Tag: ACIC

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Too many (all?) global media and culture theories ignore the unique position of the United States

Dal Jong Yin’s “Hierarchy in Globalization Trends.” The model is quite useful. However, I believe it needs to be adjusted to account for the unique situation/positionality of the United States.

I am currently reading, and reviewing, a well-done text book, Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age, written by Simon Fraser scholar Dal Yong Jin. Jin, unlike many global media and communication scholars, has not been fully seduced by the cultural globalization, hybridization and glocalization perspectives whose adherents have dominated global media and communication studies for more than two decades — is this the longest ever dialectical swing away from one pole (cultural imperialism) to the other (cultural globalization), I sometimes wonder? 😉

Jin develops a solid middle ground between cultural imperialism and cultural globalization in this textbook, published in 2019. That is, he is careful to acknowledge that the reality of hybridization, which sees cultures inevitably mixed in cultural products and objects, does not erase substantial differences in cultural and political economic power. Jin also smartly acknowledges the fact that everything is indeed a hybrid, to one extent or another,  does not prevent hegemonic forces of globalization from co-opting and (ab)using hybridization and glocalization to suit their own globalizing (cultural) interests.

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Deconstructing cultural globalization and its valorization of individual agency

So, my work very much tilts toward the cultural imperialism side of a continuum of cultural imperialism vs. cultural globalization in the field of global media and communication studies. That is, I do not see individuals as having all that much power in terms of the age-old structure-agency debate.

I believe that we are primarily structured by forces outside of ourselves — long-running historical forces such as politics, ideology, culture, religion, socially-proscribed gender roles, etc. — primarily shape us and largely direct what sorts of “choices” we do (not) have.

I am especially very much opposed to the claim made by libertarian theorists that we do things own our “own.” We NEVER do anything completely on our own. NEVER!

What do I mean by this?

What I mean is that the entire history of the universe, the earth, and most importantly, the entire history of humanity — meaning the history of all human beings who have ever lived — precedes us. All of those human beings collectively, across time, through their also historically and socially situated being and actions created the social conditions and structures in which we today live as “individuals.” Continue reading “Deconstructing cultural globalization and its valorization of individual agency”

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American prestige press newspapers valorize and celebrate the global hegemony of “America’s” language

These five newspapers are among the most influential in the U.S. “ and even in the world. Their coverage of the global hegemony of English both reflects, and reproduces, American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC).

This abstract is for a paper published in the journal World Englishes that examines the ways in five major American newspapers — The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the L.A. Times  and the Miami Herald cover the global hegemony of English. The paper itself offers an overview of my Ph.D. doctoral thesis in which I conducted a critical discourse analysis of more than 200 articles published in five American prestige press newspapers across more than a decade’s worth of time, from 1991 to 2003. The analysis found, among other things, that, in general, the newspapers valorized and celebrated the rise of English as a global language. The global hegemony of English is central to American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) as it ensures that while billions of other people around the world learn English, the dominant language in the United States, precisely because billions of others are learning English, very few English-mother tongue speakers in the U.S. learn other languages to any meaningful degree of fluency. Continue reading “American prestige press newspapers valorize and celebrate the global hegemony of “America’s” language”

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American university students and the global hegemony of English

This abstract is for a paper published in the journal World Englishes that examines the ways in which more than 100 American college undergraduates reflect upon their own linguistic privilege vis-a-vis the global hegemony of English. The students reflect as well upon the ways in which being at the center of the global linguistic configuration of power also hurts them inasmuch as it reduces their incentive, and chances, to learn a non-English language. The global hegemony of English is central to American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) as it ensures that while billions of other people around the world learn English, the dominant language in the United States, precisely because billions of others are learning English, very few English-mother tongue speakers in the U.S. learn other languages to any meaningful degree of fluency. Continue reading “American university students and the global hegemony of English”

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American, Australian and Slovenian students debate the global hegemony of English

English is, far and away, the world’s most hegemonic language. This is true inasmuch as anyone who wants to rise to the top of global domains of power such as business, technology, science, higher education and law, pretty much has to learn English, typically to a very high degree of fluency.

Below is an abstract for a paper that examines the way in which the global hegemony of English privileges Anglo-Americans. The paper is based on a critical textual analysis of online discussion board exchanges about this topic among American, Australian and Slovenian university students. The global hegemony of English is central to American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) because it allows mother tongue speakers of English in the U.S. to get away without learning another language and therefore places a significant linguistic blinder on them. It also causes them to be more inward looking inasmuch as so few English-mother tongue speakers in the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom, etc. expand their linguistic horizons in any meaningful or deep way. A failure to expand these horizons means, of course — and this is redundant, I know — that their cultural and linguistic horizons are smaller and more inward pointing that members of other language groups all of who pretty much are required to learn English. Continue reading “American, Australian and Slovenian students debate the global hegemony of English”

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A South Korean film, Parasite, may have become the first non-English language best picture winner, but Americans still have little interest in foreign film

A poster for Parasite. In 2020, the South Korean film became the first non-English language film to ever win the best picture award at the Academy Awards . [Credit: CJ Entertainment]
For more than 100 years, the United States has been an exceedingly difficult market for non-English language films to penetrate. The historic win of the best picture award at the 92nd Academy Awards by the South Korean film Parasite cuts against that grain.

But only a little.

Yes, Parasite did break important new ground by becoming the first non-English-language film in the 92-year history of the Academy Awards to win the coveted best picture award. But — and this is an important but — it is the ONLY non-English language film, so far, to ever win this award. Continue reading “A South Korean film, Parasite, may have become the first non-English language best picture winner, but Americans still have little interest in foreign film”

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A listing of news media coverage of American Cultural Insularity

 

Credit: Wikimedia Creative Commons Graphic.

American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) does generate news media coverage, and has for awhile. In fact, the specific idea of ACIC seems to garner more attention in the news media than it does within academic research and scholarship where it is, within global media and international communication studies at least, largely overlooked as a phenomenon. Most of the attention by scholars is instead devoted to the impact of American culture outside of the United States rather than to some of the very clear, and also interesting, and, from a critical perspective, troubling dimensions of the comparative domination of American culture globally on its own domestic cultural production, consumption and distribution context.

Below is an obviously incomplete and somewhat eclectic but also interesting and revealing of list of news media coverage that touches upon, and often focuses upon, some dimension of or aspect of ACIC.  For now, I have organized the list chronologically, according to date of publication, from most recent to oldest.  I may change this organization as I search for, and come across, more news media coverage that either focuses on ACIC or touches on some significant aspect of it. Continue reading “A listing of news media coverage of American Cultural Insularity”

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American Cultural Insularity in the Center and the global hegemony of “standard” written Anglo-American English

Where American vs. British English tends to be taught as the “ideal” standard for those studying English as a Foreign Language (EFL). [Credit: reddit user Speech500]
The following paper  — The Globalization of English and the Question of a Global Written Standard — which examines the key question of the different ways in which a global written standard English privileges elite Americans and solidifies their global language and general cultural hegemony, puts forward what I believe to be a powerful and accurate – and extremely important – critique of the ways in which global power brokers (re)create a cultural and linguistic order that favors them and people like them.

I submitted it for consideration for publication in two academic journals: World Englishes and Language Problems & Language Planning. In total, three anonymous academic reviewers read my  submission. All three returned what I found to be hugely unfair and also demeaning and dehumanizing rejections. The often demeaning and hypocritical and poor treatment of other academics under the cloak of anonymity is one of the things I dislike most about the academic world. My experience has shown that far too often anonymous review results in people abusing their anonymity to blast writers of submissions in deeply personal and charged ways. In this case, the reviewers clearly did not like the fact that, in this paper, I was criticizing two things: Continue reading “American Cultural Insularity in the Center and the global hegemony of “standard” written Anglo-American English”

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American and Anglo-American films originally in English have dominated globally — and in the United States

Avengers: Endgame, an American Hollywood film, is the top-grossing film of all-time, globally, according to Box Office Mojo.

Hollywood films dominate Top 200 all-time biggest grossing films globally


If you want to get an idea of just how predominant American Hollywood films are globally, take a look at the Box Office Mojo all-time top grossing films page. The page, or, really, pages list(s) the top global grossing films according to box office receipts and includes 1,000 films.  American Hollywood films – and films originally produced in English – dominate this “global” list.

Avengers: Endgame poster
On Sept. 28, 2020, all of the Top 20 grossing films of all time, globally, were Anglo-American produced films.

Here are some of the highlights from the list, which underscore the continued predominance of American Hollywood films globally, at least when dominance is measured by way of money produced:

  1. All of the Top 20 grossing films, globally, are Anglo-American produced films originally produced in English.
  2. All of the Top 50 grossing films, globally, are Anglo-American produced films originally produced in English.
  3. All of the Top 100 grossing films, globally, are Anglo-American produced films originally produced in English.
  4. The very first non-Anglo-American film to break into the Box Office Mojo all-time top 1,000 grossing films, globally, is a Chinese film, Ne Zha, released in 2019. As of Sept. 28, 2020, it was ranked at No. 115. Globally, at that time, Ne Zha had garnered $726 million in box office receipts. Meanwhile, in the United States – and this a perfect example of American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC) – Ne Zha had made only $1 million in box office receipts.
  5. Detective Chinatown 2, another Chinese film, ranks at No. 187 on the Box Office Mojo all-time list as of Sept. 28, 2020, with $544 million in box office revenue. Meanwhile, the film earned less than $2 million in the United States.
  6. Just two of the Top 200 all-time grossing films globally are produced in a non-Anglo-American country, both in China. Both of those films did extremely poorly at the box office in the United States, offering further evidence of American Cultural Insularity in the Center and of un-even cultural flows and hierarchies. Cultural flows have historically skewed heavily in an outward direction from the United States with barely even a trickle of foreign films flowing in the other direction into the United States, at least when flow is measured by way of box office receipts, which is a powerful indicator of both political economic and cultural might.

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Building a theory of language and its role in human social reality — and in American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC)

People who speak languages of bigger more dominant and powerful groups are nearly always at a power advantage in terms of the global linguistic configuration of power. [Image Credit: Louise Mézel, Babbel.Com]
Few things are as central to human social being, identity and interaction as language (Fairclough, 2001; Lupyan, 2015). Language shapes the ways that we perceive of and understand “reality” (Morand, 2000; Sapir, 1981). Indeed, “reality” is itself a human concept that we encode via the so-called signifier “reality” in order to describe something “out there” and assign it meaning so that we can begin to make sense of that thing.

Without language of some kind – with language here broadly defined to include all forms of signed and spoken language, including facial expressions, etc., we humans would have no way to communicate with each other about this thing we call “reality.”

Most human beings – probably nearly all – spend vast amounts of their day thinking, and, for the most part, they are thinking in language – talking to themselves and to others endlessly, and internally, in a near endless loop of internal talk and speech (Vygotsky, 1984).

Not only can we not collectively and socially refer to, and communicate about, something called “reality” without some sort of language, we can’t really make sense of the world in which we live, both the natural and social world, without language. We are constantly in the act of naming and categorizing things. We use these names and categories to create meaning and we share our meaning(s) via the stories that we tell to ourselves and others about ourselves and about others as well as about the “objective” natural world (Geertz, 1973).

Continue reading “Building a theory of language and its role in human social reality — and in American Cultural Insularity in the Center (ACIC)”