Category: Resources in ICD

Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other

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Special Issue: Applied Linguistics, Ethics and Aesthetics of Encountering the Other, Applied Linguistics Review, 8(2-3), 2024.

Guest Editors: Magdalena Kubanyiova and Angela Creese

1 Kubanyiova, M., & Creese, A. (2024). Introduction: Applied linguistics, ethics and aesthetics of encountering the Other.

2 Beiler, I. R., & Dewilde, J. (2024). “When we use that kind of language…someone is going to jail”: Relationality and aesthetic interpretation in initial research encounters.

3 Creese, A. (2024). The humanism of the other in sociolinguistic ethnography.

4 Williams, Q. (2024). Towards a sociolinguistics of in difference: Stancetaking on others.

5 Krause-Alzaidi, L.-S. (2024). Becoming response-able with a protest pacard: White under(-)standing in encounters with the Balck German Other.

6 Kubanyiova, M. (2024). (Im)possibility of ethical encounters in places of separation: Aesthetics as a quiet applied linguistics praxis.

7 Brizić, K. (2024). Unsettled hearing, responsible listening: Encounters with voice after forced migration.

Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding: A Resource for Innovators

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Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding: A Resource for Innovators by by Cynthia Sampson, Mohammed Abu-Nimer, Claudia Liebler, and Diana Whitney (printed version, 2010; Taos Institute Publications WorldShare Books version, 2024). The ebook version is free to download.

Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding presents an innovative perspective on peacebuilding that breaks new ground. The theoretical frameworks are rich enough to satisfy scholars, the case studies are practical enough to engage practitioners and the tips and guides to practice are sure to inspire new and innovative work among peacebuilders. This book beautifully describes the social construction of imagined futures, inviting us, as scholar-practitioners, to move beyond ‘problem solving’ and its ethic of ‘neutrality,’ towards Appreciative Inquiry, and its ethics of narrative, voice, and meaning-making, relying on the heart-wisdom that flourishes in the context of affirmation This book powerfully delivers what it promises — a provocation to think more deeply about how we conduct our peacemaking and peacebuilding relationships. A must read for those who dare to make a difference.

Related publication: Key Concept #64: Peacebuilding by Elenie Opffer; Seeds of Dialogue.

Celebrating The Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature

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Celebrating The Other: A Dialogic Account of Human Nature by Edward Sampson (printed version, 2008; Taos Institute Publications WorldShare Books version, 2024). The ebook version is free to download.

In this important book, Sampson launches a new attack – this time on Western culture’s centuries-long preoccupation with a contained, individualistic, monologic Self and its fearful suppression of all that is Other – all that is experienced as different from the implicit, self-affirming white male standard.

This view, he demonstrates, focuses more on the leading protagonist and supporting cast that he has assembled to service his own interests, desires and fears, than on others as viable people in their own right. Denying the Other so as to create a world secured on behalf of the dominant groups’ interests has become an obsession driving not only the larger culture but also the human sciences, in particular psychology’s theories of human nature. Women, African-Americans and others not of the dominant classes have been constructed as serviceable Others, and appear in textbooks, journals and popular accounts as figures whose images and everyday realities have been created to serve the dominant groups’ desires.

Sampson uses the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, George Herbert Mead, and postmodern and feminist theorists to reject this dangerous obsession and to create a dialogic foundation to replace the Other-suppressing views of psychology, and indeed, of all Western culture. Sampson’s arguments are convincing, liberating, and have major implications for the human sciences and the people they claim to serve. ‘Celebrating the Other’ changes the way human nature is viewed and studied. As the author reminds us, in silencing the Other we distort our own situation and stunt our opportunities for growth – ‘no one voice can be quoted without losing the greatest opportunity of all: to converse with otherness and to learn about our own otherness in and through those conversations.’

Related publications: Key Concept #39: Otherness and the Other by Peter Praxmarer; Seeds of Dialogue, Guest post by Maria Flora Mangano.

ReDICo Hub on Digital Interculturality

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ReDICo Hub on Digital Interculturality has now opened. Germany, but online.

ReDICo stands for Researching Digital Interculturality Co-operatively. They have just sent a note to share:

“Finally our Hub on Digital Interculturality is ready! Here you will find resources, calls, job and collaboration opportunities and publications. Our aim with this Hub is to provide a non-commercial space in which individuals, who are passionate about research and praxis in relation to digital interculturality, can come together to share and to forge meaningful collaborations that transcend geographical boundaries. It would be great if you could take just a few minutes of your time to create a profile, free of charge, on our Hub here. By doing so, you’ll be contributing to the growth of our community.

You know, beginnings are always hard! As part of your profile setup, we encourage you to include your Zip Code if you wish to appear on the platform’s World map. This will allow others to locate and connect with you based on your location. Thank you for considering our invitation. We look forward to welcoming you to our growing community!”

Histories of the Internationalization of the Field of Communication Studies

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Lopes, M. I. V., & Fuentes-Navarro, R. (Eds.). (2023). Special issue: Histories of the internationalization of the field of communication studies. MATRIZes, 17(3).

The new issue of MATRIZes – Journal of the Graduate Program in Communication Sciences of the University of São Paulo, Brazil – has just been published, and it is available free to download. Articles are in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. The topic is telling the history of how the field of communication studies has been gradually moving toward internationalization, and that seems directly relevant to the interests of many of those affiliated with this Center.

In keeping with the theme of the special issue, the international edition, with articles in English, Spanish, and Portuguese is available here.

The Portuguese edition is available here.

UNESCO e-Platform on ICD

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UNESCO created an e-platform for intercultural dialogue in 2018, which recent followers may not have noticed. It is designed to be “a global collaborative hub” intended “to promote good practices  from all over the world, that enable to build bridges between people from diverse backgrounds in order to create more inclusive societies through mutual understanding and respect for diversity.”

One section presents a concepts glossary, explaining terms from intercultural dialogue to cultural identity to intercultural citizenship. These will be particularly familiar to all those who have previously read Intercultural Competences: A conceptual and operational framework from 2013, which I drafted for UNESCO (with many contributions by others named in the notes), as they all come directly from that publication.

Another section provides good practices for a wide range of topics, intended to serve as models. CID Posters and several publications (Key Concepts in Intercultural Dialogue and Constructing Intercultural Dialogues) have been accepted for inclusion.

Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue

Participatory ESOL Report and Podcasts

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Coole, M., et al. (2023). Participatory ESOL: Taking Stock. Working Papers in
Urban Language &
Literacies, Paper 319, and 5 podcasts.

ESOL refers to teaching English to adult speakers of other languages. Here are links to five podcasts and a report on the practitioner research project, Participatory ESOL: Taking Stock.  The project was organised by English for Action and the Hub for Education & Language Diversity (HELD) at King’s College London in collaboration with teachers from different organisations across the ESOL sector.  The report and the podcasts provide a reflective account of developments in Participatory ESOL over the last 15 years, drawing on the experiences of 11 participatory ESOL teachers, but also focus more broadly on the position of participatory ESOL in the sector as a whole, pointing forward to implications for policy and ESOL teacher education more generally.

PE [Participatory ESOL] emerges … as an approach that listens to students and engages them in dialogue, that reaches beyond traditional student-teacher roles to include critique and action on social conditions, and that maintains an explicit focus on language throughout while also questioning the hegemony of English itself.

Educating for Intercultural Dialogue, Peacebuilding, Constructive Remembrance & Reconciliation

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Clarke-Habibi, S. (2020). Educating for intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding, constructive remembrance, and reconciliation: A toolkit for teachers in the Western Balkans. UNICEF Albania and Regional Youth Cooperation Office.

Although prepared specifically for teachers in the Western Balkans, this toolkit should be useful to anyone in a teaching context working with any of the major concepts. As explained in the introduction:

This Toolkit focuses on education for intercultural dialogue, peacebuilding, constructive remembrance and reconciliation. It is designed for teachers and trainers who work with adolescents (14-18 years) in formal and non-formal education settings. It may be adapted, however, for other contexts and age groups, such as for activities with older youth, for pre-service teacher training, and for teacher professional development programmes. (p. 7)

The objectives of this Toolkit are:

  1. To support teachers’ professional competences to engage adolescents and youth in intercultural dialogue.
  2. To support teachers in their use of teaching strategies and techniques, which help adolescents and youth to learn and practice open and respectful dialogue.
  3. To develop teachers’ professional competences and confidence to engage adolescents and youth in discussing controversial issues, particularly related to past and current causes of conflict in the region, and to manage all this safely and effectively.
  4. To support teachers to create ‘safe spaces’ in the classroom where adolescents and youth can explore issues that concern them freely and without fear.
  5. To support teachers’ professional competences to nurture young people’s understanding of the foundations of sustainable peace and to strengthen their agency as peacebuilding actors (p. 8).

Cruz & Miranda: Storytelling as Media Literacy and Intercultural Dialogue

Resources in ICD“ width=Cruz, M. T., & Miranda, M. (2022). Storytelling as media literacy and intercultural dialogue in post-colonial societies. Media and Communication, 10(4), 294-304.

Based on the experience of a citizenship project about the post-colonial condition and Afro-European interculturality, this essay reflects on digital storytelling, and co-creative practices as relevant literacy and education strategies for furthering interculturality in contemporary societies. The authors propose storytelling as a tool for intercultural dialogue, in the framework of media literacy.

…we need educational strategies and literacies that continue to provide the training of imagination required for intercultural dialogue in the information society (p. 302)

Li & Lee: Transpositioning: Translanguaging and the Liquidity of Identity

Resources in ICD“ width=Li, W., & Lee, T. K. (2023). Transpositioning: Translanguaging and the liquidity of identity.
Applied Linguistics, 20, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amad065

Transpositioning is an adaptation of the concept of positioning as used in social psychology, and is defined as “the process in which individuals articulate their personhood by taking up changeable identities in interaction” (p. 2). It should be relevant to those studying intercultural dialogue, though it has not yet been used in that context. See KC99: Translanguaging for a brief explanation of that concept.

“This essay seeks to address the seemingly random, ever-expanding, and shifting communicative demands of liquid modernity by focussing on two key issues: the need to reconceptualize language and communication as a consequence of the diversification of media and resources users draw upon to meet these demands; and the need for a new analytical framework to capture how people perform multiplex roles spontaneously and simultaneously through dynamic and adaptive communicative practices. We do the former with the concept of translanguaging and the latter with transpositioning.” (p. 1)

“Translanguaging facilitates transpositioning. The juxtaposition of the two terms underscores the simultaneous activation of multiple identities by way of mobilizing resources across the boundaries of named languages, new media, and entrenched ideologies. In this process, borders are renegotiated, circumvented, even outright rejected. What ensues are emergent and evolving semiotic spaces in which play—in the sense of a certain lightness of being, marked by a creative and critical ludicity—is a method of social engagement. One might thus say that communication in the liquid modern age comprises a non-committal play of identities where language users, in the manner of free-and-easy tourists creating itineraries on the whim, spontaneously (re)invent themselves by orchestrating all available and accessible resources in their semiotic repertoire in response to communicative stimuli from others.” (p. 14)

For a brief introduction to the topic, see KC99: Translanguaging.