{"title":"The City-Sin: Collective Responsibility for the Plague in Early Modern London","authors":"Andrew Fleck","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a924151","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a924151","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Abstract:</p><p>The epidemic of bubonic plague that struck London in 1603 created its own culture of collectivity. Instead of seeking to place blame on others, the writers responding to the epidemic understood the disease to be divine punishment and a call to collective moral reform. Analyzing the plague pamphlets of Thomas Dekker, William Muggins, Thomas Middleton, and a Dutch refugee residing in London, Jacob Cool, this article argues that the focus on personal moral responsibility for the plague and the need for collective reform created an unexpected culture of collectivity in early modern London.</p></p>","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140571247","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879–1924 by Cristina Stanciu (review)","authors":"Ellyn Ruhlmann","doi":"10.1353/mml.2022.a924158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mml.2022.a924158","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879–1924</em> by Cristina Stanciu <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Ellyn Ruhlmann </li> </ul> <em>The Makings and Unmakings of Americans: Indians and Immigrants in American Literature and Culture, 1879–1924</em>. By Cristina Stanciu. Yale University Press, 2023. 370 pp. <p>After America declared its sovereignty, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur sought to define a unique American identity in <em>Letters from an American Farmer</em> (1782). His question, \"What is an American?\" (48), set off a centuries-long debate that grew especially strident during peak immigration years at the turn of the twentieth century. Cristina Stanciu's illuminating new book, <em>The Makings and Unmakings of Americans</em> (2023), traces patterns of inclusion and exclusion marking America's treatment of two so-called \"problem\" groups in the debate, Indigenous people and new immigrants (1). Historians have uncovered similar patterns before, but Stanciu advances the scholarship by demonstrating parallels in how these two groups responded to their common plight of not counting as \"Americans.\" The book doesn't try to answer Crèvecœur's sweeping question, since the criteria for being considered American are fickle and, as Stanciu observes in describing the \"myth\" of an American identity, often contradictory (26). Rather, it builds a case through compelling and comprehensive archival research that, during the period of Stanciu's study, Indigenous people and new immigrants employed strategies to both adapt to and rewrite the ever-evolving terms of being accepted as American—hence <strong>[End Page 171]</strong> the phrase \"Makings and Unmakings.\" Each chapter focuses on a particular aspect of this back-and-forth process of assimilation, exploring it within legal and cultural frameworks.</p> <p>In the first chapter, Stanciu sets the groundwork for her study by describing legal strategies the US government used to regulate citizenship among the two groups—strategies that show a shifting sequence of inclusion and exclusion policies dating back to the 1787 Constitutional Convention (35–36). During one week in 1924, President Coolidge signed into law the Immigration Act and the Indian Citizenship Act (ICA). The Immigration Act established a quota system that discriminated against settlers from southern and eastern Europe, gradually barring them from citizenship because of \"new hierarchies of difference and (racial) desirability\" (29). Meanwhile, the ICA freed Native Americans from the necessity of renouncing tribal affiliations but at a great cost: colonization, genocide, territory dispossession, and finally, forced American citizenship (30). After discussing key legislative acts, Stanciu turns to ideological constructs of the term <em>Ame","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140571462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pedagogies of discomfort in the world language classroom: Ethical tensions and considerations for educators","authors":"Melina Porto, Michalinos Zembylas","doi":"10.1111/modl.12919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12919","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical tensions and considerations that arise in the world language classroom from using pedagogies of discomfort. Although pedagogies of discomfort have mostly been seen through a positive lens in the literature for engaging students with difficult issues in the classroom, there are ethical concerns, particularly in relation to the harm that students might experience. To illustrate these ethical concerns and their implications in the world language classroom, we draw on data from a number of projects in which pedagogies of discomfort have been used in university classrooms. The analysis of examples shows that while some sort of ethical violence is inevitable, there are pedagogical ways to minimize the harm on students. The article concludes by raising further ethical and pedagogical questions for exploration in the context of using pedagogies of discomfort in the world language classroom.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140533216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mason A. Wirtz, Simone E. Pfenninger, Irmtraud Kaiser, Andrea Ender
{"title":"Sociolinguistic competence and varietal repertoires in a second language: A study on addressee‐dependent varietal behavior using virtual reality","authors":"Mason A. Wirtz, Simone E. Pfenninger, Irmtraud Kaiser, Andrea Ender","doi":"10.1111/modl.12918","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12918","url":null,"abstract":"The present study takes a variationist perspective to explore the varietal repertoires of adult learners of German as a second language (L2), that is, their variable use of standard German, Austro‐Bavarian dialect, and mixture varieties. Forty L2 learners completed a virtual reality task involving interactions with dialect‐speaking and standard‐German‐speaking interlocutors. Using Bayesian multilevel modeling, the goal was to explore differential outcomes in the acquisition of sociolinguistic competence by determining whether participants adjusted their varietal behavior to match that of the interlocutor (i.e., varietal convergence). The results show that there were no interindividual addressee‐dependent convergence tendencies. A holistic person‐centered analysis of individual learners’ intraspeaker variation revealed that only select L2 learners adjusted their usage patterns but did not entirely invert their usage of dialect and standard language as a function of the variety of the interlocutor. Introspective qualitative data speak to potential drivers behind the differential development of L2 (multi)varietal repertoires.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"121 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140331215","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Information ‐ Copyright Page","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/modl.12916","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12916","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139994665","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Issue Information ‐ TOC","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/modl.12915","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12915","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"31 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139994647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Schrödinger's turn: An interactional examination of willingness to communicate and talk in codependent and competitive group talk","authors":"Nathan Thomas Ducker","doi":"10.1111/modl.12911","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12911","url":null,"abstract":"Language learners are often required to negotiate classroom participation in pair and group work; therefore, willingness to communicate (WTC) could be a key determiner of second language (L2) success. Classroom WTC is volatile and influenced by interlocutor-related variables, such as reciprocal identities, group membership and atmosphere, and peer support; however, these antecedents are often studied from a psychological or ecological standpoint, in which learners’ cognitive and affective reactions to environmental factors are examined. These examinations rarely measure talk itself; however, it has been suggested that a key WTC factor is conversational behaviors. Talk and WTC arise in a communicative space negotiated between all interlocutors; therefore, this article positions conversational maneuvers, such as turn-taking and floor sharing, as key determiners of WTC. Idiodynamic data from 16 English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom conversations showed that (a) dependent on learner reactions, conversational floortime could manifest codependent and competitive facets, (b) EFL learners’ WTC and participation was highly dependent on experienced English users’ facilitating maneuvers, and (c) more voluble EFL students took better advantage of the affordances their experienced counterparts provided than taciturn students. Given the ultimate goal of out-of-class WTC and L2 contact, the findings have important implications for training EFL learners in communicative maneuvers to control conversational floortime.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"64 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139911331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding teacher professional commitment from a positive psychology perspective: A case from Myanmar's Chinese language teachers","authors":"Yue Peng, Kaiyang Lou, Tao Xiong","doi":"10.1111/modl.12908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12908","url":null,"abstract":"In response to the issue of Chinese language teacher attrition in Myanmar, this study aimed to examine the professional commitment of these teachers, with a focus on how their commitment is constructed and shaped within the local context. The study adopted a theoretical lens of positive psychology and utilized a hermeneutic phenomenological approach. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews in which 10 participants shared their life stories. Thematic analysis was then conducted to identify key themes. The study proposed a positive-psychology-informed model with motivation, meaning, and perseverance as the three key components that interact with each other to jointly shape teachers’ professional commitment. In particular, motivation to teach is a precondition, the meaning-making process functions as reinforcement, and perseverance in coping with adverse situations is the ultimate embodiment of teachers’ professional commitment. A common feature underlying this model has been traces of the teachers’ positive emotions, attitudes, and values. Furthermore, the study approached Chinese language teachers’ professional commitment in the situated context at cultural, societal, and institutional levels. The study yields theoretical implications for understanding teacher commitment and offers practical insights for addressing the issue of attrition among Chinese language teachers in Myanmar and similar contexts.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"232 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139911346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Forthcoming in The Modern Language Journal, 108, 2","authors":"","doi":"10.1111/modl.12917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12917","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"16 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139938977","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unfolding language awareness in a plurilingual context: A study of metalinguistic, practical, and critical language awareness","authors":"Line Krogager Andersen","doi":"10.1111/modl.12912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12912","url":null,"abstract":"As part of a larger project investigating language awareness in plurilingual settings across educational levels through a multiple case study, this article zooms in on students’ language awareness as it unfolds in a classroom in a Danish upper secondary school, in the context of a compulsory, plurilingual general language awareness course. Considering language awareness as a sociocognitive phenomenon that may meaningfully be observed through students’ engagement with language in the classroom, qualitative data were collected through observation, interviews, and collections of student work, and analyzed using an abductive form of qualitative content analysis. The initial deductive analysis is based on a theoretical model of language awareness; additional, inductive analyses lead to more nuanced descriptions of students’ metalinguistic, practical, and critical language awareness. Finally, a contextualized analysis of one example is given to illustrate the collaborative unfolding of language awareness in this context, leading to the conclusion that the different forms of language awareness studied are often interlinked and that they should be viewed as such both in research and teaching practice.","PeriodicalId":42049,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE MIDWEST MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139911337","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}