Integration or Building Resilience: What Should the Goal Be in Refugee Resettlement?

The article presents a qualitative study of 110 providers and administrators of refugee services from four countries: United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Iceland. Of the total participants, 28 were male and 82 were female. The sample consisted of 83 social workers who provided direct services to refugees and 27 administrators who managed the programs. The interviews occurred over a period of 3 years from January 2014 to January 2017. The participants described what they perceived to be the goals of resettlement and the successful outcomes of their work with refugees. Findings show that providers and administrators varied in what they believed to be the goals and outcomes, with three main differences emerging: (1) lessening the transition burden; (2) acquisition of language and securing self-sufficient employment; and (3) enhancing the integration of resilience within the refugee. These differences are discussed in terms of how they differ in resources required and in outcomes. The implications of these differences are addressed.     

佛教与日本语言文学关系的研究述评

20世纪80年代后期以来大陆佛学研究出现了一股“文化热”,将佛教作为一种文化,看做是中国传统文化的重要组成部分,研究佛教与文化千丝万缕的联系。跟随着这股潮流,有关日本文化的研究也掀起了高潮且日趋精进。据不完全统计,近20多年来发表的论文达上千篇。通过国内出版的著作和学术杂志上所发表的论文,对佛教和日本语言文字、文学方面的研究成果作分析综述,以期廓清这些领域的发展趋势和研究动态。     

重建"阶级话语":工会维权的合法化和正义论基础研究

自由主义的个人主义政治理论和马克思主义的阶级政治理论构成了现代社会中两种针锋相对的合法化叙事路径。从深层的社会历史逻辑和政治逻辑来看,只要资本的逻辑没有根本改变,阶级政治话语就始终是资本合法性的批判维度,也始终是工人阶级追求"阶级平等"与"制度正义"的合法化源泉和正义论基础。资本的全球化和我国已成为"世界工厂"的客观逻辑决定了"阶级话语"不可能"退场"。"阶级平等"应该成为"制度正义"的基本考量。     

刑事立法语言之技术特点

刑事立法语言具有立法语言的一般共性 ,要求准确、明确、通俗、简约、庄重及严谨。但刑事立法语言又具有自己的特殊性 ,其区别于其它立法语言的技术特点是 :第一 ,刑事立法语言突出表现罪刑关系 ;第二 ,刑事立法语言以明确性为主 ,兼顾弹力性 ;第三 ,刑法用语的专门性、专业性 ;最后 ,刑事立法语言中句式的特定性。     

Who stands for the norm? The place of metonymy in androcentric language

Since its emergence as an academic discipline in the early 1970s, feminist commentary and scholarship has prosecuted a critique of androcentric or sexist (gender exclusive) language, which has to some extent been successful. The struggle by women to occupy a positive linguistic space is continually being challenged by the endemic nature of masculine bias, which is realized through “indirect” or “subtle” sexism in the community. Seemingly innocuous words, like guy/guys, are frequently used to represent both men and women, reminiscent of the previous use of man/men as gender-inclusive common nouns. This raises the question of how to account for the persistence of such language use in spite of the fact that attention is regularly drawn to its problematic character. In this paper we approach the matter in a novel way, by appealing to work in the field of cognitive semantics, in particular the conceptual theory of metonymy. We propose that the relationship between the concepts of masculine and feminine as these are typically structured through language is indicative of a metonymy THE MASCULINE FOR THE FEMININE, in which the masculine “stands for” the feminine and in which lexical items are given as inclusive yet in effect refer to one (normative) gender. A corollary is that the feminine is subsumed (really or virtually) by the presence of the masculine and is made to disappear, and only reappears when she needs to be specified within the contextual frame.     

Two principles of equal language recognition

Within the umbrella of equal recognition, several principles of linguistic justice can be distinguished. A first, the per-capita principle, mandates prorating language recognition based on a per-capita distribution. A second, the equal-services principle, prescribes upholding the official languages as the languages in which the state speaks and in which public services are provided, irrespective of changing numbers of speakers. Alan Patten defends the prorated per-capita principle. I argue for the equal-services principle, which practically will often amount to a form of linguistic maximin: the more vulnerable the language, the more numerous the resources.     

Explaining Kazakhstani identity: supraethnic identity,ethnicity, language,and citizenship

The demographic composition of Kazakhstan after the fall of the Soviet Union presented a dilemma to the new Kazakhstani government: Should it advance a Kazakh identity as paramount, possibly alienating the large non-Kazakh population? Or should it advocate for a non-ethnicized national identity? How would those decisions be made in light of global norms of liberal multiculturalism? And, critically, would citizens respond to new frames of identity? This paper provides an empirical look at supraethnic identity-building in Kazakhstan – that is, at the development of a national identity that individuals place above or alongside their ethnic identification. We closely examine the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan to describe how Kazakhstani policies intersect with theories of nationalism and nation-building. We then use ordered probit models to analyze data from a 2014 survey to examine how citizens of Kazakhstan associate with a “Kazakhstani” supraethnic identity. Our findings suggest that despite the Assembly of People’s rhetoric, there are still significant barriers to citizen-level adoption of a supraethnic identity in Kazakhstan, particularly regarding language. However, many individuals do claim an association with Kazakhstani identity, especially those individuals who strongly value citizenship in the abstract.     

“Orbiting the Core”: Politics and the Meaning of Dialect in Chinese Linguistics, 1927–1957

In 1956, the Chinese Communist state launched its official language policy, which included the promulgation of a standard spoken language, called Putonghua. Their justification for this policy and their methods for implementation were guided by intellectual and ideological frameworks that formed during decades preceding the policy's rollout. In particular, Communist language reform was predicated on the conceptualization of Putonghua as a holistic language meant to serve the national body—and of local dialects, called fangyan in Chinese, as dependent on Putonghua for their very definition. This article interrogates the history of this framework. Focusing on dialect surveys from the 1930s, Chinese interpretations of Marxist linguistic theory in the early years of the Communist state, and methods of Putonghua promulgation in the late 1950s, this article reconstructs the epistemological regimes that gave meaning to the concept of independence and autonomy as they related to language in modern China.     

Language and education laws in multi-ethnic de facto states: the cases of Abkhazia and Transnistria

Even after the conflicts of the early 1990s that brought them to their de facto independence, both Abkhazia and Transnistria remained strongly multi-ethnic. In both territories, no single ethnic group is an absolute majority and Russian is the language that is mostly spoken on the streets of Sukhumi and Tiraspol. Legislators of both entities felt the need to deal with multi-ethnicity and multilingualism, including in their constitutions, in laws related to education, or more directly with specific language laws (1992 law “On languages” in Transnistria; 2007 law “On the state language in Abkhazia”). The protection of linguistic rights that is formally part of the legislation of both territories finds limitations in practice. The language of education has proved to be particularly contentious, in particular for Moldovan/Romanian language schools in Transnistria and Georgian language schools in Abkhazia. Why are language laws in Abkhazia and Transnistria so different, in spite of the fact that they are both post-Soviet, multi-ethnic territories that became de facto independent in the early 1990s? The different approaches found in Abkhazia and Transnistria represent remarkable examples of language legislation as a tool for nation-building in ethnically heterogeneous territories.