Tag Archives: language

Understanding the ‘Global News’ Paradigm

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Birkbeck’s William Richards reflects on this School of Arts event exploring the evolution of English-language journalism.

In an era of ever-increasing digital compartmentalisation and division, what really is global news?

This was the question asked by Dr Justin Schlosberg, Senior Lecturer in Birkbeck’s Department of Film, Media & Cultural Studies at a fascinating talk entitled ‘The Global News Paradigm’.

Hosted online by the School of Arts on Monday 25 January, the event began with the hypothesis from Dr Schlosberg that global news is in flux and in content evolution. For better or for worse, broadcasters steeped in the Western liberal tradition of professional journalism have faced increasing competition from English-language news channels around the world.

Throughout this talk, the hegemony of the BBC and CNN was analysed in the context of its rising challengers; the likes of Al Jazeera English and RT (formerly Russia Today). Indeed, says Dr Schlosberg, this raises all sorts of complex and critical questions about the nature of journalism as a fundamentally truth-telling practice, and the potential impact of disinformation and counter-disinformation on global news agendas.

Seeking to evaluate these questions, Dr Schlosberg carefully examined and discussed the ways in which international news stories have been covered by competing English-language news channels.

It is often very easy to get carried away by buzzwords of ‘Fake News’ or ‘bias’ when discussing the media in this day and age. Nevertheless, what constitutes stories of importance within the contact of ‘Global News’ remains open to to debate and interpretation.

A recording of this event is available to watch on YouTube.

A big thank you to the School of Arts and Dr Justin Schlosberg for his presentation. We look forward to hosting similar, thought-provoking talks in the future.

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Arts Week 2017: Speaking in Brogues

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This post was contributed by Hafsa Al-Khudairi, a student on Birkbeck’s MA Contemporary Literature and Culture

broguesMarina Warner opens the event with the definition of a brogue. It is a type of shoe that her father gave her mother, which is popular in England and a symbol of the start of their life in the country. The other meaning is a rustic accent that accompanies rural areas. Though Warner specifically emphasized that it should not be a pejorative word, but an expression of beauty and strength. Brogues at university level is the language people interact with and use to create an environment of integration.

Social Constructions and Burdens in Language:

Maria Aristodemou, who is interested in law, psychoanalysis and society, starts by exploring how alienating language can be for both foreigners and for the native speaker. Humans animals are limited by their use of language to express their desires for not all their wants can be expressed in this manner and they have no other means to do so. This makes all humans immigrants in the house language as even the native speaker has to learn from childhood how to use the language, so they are “doomed” by their restrictions. However, language is also built through a socially-constructed idea of identity that holds the historical and societal desires and expectations.

Language is about Sharing:

Mattia Gallotti, who is working on a project called The Human Mind, where he explores the differences between people of different disciplines, explores the idea that language is about sharing. Specifically sharing minds because it is what philosophers think discussions produce. Sharing minds is most effective when it is produced from sharing stories. There is a power in sharing because it produces difference and power. The more people exchange stories through language, the more they can change the world they live in and empower themselves and others. For him, this helps people create their own sense of self, including identity and culture, wherever they go, producing the feeling of a collective ‘we’.

Photography is a Bridge between Two Languages:

Rut Blees Luxemburg, who is a photographer, used her creative photographs to explore the idea of bridging the gap between the English and the German language. She explored themes of connecting marginality with water, the divine, culture, and poetic meanings. Water is related to how she remembers rivers that can connect places and transfer languages beyond the confines of the arbitrary lines that separate countries. Hence, Brogues is a reference to the ground and the soil, which is an attachment to a nation, but it is a sense of home through language, beyond the actual boundaries of the actual home.

The event ended with a Q&A about identity, the term ‘we’, personality, and strangers in a strange land, and their intersection with language. Identity was clarified as an unappeasable fantasy, but identification is real. Then, how many people associate ‘we’ with negative connotations, however, it does have positive communitive connotations as well. The conversation turned towards personalities and strangers. It was concluded that knowing multiple languages helps create patterns of personalities based on a person’s association with the language. Also, the romance of being a stranger is a privilege for the difference in language capabilities and accents helps categorize people into other beings and it can be detrimental to the sense of belonging. Still knowing different languages can help people communicate and sense a feeling of comradery when people find someone who understands them beyond grammar and syntax.

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Policy and planning in organisations: why language matters

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This post was contributed by Dr Lisa J. McEntee-Atalianis from Birkbeck’s Department of Applied Linguistics and Communciation. Dr McEntee-Atalianis is organising a conference on Language Policy and Planning in Multilingual Organisations: Exploring Language Regimes on Monday 3 July 2017.

un_language-policyIncreasing debate about the impact of international contact on language use has given rise to broadly binary accounts of its effects:  as a nurturing arena for multilingual diversity and creativity in communication practices; or as a stymieing force, leading to the dominance of linguae francae, particularly English. Themes of power, politics and economics, inter alia, play into analyses of some multilingual contexts, with calls for changes to language policy often made to combat inequity, injustice and/or to assess the ‘cost’ (financial or otherwise) of maintaining more than one language.

Traditionally the field of language policy and planning (LPP) has focused on national concerns, however in recent years research has also focussed on community, family and organisational scenarios. It is recognised that we must move beyond a nationalist paradigm to accommodate the networks, structures and flows apparent in post-national societies and inter/transnational contexts. As we move into ever-increasing global connectedness many of us are now interwoven in professional and personal networks which transcend the nation (virtually and physically), leading to complex patterns of interaction and the emergence of fluid linguistic repertoires. We are also subject to multiple layers of governance and influenced by the burgeoning economic and political might of transnational corporations and supranational organisations, which far exceed the influence of our local communities or states. How issues are debated and decisions made within these organisations and whether or not we are given a voice is of importance to us all. Language matters!

While there is still comparatively limited research on LPP in organisations, studies on supranational organisations (e.g. the EU and UN) and public administration of multilingual states (e.g. Canada, Switzerland, Belgium) have shown that they experience great difficulty in implementing and sustaining multilingual provision and this can lead to marked inefficiencies and inequities for those functioning within them and those affected by their work. This is an issue addressed in my own research on the work of the United Nations.

Current language regimes in some multilingual organisations no longer necessarily reflect the practices or needs of individuals who work within them or the people they are trying to reach. Moreover, there is demand for scientific modelling of established and newly emerging multilingual organisations to assess their effectiveness. For further developments in the field of LPP and for academics to be able to inform policy makers, concerted interdisciplinary collaboration is needed – not least the combined efforts of linguists, economists and political scientists. In a step towards this goal, I am convening a symposium with Michelle Gazzola (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field of LPP who work across a range of disciplines (education; economics; linguistics; politics) and research sites.

We will consider the unique challenges faced by multilingual organisations working within different sectors (e.g. business; diplomacy; economics) and identify and evaluate the socio-economic and political effects of alternative ways of managing multilingual communication adopted by public administrations and organisations (e.g. political representativeness, democratic participation, social exclusion). By looking at different methods of investigating language regimes and the challenges faced by researchers who work in these areas we hope to reshape current priorities for LPP research and increase its impact on policy makers working in multilingual organisations.

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