Linguistic landscape (LL) is a thriving strand of inquiry in sociolinguistics to interpret the multilingual representations in public space. Taking city residents as LL readers, this paper examines their opinions about the urban multilingualism visible in Eastern China’s big cities in order to find out how the language displays are perceived and evaluated by the public. LL-related language policies and the LL practices in three representative cities are sketched out as the backdrop for the language attitude exploration. A questionnaire survey was administered among 1302 participants from Eastern China to investigate their perception of and attitudes towards the urban multilingualism in their lived space. It is found that most participants are aware of the multilingual practices in the written environment, and they respond positively to the Chinese-dominant, English-rich multilingual practices in the LL. The inscriptions of English and other foreign languages are generally conceived of as instrumental in the construction of an international-oriented city image. Moreover, the non-standard language variations (e.g. Chinglish) in the LL tend to be seen as a problem, though traditional Chinese characters are not turned down. The findings in the study can help us gain an understanding of the bottom-up language ideologies in China and contribute to the ‘experiential’ dimension of LL studies.
Sometimes, in both popular and academic literature, a toponym is attributed to someone who did not bestow the name. Such attributions are based on mere conjecture, folk-etymology, or are perpetuate...
The intertwined relationship between rights and responsibilities are reciprocal between people and the State. Citizenship and land ownership are fundamental means through which people's relationship with the State is adjudged and determined. The study explores how the lack of accessibility of land ownership and citizenship certificate affects peoples' civil, political and social rights. The same is concluded through the case study of landless Dalits. To factor the relationship between landlessness, citizenship and social security; unstructured interviews with 60 household heads were conducted. The study found that the lack of citizenship certificate and land ownership certificate promotes the feeling of statelessness, without a change in patriotic impulse. Despite the government’s attempts to redistribute land in the area, the gradients of socio-economic and political power determine the fate of landless Dalits. The Dalits, inept and minority stakeholders, continue to be landless after more than four decades, whereas the elites are able to obtain land ownership certificate through their influence on the local authorities. Landless Dalits are being ignored not only by the State and political parties, but also by national and international organizations. Discriminatory behaviour of the State towards Dalits is an ongoing process without the provision of basic fundamental rights. This has affected their sense of citizenship.
Blueback charts were nautical charts, so named because blue paper backing was used to stiffen and strengthen many of them. Before governments took on maritime mapping, it was these commercially published maps that provided the cartographic record of European discovery. Bluebacks remained popular, even after the British Admiralty started selling its own charts from 1821. They distilled onto one, often massive, sheet sufficient up-to-date information for the merchant seaman to navigate oceans, coastlines, straits and ports and allow for a safe and successful voyage. Today they provide valuable insights into European discovery and exploration, the challenges of navigation in the era of sail, patterns of commerce and trade, and the evolution of ports and coastal communities. Robert Sayer, Aaron Arrowsmith, Laurie & Whittle, Norie and Wilson, Robert Blachford and James Imray were among the firms that published important Bluebacks relating to Australia and New Zealand. They were careful, cautious and highly professional publishers, yet the charts themselves, or informal notations left on them by seamen, can add a delightful informality and humanity, not a feature of mapping genres as a rule.
The present article explores ways of speaking and writing about nature in the Judeo-Christian tradition which many researchers consider important causes for the current environmental and ecological crisis. Moreover, the article analyses another perspective, namely how the present Pope Francis formulates an alternative understanding of the relationship between God, human beings and nature in his encyclical Laudato Si. In this encyclical, he advocates an attitude of respect, protection and safeguarding of nature that requires a different way of life. In order to understand the meanings and consequences of these different understandings and ways of describing nature, the article uses the philosophy of language and, especially, the religious language of Wittgenstein; particularly his claim regarding the importance of religion as language game, which is different from the language of science. According to Wittgenstein, religion enables us to value everything that exists, and together with ethics and art, religion provides us with guidelines of how to live and relate to the world. Other important concepts used in the analysis of the different religious perspectives are metaphors and models.
The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, it sets out to explore the usefulness of Google Trends to the study of language and the perception of variants and, secondly, it investigates the social realities of dialect labels as reflected in searches on the Internet search engine Google. Google Trends is an online tool which is freely available and allows you to map the search volume of search terms across time and space, and also see which other related searches Google users performed within the specified time period or area. In this way, Google Trends can perhaps help us shed light on what it is Google users are curious about or interested in when they search for words such as Geordie, Scouse and Cockney – is it the dialects which the labels denote or is it something else? The study thus takes as its primary interest the application of the Google Trends search tool to the study of folk perceptions of dialect labels and, as a secondary aim, if this can be used to uncover what these dialect labels denote to lay people. With regard to the first aim, the study found that using Google Trends data can be useful in the early stages of perceptual dialectology studies of dialects and dialect labels. With regard to the second aim, the main finding of the study was that there are vast differences between the three dialect labels investigated here, both in terms of sheer search volume over time but also with regard to the collocates with which they are associated. Explanations for some of the patterns of search volume over time and the differences between the three dialect labels are sought by considering the impact of popular culture and TV shows.
Review(s) of: Grounds: Projecting the landscape imaginary, by Jill Desimini and Charles Waldheim, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2016. ISBN 9781616893293, hb, 272pp., 200 col. ills.US$50.
In 1942, after a series of directives from General MacArthur’s Headquarters, the Allied Geographical Section (AGS) was formed with the task of compiling all the available geographical intelligence on the largely unmapped and underexplored south-west Pacific area. During its lifespan (1942-45), the AGS produced 3 major types of publications: Terrain Studies; Special Reports; and Terrain Handbooks. The Terrain Studies were the most important and complex works, designed to give the most comprehensive information. Thus, they contained text, diagrams, photographs and various sized and coloured maps. In 2012, Monash University Library initiated a project to digitise its substantial collection of Terrain Studies and make them available via the Monash University Research Repository (http://arrow.monash.edu) to complement its online collections for the ANZAC Centenary. This paper explores a number of aspects of the project: its genesis; challenges, given the format of the material; the scanning process; metadata creation and changing geography (role of gazetteers); how it complements existing WWI exhibits; and methods of access.2015The Globe, vol. 78, p. 43-50Copyright 2015 Bronwyn Foott and Barbara WojtkowskiAustralian and New Zealand Map Society0311-3930handle 1959.1/1225865pid monash:163630
The internet-based crowdfunding platforms have in many ways changed the way projects are nowadays funded. Apart from opening to the small businesses, it has created funding opportunities for non-governmental organisations, citizens’ initiatives, non-formal groups and individual projects, which used to have rather limited access to this sort of resources. However, the widening and liberalisation of the market poses new challenges for these entities as well – the project ideas have to be effectively elaborated in order to stand out from the crowd, reach the potential supporters and persuade them to get engaged with the project. This paper explored the discursive practices in crowdfunding for human rights projects, with particular focus on discursive strategies employed in project descriptions on the crowdfunding platforms Kickstarter. Within the discourse analysis framework, the study addressed the various strategies employed in the legitimation of social action (Van Leeuwen 2008), in this case, donating money or otherwise supporting the projects. The findings suggest that rationalisation and appealing to morality are most frequently used to legitimise the social action of crowdfunding on online platforms. The research into discourse of crowdfunding highlights the current tendencies employed for engaging the potential contributors, but also reveals how the crowdfunding and human rights activism are socially constructed on online platforms like Kickstarter.
Sealing has been an industry in the North Atlantic and Arctic seas since at least 1593. Initially the profits from sealing were far less than those gained from whaling, and the sealing industry remained a minor, if locally important, activity for many communities. Sealing became better established as a global industry from the late 18th century onwards as it expanded into the South Atlantic and the Southern Ocean, and the paper focuses on the relationship between explorers' reports of new discoveries and the role of sealers in the official and unofficial charting of the islands of the southern oceans and in the independent search for new sealing grounds.
This article discusses a world map in two hemispheres (ca.1538-39) by Frenchman Jean Mallard, whose stated aim was to draw a world map showing the results of French voyages. The outcome may be the earliest to show an imagined southern continent with a promontory extending north of the Tropic of Capricorn, south of modern day Indonesia. The promontory is named 'La Gatigare.' The map has been described as a prototype of the Dieppe school charts, and La Gatigare as a typical outline of Java-la-Grande. The argument presented is that there are material differences between Mallard's map and the Dieppe charts leading to the conclusion La Gatigare is not an early example of Java-la-Grande. It is suggested that Mallard's map should be looked upon not as a part of, but as a forerunner to, the Dieppe school of cartographers. The article also discusses two maps from the 1590s, of Portuguese origin, with similar promontories of the assumed southern continent extending north towards the Indonesian islands.
Long fascinating to those who study cartography, the cordiform maps (from the Latin for heart, cor) are known to few outside that small group. The cordiform projection has been considered something of an anomaly, sitting uncomfortably with the discoveries and discourses of the New World or the genesis of modern cartography. This paper asks why the shape of a heart was chosen for imaging the world. To answer this requires exploring meanings for the heart image outside of its use in cartography. This approach sees the map not as a fixed sign, judged by its geographic content alone, but a complex image under pressure from wider expectations upon the mapmakers and their audiences. In the sixteenth century, meanings were attributed to the heart that we no longer subscribe to today, including learning and memory, leadership and wisdom. A second aim is to establish that the maps' shape - the heart - was intimately entangled with aspirations about the New World. Ultimately, these unusual maps can illuminate the mindset of those in Europe aspiring to a new vision of human affairs, suggesting that the early modern cartographic enterprise was not as homogenous as is often considered. This paper introduces audiences to the maps as well as key issues that have hindered their interpretation. It will show that they, perhaps more than any other maps of their time, are critical for revealing potentially conflicting and controversial aspirations for the New World.
Review(s) of: The world of maps: Map reading and interpretation for the 21st century, by Judith A. Tyner, Guilford Press, NY, 2015, hb, xvi + 236 pp. ISBN 9781462516483 (hb) 978146251935 (ebook), US$51/A$81.
Review(s) of: Mapping Western Australia: State geological maps 1894-2015, by A. Riganti, J.F. Johnston, R.M. Hocking and D.McB. Martin, Geological Survey of WA, Perth, 2016, pb, 39 pp., ISBN 9781741686661, A$11.
Review(s) of: Endurance: A novel of ice, war, and adventure, by Tim Griffiths, Allen and Unwin, Australia, 2015, pb, 368pp. ISBN 9781760111540, A$30.
Many of those who served in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign in 1915 sought to record their experiences, usually in letters and diaries, occasionally in graphic form, though few had the skills or materials to do this. Leslie Fraser Standish Hore, known as George, one of the few surviving officers of the 8th Light Horse Regiment, whose Gallipoli experience culminated in the disaster of the attack at The Nek on 7 August, left a memorable record of that experience in three forms: firstly, in a series of observant coloured sketches; secondly in a letter to his wife which gave an account of the harrowing event; and thirdly and perhaps most significantly, he produced what he called the 'Anzac Panorama'. Informed by his pictures and by six smaller panoramas he had sketched during the campaign, it was completed from memory after the Gallipoli campaign was over. Hore then had it printed in Cairo, probably early in 1916. The panorama gives an interesting representation of Australian positions on 7 August, the day of the assault on Turkish positions at The Nek by the 8th and 10th Australian Light Horse Regiments. This article outlines Hore's background, and goes on to discuss all three aspects of his Gallipoli experience: his sketches, his account of the attack, in which he was wounded, and finally the 'Anzac Panorama', which brought together all that had gone before. While it is but one part of a considerable corpus of sketching and painting, he clearly intended it to be the most significant part. He was well fitted to achieve this.
L'article analyse, dans une clé géocritique, les représentations de l'espace et du paysage des bonifications en Italie, telles qu'elles émergent de quelques oeuvres littéraires. On observera en particulier trois phases du regard littéraire sur le paysage des bonifications et certains thèmes qui les traversent. D'une phase classique, centrée sur l'éloge indirect des bonifications en tant que dépassement des marais, on arrive à une phase de modernisation fasciste, qui voit dans les bonifications la construction d'un paysage à l'image du régime (ordre, géométrie, machinisme). La troisième phase, contemporaine, reconsidère les paysages de la bonification dans le sens d'une humanisation, d'un vécu et d'un sens du lieu retrouvé.
