writers. Composition courses are commonly taught by teachers with no formal training in L2 writing pedagogy. Therefore, a better understanding of their professional preparation and needs will help composition programs develop adequate training and prepare instructors who are able to address linguistic and cultural needs of multilingual writers. In this study, a perception survey was completed by 34 instructors of mainstream first-year composition at a large research U.S. university. The participants had …

The Principle Of Reciprocity In Hospitality Contexts: The Relationship Between Tipping Behavior And Food Servers’ Approaches To Handling Leftovers, John S. Seiter, Harry Weger

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Based on the norm of reciprocity, this study hypothesized that food servers would earn higher tips when they boxed customers’ leftovers compared to having customers box leftovers themselves. In addition, the effect of writing messages (i.e., the date and/or customer’s name) on boxes of leftovers was explored. Two female food servers waited on 608 diners and boxed or did not box leftovers, and wrote or did not write messages on boxes. The hypothesis was supported. However, writing messages was not associated with tipping behavior.

Language Learning Strategy Use In An American Iep: Implications For Efl, Nolan Weil, Jianzhong Luo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This study employed the Strategy Inventory for Language Learners (SILL) to investigate the frequency and types of language learning strategies used by 65 students studying English as a Second Language (ESL) in a university Intensive English Program (IEP) in the western United States. Students came from 15 different countries and represented three instructional levels within the program. Results indicated that frequency of strategy use increased from the lower intermediate to the upper intermediate level and also from the upper intermediate to the advanced level. However, only differences between the lower intermediate and the advanced level were statistically significant. IEP students …

Introduction To Forum: Nation, Gender, And Transnational Modernism, Ping Zhu, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This forum, sprouted from a thematic panel at the 2013 Annual Meeting of Association for Asian Studies in San Diego, situates its theoretical focus on the intersecting relationship between gender and nation in early twentieth-century China within a transcultural framework. Viewing both "gender" and "nation" as centrifugal sites for discursive production in modern China, the five contributors of this special issue probe into the complex cultural mechanism which placed gender at the center of the nationalist discourse. Reciprocally, the authors explore how the instability of both discourses on gender and nation opens up space for creating subversive cultural imaginaries and …

Writing Women In Northeastern China: Melancholic Narrative In Mei Niang's Novellas, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Mei Niang (1920–2013), the pen name of Sun Jiarui, is a female fiction writer, translator, and editor of Funü zazhi (Ladies’ journal). In the semi-colonial Northeast China, Mei Niang’s exploration of melancholic narratives shore up manifold levels of socio-historical discourses that are constructive of women’s subjectivity. Melancholic narrative functions as an inverted mirror of both the author’s cultural displacement from her diasporic experience, and her portrayal of colonial domination of local elites by the Japanese in Northeast China. Also, the author’s depiction of feminine melancholia revokes the modernist ideology of love and its constitutive male-centered discourses, dismantles the social disenfranchisement …

Does A Customer By Any Other Name Tip The Same?: The Effect Of Forms Of Address And Customers’ Age On Gratuities Given To Food Servers In The United States, John S. Seiter, Harry Weger Jr.

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This study examined whether different forms of address used by food servers were related to customers' tipping behavior. Food servers addressed diners who paid with credit cards by their first names, titles plus last names, sir/ma'am, or no address. Results indicated that when food servers personalized their service by addressing their customers by name, they earned significantly higher tips than when they used less immediate forms of address, although customers' estimated age mediated these results.

Rethinking Theatrical Images Of The New Woman In China's Republian Era, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In her article "Rethinking Theatrical Images of the New Woman in China's Republican Era" Li Guo analyses the multivalent representations of the New Woman and posits that they encompass a broad array of blended feminine identities following the introduction of Western literary and cultural trends into Chinese culture. The tensions between ideological discourses about nation, gender, and politics as revealed in the plays of the republican period reveal the many underlying cultural paradigms and the processes in which dramatists Sinicized foreign models of the New Woman to appeal to their domestic audiences. Guo explores how the playwrights' gendered viewpoints contribute …

Introduction To Asian Culture(S) And Globalization, I-Chun Wang, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Marshall McLuhan coined the term "the global village" associating globalized human experiences in an electronic age (4). Although transnational relations existed for many centuries, McLuhan predicted in the 1960s that new technologies not only facilitate the growth of international interconnectedness, cross-border exchanges, as well as trans-cultural phenomena, but also help foster cultural transactions. Referring to the dramatic and unprecedented break between the past and the present, tradition and modernity, Arjun Appadurai argues that media and migration have been two major forces impelling the circulation of world cultures (3). In the phenomenon of globalization, people from every part of the world …

Bibliography For The Study Of Asian Culture(S) And Globalization, Chien-Hang Lu, Li Guo, I-Chun Wang

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Ecological Integrity In Protected Areas: Two Interpretations, Gorden Steinhoff

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Federal environmental legislation and policy in the United States require that managers seek to maintain natural conditions or “naturalness” within national parks, wilderness, and other protected areas.1 A number of experts in protected area management have argued, however, that naturalness should be abandoned as a mandatory goal in these areas. In the recently published book, Beyond Naturalness, leading management experts strongly recommend changes in protected area law and policy to allow alternative goals.2 One goal recommended by these experts for many management situations is maintaining ecological integrity.3 Indeed, ecological integrity is currently the management goal required by law in Canadian …

Persuasion On Trial: An Exercise For Understanding The Benefits Of Studying Persuasion, John S. Seiter, R. H. Gass

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The study of persuasion is the wellspring of the communication discipline. Nevertheless, in one review, Seiter and Gass (2004) noted that "critics of persuasion seem to emerge and reemerge with some regularity" (p. 2). Although the study of persuasion is generally venerated by those within the field of communication, it is not always viewed so favorably by laypersons, including students who enroll in introductory persuasion courses. Ordinary people often perceive persuasion negatively.

Review Essay: Negotiating The Traditional And The Modern: Chinese Women's Literature From The Late Imperial Period Through The Twentieth-Century, Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The three books above complement each other in their coverage of Chinese women's literary genres from the late fourteenth through the early twentieth century. The authors' theoretical inquiries invite consideration of the following questions: what meaning, if any, might a feminist imagination or approach have in the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) eras, early and late Republican China (1911-1948), and beyond? What do these works have in common regarding the resituating of women's literary status, the reclamation of feminine agency, and the empowerment of female subjectivity in China's literary tradition? These books can be considered in dialogue with Western feminism …

Responses To An Opponent’S Nonverbal Behavior In A Televised Debate: Audience Perceptions Of Credibility And Likeability, Harry Weger Jr., John S. Seiter, Kimberly A. Jacobs, Valerie Akbulut

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This study examined audience perceptions of a political candidate’s credibility and likeability as a function of varying the candidate’s responses to an opponent’s nonverbal disparagement during a televised debate. 412 participants watched a purported televised debate between candidates for mayor in a small city in Utah. In all six versions, one debater engaged in strong nonverbal disagreement during his opponent’s opening statement. His opponent responded to the nonverbal behavior with one of six decreasingly polite messages. Results indicated that more direct (i.e., less polite) messages increased audience perceptions of the speaker’s expertise and character compared to providing no response. The …

Talking About Information Literacy: The Mediating Roleof Discourse In A College Writing Classroom, W. Holliday, Jim Rogers

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This paper reports on the findings of an observational study of information literacy instruction in a college writing course. Using a sociocultural approach, the study explores how classroom discourse can influence the ways in which students conceive of information literacy and the process of research and writing. We found that a discourse that emphasized finding sources more than learning about might limit students engagement with information and the process of inquiry. This article concludes with recommendations for modifying discourse and instructional practices in order to help students engage more deeply in the research process.

Rethinking Female Voice And The Ideology Of Sound: A Study Of Stanley Kwan's Film Center Stage (1992), Li Guo

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The article presents criticism on the film "Ruan Lingyu" ("Center Stage"), focusing on director Stanley Kwan's depiction of the female voice in terms of a feminist analysis of the body and voice of Ruan Lingyu, the silent film actress whose life is the focus of the film. Kwan's use of sound editing is highlighted, and special attention is paid to actress Maggie Cheung's portrayal of Ruan. Other topics include Ruan's suicide and China's transition to sound motion pictures.

Naturalness And Biodiversity: Why Natural Conditions Should Be Maintained Within Protected Areas, Gorden Steinhoff

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In this Article, I will argue that naturalness (natural conditions) should be maintained as a mandatory goal in the management of protected areas. It will be important to describe in detail what naturalness as a management goal consists of. Within Beyond Naturalness, Cole, Yung, and other authors misrepresent the naturalness mandated within protected area law and policy. I wish to defend the claim that naturalness, properly understood, is necessary for the preservation of native biodiversity. I will describe an interesting case study in which managers have intervened in wilderness to conserve "what we value" without respect for natural conditions, and …

The Flipper Debate: Teaching Intercultural Communication Through Simulated Conflict, Jennifer A. Peeples, Bradford J. Hall, John S. Seiter

Languages, Philosophy, and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Although Western cultures tend to view dolphins as friendly and benevolent, in Japanese fishing communities, "iruka" (dolphins) are often viewed as food or pests. These perspectives have led to intense conflicts between Japanese fishermen and activists from the west. This article presents an exercise that simulates intercultural conflict by asking students to role-play the parts of Japanese fishers or Western filmmakers and, along the way, sheds light on concepts such as ethnocentrism, value differences, and world views.