Synergy

3

Authors: Lucia-Mihaela GROSU-RĂDULESCU

“A book is not shut in by its contours, is not walled-up as in a fortress. It asks nothing better than to exist outside itself, or to let you exist in it. In short, the extraordinary fact in the case of a book is the falling away of the barriers between you and it. You are inside it; it is inside you; there is no longer either outside or inside”. (Poulet, 1969: 54)

11

Authors: Preeti SHIRODKAR

The notion of borders and their unstated others – ‘home’ and ‘identity’ – find a central place in diasporic discourse and serve as a strand that unifies it, a theme that is explored by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni in ‘Before We Visit The Goddess’. My paper would engage with the novel-in-stories as an attempt at questioning and crossing these borders, in order to seek a home that may be transitory, in its physical manifestation, but is nevertheless one that seeks to anchor the mind and thereby liberate the individual from the shackles that have ironically moved beyond societal constrictions to becoming personal ones.

14

Authors: Clelia CLINI

The Last Word (2014) is the first novel written by Hanif Kureishi not being set in London but in the English countryside. While the main focus of the novel is the antagonistic relationship between the famous Indian writer Mamoon and his biographer Harry, the context of deprivation within which Mamoon’s mansion is located speaks of what Kureishi himself called a “big break in Britain, between London and the rest of the country” (2014). This paper will precisely focus on the novel’s description of this “break” within the country and relate it to the outcome of the recent “Brexit” referendum. In particular, through references to earlier novels by the same author and an interview I conducted with him in 2014, the analysis will focus on Kureishi’s take on multiculturalism and the contemporary social and political situation of Britain. What dynamics of power regulate social relationships? Who is included and who is excluded? In addressing these questions, the paper will also address the emergence of “post-multiculturalism” discourses and the backlash against multiculturalism in Europe (Vertovec and Wessendorf, 2010).

15

Authors: Paul L. LANDRY

There has been heated public and political discourse in the United States concerning immigrants, with generalized fear of terrorist attacks, xenophobia and calls for restriction on immigration. A major proposal by one candidate in the Presidential election has been to “build a wall” to keep out Mexican immigrants. Yet in a “nation of immigrants,” with millions of immigrant families and descendants already within, people from other countries will continue to enter. Major concerns for educators, and for teacher educators, are the effects and implications of such anti-immigrant discourse upon schooling and educational opportunities for immigrant language minority children in public schools. Structurally, the US Constitution guarantees education to children within the United States, and prohibits discriminatory denial of education services based upon race, ethnicity, language or immigration status. The focus of discussion will be on implications of such public rhetoric and related policies upon relationships between immigrant language minority families and schools, and the academic progress of immigrant children. A wealth of research demonstrates the beneficial effects of positive and receptive school environments for immigrant language minority children, and strong collaboration between schools and immigrant families. Research regarding such relationships also suggests adverse effects of symbolic interactionism in anti-immigrant discursive environments which impede salutary and productive collaboration between immigrant language minority families and schools. As rhetorical sparring continues, the children fall further behind academically due to marginalization, ineffective instruction and dropping out of the education system. This dysfunctional interaction exacts a far deeper and more persistent cost burden, in terms of human capital and lost opportunity, than generally recognized in superficial political debate over who would pay for a putative anti-immigrant wall.

15

Authors: Dan H. POPESCU

In light of the recent migration phenomenon and of the so-called fear for the Islamization of our old continent, my paper is an attempt to deal with the art of travel writing and the image of the Turks as the "Perennial Other" in Central Europe, due to the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, starting with the 14th century. The text I have chosen for my analysis is a travelogue produced by a British writer and traveller through Hungary and Romania in the 1930s: Between the Woods and the Water by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (published in Romanian translation in the spring of 2016).

17

Authors: Ildikó HORTOBÁGYI

With the exponential growth of digital technology, multimodality has become a normal state of communication (Kress, 2010). The emergence of Web 2.0 environments and the shift of Internet to accommodate highly interactive contents have generated new attitudes towards language and text. Drawing on recent related literature (Hesmondhalgh 2013, Danesi 2016, Tannen and Trester 2015), and relying on research carried out in the field of media literacy, the paper aims to prove that the internet has encouraged a dramatic expansion in the variety and creativity of language. Building on a comparative approach, online and offline communication instances exemplify how meaning is created and negotiated. Bi- and multilingualism, biliteracy, code-switching and language loyalty on digital platforms are also analysed. The relevant findings of the research may assist instructors while designing relevant teaching material to illustrate the importance of decoding medialects to construct meaning.