AILA ReviewPub Date : 2018-12-31DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00016.WID
H. Widdowson
{"title":"Response 1: Applied linguistics as transdisciplinary practice: What’s in a prefix?","authors":"H. Widdowson","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00016.WID","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00016.WID","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"135-142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43057850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2018-12-31DOI: 10.21256/ZHAW-2797
Marlies Whitehouse
{"title":"The language of numbers : transdisciplinary action research and financial communication","authors":"Marlies Whitehouse","doi":"10.21256/ZHAW-2797","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21256/ZHAW-2797","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Wider parts of society-at-large are not fluent in the language of numbers, and financial literacy in particular is low in many countries (OECD, 2014). This paper shows how research on financial communication with and for practitioners (Cameron, Frazer, Rampton, & Richardson, 1992, p. 22) can foster intra-lingual translation in the financial sector, which increases financial texts’ communicative potential and finally enables laypersons to better understand the language of numbers. Such an increased understanding allows individuals to set up investment plans for their current and future wealth and, for example, make informed decisions about their pension plans. By doing so, financial crises on the individual, organizational, and societal level can be avoided, which benefits social welfare and society-at-large. Transdisciplinary Action Research (TDA) offers a framework and procedures to approach such goals through close collaboration of scholars and practitioners throughout research projects. Following TDA core concepts, a cyclic process of research and development has been established in the last two decades (e.g. Perrin, this volume; Whitehouse, 2014). Whereas applied linguists involved aimed at better understanding practices of writing and intra-lingual translation at the interface of technical and everyday language, stakeholders from the financial industry wanted to improve their communication. The representatives of society-at-large, finally, were interested in contributing to sustainably increasing financial literacy. In the first part of the present paper, I sketch the suitability of transdisciplinarity in general and TDA in particular in financial communication (Section 1). Then I define the key concepts of intra-lingual translation, communicative potential, and financial literacy (Section 2). Next, I outline the data corpus and explain how TDA was applied in a series of research projects (Section 3). The presented results on a macro-level shed light on the financial analysts’ situation and practices in their multilingual workplace: the findings on the micro-level suggest that financial analysts’ texts pose a risk of partial communicative failure (Section 4). The article concludes by indicating empirically based measures to develop financial literacy, intra-lingual translation across stakeholders and texts’ communicative potential in finance (Section 5).","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"81-112"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"68015449","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2018-12-31DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00010.INT
D. Perrin, Claire J. Kramsch
{"title":"Transdisciplinarity in applied linguistics: introduction to the special issue","authors":"D. Perrin, Claire J. Kramsch","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00010.INT","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00010.INT","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49303769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2018-12-31DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00013.PER
D. Perrin
{"title":"On, for, and with practitioners : a transdisciplinary approach to text production in real-life settings","authors":"D. Perrin","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00013.PER","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00013.PER","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article explains how research “on” practitioners can be turned into research “for and with” practitioners (Cameron, Frazer, Rampton, & Richardson, 1992, p. 22) by including these practitioners in the research teams. Methodologically, it draws on two decades of multimethod research and knowledge transformation at the interface of applied linguistics and transdisciplinary action research on professional communication (Perrin, 2013). Empirically, it is based on large corpora of data collected in multilingual and multicultural workplaces. First, the article outlines transdisciplinary action research as a theoretical framework that enables researchers and practitioners to collaboratively develop sustainable solutions to real-world problems in which language use in general and text production in particular play a substantial role (Section 1). Then, Progression Analysis is explained as a multimethod approach to investigate text production practices in natural environments such as workplaces (Section 2). Examples from four domains (education, finance, translation, and journalism) illustrate what value transdisciplinary collaboration between academic researchers and practitioners can add to knowledge generation in applied linguistics (Section 3). For the case of journalism in increasingly global contexts, in-depth analyses offer step-by-step understanding of the trajectory from a real-world problem to a sustainable solution (Section 4). The article concludes by suggesting empirically-based measures for research that contribute to the development of both theory and practice in applied linguistics (Section 5).","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"53-80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47807254","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2018-12-31DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00012.WAR
C. Warner
{"title":"Transdisciplinarity across two-tiers: The case of applied linguistics and literary studies in U.S. foreign language departments","authors":"C. Warner","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00012.WAR","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00012.WAR","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In the ten years since the Modern Language Association published their report, “Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World” (2007) dissatisfaction with the “two-tiered configuration” of US foreign language departments has become increasingly vocal. While the target of the criticism is often the curriculum, it has often been noted that programmatic bifurcations mirror institutional hierarchies, e.g. status differences between specialists in literary and cultural studies and experts in applied linguistics and language pedagogy (e.g. Maxim et al., 2013; Allen & Maxim, 2012). This chapter looks at the two-tiered structure of collegiate modern language departments from the perspectives of the transdisciplinary shape-shifters who maneuver within them – scholars working between applied linguistics and literary studies. These individuals must negotiate the methodologies and the institutional positions available to them – in many instances, the latter is what has prompted them to work between fields in the first place. The particular context of US foreign language and literature departments serves as a case study of the lived experiences of doing transdisciplinary work in contexts that are characterized by disciplinary hierarchies and the chapter ends with a call for applied linguistics to consider not only the epistemic, but also the institutional and affective labor needed to sustain transdisciplinary work.","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"29-52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2018-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59300843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2017-07-19DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-44195-5_6
David C. S. Li
{"title":"Towards ‘Biliteracy and Trilingualism’ in Hong Kong (SAR): Problems, Dilemmas, and Stakeholders’ Views","authors":"David C. S. Li","doi":"10.1007/978-3-319-44195-5_6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44195-5_6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"22 1","pages":"72-84"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46541416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2017-01-15DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00004.WAN
Xuan Wang, S. Kroon
{"title":"The Chronotopes of Authenticity: Designing the Tujia Heritage in China.","authors":"Xuan Wang, S. Kroon","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00004.WAN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00004.WAN","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper examines the ways in which the ethnic minority group the Tujia in Enshi, China, engages with heritage tourism, as a complex project of designing authenticity. Authenticity is taken as part of the chronotopic phenomena of identity making: the complex interplay of multiple, nonrandom timespace frames of discourses and semiotic performances which condition and offer new potentials to the meanings of authenticity. We show ethnographically the chronotopic nature of the local production of “authentic” heritage for tourism in Enshi. This leads to a historical grounding of the Tujia in China’s nation-building and state politics of multiculturalism, which uncovers the anxiety of inauthenticity experienced by the Tujia in Enshi with their own minority status and cultural heritage, as well as their strategic chronotopic incorporation of both “authentic” and “inauthentic” aspects of local identity practices into a new order of authenticity afforded by heritage tourism as a form of new economy. Through such practices, we argue, the Tujia in Enshi chronotopically shift away from the periphery towards a new and reconfigured center of meaning-making, although this reappropriation of authenticity still must be understood within the “cunning of recognition” scheme, i.e. within the constraints of late modernity.","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"30 1","pages":"72-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-01-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1075/AILA.00004.WAN","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45722347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2017-01-01DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00006.BAL
C. Ballena, V. Unamuno
{"title":"Challenge from the Margins: New Uses and Meanings of Written Practices in Wichi.","authors":"C. Ballena, V. Unamuno","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00006.BAL","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00006.BAL","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores the production of new meanings linked to written practices in the Wichi language in the Impenetrable Chaqueno (Argentina). Through collaborative ethnography examining different collective experiences and points of view, we study changes in writing in connection with changes in the access, distribution and availability of written practices in the Wichi language, and particularly in connection with social processes that position the Wichi people as key agents. Voice and agency are considered in order to explain meaning-making of language practices that are central but at the same time peripheral, and which seem to challenge, from the margins, social relationships between languages and people that hitherto seemed to be immovable.","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"30 1","pages":"120-143"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59300600","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AILA ReviewPub Date : 2017-01-01DOI: 10.1075/AILA.00003.SIN
J. Singh, Tom Bartlett
{"title":"Negotiating sustainability across scales: community organising in the Outer Hebrides","authors":"J. Singh, Tom Bartlett","doi":"10.1075/AILA.00003.SIN","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1075/AILA.00003.SIN","url":null,"abstract":"This paper represents voices of community organisers on Barra, a small island in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. Although, arguably Barra is geographically and socio-politically located in the peripheries of Scotland, Britain and Europe, the island has been a centre of North Atlantic maritime trade networks for centuries. In the current phase of Europeanisation and devolution of powers within the United Kingdom, the community finds itself in the position of having to attend to multiple scales: the European Union, the United Kingdom, Scotland and the island itself with its various interest groups. We draw on ethnographic interviews with community organisers that were elicited for the research project Sustainability on the Edge to illustrate some political challenges and possibilities of such scalar realities. We show that community organisers construct a voice that emphasises a historical quality of what it means to live on Barra while inflecting this quality with worldly knowledge that enables access to resources from outside the island. Our findings remind us that centres and peripheries are neither fixed categories that could simply be mapped on geographical visualisations nor notions independent of discursive practice.","PeriodicalId":45044,"journal":{"name":"AILA Review","volume":"30 1","pages":"50-71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"59300440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}