Modern Languages Commons^™

Biutiful: En Los Márgenes De La Cosmópolis Neoliberal, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful, the city operates as a sort of anti-model exposing the dark side of neoliberal economies in larger fashionable cities, with an emphasis in precarization and exclusion and dynamics of violence against migrant populations. To this end, he uses an aesthetics of incongruence and a focus over a motley society, in permanent tension and negotiation between variegated groups. These strategies coexist with two other themes: exclusion represented as a form of expulsion or excrecence, and the appeal to memory as an ethical imperative that disrupts the logic of monetary calculus in which the main characters …

Intercultural Communicative Competence And Spanish Heritage Language Speakers: An Overview From The U.S., Australia And Europe, Adriana Raquel Díaz, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

Research on ‘heritage/community language education’ (HCLE) has a relatively recent trajectory, but it has generated a large number of scholarly publications, particularly in relation to Spanish in the United States (U.S.) where the growth of Spanish heritage language learners (HLL) has been exponential. However, to date, limited research attention has been given to the intersection between heritage language learning and the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). This may be attributed to the assumption that, on a daily basis, such learners are required to move and effectively operate between languages and cultures and, therefore, already possess adequate levels of ICC. …

El Espectro, En Teoría, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

The article offers a synthesis of spectral theory from the publication of Spectres de Marx by Jacques Derrida and Ghostly Matters, by Avery Gordon, with a focus on its impact and relevance for Latin American cultural and narrative studies. He also offers a summary of the contents in the special issue "XVI. México espectral".

Jewish Refugee Women, Transnational Coalition Politics, And Affect In Ebe Cagli Seidenberg’S Come Ospiti: Eva Ed Altri, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

Writing across and beyond borders evokes at once the human aspiration to connectedness and the reality of a divided world invested in particular interests. For Ebe Cagli Seidenberg, the act of writing emanates from the Fascist racial laws of 1938, which forced her – a young Jewish Italian woman – to leave her native Italy and find refuge in the United States. The production of a five-volume series entitled Ciclo dell’esilio obbligato [Cycle of the Forced Exile, 1975-91] is a testament to that unwanted separation and the implications that borders have on processes of self and communal identity, …

El Tirano Indigente: Pedro Páramo, Deuda Y Necropolítica, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

This article studies the connections between conditions of tyrannical control in Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo and forms of violence and government in the contemporary world. It discusses debt and violence, two essential elements in the plot of Pedro Páramo, from the perspective of the so-called drug war, as well as critical discussions of debt that have emerged in the context of recent financial crises (Graeber, Lazzarato, Varoufakis).

Pedro Páramo’s tyranny is built on the implementation of two powers that feed on each other: necropolitical power and control through debt. Necropolitical power (Mbembé) involves the administration of and dominion …

Tales Of The Brick Age: Corruption And Bankruptcy In The Late Works Of Rafael Chirbes, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

The subprime collapse, the Global Recession, and the Eurozone crisis have given rise to an entire subgenre of crisis narratives in literary and visual arts, attempting to make sense of the human aspect, causes and outcomes of the largest non-war economic commotion in the West since the Great Depression. In Spain, the last two novels of Rafael Chirbes (1949-2015), Crematorio (2007) and En la orilla (2013)1 have distinguished themselves for an insightful view and poignant reflections on the real estate boom and bust, which defined the economic and cultural parameters of Spain after the democratic transition. Here I will call …

Songs Of Passage And Sacrifice: Gabriella Ghermandi’S Stories In Performance, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

In this time and on this page, Spivak's island seems an apt place to begin a discussion about storytelling, resistance, and belonging. This chapter documents a conversation originating from two disciplinary perspectives-literature (Ferraro) and music (Dolp). We explore how spoken-word performance in a global context can facilitate social empowerment, craft a cultural past, and invigorate political consciousness. Although our analytical strategies and some of our conclusions differ, we share the assertion that the notion of artistic citizenship as it is defined elsewhere in this collection is considerably complicated, and even requires redefinition, in the context of non-Western cultures. Our present …

The Origin And Development Of Tigrinya Language Publications (1886 - 1991) Volume One, Abraham Negash

Staff publications, research, and presentations

Tigrinya is a Semitic language spoken in Eritrea and in the Tigray Region of Northern Ethiopia. Tigrinya is one of the nine languages in Eritrea. It was one of Eritrea's official languages (along with Arabic) during the short-lived federation with Ethiopia (1952-1962). When Ethiopia officially annexed Eritrea in 1962, Amharic also formally replaced Tigrinya and Arabic; and was established as an official language by the imperial government of Ethiopia. In 1993, when Eritrea officially declared its independence through referendum. Tigrinya regained its status as a working language.

Tigrinya has its own alphabet of 32 letters adopted from Ge'ez, a language …

Casting Sound: Modality And Poetics In Gabriella Ghermandi’S Regina Di Fiori E Di Perle, Laura Dolp, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

This article investigates Gabriella Ghermandi’s novel Regina di fiori e di perle (2007) through two disciplinary perspectives: the first considers music as a historical and social practice through historical observation of Ghermandi’s characters who reference Ethiopian oral traditions; the second explores the contemporary dynamics of migration and transnational identity through textual analysis that critiques how storytelling practices are carried into an Italian context. We argue that the novel reflects a dissemination of oral memory across generations and gender and into a postcolonial setting, and that its characters reflect adaptations to institutional and twentieth-century technological change. Crucially, and more specifically, the …

Introduction: Theories Of The Ghost In A Transhispanic Context, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas, Amanda L. Petersen

Modern Languages & Literature

Nuestros muertos quieren ser parte de nuestra conversaci6n, no nos permiten olvidar, nos dicen que las comunidades que formamos en vida son parte tambien de las comunidades ausentes. -Cristina Rivera Garza, in Monica Maristain 1

[Our dead want to be part of our conversation, they do not allow us to forget, they tell us that the communities that are no longer present are also part of the communities we create in life.]

The commonplace phrase, "the ghosts of the past," evokes remoteness, something intangible that nevertheless is ever present, a sort of historical sublime. 2 As the Mexican novelist Cristina …

Mil Y Una Muertes De Sergio Ramírez Y Los Fantasmas De La Construcción Nacional Nicaragüense, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

Este artículo analiza la novela Mil y una muertes del nicaragüense Sergio Ramírez con un énfasis en los temas de lo fantasmal, fotografía e identidad nacional. Partiendo de un cuestionamiento de la “internacionalización”de la temática novelística de Ramírez, este artículo describe cómo el personaje principal de la novela, el fotógrafo Castellón, evoca fracasos personales y estéticos que por otra parte alumbran condiciones de i n f aciudadanía de cuerpos sujetos a la merced del estado y situados al borde de la catástrofe. A l mismo tiempo, la frustración vital de Castellón es eco de una frustración simbólica más amplia, la …

Ancres Invisibles, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

Cet article se propose d’examiner la manière dont Invisibles (2011) de Nasser Djemaï confère une présence scénique aux vieux immigrés maghrébins qui ont toujours vécu à l’ombre des regards et des consciences. Présence spectrale, ils hantent de leur vieillesse les foyers, errent dans les cafés, se posent sur les bancs publics sans que personne ne les voie. En particulier, cet article examine la manière dont cette pièce inscrit en plein le risque de la perte de l’histoire, et la fantomisation de l’humain ; comment elle fait surgir un rapport nouveau à l’espace, à l’histoire et au présent, en mettant en …

The Moudawana Syndrome: Gender Trouble In Contemporary Morocco, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

The present article examines the way Zakia Tahiri’s film Number One (2009) foregrounds a renewed understanding of gender and gender relations in contemporary Morocco, especially in the wake of the New Family Code Reform (Moudawana), which has revolutionized women’s status by increasing their power in the private as well as the public spheres. It centers not on the oft-studied subject of women and the regulation of femininity in Arab countries, but on the complex relationship between masculinity and performance, highlighting the sociocultural norms that have shaped and affected the performance of masculinity in Arabo-Muslim contexts. In particular, this study examines …

Face Work In Spanish Language Service Encounters Between Native And Nonnative Speakers In The United States, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

Linguistic politeness plays an important role in the opinions people form of one another, especially when it offers one of the few clues an individual may have of his or her interlocutor’s disposition, as is the case in anonymous, first-time service encounters. Face is a fundamental concept in politeness theory. To borrow a summary from Callahan (2011):

Positive face refers to the desire to be liked and appreciated, while negative face refers to the desire to be unimpeded (Brown and Levinson 1987). Positive and negative face are often characterized as corresponding to the dichotomies of involvement vs. independ- ence, intimacy …

Requests For Money On Public Transportation: Saving Face For Speaker And Hearers, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper examines the verbal mitigators present in requests uttered by twenty panhandlers on the New York City subway. The research questions were: (1) What types of external and internal verbal mitigators characterize panhandlers’ requests on the New York City subway? (2) Are there any requests without verbal mitigation? (3) What patterns do reasons given for the requests follow? (4) How do panhandlers use words to mitigate the threat to their own face that begging occasions? By observing norms for showing respect for one’s interlocutors, the panhandler creates an image of a self-respecting individual who believes that hearers also owe …

La Posthibdridez Fronteriza En La Narrativa De Heriberto Yépez, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

No abstract provided.

Les Enfants De L’Ombre: Dalila Kerchouche. Leila: Avoir Dix-Ans Dans Un Camp De Harkis, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

Dans son roman, Leila : Avoir 17 ans dans un camp de harkis, Dalila Kerchouche retrace le parcours de ceux dont la jeunesse fut passée/gâchée dans les camps de la relégation. À travers le regard blessé d’une adolescente de 17 ans, on découvre ce que l’histoire officielle a voulu couvrir du manteau de l’oubli : l’arrivée précipitée des harkis et leurs familles en France, leur dur quotidien dans les camps en marge de la communauté nationale, leur dépouillement, les humiliations, les souffrances, les folies et une gestion étatique aussi choquante qu’incohérente. Le présent article examine la portée individuelle et collective …

Pre-Imposition Vs. In Situ Negotiation Of Group And Individual Identities: Spanish And English In Us Service Encounters, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper examines the supposed opposition between essentialist or positivist approaches to identity—which categorize group and individual members by a priori properties of sex, race, ethnicity, and native speakerhood—and constructionism, which views such properties as relational and negotiable. Even when categories such as sex, race, ethnicity, and native speakerhood are considered to have been imposed a priori, there nonetheless persists a general recognition that these are at least to some extent social constructs—if not the categories themselves, the ideas we have about them. Using data from previous empirical work in Spanish and English code-choice in US service encounters, this paper …

Italianization Of Emigration To Canada: Or, What Is The Role Of The Italies Outside Of Italy?, Eveljn Ferraro

Modern Languages & Literature

In Migrancy, Culture, Identity Iain Chambers observes that present-day critical thought frequently adopts metaphors of movement, migration, maps, travel, and sometimes tourism to describe and explain the encounter with people and cultures that the European rationale is no longer able to domesticate in an era of increasing globalization. Chambers himself uses the metaphor of journey to represent this encounter and, taking on Said' s reflections on exile and his idea that homes are always provisional, 1 he states that the questions we meet en route displace our terms of reference, which are the certainty of the point of departure and …

Workplace Requests In Spanish And English: A Case Study Of Email Communication Between Two Supervisors And A Subordinate, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper examines the mitigation in email communication between two supervisors and a subordinate, to investigate how this feature differs in requests written in English and Spanish by native speakers of each language. Forty-seven emails were harvested from a span of three and a half years. The Spanish-speaking supervisor's requests contained fewer mitigation devices of every type. Although the requests written in Spanish contained less mitigation, this does not mean that this supervisor's email communication was devoid of facework. On the contrary, his use of imperatives and other direct strategies may have been intended as a form of positive politeness. …

Asking For A Letter Of Recommendation In Spanish And English: A Pilot Study Of Face Strategies, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

Linguistic politeness plays an important role in the opinions people form of one another, especially when an individual has little other knowledge of an interlocutor, as is often the case in relationships between professors and students. Positive face refers to the desire to be liked and appreciated; negative face refers to the desire to be unimpeded. Positive and negative face are often characterized as corresponding to the dichotomies of involvement vs. independence, intimacy vs. distance, and solidarity vs. deference. An action or utterance that goes against one’s need for appreciation, in the case of positive face, or need for autonomy, …

Transatlantic Fuentes: Between ‘The Two Shores’ Of Pluriculturality And Glossocentrism, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

The cultural program that Jerónimo de Aguilar pronounces at the end of Carlos Fuentes's short story “The Two Shores” appears to be inconsistent with the fundamentals of democratic liberalism and multiculturalism upon which they are ostensibly based. Furthermore, cultural visions like those in “The Two Shores” lend signifying imagery and empower cultural institutions, the media, and political authorities to exert symbolic violence upon minorities, thereby negating the multiculturalism that such visions claim to be promoting. El programa cultural que Jerónimo de Aguilar pronuncia al final del cuento “Las dos orillas” de Carlos Fuentes parece inconsistente con los fundamentos del liberalismo …

U.S. Latinos’ Use Of Written Spanish: Realities And Aspirations, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper reports on an investigation of writing in Spanish in the lives of U.S. Latinos. Twenty-two semi-structured interviews were conducted with informants recruited from among students and former students of high school and college Spanish courses. The interviews were transcribed and coded for concepts and emergent themes (Rubin & Rubin, 2005; Bogdan & Biklen, 1992). Some themes that emerged relate to what U.S. Latinos do with written Spanish and what they would like to be able to do; other themes include classroom experiences, extra-academic avenues of acquisition, the social position of varieties of Spanish, language maintenance, and intergenerational loss. …

Carlos Fuente's "The Two Shores": Between Counterfactualism And Cultural Allegory, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

A literary criticism of the short story "The Two Shores," which appeared in the 1992 book "The Orange Tree," by Carlos Fuentes. The plot and characters of the story are described, particularly the narrator, Jerónimo de Aguilar, a dead man who was held captive by the Mayans. The story is a contribution to the reconsideration of the Spanish conquest of the Americas, particularly Mexico. The idea that the story may present a counterfactual historiography, an idea created by critic Niall Ferguson, is considered.

El Uso Del Acento Ortográfico En El Español De Los Estados Unidos, América Latina Y España: Normas Periodísticas, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

El acento ortográfico es uno de los aspectos del español escrito más difíciles de dominar para los hablantes nativos y los hablantes del español como lengua de herencia. Si bien algunos acentos ortográficos sirven para distinguir persona y tiempo verbal, y para diferenciar homógrafos, el acento escrito tiene una carga funcional relativamente baja. Sin embargo, la colocación incorrecta del acento estigmatiza al escritor, quien puede ser juzgado como menos inteligente que la persona cuya escritura muestre un dominio perfecto de aspectos mecánicos. Tales escritores reciben calificaciones más bajas en asignaturas universitarias, y los textos que producen resultan menos competitivos en …

Spanish/English Codeswitching In Service Encounters: Accommodation To The Customer's Language Choice And Perceived Linguistic Affiliation, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This paper reports on data collected in service encounters in New York and California. Assuming the role of customer, fieldworkers visited businesses and addressed service workers in Spanish. In the majority of 715 encounters, accommodation to the customer's language choice came at the first turn. That is, in the worker's next turn after having been addressed in Spanish, he or she commenced to speak in that language. In a minority of instances the worker maintained English throughout the exchange, even as the customer continued to speak only Spanish. In other encounters, the worker engaged in codeswitching between Spanish and English. …

La République Des Lettres: Ses Écrivains, Ses Critiques, Ses Limites, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

L’article se propose d’étudier le rôle de la critique littéraire française et étrangère, ses incertitudes et ses dérives à propos de la littérature « beur » (terme désignant les Français issus de l’immigration maghrébine)

The author looks at the position of French and stranger literature criticism, its ambiguity and departure from “beur” creative writing.

English Or Spanish?! Language Accommodation In New York City Service Encounters, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

Speech accommodation theory refers to an individual's adaptation of his or her speech to more closely approximate that of an interlocutor. A change to the interlocutor's language is one of the most obvious and observable forms of accommodation. Language choices are shaped by the linguistic proficiency of both speaker and interlocutor, the ingroup or outgroup status of each, and the situational norms for the setting in which an exchange takes place. Language choices in the workplace are further influenced by company policies and by the asymmetrical power dynamic in worker-customer interactions.

This paper reports on data from service encounters with …

Student Perceptions Of Native And Non-Native Speaker Language Instructors: A Comparison Of Esl And Spanish, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

The question of the native vs. non-native speaker status of second and foreign language instructors has been investigated chiefly from the perspective of the teacher. Anecdotal evidence suggests that students have strong opinions on the relative qualities of instruction by native and non-native speakers. Most research focuses on students of English as a foreign or second language. This paper reports on data gathered through a questionnaire administered to 55 university students: 31 students of Spanish as FL and 24 students of English as SL. Qualitative results show what strengths students believe each type of instructor has, and quantitative results confirm …

Native Speakers' Attitudes Toward The Use Of Spanish By Non-Native Speakers: From George W. To J. Lo, Laura Callahan

Modern Languages & Literature

This investigation of native speakers' attitudes toward the use of Spanish by non-native speakers considers the following questions: Do native speakers consider the public use of Spanish by non-native speakers to be inappropriate? Do Latino non-native speakers provoke a more favorable response? Do native speakers believe Latinos have an obligation to know Spanish? What factors correlate with native and heritage speakers' attitudes toward ethnicity and language choice? Data were collected via a questionnaire distributed to students at post-secondary institutions in ten states. The findings provide insights into the attitudes of native and heritage speakers, a rapidly growing population in the …