Looking at the cultural heritage proclamations of Ethiopia:conceptualisation and management of cultural heritage

The main purpose of this paper is to explore how the conceptualisation and management of cultural heritage have been treated in the cultural heritage proclamations of Ethiopia.The analysis of the four cultural heritage proclamations reveals that the notion of cultural heritage improves from the frst to the fourth proclamation.In the first two proclamations,the term antiquity was employed,and the latter two employed the term of cultural heritage.The 1966 proclamation included antiquities that were dated prior to 1850 EC,while the 1989 proclamation removed this cutoff date and expounded upon the definition of antiquities.The 2000 proclamation replaced the term antiquity with cultural heritage and introduced the concept of intangible cultural heritage.In terms of the management of cultural heritage,the differences between the 1989 and 2000 proclamations are quite minimal.The 2014 proclamation attempted to classify cultural heritage into national and regional cultural heritage.It also defined important components of intangible cultural heritage.The management of cultural heritage exhibits some evolution from the first to the last proclamation.However,due to the diversified nature of cultural heritage conceptualisation and management,it will be important for additional legislation to be issued separately for movable,immovable and intangible cultural heritage,for example.This study argues that strong legal and institutional frameworks should be established to properly protect,conserve and study cultural heritage.

Cultural conceptulisations in Elijah Akintunde's Yoruba ballad gospel song Jjo Odi‘Dance of the Deaf’

What kind of actions or reactions can sudden good news elicit in the experiencer?How can these actions/reactions be cognitively interpreted by others?Is there a nexus between social realities and the gospel?Using these questions as a spark,this article critically examines the cultural conceptualisations in Jjo Odi,a Yoruba gospel ballad by Elijah Akintunde.Drawing insights from Cultural Linguistics,this study argues that cultural symbols and structures(schemas,categories,and metaphors)are deployed in gospel music to capture the message of liberation from socio-economic challenges.Specifically,DANCE and DEAFNESS are mapped to express the kind of PERPLEXITY and ABSURDITY that characterise reaction to SUDDEN PLEASANT NEWS.The song also invokes cognitive schemas and cultural memories of dance,cultural class categories and metaphorization of dance and its internalized network of cognitive associations in the Yoruba world view to project the message of prosperity as a miracle.The study concludes that language is firmly grounded in cultural cognition and the complex socio-economic lives of Nigerians can be captured in the negotiation of spirituality in gospel songs.Future research may explore how the artistic performance of other music genres equally evoke cultural imageries in communicating other diverse issues.

University English Teachers' Sense-Making of Their Classroom Practices

This paper reports a study which investigated the meanings a group of experienced English as Foreign Language （EFL） teachers at a Chinese university gave to their classroom practices. It uncovers for each teacher a conceptual framework for practice, which comprises teaching principles and strategic intentions. It reveals that teachers＇ frameworks for practice are an interwoven system of their most strongly held beliefs in language teaching and their perceptions of their teaching contexts, and that teachers＇ own learning and teaching experiences are important influences on their conceptualisations of classroom work. Findings of this research have implications for language teacher education and development.

Cultural Linguistics: The Development of a Multidisciplinary Paradigm

Cultural Linguistics is a multidisciplinary area of research that explores the relationship between language and cultural conceptualisations. It offers both a theoretical framework and an analytical framework for examining features of languages that are entrenched in cultural conceptualisations, including cultural schemas, cultural categories, and cultural metaphors. In recent years, Cultural Linguistics has drawn on several disciplines and sub-disciplines, such as complexity science and distributed cognition, to enrich its theoretical basis, particularly the notion of cultural cognition. Applications of Cultural Linguistics have enabled fruitful investigations of the cultural grounding of language in several applied domains such as World Englishes, intercultural communication, and political discourse analysis. This paper elaborates on these observations and provides illustrative examples of linguistic research from the perspective of Cultural Linguistics.

Appraisal of the Production-Oriented Approach： An Introduction

The production-oriented approach （POA） has been developed over a decade. It is driven by the need to improve English classroom instruction for university students in China （Wen, 2016）. It is also motivated by the aspiration to enhance the quality of foreign language education in other similar pedagogical contexts outside China. A volume of research has been done by Wen Qiufang and her research team, to formulate the theory of POA and to test its effectiveness in classroom pedagogy （e.g. Wen, 2016, 2015; Yang, 2015; Zhang, 2015）. At the moment, the POA is still at an early stage of theory building and almost all empirical research is done in the Chinese context. In order to improve the quality of this theory and to make it intelligible to the international academic community, a one-day symposium was held in Beijing Foreign Studies University on May 15, 2017. The symposium was entitled ＇The first international forum on innovative foreign language education in China： Appraisal of the POA＇. In the forum, leading experts in applied linguistics were invited to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the POA and the directions for its future development. The symposium was the first attempt for the POA research team to discuss its latest work with international scholars. This Viewpoint section collects the responses of four experts who participated in the symposium, listed in alphabetical order. The collection of articles covers three topics related to the POA： its pedagogical application, its use for teacher training, and its research. Alister Cumming is Professor Emeritus and the former Head of the Centre for Educational Research on Languages and Literacies, University of Toronto, Canada. His article focuses primarily on POA research as an exemplary case of design-based research. Rod Ellis is Research Professor in the School of Education at Curtin University, Australia. He discusses POA in terms of pedagogy, teacher training and research, with both critiques and constructive suggestions. Paul Kei Matsuda is Professor of English and Director of Second Language Writing at Arizona State University, the writed states. He responds to POA from the perspective of an expert researcher and teacher of L2 writing. Charlene Polio is Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Linguistics ＆ Germanic, Slavic, Asian ＆ African Languages atMichigan State University, the writed states. She conceptualises POA as a useful method to address some issues in pre-service teacher development. Overall, the articles in this section are insightful and reader-friendly. They are not only useful for the development of POA in particular, but may also be valuable to a broad range of researchers as they touch upon pertaining issues, as well as emerging topics, in the field of applied linguistics. We therefore find it necessary to make them accessible to a wide readership.