PUBLISHER Faculty of Education and Humanities, International Burch University
Address: Francuske revolucije bb, 71210 Ilidža, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Phone: +387(0) 33 944 400 Fax: +387(0) 33 944 500
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Vildana Dubravac, PhD, International Burch University, BIH
EDITORIAL BOARD Senad Bećirović, PhD, International Burch University, BIH Amna Brdarević-Čeljo, PhD, International Burch University, BIH İbrahim Murat Öner, PhD, International Burch University, BIH Irena Zavrl, PhD, University of Applied Sciences, Burgenland, Austria Ruta Eidukevičlene, PhD, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania Teodora Popescu, PhD, University “1 Decembrie 1918”Alba Iulia, Romania Mirna Begagić, PhD, University of Zenica, BIH Adila Pašalić-Kreso, PhD, Academy of Sciences and Arts of BIH Gorčin Dizdar, PhD, International Burch University, BIH Žana Gavrilović, PhD, University of East Sarajevo, BIH Amer Džihana, PhD, International Burch University, BIH Asim Šahinpašić, PhD, International Burch University, BIH
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Azur Avdić
E-MAIL [email protected] © International Burch University, 2019
JOURNAL OF EDUCATION AND HUMANITIES Faculty of Education and Humanities, International Burch University Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 2019
CONTENTS
3 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić
17 The analysis of learning styles among high school students Haris Delić
29 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder
51 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković
65 Teaching English language to students of diverse cultures Amila Dautbašić & Jasna Saračević
76 Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima Asim Šahinpašić
Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2 (2), pp. 3-16, Winter 2019 Professional paper ISSN 2566-4638 © International Burch University https://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JEH2019221
Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66
Damir Kahrić, BA University of Sarajevo, Faculty of Philosophy, English Language and Literature Department, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract: This work presents an overview of the style and technique Keywords: William which William Shakespeare used in order to create his own form of Shakespeare, Sonnet 66, sonnet sequence. In other words, this article presents a detailed Iambic pentameter, New analysis of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 through the lens of the Criticism, Laza Kostić American New Critical approach. It means that the precise fourteen- line structure of the sonnet is examined, and such a structure reflects the Bard’s themes and ideas inside of the sonnet. The article gives an analysis of particular features of the American New Criticism and Article History the people who contributed to the creation of such a literary Submitted: 5 July 2019 criticism. Furthermore, the article explains the notion of how the Accepted: 13 November 2019 language used reflects the meaning behind Sonnet 66. Also, the article explains the ways in which the Bard influenced other poetry writers, such as Laza Kostić, as well as the manner through which he was able to insert elements of his poetic craft into the famous Shakespearean dramas.
Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 2019
1. INTRODUCTION
William Shakespeare, who has been mythologised in the English history, language and literature through many centuries, still remains one of the most prominent and mysterious figures within the English canon. When English literature is taken into account, Austen, Milton, Keats, Spenser or Coleridge are just some of the names which are closely associated with English literature, however Shakespeare’s name vividly stands out among the crowd of writers or poets. Shakespeare’s writing opus encompasses numerous plays and several longer poems, as well as his famous sonnet sequence. Firstly, this paper will analyse certain features of the so-called Shakespearean sonnet sequence, thus emphasising the notion of how this writer managed to formulate his own style when it comes to the creation of ‘little songs’. Afterwards, this article will present the characteristics of the American New Criticism, as a literary theory which will be applied in order to analyse Sonnet 66 line by line, focusing on its form rather than on its content. Also, by analysing the form of the sonnet, its meaning will also be interpreted, because the form of the language will be the reflection of the ‘story’ behind the poetic work.
As the very name implies, the New Critical approach will deal primarily with the formal aspects of Shakespeare’s poetry, examining the rhythm, rhyming scheme, syntactic structure, (iambic) metre used, as well as different metaphors or literary devices, figures of speech which the Bard used in order to convey his worldviews, dissatisfactions or general opinions on the reality which surrounded him during the Early Modern period in England. The stylistic features of Shakespearean sonnet sequence will also be analysed, taking into account the meticulous use of the so-called iambic pentameter, as a prosodic and poetic features, found commonly among Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. The article deals with the general longing for death that the poetic persona desires in order to depart from the cruel and corrupt world which surrounds him. Moreover, it deals with the manner in which Shakespeare uniquely brought to light all the evils which me might have encountered during his own lifetime, and how the unworthy have been given the status of prominence, whereas those of more calibre, integrity or potential have been downtrodden by those who hold power or some other form of authority. Finally, this article will describe some of the ways in which Shakespeare’s lyrical cycle influenced other authors, such as Laza Kostić, or even how the Bard was able to transmit some of this poetic gifts onto his other literary pieces, mainly his dramatic literary opus, such as with the examples of A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Romeo and Juliet.
This paper will emphasise the practical use of New Criticism in Shakespeare’s lyrical cycle, more prominently Sonnet 66, and will examine the relationship between the form, the structure of the sonnet and the meaning which the author implemented into his writings. As the Bard’s words carry particular meaning, the followers of the American New Criticism focus more on the poetic language used
4 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić in order to interpret the paradoxes, ironies and other literary metaphors. In other words, the writer’s lexis reflects the meaning of the content. Through close reading of Sonnet 66 it becomes apparent that even particular prefixes carry important semantic connotations, relevant for the understanding of Shakespeare’s artistic language. However, it should be noted that New Criticism may not be the most prominent of literary theory present in the 21st century, yet scholars who apply it are able to better decipher the author’s messages if the language used by the same author is closely studied. Therefore, this paper will explain how the language in its own form (i. e. metre, rhyme, line number, etc.) can be used adequately to interpret Shakespeare’s dissatisfaction with his own society and the deep lamentation which the speaker is expressing.
2. SHAKESPEARE’S ‘LITTLE SONGS’
From Elizabethan times, three most prominent types of sonnets have been used in Europe: Petrarchan, Shakespearean, and Spenserian sonnets. Many of the sonnet sequences which appeared after the Tudor period, in England, have actually been modelled after those kinds of poetic pieces. In essence, Shakespearean sonnet can be defined as: “A lyric poem consisting of a single stanza of fourteen iambic pentameter lines linked by an intricate rhyme scheme” (Abrams, 1999, p. 290). On the other side, Shakespearean sonnets are exquisitely sentimental in their theme: they interweave aspects of love (requited or unreturned), passion, lust and deep yearning, but also possess different addresses which are still disputed by contemporary scholars of Shakespearean studies. Whether Shakespeare felt some bisexual or homosexual tendencies towards a young man who is described as vividly fair, or whether he cheated on his spouse, Anne Hathaway, with an unknown woman, described on the other hand as having black hair and dark skin, truly remains unknown even to this very day. Also, the precise identity of the beautiful young man is rather unsubstantiated, even though there are some suggestions that the aforementioned persona could have actually been his close friend and his ‘poetic Maecenas’, the Earl of Southampton. There is a third (speculated) addressee, as well, who is occasionally described as being an anonymous ‘rival poet’ of the Bard. It should be noted that the thematic features of Shakespeare’s lyrical cycle are not the only fascinating aspects of his writings nor are the already-mentioned addressees the only interesting points of his sonnets.
The Earl of Southampton can be perceived as the person who promoted Shakespeare to actually widen his entire writing opus, in which case, poetry became an essential part of Shakespeare’s writings (Bloom, 2008, p. 312). The Bard’s plays, as particular forms of entertainment for everyone, encompass certain features of Shakespeare’s lyrical genre and style, thus many formal characteristics of his poetry can also be traced within his dramas. The prominent form which Shakespeare used in order to actually breathe life into these poems
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are of extreme interest to different literary theorists. Primarily, his style is unique, his sentence structure recognisable, his metre perfected and it is possible that there is not a single person within the continent of Europe who has not at least once heard a line from any Shakespearean sonnet at one point or another in their lifetimes. Therefore, it is obvious how much the writings of this Renaissance and Jacobean poet influenced world literature prior and post 1616. This article will approach Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 from a new, critical perspective. In other words, the article is going to closely examine and exemplify numerous elements which are closely knit with the creative foundation of this particular poem.
It should be noted that Sonnet 66 was relatively ‘ignored’ by different scholars from the English-speaking countries. In other words, not many scholars generally focused on that particular sonnet, with a notable exception of Helen Vendler, especially in the 21st century. However, there are other authors who tried to capture and interpret the meaning behind Sonnet 66 both in terms of its content and form. Taking into account a more contemporary timeframe, Pfister (2010, p. 40) explains in his article that this sonnet was used by artists in order to ‘ventilate’ their anger directed towards totalitarian systems, particularly during WWII, but their anger was also directed towards all those who wanted to corrupt or silence art, as such. In the same regard, the Bard heavily criticised those who would tongue-tie art. Pfister observes the style of the aforementioned sonnet, whereas this paper similarly analyses the formal aspects of Shakespeare’s language, which in turn depicts the writer’s description of the community around the speaking persona.
Besides Vendler’s work dubbed The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and Pfister’s analysis of the importance of Sonnet 66, Natalya Borisovna Zubareva also wrote an article examining the features of language used in Sonnet 66, as well as in other Shakespearean writings. Zubareva explains the basic word and sound structure of Sonnet 66, as well as the metrical importance of his poetic craft. Zubareva (2017, p. 687) also explains in her article that: “With only small degrees of variation, Shakespeare primarily used a metrical pattern consisting of lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter, or blank verse, to compose his plays. At the same time, there are passages in all the plays that deviate from this and use forms of poetry or simple prose”. The author in this particular case does not necessarily focus on Sonnet 66 through the prism of New Criticism, yet she closely examines the linguistic patterns, musicality of words, the use of metre and rhythm, and these elements are of extreme importance for the followers of the American New Criticism. Thus, certain similarities can be found between the works of Pfister and Zubareva, as well as this paper. It becomes apparent that New Criticism, as a literary theory, can greatly contribute to other researchers in the process of analysing the Bard’s poetic verse and his creative linguistic patterns.
6 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić
3. FORMALIST APPROACH TO SONNET 66
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, As to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, And purest faith unhappily forsworn, And gilded honour shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Tired with all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone (Vendler, 1999, p. 307).
This article will present a new critical analysis of one of Shakespeare’s most controversial and universal sonnets. The New Critical approach applied in the sonnet analysis will focus primarily on the form of the short poem and the language used. The American New Critics focus on the language used in literature, poetry because they saw it as: “… providing an almost mystical experience of coherence in which opposites – language and meaning, spirit and matter, content and form, the particular and the universal – are reconciled” (Ryan, 1999, p. 4). Therefore, it is apparent that literary language, as such, can contribute to a more objective analysis of a given work, whereas it can also tie different binaries together in order to create meaning through the sonnet’s form. Some of the names which are closely associated with the Anglo-American New Critical movement are I. A. Richards, William Empson, T. S. Eliot or even Cleanth Brooks. Brooks, for example, carefully studied, observed and examined poetic pieces, such as Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn and thereby he would be able to find particular paradoxical images within poetry, and those images spoke of opposites such as: “… fluidity and stillness, the ideal and the ordinary…” (Ryan, 1999, p. 5). The very language applied in poetry differs from the ordinary speech used in everyday communication, and taking into account Shakespeare’s mastering of such poetic language, it is obvious that the Bard knew how to apply his language/linguistic capacities in order to present a clearly understandable flow of unmistakable emotions through which he would convey his deep sorrows and regrets because of all the atrocities he had been experiencing during his own lifetime. However, in addition to Shakespeare’s own talent in creating verse, the (poetic) language which the New Critics would examine can actually be found other literary or non-literary texts, as well, and this is due to the fact that:
“By the very nature of the human being, the ordinary citizen in the ordinary day speaks much of what we might call incipient poetry-he attempts to
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communicate attitudes, feelings, and interpretations. (Unfortunately, most of this poetry is bad poetry.) And poetry in this sense is not confined to the speech of the ordinary citizen. It appears also in editorials, sermons, political speeches, magazine articles, and advertisements.” (Brooks, Jr. & Warren, 1938, p. 7)
Certain integral parts of Sonnet 66 which are of great interest for the American New Criticism are rhythm and metre of this particular ‘little song’. In other words, if the form of the sonnet and the metaphors used are the main focus of New Critical analysis, then it is suffice to say that particular aspects of its form are also of vital importance for one such analysis of this Shakespearean sonnet. “Rhythm and its specialized form, metre, depend upon repetition, and expectancy. Equally where what is expected recurs and where it fails, all rhythmical and metrical effects spring from anticipation. As a rule this anticipation is unconscious. Sequences of syllables both as sounds and as images of speech-movements leave the mind ready for certain further sequences rather than for others.” (Richards, 2004, p. 133)
In a similar fashion to the Russian Formalism, the followers of New Criticism examine the language of a given literary work and thereby they derive the meaning from the written piece, and those essential parts which are observed through close-reading are certain tropes and metaphors, which Shakespeare used in his literary opus, for example, as well as different symbolisms, literary ironies and paradoxes. By doing so, secondary meaning(s) are derived and such meanings cannot be examined by the means of “… simple, straightforward denotative speech” (Ryan, 1999, p. 5).
It becomes apparent that certain words and/or images are capable of presenting different meanings which Shakespeare hid underneath the basic structure of his sonnet sequence and the analysis of Sonnet 66 can be adequately applied. Finally, it should be noted that the American New Criticism can be applied to any Shakespeare’s work, regardless whether the literary piece is one of his famous dramas or his shorter or longer poems, because the meaning in either halves of his writing opus can be derived from the manner in which the Bard created his extraordinarily famous plays or poems, as such.
Among 154 Shakespearean sonnets, there is one which stands out, possibly, more than any other. The poem is dubbed Sonnet 66 and it presents the writer’s contempt with his own Renaissance world, but it also perfectly depicts the contemporary period. It would appear that not much has changed from the Early Modern period to the age of Post-postmodern and that presents a particularly gloomy picture of the human society. The aforementioned sonnet presents the speaker’s dissatisfaction with the community of his own age, but if one tries to truly understand the world of Shakespeare and the world of Tudor/Jacobean England, one ought to understand the circumstances which
8 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić influenced the Bard to write such a poetic piece. Oscar Wilde claimed in one of his essays: “And he who desires to understand Shakespeare truly must understand the relations in which Shakespeare stood to the Renaissance and the Reformation, to the age of Elizabeth and the age of James; he must be familiar with the history of the struggle for supremacy between the old classical forms and the new spirit of romance, between the school of Sidney, and Daniel, and Johnson, and the school of Marlowe …” (The Critic As Artist, 2007)
Therefore, it is obvious that in order to understand the content of Shakespeare’s plays and his poems, one ought to consider the socio-cultural background which vividly influenced the thematic and formalistic features of his works. The poetic persona is openly describing the world of the Elizabethan era, presenting the utmost dissatisfaction with the entire society, as such. Sonnet 66 is presenting the entire line of different individuals that readers can ‘get acquainted with’ once they starts analysing the short poem.
The very first line presents a particular type of a ‘prologue’, in which case the phrase ‘all these’ encompasses different aspects of Shakespeare’s society which will be described further on within the sonnet lines. Every sentence seems to present a particular victim of the society, whereas after the seventh line, the victims get accompanied by their own victimisers. In other words, it becomes evident who the actual perpetrators are. “Who makes art tongue-tied? Authority. Who controls skill? Folly” (Vendler, 1999, p. 308). The poem could be divided into two major parts; the first half, after the opening two sentences, presents the speaker’s lament. The lament is obviously growing inside of the speaker. The pain, disillusionment and suffering are just some of the displeasures that the poetic voice is actually experiencing and is, therefore, in a vivid lament due to all these uncouth occurrences that the society is going through. However, in the second half of the sonnet, starting from the seventh line, it becomes apparent that the speaker is transforming the lament into determination. Pragmatically speaking, the poetic voice is still experiencing some degree of pain and displeasure, yet now, the poetic voice starts calling out the perpetrators openly, therefore brining the accused into the light (Vendler, 1999, p. 308). Shakespeare speaks about the dichotomies of the society, on one side there are those who are downtrodden, whereas on the other, there are those individuals of power and of wealth who oppress the aforementioned lot. The poetic voice seemingly gains more power, more courage and more willingness to openly talk about the trouble of the world. Moreover, since Shakespeare’s discourse gradually changes, the sonnet could entwine two kinds of Shakespeare’s own voice. Alike polyphony, the first voice is resentful, bitter, yet vividly sad, however the second kind of the voice is more determined and more willing to (possibly) try to change the order of things, lest the entire society collapses underneath the pressure of the people who are destroying the true values.
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If there were a complete balance created within this poetic piece, then the first octave would possibly present the unaccompanied persons, while the third quatrain would depict the innocents alongside the wrongdoers. In the final line of the octave, we see a single sentence combining the victim and the victimiser which entering too early, whereas the final quatrain possesses a single ‘victim- only’ line, which is actually the line number eleven. Also, it should be noted that if there were a particular balance between the octave and the final quatrain, then the past participle would control the octave and the present participle would be found in the final quatrain. Nonetheless, Shakespeare masterfully uses the past participle which enters the sestet, evidently portraying the Shakespearean version of a literary volta (Vendler, 1999, p. 309). Also, the Bard could have presented all the undermined individuals in the first octave, isolating them in order to have them dominate the whole octave, but he likewise decided to present the victims accompanied with those who have been climbing the ladder of society due to some evil undertakings. Thus, Shakespeare could have been gravely concerned with two particular types of injustice(s), one being the undeserved social position and other one being the destruction of the less fortunate individuals who did not manage to obtain, use and abuse any sort of power (Vendler, 1999, p. 309).
Furthermore, Shakespeare presents an almost perverse form of evil which is noticeable in his society. Primarily, when the phrases from the fourth to the seventh line are analysed, it becomes clear that there are many adverbs which Shakespeare employed in order to present the deterioration of the social order: unhappily, shamefully, rudely, wrongfully. These adverbs seem to be juxtaposed with the non-existent normality of the social hierarchy, in which case they seem to overpower it and completely annihilate everything which is good or virtuous. Also, the pervasion of the social order seems to be reflected in a number of prefixes which Shakespeare used with his adverbs and adjectives: un-happily, for-sworn, mis-placed, dis-graced, dis-abled. “The corrupt society is being measured against an independent morality firmly held to be self-evident” (Vendler, 1999, p. 309). Figuratively speaking, Shakespeare juxtaposes the worthy and the unworthy. From the third line, once he starts introducing the main subjugated persons, he presents the notions of how someone, who is genuinely worthy of good fortune, is robbed of that honour, but also how the lowest of the low have climbed up the social ladder (undeservingly), and so on. Therefore, almost every line describes dichotomies, binaries, two opposites in which one is a victim while the other part is the victimiser. The virtuous, the good, the truthful, the strong, the honourable and all those other people who share good qualities will be, eventually, subjugated to all manner of different evils. In the final couplet, the poetic voice is actually contemplating suicide, just as in the first two lines, whereas the speaker makes it clear that it is only because of love that the voice decides to stay among the living and not cross the threshold of death. In other words, the poetic voice is reluctant to take his own life: “… And who, under such conditions, could justify leaving his love – somewhere in the
10 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić procession – alone” (Vendler, 1999, p. 310). If Shakespeare did contemplate suicide at a particular juncture, alike the protagonist of his magnum opus Prince Hamlet, then he certainly decided to stay alive due to the fact that his loved one (whoever the anonymous addressee may be) would be left all alone, unprotected and vulnerable in such a world where true values are no longer appreciated.
There is a possibility that Shakespeare used certain Christian parallels with the seven cardinal sins. The deadly sins open up the entire poem, whereas the internal, cognitive, emotional and spiritual sins appear to be more complicated and thus are more serious than particular earthly sins connected to greed or lust (Seven deadly sins, 2010). The entire culmination can be observed once the spiritual or intellectual sins are mentioned, but taking into account that Shakespeare was an artist himself, there is no doubt that the Bard of Avon heavily criticised the censorship of art. The art ought not to be tied down by anyone and should not be subdued to someone’s whims. The art should transcend the ideas of subjugation, the very role of art should never be lost under the evils of the world. Should the speaker become tongue-tied, as the sonnet implies, then the dire repercussions would be reflected on the eloquence of the poet. In addition to his literary devices, his metaphors, Shakespeare’s specific syntax perpetuates the idea found within the very first line. The poetic voice seems to be weary, perhaps even exhausted, due to all the evils which he had witnesses. The middle part (lines three to ten) of Sonnet 66 commences with a conjunction ‘and’. Since that conjunction is repeated on so many occasions, it presents the notion that the speaker is actually tired. The eloquence of this ‘little song’ is deteriorating, due to his tired condition, the poetic voice is influenced by the same phenomenon which Shakespeare is criticising. The lyrical voice is obviously becoming tongue- tied. Every line seems to be anticlimactic due to so many identical lexemes being repeated and the ‘exhausted sonnet’ can only be reinvigorated once the readers start focusing on the imagery of different persons in the poem and thereby connect them to the people of the contemporary era. That is to say, numerous aspects of Shakespeare’s own age can be easily identified with the world of the 21st century (Vendler, 1999, p. 310).
In addition to numerous literary devices which Shakespeare inserted into Sonnet 66, the form of Shakespearean sonnets remains one of the most interesting parts of his short poems. Shakespeare’s sonnets, his ‘little songs’, share (almost) identical features. It is apparent that Shakespeare remained faithful to his form, but moreover his form presents an artistic language which can be either completely flamboyant and complex or utterly straightforward and understandable to both the royals and commoners alike. His 154 sonnets are short poetic pieces which are comprised of 14 lines. Sonnet 66 has three quatrains, ending with a couplet, and as it is evident with Sonnet 66, the first two lines and the ending couplet are usually somewhat connected. Quatrains are often used in English literature and such four-line stanzas are connected to numerous metres and rhyming schemes (Abrams, 1999, p. 295). This sonnet possesses a regular
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rhyming scheme, in a similar fashion to the rest of the sonnets in Shakespeare’s book, whereas the scheme is: abab cdcd efef gg. Metre, as such, can be defined as: “… the recurrence, in regular units, of a prominent feature in the sequence of speech-sounds of a language” (Abrams, 1999, p. 159). The type of a metre which Shakespeare used is dubbed ‘iambic pentameter’. The Bard of Avon used iambic pentameter masterfully, presenting the high degree of skill when it comes to writing such five-stress iambic verses.
The ‘iambic clothing’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 66 incorporates universal messages, worlds of different epochs which come together and start sharing similar features. Through his iambic stanzas, Shakespeare managed to depict many individuals, standing side by side, being influenced by the society which they inhabit. His poetic characters possess universal traits which can be found in every person, no matter what age he or she may belong to. Thus, it is no wonder that Shakespeare successfully tackled the minds and creative strings of different playwrights and poets all over the globe. For example, many poets mimicked the Bard’s use of iambic pentameter, which can also be observed in his dramatic opus. A famous Serbian poet of Romanticism called Laza Kostić glorified Shakespeare to such an extent that he wrote a particular hymn which celebrates Shakespeare as the ‘flower’ of God’s creation on earth. “He was the first to translate Shakespeare directly from English into Serbian, by using the iambic verse for the first time. He has written the ode to Shakespeare in the glory of the English bard” (Laza Kostić and Shakespeare – the strongest connection, 2010). Therefore, it is obvious that the Bard of Avon successfully influenced other poets who even were not even from the English-speaking territories. Among many others, Kostić modelled his poem, his ode, after Shakespeare’s own skill when it comes to creating verses and the Serbian poet was, to a particular extend, rather successful, even though his poem was not even written in the English language. Taking into account certain features of Shakespeare’s use of iambic pentameter, it is apparent that the same metre was used in Shakespeare’s tragedies, comedies and other works. For example, the story of the tragic love between Romeo and Juliet incorporates different instances at which Shakespeare applied his iambic pentameter, but one of the most exquisite examples of that can be read in the lines: “But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun” (Yarbrough, 2014). This romantic quote beautifully exemplifies how useful iambic pentameter actually is, even in his tragedies. On the other hand, the last speech of Puck which ends the entire play of A Midsummer Night’s Dream can serve as one of the examples wherein Shakespeare used iambs, yet not applying the regular form of iambic pentameter. “The first two lines of the speech are fairly clearly written in strict trochaic tetrameter, and the last two lines are written in iambic tetrameter. However, most of the lines in between contain only seven syllables. This allows the lines to be interpreted as either iambic or trochaic tetrameter” (Lee, 2011). Therefore, it is apparent that Shakespeare managed to insert confusion and uncertainties into the theme and form of his dramatic pieces. Since A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a comedy overflowing with confusion and
12 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić misunderstandings, the very plotline reflects the ambiguity in which Shakespeare manages to create his verse.
William Shakespeare was can be perceived as the greatest writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean England due to the fact that his writing craft presents universal characters, settings and didactical messages which remain eloquent for every period of history. Even if his entire dramatic opus was disregarded, the number of his poems and his sonnets would still make him one of the most prolific authors of his own age. The Bard himself remains a mystery to this very day, and likewise does his lyrical cycle. In essence, this paper shed new light on Sonnet 66 which has frequently been overlooked by other authors and it presented a new framework in which the same poem could be analysed. That is to say, this paper combined the techniques of New Criticism and thus helped in the promotion of Sonnet 66. The paper observed Sonnet 66 and associated it with the world of the 21st century, stressing the importance of the artistic language and the universal themes which the Bard successfully incorporated in the aforementioned poetic piece. This paper contributed in drawing more attention to Shakespeare’s lyrical cycle, primarily Sonnet 66, among the newer generations of Shakespeare scholars by focusing on its unique linguistics features and by stressing the universality of the themes.
Through his sonnets, Shakespeare addresses his readers, through the poetic personae he speaks with anyone who is willing to analyse his poems. In that regard, Shakespeare is similar to one of the ancient deities; he is alike Janus, a Roman god who possessed two faces. He speaks of sorrow, of lost ideals and of earthly evils by presenting once face, but also gives particular notions of hope with his second face in order for his readers to understand that there is still some good in the world that ought to triumph. William Shakespeare presents numerous dichotomies, he presents opposites and diversities to all those who are immersed into poetry. Therefore, Sonnet 66 can be observed as a medium which Shakespeare used because he wanted everyone to know what the dangers of a corrupt society are, but that sonnets also presents an entire stage of individuals who pass through each era. The form of his sonnet serves as a mirror for its content, whereas every line talks about ills and good fortunes in a world where true values no longer apply. In that sense, Shakespeare’s sonnets transcend any boundaries and tackle the important issues of every person, regardless of their background or their class status.
4. CONCLUSION
This paper depicted the formalist analysis of Sonnet 66 through the prism of the American New Criticism. The article explained certain features of Shakespeare’s sonnet sequence, but also the primary ideas which guide the followers of the American New Critical approach. Moreover, New Criticism focused on the
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formal use of the poetic language, the basic structure of Sonnet 66 in order to understand the meanings behind Shakespeare’s words. By exploring the linguistic patterns and the language which William Shakespeare used in his poetic craft, one is able to better comprehend the amount of irony, paradox and tension which are required for the analysis of Shakespeare’s ‘little songs’. This paper explored the deep lament and dissatisfaction which the speaker is expressing, and the manner in which Shakespeare employed language to create paradoxes between those unworthy individuals who take power and those in the society who are used and abused by the former category. The poetic voice, suffocated by the overwhelming grief, even begins contemplating suicide, yet realises that his beloved one would be then left alone in such a cruel world, unguarded and that thought is something which prompts the speaker to stay alive. In the concluding part of this article, readers observed the influence of Shakespeare’s lyrical style outside of the Anglophone sphere. The Bard’s writings style, his use of iambic pentameter was also greatly praised by Laza Kostić, who modelled his own poetic pieces after Shakespeare’s lyrical craft. Kostić did not only exalt Shakespeare’s dramas and poems but was also fascinated by the originality in his approach, and thus employed the rhythmical patterns, the metre and literary devices in his own poetry, similarly to Shakespeare during the Renaissance era in England. Lastly, the paper depicted some of the key poetic formal elements which Shakespeare masterfully transmitted from his lyrical cycle to his dramatic works, including both tragedies and comedies.
It should be noted that even though New Criticism is no longer a predominant literary theory in the 21st century, particular elements, such as close reading, do remain vital for the understanding of different literary texts. Furthermore, the American New Criticism closely focuses on the formal outline of a certain literary text, because the language reflects the inherent meaning behind it. As observed in Sonnet 66, the speaker’s words in a linguistic sense actually uncover deep emotions hidden beneath the lines of the text. By observing the sentence structure, the morphological usage of negative prefixes, and the paradoxes which Shakespeare creates, such an approach grants more emphasis on the language of the author which in turn contributes to a batter understating of the writer’s message. William Shakespeare was a master of words, as he was able to convey universal ideas throughout various epochs and such ideas were both significant in his era, but likewise remain rather relevant in the 21st century. The language, the use of irony and tension in the speaker’s voice presents a whirl of scenes which in turn create a mosaic depicting corrupt society that Shakespeare was a part of. Thus, it becomes apparent that the poetic language reflects the meaning of Sonnet 66 and vice versa; both sides are entwined. Sonnet 66 no longer has to remain overshadowed by other, more prominent ‘little songs’, but rather it can find its well-deserved place in the Bard’s lyrical cycle, and furthermore it can be fully appreciated by a larger number of researchers.
14 Re-examination of Shakespeare’s Lyrical Cycle: New Criticism and Sonnet 66 Damir Kahrić
The significance of New Criticism is not lost and in close reading of artistic texts, it remains apparent that when discovering the ‘magic’ of the author’s language, one is actually able to fully grasp the writer’s thought or emotion. New Criticism contributes to the field of Shakespearean studies by emphasising the relevance of the Bard’s lexis, indicating that the poetic voice speaking is actually the voice of the original author, and through his artistic language, different researchers can ‘dissect’ his poetic lines to reveal the original messages behind them. Such a formalist approach can help the readers analyse the stress, tone and rhythm of the author’s emotion and in essence discover the writer’s perspective on certain matters. Thus it is important to mention that the American New Critical approach can be applied to any number of William Shakespeare’s literary pieces, and such a literary theory can be used in further studies among the researchers who decide to examine his dramas, narrative poems or his sonnet sequence. By applying the New Critical approach, one can obtain a more objective or scientific perspective on the relation between the artistic language and the content of any given literary genre.
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REFERENCES
Abrams, M. H. (1999). A Glossary of Literary Terms, 7th ed. Boston: Heinle & Heinle
Bloom, H. (2008). The Sonnets (Bloom’s Shakespeare Through the Ages). New York: Infobase Publishing
Brooks, Jr., C. and Warren, R. P. (1938). Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for College Students, New York: Henty Holt and Company, Inc.
Laza Kostić and Shakespeare – the strongest connection. (2010). The “Laza Kostić”. Retrieved from http://www.the-laza-kostic-fund.com/en/laza-kostic-and-shakespeare- the-strongest-connection--nid-25.1.12.html
Lee, R. (2011, October, 28). Puck’s Final Lines. Ryan Lee: Integral Language Reflections. Retrieved from https://rglee.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/pucks-final-lines/ Pfister, M. (2010). ROUTE 66 AND NO END: FURTHER FORTUNES OF SHAKESPEARE’S SONNET 66. Linguaculture, 2: 39-50. DOI: 10.2478/v10318- 012-0007-5
Richards, I. A. (2004). Principles of Literary Criticism. London: Taylor & Francis e- Library
Ryan, M. (1999). Literary Theory: A Practical Introduction. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publisher Inc.
Seven deadly sins. (2010, January, 21). Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/seven-deadly-sins
The Critic As Artist. (2007). Oscar Wilde Online. Retrieved from http://www.wilde-online.info/about-us.htm
Vendler, H. (1999). The Art of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Cambridge Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Yarbrough, R. (2014, December, 15). Romeo and Juliet: Act II, Scene 2 Through the Years. Scalar. Retrieved from http://scalar.usc.edu/works/romeo-and-juliet-act-2- scene-2-through-the-years/iambic-pentameter-in-act-ii-scene-2
Zubareva, N. B. (2017). W. SHAKESPEARE – B. PASTERNAK – D. SHOSTAKOVICH. SONNET 66 (THE QUESTION OF ARTISTIC TRANSLATION). The Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art and Communication TOJDAC April 2017 Special Edition, 2017, Special Edition: 685-692. DOI NO: 10.7456/1070ASE/068
16 Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2 (2), pp. 17-28, Winter 2019 Original research paper ISSN 2566-4638 © International Burch University https://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JEH2019222
The analysis of learning styles among high school students
Haris Delić, MA Faculty of Education and Humanities, International Burch University Francuske revolucije bb, Ilidža 71210, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract: It is important for the effectiveness of learning Keywords: Learning, styles, environments to consider group or individual learners’ high school students, gender, characteristics, competences and experiences throughout the grades process of planning learning environments. This study aimed at investigating the differences of language learning styles between males and females and among four high school grades. The participants were 90 male (46.2%) and 105 female (53.8%) high school students studying at public religious high school (Madrasa) Article History in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For testing the main research questions, Submitted: 17 June 2019 a 5-point likert scale questionnaire was distributed to 195 high Accepted: 19 November 2019 school students. While no significant correlation was found between learning styles and gender, a significant correlation was unexpectedly found between learning styles and grades. These results are a good platform for the research of gender and grade based differences among language learners.
Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 2019
1. INTRODUCTION
The learning process is present throughout human life. Sometimes a person learns consciously, directly, with the goal and within a certain scientific field, and sometimes learning takes place unconsciously, spontaneously, in a child's game or in various life situations. Hence, a proverb says that in fact learning has only its beginning and never ends. The process of learning, or the adoption, processing and the development of knowledge and experience, through formal education is different for each individual. Thus, learning styles are grouped according to the characteristics and ways of learning of individuals or groups. Hence, we have a visual learning style which prefers learning by watching and an auditory style in which listening is an easier way of learning. Some learners can have an environmental impact on the process and learning efficiency, while for others this does not at all represent an important factor in learning. It is also possible that students have the need to combine the styles mentioned above or a number of other styles. These and many other learning styles help us to look at the learning process in a more comprehensive way and to help teachers, as well as students themselves, in mastering knowledge and skills in learning.
We can determine the style of learning by offering students the opportunity to choose different activities and then monitor their functioning. Sometimes students are not even aware of their preferred learning style, they have not paid attention to it or they have not been advised. In this way, a student can reveal the style of learning that best suits him and for which he has not known. We can also conclude on the style of learning on the basis of monitoring and analyzing students' success. Students are more successful when we check their knowledge by activities that demand the application of their dominant style of learning (Jensen, 2003). There are, as we have stated, various models of learning styles. Differences between definitions and learning style models are the result of the fact that learning takes place in different ways so that authors define learning through different aspects. Shuell (1986, p. 420) states that "the different ways that individuals use to adopt and process information and to respond to phenomena around them determine their learning style”. Learning styles for Jensen (1998) are one of the ways of thinking, understanding and processing information, while for Kolb (1984) learning styles are the methods of personal choice of looking and processing information. In this way, learning styles are, on the one hand, sensitive, and on the other hand, mental.
18 The analysis of learning styles among high school students Haris Delić
2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1. STYLES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Learning styles are preferred ways of processing and memorizing things being learned and throughout the research they are described as cognitive and psychological attributes that indicate how learners perceive, process, and maintain the information and knowledge. In literature there exist numerous learning styles and learning style models. For some researchers learning styles are “predispositions to particular ways of approaching learning” (Richards & Lockhart, 1994, p. 59), and for others styles serve as “the general approaches students use to learn a new subject or tackle a new problem” (Oxford et al., 1992, p. 449). One of the definitions says that “learning style is a biologically and developmentally imposed set of personal characteristics that make the same teaching method effective for some and ineffective for others” (Dunn et al., 2002, p. 75). Furthermore, Ortega (2009) defines learning styles as the “preferences people have when perceiving, remembering and using information for problem solving and for learning” (Ortega, 2009, p. 205). Dunn (2002) states that “chronobiology is also part of style: some people are “morning people”; some are “night owls” (Dunn et al., 2002, p. 76). In Lorenzo’s dissertation (2015) there is an extensive classification of learning styles classified according to different authors and their views. Styles can be seen as a means of checking how individuals operate with the intelligence they have which does not mean to measure the level of intelligence but rather to check how and to which extent they use that intelligence. We can find throughout research that people learn more when they are aware of their learning styles (O'Connor, 1997). Moreover, the determination of learners’ learning styles helps teachers and educational planners to provide students necessary educational support and supplies (Anderson & Elloumi, 2004), because learning styles are crucial factors in learners' learning. Studies about learning show that considering learning styles in planning and presenting education can improve learning processes meaningfully (Dwyer, 1998).
2.2. TYPES OF LEARNING STYLES
Xu (2015) writes that there are “over seventy learning style models”, and that some of them are dependent/independent style, holistic, reflective, impulsive style etc. However, all these styles, according to him, can be categorized into three major types: perceptual learning styles, cognitive learning styles, and personality learning styles (Xu, 2015, p. 414). The importance of learning styles lies in learners’ awareness of their best-working way of language learning. Since learning is the process which supposes constant efforts, being aware of their preferred way of learning is of crucial importance. After identifying the best- working style there are activities which fit for students of different learning styles. The categories of learning styles differ based on different approaches in educational research. Cassidy and Eachus (2000) state that “there are a number
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of learning‐related concepts, such as perception of academic control and achievement motivation which have been a focus of attention when attempting to identify factors affecting learning‐related performance” (Cassidy & Eachus, 2000, p. 321). Therefore the concept of learning styles is broad and categorized into a variety of definitions, theoretical positions, models, interpretations and measures. The most used models are presented by Cassidy (2010) and the one that is used in this research is Paige at al’s (2006) "Learning style survey: Assessing your own learning styles". This model consists of the following styles: Field-dependent learning style can be understood as a way of relying on context or a broader concept of a given issue, while in contrary a field-independent learning style tends to separate detail(s) from context (Zianuddin et al., 2007). As Cassidy (2010) describes field‐independent learners are intrinsically motivated and do not need to rely on other(s) while field‐dependent learners have a need for guidance from the instructor, and a desire to interact with other learners, and are thus extrinsically motivated. He continues saying that “as a style it is associated with a general preference for learning in isolation (field‐ independence) as opposed to integration (field‐dependence)” (Cassidy, 2010, p. 425). Some people are more, and some less, influenced by the context when performing a skill or learning.
Introverted and extroverted learning styles deal usually with a learner’s openness or relaxation and shyness or closure to his/her own learning space. Extroverted learners, as outgoing and comfortable, feel relaxed while working with others and in social context. Introverted, contrary, appear reserved and prefer doing things on their own. Unfortunately, through biased conclusions, extroverts in classrooms are more popular and are usually given more chances. As suggested by Lawrence (2015, p. 5) “today’s contemporary society is designed to accommodate and reward only the extrovert, and this bias begins in our schools”. Introverted learners cannot be marked as uninterested and uninvolved just because they are silent. They can absorb more by active listening and reflecting.
Auditory learners are those that learn better by listening and they store information in the way they hear it. As Gilakjani (2012) states “These individuals discover information through listening and interpreting information by the means of pitch, emphasis and speed. They gain knowledge from reading out loud in the classroom and may not have a full understanding of information that is written” (Gilakjani, 2012, p. 106). Visual learners learn by seeing things or concepts and by reading a written text. They prefer to see what they learn such as photos, diagrams, maps and graphs. Tactile learners prefer physical movement, touching and doing. These types of learners easily remember things that were done but may have difficulty remembering what has been seen or heard in the process.
20 The analysis of learning styles among high school students Haris Delić
2.3. AGE AND GENDER IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
The issue of the relationship between age and gender, on the one hand, and learning success, on the other has raised great research interest so far (Bećirović, 2017; Bećirović & Hurić-Bećirović, 2017). Thus, Delić et al. (2018) investigated possible effects of age and gender on language learning process. In that paper gender differences on given research were significantly different while different grades, different ages, did not present any significant difference (Delić et al., 2018). The concept of gender has been investigated by researchers of learning styles. In one study, Ally and Fahy (2002) found differences between gender for learning style preference while Jones, Reichard, and Mokhtari (2003) found no significant differences in preferred learning by gender. In the paper Age and Gender as Determinants of Learning Style among Medical Students the authors have concluded that learning styles are “age and gender dependent” and they suggest that different learning styles should be applied for men and women (Mohammadi et al., 2015). According to some other papers (Greb, 1999; Pizzo, 1990; Thompson, 1975) genders differ in ways of learning. Males are likely to be more kinesthetic, tactual, and visual. When they are grouped in classroom, males learn less by listening. Females tend to be auditory, authority-oriented, and better able to sit passively at conventional classroom desks and chairs than males. They need to be more quiet while learning (Tatarintseva, 2002). Hence, the mentioned papers showed differences regarding this concept. This paper aims at contributing to these researches and at developing the concept of gender and age at the level of high school students
3. METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK
3.1. SUBJECT OF THE RESEARCH
The subject of this research is the analysis of different learning styles among secondary school students and the examination of possible differences in the representation of learning styles between males and females of different ages.
3.2. RESEARCH GOALS
The goal of this research is to analyze the awareness of the presence of certain learning styles in students. The research hypothesis anticipated that there is a significant difference between different learning styles among genders and among four high school grades.
3.3. PARTICIPANTS
The sample for this study was composed of 195 high school students, the Madrasa "Osman-ef. Redžović "in Visoko, aged 14 to 20 years. There were 105
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girls (53.8%) and 90 boys (46.2%). In the first grade there were 57 students (29.2%) in the second 49 (25.1%), in the third 47 (23.1%) and 44 (23.6%) in the fourth grade. Each class had two separate groups, male and female. Representation of the participants is shown in Table 1.
Table 1 Gender, grade, and age of participants Frequency %
Gender Males 90 46.2 Females 105 53.8 Grade First 57 29.2 Second 49 25.1 Third 45 23.1 Fourth 44 22.6 Age 14 2 1.0 15 29 14.9 16 46 23.6 17 59 30.3 18 45 23.1 19 12 6.2 20 2 1.0
3.4. RESEARCH INSTRUMENT
For the purposes of this research, the instrument "Learning style survey: Assessing your own learning styles" (Paige at al., 2006) was used. The research instrument consists of two parts: The first part consists of information on the participants, gender, age and class they attend while the second part contains questions related to learning styles. It contained 42 questions. The pupils responded to the questions on the basis of the Likert scale with 5 options offered: I completely agree, I agree, I am neutral, I do not agree and I completely disagree, for which they needed about 20 minutes. The questions were grouped into 7 subscales: questions 1-10 were visual learning style questions, 11-20 auditory style, 21-30 tactile/kinesthetic style, 43-45 field-independent, 46-48 field- dependent, 31-36 extroverted, 37-42 introverted style. Descriptive characteristics of the target group were used for analysis purposes.
3.5. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS
The descriptive data of the representation of learning styles among students is presented in this paper. The differences in the use of styles between boys and girls and differences between different classes and departments are observed. The data was analyzed using the statistical program SPSS v. 20.
22 The analysis of learning styles among high school students Haris Delić
4. RESULTS
As mentioned in the methodological framework in this work we were interested in possible differences in learning styles between boys and girls and different grades. In the results part we will present mean differences based on which we will conclude which group prefers which style. The results are presented in tables 2 and 3 below.
Table 2. Analysis of the representation of learning styles between boys and girls
Gender Visual Auditory Tactile Extrov. Introv. Field ind. Field dep. style style kinesthetic style style style style style Female Mean 2.52 2.63 2.54 2.74 2.37 2.30 2.77 N 105 105 105 105 105 105 105 Std. .41 .39 .45 .59 .52 .72 .67 Dev. Male Mean 2.70 2.67 2.61 2.61 2.32 2.57 2.70 N 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 Std. .33 .42 .51 .56 .59 .70 .69 Dev. Total Mean 2.60 2.65 2.57 2.68 2.35 2.42 2.74 N 195 195 195 195 195 195 195 Std. .38 .40 .48 .58 .55 .72 .68 Dev.
Table 3. Analysis of the representation of learning styles between grades
Grade level Visual Auditory Tactile Extrov. Introv. Field ind. Field dep. style style kinesthetic style style style style style First Mean 2.53 2.57 2.62 2.57 2.23 2.20 2.60 N 57 57 57 57 57 57 57 Std. .45 .45 .50 .63 .51 .64 .60 Dev. Second Mean 2.59 2.70 2.62 2.74 2.46 2.65 2.72 N 49 49 49 49 49 49 49 Std. .32 .39 .49 .58 .57 .79 .63 Dev. Third Mean 2.67 2.68 2.39 2.66 2.48 2.51 2.90 N 45 45 45 45 45 45 45 Std. .34 .39 .35 .54 .63 .73 .77 Dev. Fourth Mean 2.64 2.68 2.65 2.79 2.23 2.37 2.77 N 44 44 44 44 44 44 44
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Std. .39 .36 .51 .54 .44 .64 .71 Dev. Total Mean 2.60 2.65 2.57 2.68 2.35 2.42 2.74 N 195 195 195 195 195 195 195 Std. .38 .40 .48 .58 .55 .72 .68 Dev.
Looking into mean differences between genders and grades we presented analysis of each type of learning styles that were asked in the questionnaire. Seven learning styles were grouped and here we will present the results on differences between them.
In terms of gender differences we can see that the highest mean among girls is found for field dependent style (M = 2.77, SD = .67) while the lowest one in found in field independent style (M = 2.30, SD = .72). For the scores of males we found the highest mean in field dependent style (M = 2.70, SD = .69) and visual style (M = 2.70, SD = .33), and the lowest mean is found in introverted style (M = 2.32, SD = .59).
Regarding the analysis between grades and learning styles we found that the first class shows the highest mean with tactile-kinesthetic style (M = 2.62, SD = .50) and the lowest with field independent style (M = 2.20, SD = .64). The second class showed the highest mean with extroverted style (M = 2.74, SD = .58) and lowest one with introverted style (M = 2.46, SD = .57). The scores of third class showed that students from this class presented the highest mean with field dependent style (M = 2.90, SD = .77) while the lowest mean was shown with tactile-kinesthetic style (M = 2.39, SD = .35). And the fourth group showed the highest mean with extroverted style (M = 2.79, SD = .54) and the lowest mean with introverted style (M = 2.23, SD = .44).
5. DISCUSSION
The results shown above indicate that in some cases there is a difference among means in given questions and in some the differences are almost unrecognized. The focus on gender differences shows that both males and females indicated the highest mean for field dependent style of learning and the means they indicated are almost identical. The difference between males and females is shown in the styles where they showed the lowest mean. Thus for the males the lowest mean is shown in introverted style while for females it is the field independent style. The most interesting point in these results is the fact of expressing the most preferred style by both males and females, which is the field dependent style. Field dependent learners are by definition those that rely more on a group, peer- workers, and striving for a common goal. They prefer to work with others. This
24 The analysis of learning styles among high school students Haris Delić
“manual” of their work gives insights into their deeper psychological code and describes them as more sensitive to others’ feelings, opinions, and ideas. There are of course more characteristics of both field dependent and field independent types of learners but for us here the most interesting characteristic of field dependent learners is their social sense and peer work functioning. The fact that both males and females indicated this style of learning may be studying at the boarding school and spending most of their time with their class colleagues. Their out-of-class activities, free time and prescribed time for studying is always organized in groups, teams, or on a roommate base in the dormitory. This socializing pattern of their time may cause their preferred style of learning which is, as the results showed, the field dependent style. This characteristic of their learning style is expected later in their academic progress. Many of the students that continue studying at the university level prefer to learn in libraries and at other public places.
After the analysis of means of styles among different grades we can see that each of the four grades showed different learning styles means. The reason for this might lie in the fact that students in these ages face big changes throughout the syllabuses in these four grades. Each year they get some new subjects and face new insights into knowledge which may be the reason for style changes throughout the grades. Also physical changes that teenagers face in these years may contribute to mixtures and changes in learning styles. This stage of life, as one of the most important stages, impacts the educational outcomes to a large extent. Another reason for non consistency in academic achievement among grades could be so-called media-related problems. Media and technology are in that kind of rapid change that almost each month, let alone each year, we have something new. Students and teachers who use it in education, in order to stay updated, need also to follow the changes and make a shift to some new models which may in the end cause confusion in the learning process (Yaman & Bećirović, 2016). Parker et al. (2004) suggest that high school student academic achievement is connected to emotional intelligence. Catsambis (1998) in her paper “Expanding the knowledge of parental involvement in secondary education: effects on high school academic success” concludes that there exists “multidimensional nature of parental involvement in students' education” (Catsambis, 1998, p. 23).
6. CONCLUSION
This paper is an approach to the language learning process through the components of different learning styles. Language learning styles are methods and approaches through which students feel comfortable and eager to study. The research showed that, under different conditions, it is normal that students differ in their learning styles and that one student can have more than one style and a group of students can have one single learning style. In this research 195 students
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from Medresa “Osman-ef. Redžović” participated and responded to the questionnaire.
It is suggested that teachers should try to make changes in their classroom that will be beneficial for learners to adjust to their preferred learning style. Finally, there is a need for further research, especially longitudinal studies into learning and teaching styles in Bosnian educational institutions. We believe this study will contribute to the academic community, school administration at Madrasa “Osman-ef. Redžović” and the students and we recommend this type of study to other high school institutions.
26 The analysis of learning styles among high school students Haris Delić
REFERENCES
Bećirović, S. (2017). The Relationship between Gender, Motivation and Achievement in Learning English as a Foreign Language, European Journal of Contemporary Education, 6(2). 210-220.
Bećirović, S., & Hurić-Bećirović, R. (2017). The role of age in students’ motivation and achievement in learning English as a second language. Journal of Linguistic and Intercultural Education, 10(1), 23-35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29302/jolie.2017.10.1.2
Cassidy, S. (2010). Learning Styles: An overview of theories, models, and measures. Educational Psychology. An International Journal of Experimental Educational Psychology. 24(4), 419-444.
Cassidy, S., Eachus, P. (2000). Learning style, academic belief systems, self‐report student proficiency and academic achievement in higher education, Educational Psychology, 20, 307–322.
Catsambis, S. (1998). Expanding the knowledge of parental involvement in secondary education: effects on High school academic success. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, Center for Research of the Education of Students Placed At Risk.
Delić, H., Bećirović, S., & Čeljo, A., B. (2018). Effects of grade level and gender on foreign language learning process in Bosnian high schools. International Journal of Educational Policy Research and Review, 5(6), 83-89.
Delić, H., & Bećirović, S. (2018). The influence of Grade Point Average and Socioeconomic Status on Learning Strategies. Journal of Education and Humanities, 1(2), 53-64.
Dunn, R., Beaudry, J., S., & Klavas, A. (2000). What we know about how people learn. California Science Teachers Association, 2(2).
Dwyer, K., K. (1998). Communication apprehension and learning style performance: Correlation and implication for teaching. Communication Education, 17(2), 137- 148.
Gilakjani, A., P. (2012). Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic Learning Styles and Their Impacts on English Language Teaching. Journal of Studies in Education, 2(1), 104-113.
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Jensen, E. (1998). Introduction to Brain-Compatible Learning. California: Corwin Press.
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. New Jersey: Pearson Education.
Lawrence, W., K. (2015). Learning and Personality: The Experience of Introverted Reflective Learners in a World of Extroverts. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Personality-Experience-Introverted- Reflective/dp/1443878073
Mohammadi, S., Mobarhan, M., G., Mohammadi, M., & Ferns, G., A., A. (2015). Age and Gender as Determinants of Learning Style among Medical Students. British Journal of Medicine & Medical Research, 7(4), 292-298. DOI: 10.9734/BJMMR/2015/15741
O'Connor, T. (1997). Using learning styles to adapt technology for higher education. Retrieved from http://www. Ind State. Edu/ctl/styles/learning.
Oxford, R., M. E. Hollaway, & D. Horton-Murillo (1992) „Language Learning Styles: Research and Practical Considerations for Teaching in the Multicultural Tertiary ESL/EFL Classroom‟, System, 20(4), 439-456.
Ortega, L. (2009). Understanding Second Language Acquisition, London: Hodder Education
Pizzo, J. (1990). Responding to Students’ Learning Styles. New York: St. John’s University.
Richards, J. C., & Lockhart C. (1994) Reflective Teaching in Second Language Classrooms Cambridge Language Education, New York: Cambridge University Press
Shuell, T., J. (1986). Cognitive Conceptions of Learning. Review of Educational Research, 56(4), 411-436. doi.org/10.3102/00346543056004411
Thompson, B., G. (1975). Sex Differences in Reading Attainment. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 16-23. doi.org/10.1080/0013188750180102
Xu, W. (2011). “Learning Styles and Their Implications in Learning and Teaching”. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 1(4), 413-416.
Yaman, A. & Bećirović, S. (2016). Learning English and Media Literacy. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR), 2(6), 660-663.
28 Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2 (2), pp. 29-50, Winter 2019 Review paper ISSN 2566-4638 © International Burch University https://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JEH2019223
Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview
Christian Ameseder University of Applied Sciences, Burgenland, Austria
Abstract: Ideally, journalism makes current information public and Keywords: Narrative facilitates democracy therewith. For accomplishing this task, journalism, interest, comprehension as well as interest in the sense of engagement and in comprehension, storytelling, the sense of selecting a message are the most important effects of a media impact journalistic message. As these effects are attributed to narratives, 15 experiments from 13 publications, which investigate the differences between traditional and narrative news writing style, were analysed. While the studies reported positive effects of narrative news on Article History narrative engagement, news selection was not part of the Submitted: 3 September 2019 investigation. The results for comprehension were intermediate Accepted: 13 November 2019 except for a favourable effect of narratives on information recognition. Implications for further research are discussed.
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1. INTRODUCTION
Storytelling and narrative journalism are enjoying growing popularity. Narratives are said to facilitate interest in and comprehension of current events. Still, only few studies and theories are focused on the effects of narratives in a journalistic context. By conducting a content analysis of empirical publications, the aim of this paper is to examine which effects of narrative journalism have already been scientifically proven and to identify directions for further research.
1.1. JOURNALISM AND SOCIETY
When investigating the effects of narrative journalism, journalism’s function for society has to be considered.
Democracy refers to a “government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through representation” (Democracy, 2019). While in ancient times only a minority of a state’s population was entitled to vote, nowadays most adult citizens are (Demokratie, 2019). Citizens elect the government for a certain period of time and participate through plebiscites in the period between two elections. In other words, laypeople have to make democratic decisions about how they want their daily lives to be. For making educated decisions, every single citizen needs sufficient information about current events, the relationships between these events and the underlying mechanisms. To form an opinion, people have to test their hypotheses on sufficient material (Engle, 1960/2003) – material that news media can provide.
Ideally, journalism serves as a public service and fulfils several functions for the ‘common good’: reduction of complexity, explanation, dissemination, socialization and (self-) observation of society to name only some. Journalists make complex content and interrelationships understandable for the general public (Burkart, 2002 pp. 378-412; Weischenberg, 2018, p. 61). In this process a lot of information gets lost – but it also gives the recipients the feeling of being able to cope with a world that otherwise would be too complex (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 40). As a consequence, news media can influence public opinion, the democratic formation of opinion and the voting behaviour (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 44).
As a closed functional system, journalism used to be exclusively responsible for accomplishing its task of addressing remarkable, current topics – as objectively as possible (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 30). In 1996, Niklas Luhmann (p. 9) wrote that everything people know about society and nature – about the world we live in – they know from mass media. In states with free press, it was the journalist’s task to turn information into public good.
30 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder
Nowadays, private persons partly take over the journalists’ function of observing society: by the use of social media many private persons jointly enhance the transparency of events (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 279). Social media also make it possible to highlight irregularities and gaps in the journalistic coverage more easily. In sum, however, there are too many contributions on social media to keep an overview and spot the most remarkable issues. People who are overwhelmed by the quantity of news messages tend to avoid them (Song et al., 2017). Especially for the working population, a manageable quantity of news is important: their time besides occupation and housekeeping is particularly limited (Schrape, 2011).
To achieve a manageable quantity, some topics and messages have to be selected above others. According to the Agenda Setting Theory, this selection influences where people direct their attention to (Littlejohn et al., 2017, p. 161). On social media, messages are displayed based on algorithms. These algorithms favour messages from contributors a user has subscribed to, messages similar to previously ‘liked’ messages, messages with which ‘friends’ have already interacted or advertisements tailor-made for the user. When relying too much on these algorithms and on getting important news automatically, there is the risk of being caught in the so-called ‘filter bubble’ (Schrape, 2015, p. 207). This tendency towards individualisation threatens the minimum consensus, which is essential for democracy (Demokratie, 2019). Journalists on the other hand reduce complexity by allocating the codes information/no information to current topics (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 61). While journalists are (or should be) subject to professional and ethical standards like impartiality, accuracy and fairness in reporting (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 32), private persons or enterprises publishing on social media are not. As their coverage is still large and social media messages on current issues are often based on journalistic sources (Schrape, 2011), news media turn information into a public good (Burkart, 2002, p. 391) and recipients gain knowledge and material to shape their opinions.
2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
First, the most important effects of journalism are derived from the functions journalism is supposed to fulfil for society. Subsequently it is about what stories can contribute.
2.1. DESIRABLE EFFECTS OF ONLINE JOURNALISM
The mentioned rise of social media made the role of a gatekeeper and watchdog a bit less important for journalists, whereas the role of an interpreter has gained in importance (Weischenberg, 2018, p. 61). On the basis of the above considerations, laypeople have to comprehend journalistic messages about carefully selected issues as well as the facts behind them. They should also be
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able to transfer the knowledge from the current to new situations. According to the ‘Taxonomy Table’ by Anderson et al. (2001, pp. 27-37), this means going beyond merely remembering factual knowledge.
Fostering comprehension of and knowledge about relevant topics requires people to receive the messages – as well as the relevant background information – in the first place. According to a study of online news consumers, 47 % of the respondents most often read only the headlines when accessing news via news aggregators, online social media and search engines. Only 45 % indicated to proceed to read the article, while the remaining respondents did not access news in this way (European Commission, 2016). As a consequence, it is very likely that many recipients lack background knowledge for interpreting the headlines correctly. To increase the likelihood of selecting and reading news articles, the interest in the sense of the desire to proceed to the whole message (interest/proceeding) is important for journalism.
After a message was selected and the recipients went on to read the message, it is important for those not familiar with the context to read the whole article. If people have scant prior understanding of a topic, making sense of new information can lead to inaccurate assumptions or unwarranted conclusions. Providing the relevant context helps individuals to gain a framework for organizing their knowledge accurately (Downs, 2014). Traditionally, the so- called inverted pyramid structure places information about the context and background at the very end of the article (van Dijk, 1985, p. 82). Lagun and Lalmas (2016) found out that approximately one third of their participants did not stick to the article until the end. To maximize the number of recipients deeply or completely engaged with the message and to increase background knowledge and understanding of the topic therewith, the interest in the sense of engagement (interest/engagement) has to be increased.
Many studies investigating the effects of narratives are focused on persuasion – especially in the context of science and health communication (e.g. Betsch et al., 2011; Dahlstrom, 2010; Dunlop et al. 2010; Hinyard & Kreuter, 2007; Slater & Rouner, 2002), advertising (e.g. Hémar-Nicolas, 2011; Mattila, 2000; Tussyadiah et al., 2011) and public relations (e.g. Farace et al., 2017; Kim & Youn, 2017; Lee & Leets 2002). Although news influence the public opinion, persuasion should not be an aspiration of journalists. Ideally, public opinion is only influenced in the sense of a democratic formation of opinion – by providing material so that people are able to draw their own conclusions.
As a result, desirable effects for online journalism are the interest in receiving the message, the desire to receive the message as a whole and, most importantly, a good comprehension of the message. These effects are often attributed to narratives (e.g. Hauff et al., 2014; Saadatnia et al., 2017), which is
32 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder why narrative journalism could help improving the users’ knowledge and their quality of democratic decisions. Narrative journalism
Although journalism and a free press are essential for democracy, there is little theoretical background for narrative journalism and its effects on democracy. Also definitions of narratives used in empirical research diverge (Frey, 2014), which is why this section starts with a definition of narratives. In their analysis of narrative text, Lahn and Meister (2016, pp. 18-19) differentiate between the event (what is told), the discourse (how it is told) and the narrator (who tells it). The event’s dimension consists of five elements: topic, plot, characters, space and time. If one of these elements is missing, it can be doubted that it is a narrative at all. In the context of news, the topic can be taken for granted, whereas narrative news differs from traditional news particularly by having a continuous plot. Characters, locations and time are often mentioned and described also in traditional journalism (c. f. theory of newsworthiness, e.g. Burkart, 2002, pp. 281-282).
Another specific characteristic of journalistic narratives is factuality. Whereas fiction authors can invent every detail of their stories, journalists are bound to reality. Their creative freedom is restricted to selecting, framing and emphasizing content (Knobloch et al., 2004). Subsequently, it is usually not possible to tell a story from a first-person perspective when the journalists were not present at the events they are writing about. Journalistic narratives might therefore cause different effects than entertainment narratives.
To the knowledge of the author, there are no meta-analyses of effects of narrative journalism so far. In previous general meta-analyses of storytelling, studies investigating the effects of narratives in a journalistic context were rare (e.g. 8.06 % in Ettl-Huber et al., 2019 and 9.09 % in Frey, 2014). Especially when the percentage is compared to the share of health communication (e.g. 29.03 % in Ettl-Huber et al., 2019 and 30.91 % in Frey, 2014). To find out more about the specifics of journalistic narratives, the present investigation focuses on the effects of textual narrative news articles, leading to the following research question: What is the present state of research concerning effects of textual narrative journalism on interest/proceeding, interest/engagement and comprehension?
3. METHOD
To gain an overview over already existing findings about the effects of narrative journalism, a content analysis of relevant studies was conducted. This analysis focused on the relevant effects mentioned above: comprehension, interest in the sense of proceeding to the message and interest in the sense of reading the whole message (engagement).
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After conducting a search for relevant publications and sorting out irrelevant ones, it was evaluated, which references were cited most in order to identify standard works in the field of journalistic narrative impact research. To figure out theories relevant for describing narrative effects, an overview of the theories mentioned in the publications was created. Possible limitations to generalisability were addressed by evaluating the procedures, stimuli, participants and instruments used. Finally, the relevance of the documented effects for practice was assess by calculating and comparing the effect sizes. To be able to compare the magnitude of the effects, effect sizes according to Cohen (1988; Cohen’s d) were calculated. When data necessary for calculation was not reported, effect sizes were transformed from η² according to Cohen (1988, pp. 281, 284, 285) or calculated from the F-value of ANOVA (Thalheimer & Cook, 2002).
3.1. SEARCH TERMS AND PROCEDURE
Papers researching the impact of narrative journalism use either the notion ‘impact’ or ‘effects’. Therefore, one of these two terms was present in all search queries. Also ‘narrative journalism’ and ‘journalistic storytelling’ are closely related conceptions, which is why either ‘narrative’ or ‘storytelling’ was combined with ‘journalism’ and ‘impact’ or ‘effects’. Therefore, the combinations of search terms used were ‘effects journalism storytelling’, ‘effects narrative journalism’, ‘impact journalism storytelling’ and ‘impact narrative journalism’. In a previous meta-analysis of storytelling effects (Ettl-Huber et al., 2019, p. 22), none of the publications, which were cited the most by the analysed papers were included in the sample. One reason might be that these studies were not present in the search engines that were used. As Google Scholar contains entries of most databases, this study used Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) for data collection. Search queries on Google Scholar were conducted between 23 March and 28 March 2019 for each of the search terms mentioned above. The search was ordered by relevance and the first 100 search results for each term were further analysed. Multiple entries were merged and after sorting out papers not dealing with the effects of textual narrative journalism, eight papers remained. Papers dealing with the narrative method of inquiry, narrative psychotherapy, interactive storytelling, theoretical papers, papers not reporting experiments and experiments not dealing with written news were considered as papers not dealing with the effects of narrative journalism in the present meaning. Interactive storytelling was omitted as in these cases the storyline is not pre- defined, which means it does not belong to traditional mass communication and the effects might be different in this case. As cause-and-effect relations can only be proved using experiments, all studies not reporting experiments were also omitted.
34 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder
It became apparent that most studies relevant for the current topic compared narrative texts with traditional news articles written in an inverted pyramid style. To increase the sample size, a fifth query was conducted using the more specific search term ‘impact storytelling journalism inverted-pyramid experiment’. Again, the 100 most relevant search results were further analysed, resulting in an initial quantity of 500 papers. After sorting out 106 duplicates and 381 irrelevant papers as mentioned above, the final sample consisted of 13 publications, which describe 15 experiments.
Subsequently, the quality of the papers was checked, theories mentioned in the papers were collated, the methods and instruments used were analysed and the reported results compared. Finally, limitations of the studies as well as potential research gaps were discussed.
3.2. QUALITY CHECK
To ensure the quality of the papers, first the data reported was checked. Every paper reported Cronbach’s alpha for the instruments to ensure their internal consistency. Also descriptive statistics (mean, SD or SE), significance (p-values) and effect sizes of the results were reported. None of the studies reported adaptation of the significance level α despite testing more than one hypothesis on the same dataset.
In a next step, the indexation of the journals in established science indexes was checked. 10 papers were published in journals indexed in SSCI. The three papers not indexed are one dissertation, one conference paper and one paper published in the Newspaper Research Journal.
Subsequently, the number of references the papers relied on (M = 53.54, SD = 36.31) and the number of other papers citing the respective study (M = 46.31, SD = 53.32; according to Google Scholar on 10 August 2019) were analysed. See table 1 for detailed results.
Table 1: Results of quality check Reference number and Indexation Number of Number author(s) (Journal/type of publication) references of citations
1 Emde et al., 2016 SSCI, SCOPUS 42 15 (Journalism Studies) 2 Kleemans et al., 2018 SSCI, SCOPUS 81 5 (Journalism Studies)
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3 Knobloch et al., 2004 SSCI, SCOPUS 59 147 (Communication Research) 4 Nan et al., 2015 SSCI, SCOPUS 39 64 (Health Communication) 5 Yaros, 2011 SSCI, SCOPUS 76 22 (Science Communication) 6 DeAngelo & Yegiyan, SSCI 56 0 2019 (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly) 7 Oliver et al., 2012 SSCI 28 172 (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly) 8 Shen et al., 2014 SSCI 28 74 (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly) 9 van Krieken et al., 2015 SSCI 37 34 (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly) 10 Wise et al., 2009 SSCI 49 38 (Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media) 11 Sternadori, 2008 – 161 3 (Dissertation) 12 Chun & Chi, 2013 – 10 1 (Conference Proceedings) 13 Zerba, 2008 – 26 27 (Newspaper Research Journal)
4. RESULTS
4.1. MOST CITED PUBLICATIONS
To find quality work on the effects narrative journalism has, the author analysed which publications were frequently cited in the papers that make up the sample. Knobloch et al. (2004) was cited by eight of the other papers, followed by two papers not in the sample, which were cited by five papers: Pottker (2003), a theoretical paper, and Yaros (2006). Four of 10 publications, which were cited by four papers, were written by or in cooperation with Annie Lang: Lang (1989), Lang et al. (1996), Lang (2000) and Lang (2006). Of the remaining papers of the sample, three authors cited Oliver et al. (2012) and Wise et al. (2009), two cited Emde et al. (2016), two cited Zerba (2008) and one cited Shen et al. (2014) and Yaros (2011).
36 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder
4.2. THEORIES MENTIONED
The theories mentioned in the studies attempt to explain how media messages result in comprehension, interest and persuasion. The analysis in hand does not focus on persuasion; thus, theories about persuasion are left aside. Interest
The Model of Narrative Comprehension and Engagement explains the impact of narratives on raising the recipients’ interest (9, 12). In this model, four distinct dimensions are important if an author wants to achieve narrative engagement (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009): narrative presence, emotional engagement, attentional focus and narrative understanding. Narrative understanding is only important as a lack of understanding disrupts narrative engagement.
Knobloch and colleagues (2004) based their research on the Structural- Affect Theory: Brewer and Lichtenstein (1981; 1982) differentiate an event-focused narrative structure (what is told) from a discourse-focused narrative structure (how the story is told; order of events as they are presented in the narrative). Certain combinations of event and discourse structure result in different affective reactions in the readers while they follow a narrative. In the traditional inverted pyramid style, initiating event and outcome are presented right away. This is why recipients are often unwilling to proceed with their reception after they have read about the outcome. When the discourse structure is parallel to the event structure (‘linear type’), the author evokes suspense (e.g. typical for thriller genre). When the discourse structure omits information in the initiating event and then makes references to this omission (‘reversal type’), recipients get curious (e.g. mystery stories).
The Uses and Gratifications Theory (13) describes the recipients’ individual motivation for selecting one message rather than another and what influences their motives for doing so. The individuals’ attitudes towards and evaluations of the medium determine the gratifications they seek from this medium (Rayburn & Palmgreen, 1984). These expectations are acquired through experience, communication, deduction and/or inference (Palmgreen & Rayburn, 1985). In other words, past reading experiences influence future reading. Narrative journalism is hypothesised to engage individuals who don’t enjoy keeping up with traditional hard news. Therefore, the positive reading experience after receiving a narrative message also has a positive impact on further news consumption and selection.
4.3. COMPREHENSION
When explaining text comprehension, four studies mention the Construction– Integration Model (1, 2, 5, 11). This model differentiates between two phases:
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construction and integration. In the construction phase, recipients process new information from the text and information from long-term memory. In the subsequent integration phase, recipients construct a coherent model (Emde et al., 2016; Kleemans et al., 2018). In order to explain advantages of narratives for comprehension, the Construction-Integration Model was combined with the Limited Capacity Model of (Motivated) Mediated Message Processing (1, 2, 10, 11): individuals are not able to process and store all information a message contains. The cognitive resources available to the recipient are divided into three cognitive sub-processes: encoding, storage and retrieval (Lang, 2006; Wise et al. 2009). If the processing of a message requires more resources than are available or allocated to the process, the information gets poorly processed (Lang, 2006). If narratives are close to how the human mind processes information about events, they might require fewer cognitive resources for being encoded. Subsequently, more resources are left for other processes resulting in a richer memory for the story (Wise et al. 2009).
The Web-Based Processing Theoretical Framework (6) focuses on users of the World Wide Web who have great control over the order and/or pace of the content on display. On the web, users tend to skim information based on importance and/or interest (e.g. Liu, 2005). In this environment, information processing is likely to suffer, which leads to decreased content knowledge compared to articles in print magazines (Eveland & Dunwoody, 2002) and to less recognition and recall for news events compared to reading print news (Tewksbury & Althaus, 2000). After skimming the beginning of a news message, online news readers may stop processing the message in more detail and devote their cognitive resources to another story. In narratives, authors do not place the basic information in the first paragraph. Therefore, readers who stop reading the message will miss it.
4.4. PROCEDURES, STIMULI, PARTICIPANTS AND INSTRUMENTS
The papers in hand investigate the effects of narratives in news stories by conducting experiments. In 15 experiments, most stimuli were presented on screen – only five used printed stimuli. Five experiments were conducted in a computer laboratory and five were web-based experiments. All papers except one (4) reported comparable word counts of the texts used in narrative and non- narrative conditions. Five papers (1, 2, 7, 5, 11) matched the amount of information in the texts in both conditions and one paper (11) compared the ease of reading to a standardised score.
The participants of nine experiments were university students, two experiments with younger pupils. The participants of two experiments were recruited online and for the last two experiments, researchers approached people on the street. The median of participants per experiment is 133, whereas the
38 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder studies measuring heart rate and second task reaction times had considerably fewer participants (47 and 58 participants respectively). Almost half of the papers (6 of 13) used self-reported measures among other measures, whereas five relied solely on self-reports. Six papers reported recognition and/or recall tasks, three papers used psychochronometrical as well as psychophysiological measures and one used behavioural measures.
All instruments for measuring interest were based on self-reports. Participants were asked directly about their reading experience (13) and situational interest (5). Instruments were created to measure the narrative influence on suspense and curiosity (3). Grouping the instruments according to the Model of Narrative Comprehension and Engagement (Busselle & Bilandzic, 2009), participants indicated their narrative presence through (narrative) transportation (absorption/immersion in the narrative world; 12, 8), story involvement (7) and narrative presence (9). Emotional engagement was measured with instruments named ‘emotions’ and ‘emotional engagement’ (9, 8), ‘identification’ (9), ‘empathy’ (9, 12) and ‘affective involvement’ (1). The instruments ‘attentional focus’ (9) and ‘narrative involvement’ (12) provided indications for the readers’ attentional focus. Reading enjoyment was measured in three studies (13, 11, 3) of which one (11) used an enjoyment index in addition. One study (1) also measured the cognitive involvement.
Besides one self-report (13), comprehension was mainly measured using tests examining: information recognition (2, 10, 11), cued recall (1, 11), free recall (6, 5) and the Sentence Verification Technique (11). In addition, also the recall order (6), time spent on story (6), secondary task reaction time (11) and heart rate (10) were examined. Heart rate indicates when individuals allocate more cognitive resources to encoding for example videos (e.g. Fox et al., 2004).
In addition to common control variables like demographic data, the studies also controlled for individual characteristics like reading experience and regular news consumption (1), general news interest and specific issue interest (13, 1, 5), perceived issue importance (6), knowledge about an issue (5, 1, 9, 8), affective disposition towards story characters (3) or perceived credibility of articles (8).
4.5. EFFECT SIZES
According to Cohen (1992), an effect size between 0.2 and 0.5 can be considered as ‘small’, between 0.5 and 0.8 as ‘medium’ and sizes above 0.8 as ‘large’. Medium and large effects can be perceived in daily life. Although recipients do not perceive small effects, they can still affect cognitive performance.
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4.6. INTEREST
At least one message of most studies showed intermediate or small positive effects of the narrative compared to the non-narrative stimulus on the interest that is raised in the recipient, reading enjoyment, suspense, curiosity and narrative engagement. These results provide some evidence for an increased interest in the sense of engagement through a narrative presentation. Narratives only had a negative effect on situational interest in a science context (5) and on reading enjoyment according to the enjoyment index (11). In the study Emde et al. (1) conducted, the least interesting topic (a text on minimum wage) produced a higher difference between the narrative and the inverted report in affective involvement. No study in the sample investigated the effects of a teaser text structure on the recipients’ news selection. Therefore no indication in favour or against an increased interest in proceeding to the message could be found.
Figure 1: Effect sizes for results on interest Number of study in brackets; dashed lines indicate non-significant results.
40 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder
4.7. COMPREHENSION
Compared to how a narrative affects interest, the results for how a narrative affects comprehension are less clear. Two studies reported significant and high effects for information recognition in favour of narratives, however, no study reported a significant result for cued recall and only one study a significant result with a rather small effect for free recall. An intermediate effect on self-reported comprehension (13) and a small effect on heart rate (10) was noted as reaction to narratives. The results from recall order (6) and the Sentence Verification Technique (11) were non-significant, but suggest effects in favour of the inverted pyramid. Participants also spent more time on narrative news than inverted pyramid reports – according to the authors, this indicated that narrative news are more difficult to comprehend (6). Finally, there was a problem with the interpretation of the mental chronometry (second task reaction time): according to the author, the longer time recipients needed to accomplish the second task in the narrative condition can indicate both: hindered or enhanced cognitive processing (11).
Figure 2. Effect sizes for results on comprehension. Number of study in brackets; dashed lines indicate non-significant results * Result allowed interpretation in both directions.
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5. DISCUSSION
Journalism disseminates information among citizens and is as such a requirement for democracy. For citizens to comprehend this information, it has to be consumed. Therefore, journalism also has to arouse interest in the sense of proceeding to the whole message and in the sense of engagement. As these effects are attributed to narratives, 15 experiments of 13 publications, which investigate these effects of narrative journalism, were analysed.
5.1. INTEREST
Altogether the studies reported positive results for narrative engagement. These findings are consistent with the meta-analysis of Frey (2014), where narratives also showed increased effects on transportation (p. 164), attentional focus (p. 149), empathy (p. 149), identification (p. 154) and emotions (p. 158).
Emde et al. (2016) state that narratives tend to show larger effects for less interesting topics. This is in line with the results of Arya and Maul (2012) who compared narrative and non-narrative scientific texts in the context of pedagogy. The narrative led to larger situational interest with a text about astronomy. This topic was considered to be less interesting compared to the topic of radioactivity. When employing narrative engagement, it has to be taken into consideration that mechanisms like transportation, narrative engagement or identification also lead to narrative persuasion (Hamby et al., 2018).
None of the studies analysed directly investigated the influence of teaser text structures on the recipients’ news selection and on whether or not recipients proceed to consume the whole article. Nonetheless, a direction for further research can be derived from Knobloch et al. (2004), who investigated the aspect of curiosity: headlines and other teaser elements structured according to the reversal type might evoke the recipients’ curiosity and users might more often select items (e.g. on news overviews or on social media) and proceed to consume the whole message.
5.2. COMPREHENSION
In the present study, only one paper (Zerba, 2008) investigated self-reported comprehension and found an intermediate positive effect of narratives on comprehension. One single result is not enough for making an assessment. Also, Frey (2014, p. 150) could not work out a convincing result: two studies he cited report negative and three report positive effects on recipients’ self-perceived comprehension.
In accordance with Frey (2014, p. 155), the results of the memory tests of the studies examined in this paper pointed in both directions. Still, all significant
42 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder results of these studies were in favour of narratives compared to other ways of information transfer. Concerning the remaining results on comprehension, heart rate measurements showed a significant effect in favour of narratives (Wise et al., 2009) and time spent on story had a significant effect that worked against narratives (DeAngelo & Yegiyan, 2019). Also, Frey (2014, p. 150) reported only one study with a significant result for comprehension (in favour of narratives) and found almost the same number of studies showing favourable short-term effects of narratives for comprehension and knowledge acquisition as studies showing these effects for non-narrative messages (Frey 2014, p. 157). According to Frey (2014, p. 157), short-term effects on comprehension seem to be mixed, but the results for long-term effects were mostly in favour of narratives. Therefore, investigating long-term effects on comprehension in the context of journalism is an interesting topic for further research.
DeAngelo & Yegiyan (2019) interpreted more time spent on a story as the story being more difficult to comprehend. As participants could decide for themselves how much of a message they wanted to receive, more time spent on a story could also mean higher narrative engagement as the recipients consumed more of the message. To investigate this issue, the time spent on story has to be combined with other measures like viewport time (Lagun & Lalmas, 2016), where it is possible to tell how much of the message was consumed.
Emde et al. (2016) did not find a significant effect for comprehension of traditional versus narrative news. They suggested that the effects might only be significant with some media. The difference might be smaller for written news messages compared to audiovisual information, e.g., which demands simultaneous processing of two channels. Individuals usually cannot control the pace of information processing. Therefore, effects of different media (e.g. videos, pictures, information graphics) on comprehension should be considered in further research. Research on effects of different media is also needed as visual social media are on the rise (c. f. Newman et al., 2018).
Most of the studies assessed the effects on remembering factual knowledge (Anderson et al., 2001, pp. 27-37). Factual knowledge means the recognition of content (e.g. tested with information recognition, cued or free recall), whereas comprehending content (e.g. tested by assessing interrelationships among various concepts in a domain) is associated with knowledge structure. In the first case, information is retrieved from memory, in the latter, connections among concepts are reflected (Eveland et al., 2004). Further research should also focus on comprehension in terms of reflecting knowledge structure.
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5.3. LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH
The participants of the experiments were mainly students and pupils. As news are aimed at all citizens, it is at least questionable if the findings can be transferred to the whole population – especially to people who have received less education. Some studies reported favourable effects only for one of the stimuli, which might indicate that other factors than the controlled ones influenced the effects (e.g. tense, perspective, stylistic devices or topic). Dahlstrom (2010) also found out that the location of information in the internal causal structure of a narrative influences its effects. In addition to that, other aspects than age, gender, interest and knowledge can influence the results. Therefore, studies should also control different personal characteristics like the Bem Sex Role Inventory (Troche & Rammsayer, 2011) or situational influences like individual processing targets (Slater, 2002).
Only one study (Shen et al., 2014) examined medium-term effects of journalistic messages but medium- and long-term effects are crucial for making democratically oriented decisions. Besides measuring immediate effects, further research should also measure the effects after a certain period of time (time delayed measurement).
None of the studies examined the effects of using mobile devices when displaying the stimuli. As 70.4 % of page views on websites indexed in ÖWA (Austrian web-analysis) are done with mobile devices (ÖWA, 2019), these should be considered in future studies. In addition, the studies only used self-reports for investigating interest. Further studies could use eye tracking or viewport time: gaze is a reliable indicator for interest, focused attention as well as the effect an article has (Arapakis et al., 2014) and viewport time reflects levels of user engagement (Lagun & Lalmas, 2016).
Finally, the sample size of the present study was small. One reason for this was the restriction to experiments using text stimuli. However, therefore, influences from the medium could be excluded and the narratives were compared to the same control stimuli (inverted pyramid) in all experiments. As a consequence, more search results and results from additional search engines should be included to increase the sample size. A more specific search for effects of narrative journalistic teaser texts might allow finding studies that deal with the interest recipients take when proceeding to read a message.
44 Effects of narrative journalism on interest and comprehension: an overview Christian Ameseder
REFERENCES
Publications used for analysis indicated by *
Anderson, L.W., Krathwohl, D.R., Airasian, P.W., Cruikshank, K.A., Mayer, R.E., Pintrich, P.R., Raths, J., & Wittrock, M.C. (2001). A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing. A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (abridged version). New York: Longman.
Arapakis, I., Lalmas, M., Cambazoglu, B.B., Marcos, M.-C., & Jose, J.M. (2014). User Engagement in Online News: Under the Scope of Sentiment, Interest, Affect, and Gaze. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(10), 1988-2005.
Arya, D.J., & Maul, A. (2012). The role of the scientific discovery narrative in middle school science education: An experimental study. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104(4), 1022-1032.
Betsch, C., Ulshöfer, C., Renkewitz, F., & Betsch. T. (2011). The influence of narrative v. statistical information on perceiving vaccination risks. Medical Decision Making, 31(5), 742-753.
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50 Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2 (2), pp. 51-64, Winter 2019 Original research paper ISSN 2566-4638 © International Burch University https://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JEH2019224
BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication
Lejla Isaković University of Zenica
Abstract: The English language has for a long time occupied a Keywords: BELF, E-mail central position on a global scale and been used by speakers of correspondence, grammar, various linguistic backgrounds for successful communication. This vocabulary, formality has especially been proven in practice by the world of business, with an overwhelmingly large number of corporations operating across state borders and linguistic and cultural barriers. With the change of field and medium, it is inevitable that the language itself is going to change and adapt to new needs and applications. Electronic Article History communication is the main means of correspondence between such Submitted: 6 December 2019 internationally operating companies, and this paper took it up to Accepted: 21 December 2019 investigate how the medium influenced the language of e-mail messages between business people with different native languages. 59 e-mail messages between a company from Bosnia & Herzegovina and a company based in Romania were gathered and manually tagged for syntactic variation. To answer the question of whether BELF favoured linguistic purity over matter or vice versa, we looked into grammar, syntactic structures, vocabulary, e-mail openings, and request-making strategies. All these parameters were considered as indicators of BELF formality/informality. The conclusions reached here are generally in line with the way in which BELF was characterised by some of the most important investigators in the field. Significant variations from regular grammatical standards were displayed in the language at hand, and BELF was here marked as being semi-formal, with some aspects leaning towards informality and other towards formality. Overall, it seems that business people have no regard for linguistic purity, while they value the main point of the message, facts and numbers to a much greater extent.
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1. INTRODUCTION
''A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country'' (Crystal, 2003, p. 3). The language that has for a long time occupied this widely recognized special role is definitely English. For achieving the global status, the language needs to be taken up by other countries around the world. Crystal mentions two ways in which this can be done, namely, by giving English the position of an official language, or the second language in a country, or by making it a priority in foreign language teaching.
Another factor contributing to the status of English as a worldwide language is the globalisation. With so many different countries being closely connected by various influences such as politics and economy, the need for a common language is enormous. The area in which this need is most appreciated, besides the international academic communities, is the business community (Crystal, 2003). Therefore, English as the global language appreciated by business communities is the main concern of this paper. Given that English is nowadays spoken by more ESL and EFL speakers than native ones, we deem it appropriate to concern ourselves with the use of English as a foreign language, particularly among business people who do not share the same mother tongue, the language known as BELF. BELF is characterised as a neutral communication code used for conducting business within the global discourse community (Louhiala-Salminen et al., 2005).
Due to a number of developments, Business English has undergone some major shifts over time, mostly due to the realisation that there is a gap to be bridged between the academy and the globalized business world. English for Business Purposes (EBP) is nowadays the term most commonly used for this field, but it is a relatively recent development and has emerged from the broader and mainstream studies of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) (Bhatia & Bremner, 2012).
The most recent and also the currently ongoing development which has changed the world of Business English is the technology, with the Internet revolutionizing the way enterprises communicate. Computer-mediated communication, as Jackson (2007, p. 10) points out, was for a very long time considered only a subfield of business communication, but this distinction is being erased by the blending of multimedia, as mediated communication ''is infused into nearly any business communication context, perhaps even coming to dominate certain areas such as public relations’' (as found in Bhatia & Bremner, 2012).
With a change in the way in which language is conveyed and disseminated, it is implied that, just as the business trade itself, language will
52 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković inevitably reflect those developments. Nickerson (2005) addresses this change and reports on a comment by St John (1996, p. 15): ‘‘There is a definite need to understand more of the generic features of different events such as meetings, to identify common features of effective communications, to understand the role of cultural influences and the ways in which language and business strategies interact’’.
With various tools for quick communication, the style becomes direct, simple and dense, and an instant answer is frequently expected. As cited in Carrió & Muñiz, several studies report that, regardless of how rigid the guidelines of certain texts are, the use of English by international writers engaging in exchange of business ideas will cause changes in writing (Ädel & Erman, 2012; Carrió & Muñiz, 2010; Crossley & McNamara, 2009).
With the electronic media being widely used in business communication, and most of it being in a written form which is easily shared and accessible, we deemed it appropriate to investigate electronic communication and the type of language it uses. The ''media richness hierarchy'' developed by Daft and Lengel (1984), which classifies types of communication tools according to their capacity to convey information as correctly as possible, claims that e-mail is only behind face-to-face communication and the telephone, and e-mail communication is the central subject of this paper, as this type of communication possesses specific characteristics in a business context, as it has been pointed out by several researchers such as Nickerson (1999) and Gimenez (2006), and furthermore, with the advent of e-mail, the conventions of traditional written discourse were abandoned and replaced by communicational features which closely resemble those of spoken interactions (St John, 1996).
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
As found in Carrió and Muñiz (2013), the largest English speaking population in the world is located in China and India (Bolton, 2003; Crystal, 2001, 2008; Jiang, 2002; Jenkins, 2003), which explains the interest of many researchers who focused on business communication in those countries, and the fact that English is spoken as a second and foreign language rather than first, makes it an even more interesting subject of inquiry.
In order to gauge different characteristics of business communications, a great body of research exists on both spoken and written business discourse and on several subtypes or media which is used for dispersing such language, extending from memos and faxes over business letters, to electronic mail. Chiappini, Nickerson and Planken (2007) give an exhaustive overview of business communication research, providing the most important researchers in the field. A major amount of research has been dedicated to general discursive
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practices rather than just surface textual features of the genre, including the spoken genre such as negotiations (Charles 1996; Gimenez 2006), business meetings (Bargiela-Chiappini & Harris 1997; Bennington, Shetler & Shaw 2003; Handford 2010; Poncini 2003, 2004; Rogerson-Revell 1999), advertising and other promotional artefacts (Bhatia 1993, 2005; Cook 1992; Halmari & Virtanen 2005), and certain electronic forms of communication (Gimenez 2000, 2001) (as cited in Chiappini et al., 2007). Chiappini et al. (2007) report that during the 1980s and early 1990s, the business letter was the main focus of work on written business discourse, which was an important genre of communication in business settings (James, Scholfield & Ypsiladis, 1994; Jenkins & Hinds, 1987; Johns, 1980; Maier, 1992; Yli-Jokipii, 1994) with more recent investigators in the field being Bargiela- Chiappini and Nickerson (1999), Santos (2002), Yeung (2007).
E-mail communication, which is the sole interest of this paper in the context of BELF communication, has been of increasing and continuing interest, beginning in the 1996 (Nickerson, 2005). Sproul and Kiesler (1986) define e-mail as a medium which ''uses computer text processing and communication tools to provide a high speed information exchange service'' (p. 1494, as found in Markus, 1994). Markus also refers to the work of Culnan & Markus (1987) to describe e- mail as ''an asynchronous medium in which a user can communicate with one or many other people in the form of a note or document, typewritten on computer terminals'' (p. 505).
Kankaanranta and Planken (2010) explored perceptions of BELF held by internationally operating business professionals based on an online survey and in-depth interviews, subsequently revealing three important features of BELF discourse. Typical BELF discourse was thereby characterised as simplified English, the interviewees continually emphasizing the use of simple and clear English which does not contain complex sentence structures and phraseology, and which regards grammatical inaccuracies as quite commonplace, regular phenomena or little consequence. Firth (1996), Porcini (2002), Seidlhofer (2004), and Rogerson-Revell (2008) all agree that the core objective of BELF is to enable operative and consistent communication between non-native speakers for successful communication and therefore, linguistic mistakes and nativeness are of negligible importance. To this effect, Louhiala-Salminen (1996) posed a question in their study to see if business practitioners perceived a linguistic change in written business communication over the previous decade, and the strongest tendency among the answers pointed to the language which had become less conservative and more efficient.
This linguistic change towards a ‘’less conservative’’ and more efficient communication could, in our view, be traced through its lexical and grammatical aspects. Martins (2017) summarizes lexico-grammar characteristics of BELF as pointed out by different investigators (Breiteneder, 2009; Cogo & Devy, 2008; Hülmbauer, 2007; Seidlhofer, 2004):
54 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković
- Dropping definite and indefinite articles - Omission of the third person singular present tense - Plural of uncountable nouns - Interchangeable use of who and which - Extended application of semantically flexible verbs - The regular use of invariable tag questions (p 63-64)
The lexico-grammar features of language also have an impact on the level of formality expressed between persons through their e-mail exchanges.. The perspectives on the formality of e-messages are conflicting. When e-mail was still a fairly new technological convenience, it was understandably viewed in terms of informality because of its speed, spontaneity, and privacy, however, Crystal (2006) points out that, contrary to a previous view that punctuation and spelling are loose, in business world, where e-mails are perceived as providing convenient professionalism by speeding up decision making and building strong working relationships, such standards are actually carefully observed and upheld. On the other hand, Yates and Orlikowski (1992), while comparing e- mails to memos, claim that the language of e-mails is more informal and colloquial, with spelling and grammatical errors which were considered inappropriate before, having become tolerated in this new medium. Informality or formality of language can also be traced through salutations, namely if writers use first or last names, as well as through abbreviations (such as can’t, don’t, etc.). For the examination of language formality/informality, it might also be useful to look at a study which concerned itself, among other issues, with making requests in one company’s Swedish and Finish BELF message exchanges (Louhiala- Salminen, Charles, & Kankaanranta, 2005), and found that the Finnish writers tended to make more direct requests than Swedish writers, who used indirect requests. The stronger preference for direct requests is reported to be in line with some previous research according to which straightforward forms had become a ‘’shared value among email communicators’’ (Louhiala-Salminen et al., 2005, p. 416).
The goal of this paper is to collect the data from research articles which investigated electronic mail communication and provided us with the most ubiquitous features of such communication and compare those findings with e- mails collected from a construction company in Bosnia & Herzegovina which conducts its business largely with other countries in Europe. We will strive to examine the types of linguistic choices by EFL speakers in an international business environment, mainly through grammatical and lexical manifestations of EFL in order to compare them to the widely investigated BELF trends in larger communities in the world, and discover the amount of consistency or inconsistency in e-mail correspondence between employees of one B&H company and one from Romania.
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3. METHODOLOGY
Bhatia and Bremner (2012) acknowledge the fact that aspects of business communication can be best revealed by analysing large quantities of authentic textual data (written or spoken). Therefore, this study aims to achieve just that, which is to analyse business communication through a corpus of authentic language in corporate environments provided in a written medium, with a focus on the producers of such language not being native English speakers. Given that business organisations are generally not very open to being placed under scrutiny by outsiders, for whichever purpose, a decision was made to attempt collecting electronic correspondence between a company in Bosnia & Herzegovina and a company based in another European country where English is also spoken as a foreign language.
Contact was made with one of the executive officers in a local company which deals with the production and installation of insulation pipelines and air conditioning for industrial plants, and he agreed to share a portion of the company’s international correspondence. E-mail communication was chosen for a number of reasons, mainly because it is easily accessible in the sense that physical presence of the investigator in the company is not required for obtaining such communication, and also because the company may choose which e-mails to share, so that the risk of breaching confidentiality is minimised. Prior to forwarding the e-mails, the employees involved in the communication censored the data such as passwords and confidential amounts of money negotiated between companies. Names were not censored, but the author of this study decided to subsequently change them.
The total of 59 e-mails were received, under six different subjects. The e- mails were carefully examined in order to find all features of language which deviate from conventional English, such as grammatical mistakes and unusual sentence structures. The tagging system employed in this study is taken from Carrió-Pastor and Muñiz-Calderón, (2013), who applied the system on syntactic variation in English language used by Chinese and Indian writers in order to investigate the internal mechanisms that make a language change. Their hypothesis was that language significantly changes when spoken by non-native speakers of English in a corpus comprised of e-mails written by speakers of English as a second language, which is a similar stance to the one taken in this paper, which focuses on speakers of EFL. The tagging system relies on variations studied by linguists such as Bolton (2003), Kachru (2005), Kirpatrick (2007) and Sailaja (2009) and the system follows a classification of errors proposed by James (1998) and Dagneaux, Dennes and Granger (1998) (as cited in Pastora & Calderón, 2013). Figure 1 shows the tagging system designed to detect the syntactic variation found in the corpus:
56 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković
Table 1. Table of a tagging system for syntactic variation. Adapted from: 'The Compilation of a Corpus of Business English: Syntactic Variation (p. 92-93)’. By Pastor and Calderón Tagging of syntactic variations Use of articles: definite
For the use of articles, in each place where an article was missing we placed the tag for the type of article which should have been written. If an article was included, but a wrong one, the tag for the wrong article was inserted. Similarly, inappropriate tenses were marked with tag for the tense which was in the e-mail, not the one which should have been used. The same procedure was followed for all other categories, with the last category of sentence structure being used for sentences which do not violate grammar but are of odd composition, and for those for which no other tag was appropriate. E-mails also contained a significant amount of spelling mistakes, but those were not tagged, in fact, we decided to disregard them completely because the nature of the medium does not make it clear whether the mistake was genuine or only an issue of typography.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 2 is a summary of all syntactic variations found after the e-mail messages were manually tagged, and it shows the numbers indicating how many times the variation occurred in the text and that same amount expressed in percentages. Out of 34 categories outlined by Pastor and Calderon, our corpus was found to contain only 13. The categories which were found to be variations on their standard use are: prepositional phrases, direct articles, sentence structure, present simple, past simple, present perfect, adverbs, personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, present continuous, passive, and the complex phrase adjective plus noun. The largest amount of variation was found in relation to the use of prepositions, with the total amount of tags being 24. It is peculiar that, in the summary of BELF characteristics by Martins (2017), prepositions were not mentioned at all. Given that BCS (Bosnian/ Croatian/ Serbian) is the native language of half of our correspondents, it was expected that prepositions will be
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the category with most variation, as it had been previously noticed that EFL speakers have most difficulty with that category because it differs greatly between English and BCS. We cannot ascertain the reason for preposition variation in all the e-mails, because we do not know the grammar of Romanian language, however, it was noticed that BCS speakers use those prepositions which are correct in their mother tongues and just translate them into English. It is quite possible that this was the case with the speakers of Romanian, as well.
A close second most frequently noticed variation was the syntactic category of direct articles, and there are 18 instances of sentence structure variations. The most frequent phenomena in BELF, according to various investigators summarized in Martins (2017), was the dropping of definite and indefinite articles, and it can be said that this characteristic is confirmed by our corpus, as well, additionally because indefinite articles are the fourth most represented variation. More precisely, omission of direct articles was the most frequent characteristic in this regard, with 20 cases of DA omission and 7 cases of indirect article omission. Regarding tenses, the present simple and the past simple were influenced by their use as a part of BELF, each of them being tagged 6 times, and present perfect three times. Martins (2017) only speaks of the present simple tense, claiming that speakers often dropped the third person singular suffix, which was found to be the case only two times (‘’it show us 3 different SWIFT codes’’ and ‘’toll declaration that represent real road use’’), and the third person suffix was once inserted where it should not have been (‘’what des PCL means’’). The other variations related to the present simple tense include the use of PRS where another tense was grammatically proper, and an instance of second person singular verb variation (‘’you already has’’). Therefore, the characteristic of the peculiar use of the present simple tense is hereby confirmed, however, the precise variation in terms of third person singular was not as prominent as expected. The only other tense, the present continuous, was tagged only once, together with personal and demonstrative pronouns, passive, and adjective + noun structure being the least represented category.
Sentence structure variation is a very prominent feature of our corpus, but it cannot be individually categorised or divided according to most salient constructions since there are a lot of different types of constructions and most of them are quite creative (‘’We will try our best that we can meet your favor’’). Other categories mentioned by Martins (interchangeable use of who and which, extended application of semantically flexible verbs, and the regular of invariable tag questions) were not present in the collection of e-mails at all.
Table 2. Variations in order of frequency Category N % PP* 24 24.49 DA* 23 23.47
58 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković
SST* 18 18.37
INDA* 10 10.2 PRS* 6 6.12 PAS* 6 6.12
PRPER* 3 3.06 ADV* 3 3.06
PERP* 1 1.02 DMP* 1 1.02 PRCONT* 1 1.02
PSV* 1 1.02 ADJN* 1 1.02
For the type of vocabulary which indicates the register of e- communication between these two companies, we chose to consider abbreviations and informal expressions which include terms such as ''thanks'', ''OK'', and ''nope'', and phrasal verbs such as ''catch up'' and ''check out'', the results being depicted in Table 3. The table indicates that the Romanian correspondents engaged in very little use of this type of informal language, with only two instances of such vocabulary. In the B&H company's e-mails, a number of such examples is 9. Abbreviations were considered to be short versions of negation such as ''couldn't'', ''haven't'', ''won't'', and contractions such as ''we'll'', ''that's'', ''there's'', ''it's''. The amount of contracted versions used by B&H writers exceedes the Romanian counterparts by a large margin, with 17 such examples in total, and only 5 on the Romanian side.
Table 3. the number of informal vocabulary and abbreviations in e-mail messages by both companies B&H Romanian Abbreviations 17 5 informal vocabulary 9 2
Considering that our corpus is only a small part of a larger body of communication between two companies which are in a continuous cooperation, we believe that, if access were granted, many more consistencies would be revealed between such language and the characteristics described in literature on Business English as Lingua Franca. Nevertheless, our analysis of grammar and vocabulary clearly indicates that the language of e-communication in this particular business environment is far from the standard, prescribed use of English found in grammar books and dictionaries, with a quite significant
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number of ‘’mistakes’’ and deviations from what native speakers consider appropriate and ‘’natural’’. Therefore, it is evident that the perspective on e-mail communication laid out by Crystal (2006) which viewed e-mails as vessels for conveying one’s company’s professionalism with its regular use of typography and grammar, is no longer valid. Instead, we confirmed the e-mail characterisation by Yates and Orlikowski (1992) which described the new form of communication as much more informal, colloquial, and forgiving of grammatical errors. Kankaaranta and Planken (2010) confirmed this view in their study of internationally operating business professionals according to whom BELF discourse was characterised by simplified English and which regards grammatical inaccuracies mostly inconsequential. They also speak of simple sentence structures and phraseology, which, even though there was a large number of sentence structure variation within our corpus, is also the case in our correspondence. The structures may have been awkward and at times creative and reflecting the speaker’s native language, however, the general tendency was toward simplicity and clarity.
Figure 1. Example of one e-mail tagged for syntactic variation
One of the indicators for the level of formality expressed in e-mail exchanges between a domestic and a foreign company were e-mail openings, or greetings (Table 4). A manual analysis showed three types of greetings: Hello, Hi, or Dear without any first or last names, the proper and most standardly used greeting consisting of Dear Mr/Mrs plus their last name, and the other two being Hello or Dear plus the persons first name. We consider the combination of Dear plus last name to be the most formal form of greeting, the second option including the first name is less formal, and only Hello, Hi or Dear is considered to be informal. In the domestic company’s e-mails, the recipient was most frequently greeted with the combination of Dear/Hello + first name (12 times), 10 times the option without any names was chosen, and 9 times the most standard form was in use. The Romanian company’s messages, on the other hand, show a smaller amount of informal greetings (6 as opposed to 10), the use semi-informal greetings is almost the same as in the e-mails from the Bosnian
60 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković company (11 and 12), and there were 7 formal greetings in Romanian mails in total. It is evident that the mode of greeting varies largely and it is not consistent through the correspondence. It is impossible to say which company’s employees were more formal/informal than the others’, since numbers are approximately the same. What is important though, is that correspondences were started in different manner by Bosnian and Romanian writers, but as the correspondence continued, one of the parties adopted the other one’s way of addressing, in order to show respect. It was also noticed that the greetings did not randomly vary from message to message, but that each string of e-mails had its own form of greeting, depending on who the addressee was. We conclude that the form of address depends on the parties included, as one string of e-mail used only the formal greeting, another the semi-formal, and others used the informal one. Generally, the person who initiated the communication felt which form of opening was most proper to the person they addressed, and adhered to that form throughout the rest of their communication. However, we cannot claim that these regular e-mail openings make business communication completely formal or completely informal, since some messages omitted the greeting completely, if the message was very brief and not of major importance.
Table 4. Types and frequency of e-mail openings for both companies Greeting B&H Romanian Hello/Hi/Dear 10 6 Dear/Hello + First name 12 11 Dear Mr/Mrs + Last name 9 7
In regard to the last aspect of formality, we considered the way of making requests. The e-mails from the domestic company contained a lot more requests than the Romanian ones and all but one were indirect. Some of the examples are: ''Can you please check what's happening?'', ''Can you please help me with this.'', ''Can you please tell us which one to choose? Can you write it on the Invoice and send it to us.''. Note that some of these do not include a question mark. The one direct request expressed as imperative was: ''please send us scanned, signed and stamped document, so we can issue the invoice.''. The e-mails from Romanian correspondents contained 5 requests, 4 of them being indirect, and one direct one: ''Please send us the new invoice.’’. The increased preference for indirect requests with modal initials and various want/desire statements, places our correspondents closer to the Swedish company’s employees in the study by Louhiala-Salminen et al. (2005), and therefore, simultaneously goes against the shared value of minimalist e-mail politeness discovered in some previous research (Alatalo, 2002; Mulholland, 1999; Nickerson, 2000). The study suggests that politeness plays a secondary role in these routine situations and that ‘’both the requester and requestee can be seen as being engaged in a collaborative activity in which the exchange of information is equally important to both of them’’ (p. 416), which we find to be true also for the subjects in this paper,
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however, for some reason, they chose the more polite and less-face threatening option of request making, unlike the majority of correspondents in the aforementioned Finish study. More data is needed in order to get to the bottom of this phenomena, such as interviews or surveys with the employees which would help us discover the reason for their linguistic choices and levels of politeness.
5. CONCLUSION
The aim of this study was to analyse the language of a corpus of electronic messages exchanged between the speakers of English as a Foreign Language, more precisely, the EFL spoken for business purposes. Composers of these messages were employees of one company based in Bosnia & Herzegovina, thus, the native speakers of BCS, and a company based in Romania, with Romanian as their native language. It was our goal to investigate if Business English employed in these two Balkan countries displays similarities or differences with BELF as it was characterised by various researchers on a more global scale. As measurements for characterising the language of e-mails we gathered, we chose to look at grammatical and syntactic variation, vocabulary, e-mail openings, and the way in which e-mail authors made requests, and used these parameters as indicators of the level of formality of BELF. Vocabulary and grammar strongly indicate a correlation with some of the most important previous research, as there was a tendency to disregard accuracy in favour of conveying the message. As we previously stated in the literature review part, investigators such as Firth (1996), Porcini (2002), Siedlhofer (2004), and Rogerson-Revell (2008) agree that the core objective of BELF is to enable operative and consistent communication between non-native speakers for successful communication. Our corpus of e-mails tells us that linguistic mistakes and nativeness are not important when it comes to international business dealings, the main objective is to get the information across and to receive feedback from the other party so as to ascertain that the business transaction hass or will be successful. A much greater focus is on hard and fast facts, numbers, passwords, addresses, and similar data. If grammar and vocabulary is to indicate the level of formality, we can say that BELF in our case is semi-formal, with regular formats of openings, e-mail body parts, and closings. Informal vocabulary items such as ''OK'' have been used by both parties, but in other areas such as greetings and request making, a certain level of formality was, indeed, maintained. This study was limited with regard to our access to some of the background information, as we considered it too imposing to request interviews or send questionnaires which would more precisely reveal the nature of these business persons' relationships and their attitudes toward business communication. However, we still consider that by only looking at raw data such as these e-mail messages we received, some valid and insightful conclusion could, and have been made.
62 BELF: Subject matter or linguistic correctness in e-mail communication Lejla Isaković
REFERENCES
Bargiela-Chiappini, F., Nickerson, C., Planken, B. (1997) Business Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan. New york.
Bhatia, V.K., & Bremner, S. (2012). English for Business Communication. Language Teaching, 45, 410- 445. DOI:10.1017/S026144481200017.
Carrió-Pastor, M. L., & Muñiz-Calderón, R. (2013). The Compilation of a Corpus of Business English: Syntactic Variation.Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 95, 89–95. DOI:10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.10.626
Crystal, D. (2003). English as a Global Language (2nd ed.). New York. Cambridge University Press. retrieved from: http://culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/pdf/research/books/nation_bran ding/English_As_A_Global_Language_-_David_Crystal.pdf
Daft, R. L., & Lengel, R. H. (1984). Information richness: A new approach to managerial behavior and organizational design. Research in Organizational Behavior, 6, 191-233.
Firth, A. (1996). The discursive accomplishment of normality: On “lingua franca” English and conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics, 26(2), 237– 259. DOI:10.1016/0378-2166(96)00014-8.
Jackson, M. H. (2007). Should Emerging Technologies Change Business Communication Scholarship? Journal of Business Communication, 44(1), 3–12. DOI :10.1177/0021943606295781
Louhiala-Salminen, L., Charles, M., & Kankaanranta, A. (2005). English as a lingua franca in Nordic corporate mergers: Two case companies. English for Specific Purposes, 24(4), 401–421. DOI:10.1016/j.esp.2005.02.003.
Markus, M. L. (1994). Electronic Mail as the Medium of Managerial Choice. Organization Science, 5(4), 502–527. DOI:10.1287/orsc.5.4.502.
Nickerson, C. (2005). English as a lingua franca in international business contexts. English for Specific Purposes, 24(4), 367–380. DOI:10.1016/j.esp.2005.02.001.
Poncini, G. (2002). Investigating discourse at business meetings with multicultural participation. IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 40(4), 345-373. DOI:10.1515/iral.2002.017 .
Rogerson-Revell, P. (2008). Participation and performance in international business meetings. English for Specific Purposes, 27(3), 338–360. DOI:10.1016/j.esp.2008.02.003.
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Seidlhofer, B. (2004). Research Perspectives on Teaching English as a Lingua Franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 209-239. DOI:10.1017/s0267190504000145.
Seshadri, S., & Theye, L. D. (2000). Professionals and Professors: Substance or Style? Business Communication Quarterly, 63(3), 9–23. DOI: 10.1177/108056990006300302.
64 Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2 (2), pp. 65-75, Winter 2019 Original research paper ISSN 2566-4638 © International Burch University https://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JEH2019225
Teaching English language to students of diverse cultures
Amila Dautbašić Jasna Saračević International Burch University Bosnia and Herzegovina
[email protected] [email protected]
Abstract: In schools where the English language is taught, it might Keywords: diversity, be challenging to treat and teach students equally, if they are of culture, classroom, school, diverse cultures. Potential problems may occur because students education. have different understanding, background knowledge, learning abilities and cognitive skills, as well as challenges related to comprehension, pronunciation, and vocabulary and language acquisition in general. The paper investigates teaching English to students of diverse cultures in schools. The results showed large Article History differences in terms of learning and acquiring English evident in: Submitted: 31 May 2019 difficulty acquiring vocabulary, frequent occurrence of code Accepted: 15 December 2019 switching, and cognitive challenges.. The results showed a relationship between learners’ motivation and attitudes towards learning. The evidence indicated that culturally diverse students in elementary school are more active and verbal in English learning classes while those in high school face more difficulties related to pronunciation, speaking in large groups and motivation. Culturally different students at the university level develop into introverted students with less cognitive skills. With proper methods applied by the teachers, students’ achievements can be upgraded which would eventually influence students’ skills of mastering the English language.
Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2, Issue 2, Winter 2019
1. INTRODUCTION
The aim of the current paper was to get to the root of the matter and address the most crucial factors that would give the most accurate answers to how different understanding, background knowledge, learning abilities and cognitive skills, as well as challenges related to comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary and language acquisition in general, affect the teaching process within multilingual language classrooms. When teaching English in such a context, a teacher should consider the experience and learning approaches of the students while choosing methods appropriate to use with all of them in order to help them understand properly, without any difficulties (Quinton, 2013).
Different social backgrounds, environment and culture influence the process of language acquisition (Bećirović, Brdarević-Čeljo & Zavrl, 2019). Students are different in terms of experience, methods of learning and many other factors (Guild, 1986), all of which impact the students’ behaviour and their learning styles. Thus, good and professional teachers use a variety of teaching methods in order to stimulate all their students’ learning. For instance, relying on stereotypes regarding one’s race or ethnicity is not a proper way to create a teaching plan for students of that culture (Davis, 2013).
Another aspect of creating a good atmosphere in a multicultural classroom should be based on establishing a friendly relationship between a teacher and students, since students in an authoritarian classrooms are more likely to give negative feedback or might feel threatened for being different. In order to avoid this, a teacher should behave like a facilitator in the classroom, not like an instructor (Lynch, 2015). Creating a survey to decide what is the most interesting for student and what fits their needs might be a good way to show them that they are actually the ones who help the teacher decide and gives them motivation to learn, once they had a chance to choose and be recognized as an important factor in making decisions.
Usually, students with different cultural background, non-native speakers of the language spoken in that country might feel lost and unaccepted, those feelings pressuring them to push their native language aside and forcing them to consider English as their main language. In a culturally responsive classroom, it is important to celebrate varieties and help non- native speakers realise that diversity is an advantage and that it enriches the whole classroom. That is the perfect method to help students achieve fluency in English without feeling uncomfortable. Even the usage of students’ native language in some materials might be very helpful in English learning (Lynch, 2015). Teachers should know how to incorporate materials related to their students’ diversities into everyday classes and make them feel accepted and thus encourage students to develop a sense of identity based on their differences. Teachers are important helping students not to feel like they are on their own, but have a friend in their teacher.
66 Teaching English language to students of diverse cultures Amila Dautbašić & Jasna Saračević
Various grouping strategies such as grouping students according to qualifications/programs should be done by teachers. This helps to tend to their needs, for example in the language use, grammar and language skills in English language learning. At other instances a teacher may divide students according to their abilities if the learning outcome requires that. Also, group dynamics need to be taken into consideration when grouping students together. Moreover, background and a proficiency level play a central role as well when grouping students. A curriculum is quite often underestimated for its importance in teaching, but it is crucial for a good pedagogic approach to academic performances. Even the simplest curriculum is important because it defines what is chosen as the best literature, authors, and texts for students, and what is the best to use in order to help students value their own culture and history (Davis, 2013). What is important is that all students in a group should be active participants, cooperating with their fellow members in all given activities. This will ensure that they are learning effectively. Balancing a group helps prevent the Halo Effect by the teacher and those who are proficient are expected to offer support to students that require help. This diverse nature of students in one class is stimulating and calls for the teacher to be innovative and creative in order to have a "coherent" class.
This study addresses the issue of multicultural classes in Bosnia and Herzegovina investigating teaching English to students of diverse cultures in schools with the focus on the following issues: challenges, differences, outcomes and methods. The participants were not randomly selected, but chosen based on their cultures. Thus, the study will show how teachers’ approaches within such classrooms influence the learning outcomes of the class.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
The issue of handling multiculturalism is a very popular topic for many researchers. We investigated all the pros and cons of having students of cultural and other diversities inside a classroom and how it influences their educational progress, their mental health, their cognitive development, as well as their socialisation and relationship with peers and teachers.
To start with, Witsel (2003) explained that learning and studying are not easy even in the classroom where all students are of the same culture, leading to the conclusion that the fact that students who do not belong to the same culture as their classmates have twice as more difficulties in school. With respect to the existing differences within classrooms, Bećirović (2017) indicated that younger students achieve more, thus are more motivated than older students, or that females achieve more than male students.
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Regarding other researchers who dealt with the matter of immigrant studies and their coping with their background, Saenz (1994) implies that they might not suffer so much from being alone in the class with no other peers coming from the same culture, while Steele and Aronson (1995) suggest they suffer less from being marked with stereotypes connected to the culture they have grown up in. This is because of the growth of the number of relative students in one classroom, which was shown by the research of Sekaquaptewa and Thompson (2002).
Students that come from other surroundings might also feel more powerful and confident, and less visible or noticed in a classroom environment which is culturally diverse, and this encourages students of different cultures to work together and become acquainted with other cultures (Yaman & Bećirović, 2016). However, unfortunately not many teachers are able to pay extra attention to culturally diverse students, and are not even certain if they should. This is one of the questions this research is most focused on. According to Gay (1994) teachers believe their thinking and opinions are right and their facts are correct, that the are universally accepted, without considering that their own norms, values and behaviour influences their teaching and the treatment of students. As Pena (1994) indicated, teachers spend little to no time with their students and that is the main reason why teachers are not fully aware of the students’ needs, and in culturally diverse classrooms this plays a crucial role.
Sleeter (2001) agrees that one of the main problems is the fact that students who are usually the minority are more endangered than the ones who are numerous in the classroom and psychologically, they feel uncomfortable from the very beginning, being aware that they belong to a small group of people. It is very important, in each case, to have a proper approach with these students and to make them feel comfortable. One of the most important things would definitely be using the native language. However, while researchers like Genessee (2012) would agree that using the native language in an English classroom is more of an asset than a barrier, culturally diverse students would disagree.
Corbet (2003) explained that multilingualism in an English classroom matters and it should be fun, where students of different cultures can interact and share their interests regarding one topic. Helot and Young (2006) conducted research in which they found out that teachers become more effective when they are aware of the richness which multilingual classrooms offer, because it is there that the teacher has a large variety of possibilities in the organisation of strategies and managing the classroom. Multi-culturalism and multi ethnicity, as well as multiracial elements are incredibly important for the whole process of inclusion in school and that is why teachers should nourish and work on accepting diversities (Bećirović, 2012). Cooperative learning and social interaction solve problems such as inappropriate behaviour and lack of participation (Sechele, 2002).
68 Teaching English language to students of diverse cultures Amila Dautbašić & Jasna Saračević
However, it seems that in most learning environments teachers still need much support in addressing the issue successfully. For instance, Hélot and Young (2006) found few supports in the French curriculum to deal with linguistic and cultural diversity. According to them, teachers can learn to be more effective professionals when they are made aware of the abundance of languages spoken and cultures represented by human beings. Building on this awareness, teachers need to generate strategies that recognize multiple linguistic realities.
Garcia, Skutnabb-Kangas and Gúzman (2006) further argued that multilingual schools need to include critical language awareness involving multilingual and intercultural elements. To accomplish these ends, teachers can be taught to reflect on their own language-learning experiences. As an example, Hélot and Young authored the Eveilaux langues and Janua Linguarum European projects (Candelier, 2003a, 2003b) and the SwissEveil au language, Ouverture aux langues (Eole) project (Perregaux, De Goumoens, Jeannot, & De Pietro, 2003), which had as a major objective to demonstrate a model for language awareness curricula. The materials developed through these projects contain activities aimed at fostering positive attitudes toward different languages, their speakers, and their cultures. These multilingual activities include using a second language (L2) to teach a curricular subject or offering pupils the opportunity to use their first language for specific activities.
In the French study curriculum, Hélot and Young (2006) managed to gather data which were addressing linguistic and cultural diversity, which aided the two in reaching conclusions about differences between multiple realities in a linguistic sense. Hélot and Young (2006) highlighted the importance of being aware of the amount of how plenty of speaking languages and cultures are discovered with each individual, as one of the very important traits of teachers as professionals. Similarly, Garcia, Skutnabb-Kangas, and Gúzman (2006) discuss the importance of embracing multilingual schools to start to build up the language awareness via multilingual and intercultural elements, which is accomplished by teachers being critical to themselves and reflecting their own language-learning methods. This includes teaching a subject in an L2 or offering student the opportunity to use their first language in some activities.
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This research represents a qualitative study, in which unstructured interviews were conducted. The interview consisted of 10 initial questions, all related to English instructors’ treatment of culturally diverse students. All of the questions in the interview were understandable to all the participants.
The research sample included 33 participants whose ages varied, as the research was conducted in elementary school (11 participants), high school (11
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participants) and university (11 participants). The participants had the opportunity to withdraw at any time they did not feel comfortable and also they were informed about the purpose of the research.
The sampling frame included target population of students in Sarajevo of different ages and different gender. Non random sampling was applied using a snowball sampling method. The participants were divided into three groups, elementary school students, high schools students and university students, which implies that the groups were separated by certain age borders.
4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The primary purpose of this study was to examine the cultural challenges in learning English as a foreign language in diverse schools. Previous results suggest that there are many differences in teaching, also various methods and approaches used depending on the students’ cultural and ethnical backgrounds because each student required different attention and support in learning.
The results of this research revealed a different experience on all three levels. When it comes to motivation, the elementary school students and the university students stated they were mostly motivated to go to classes, while the high school students were not.
‘’I like going to school because we have fun in English classes and sometimes, we watch cartoons in English. Last week we watched Sleeping Beauty’’ A.H. 13 y/o ‘’When it comes to motivation, besides regular student issues such as laziness or not wanting to get up early, I don’t have any issues, especially not because of my professors or assistants. University is something we all enrol voluntarily, and I realise that my motivation has to be on high levels if I want to graduate.’’ A.K. 21 y/o
Responses on questions regarding group work activities showed that the high school students and the university students dislike working in groups, but feel a lot more comfortable working with people of their culture and the elementary school students stated they feel comfortable generally working in groups, but little more comfortable in groups with other members of their culture.
‘’The only thing I like during group exercises is that somebody else gets the work done for me. Besides that, group work can be really humiliating because my friends who are domestic students give certain comments, such as ‘’Let us do that, he is too slow and will only slow us down’’ and they thing I don’t understand. But I do’’ K.G. 17 y/o
70 Teaching English language to students of diverse cultures Amila Dautbašić & Jasna Saračević
In terms of in class participation and activity, the elementary school students have shown to be very relaxed regarding their cultural diversity, and do not feel ashamed of their accent, they like to stand out, and are comfortable speaking English in front of the other students and not only the ones that come from the same cultural background. On the other hand, the high school and the university students replied that they are ashamed of their accent, they do not like to stand out and are more comfortable when speaking English within the group they are culturally part of.
‘’I like my accent because it is different. Others sometimes laugh, but I think it is also funny. I also laugh at others when they make mistake. But it’s not bad laugh, it’s cute.’’ S.H. 10 y/o ‘’It is very difficult being in class with people who are as fluent in English as you are, but you feel like they are making fun of you whenever you try to speak. I’ve never faced anyone laughing at my face, but I am convinced they dislike my accent.’’ K.C. 21 y/o
On the questions regarding the teacher’s behaviour in the classrooms, students responded differently. The elementary school students find the teacher’s classroom management appropriate, but the high school and the university students dislike the way their teachers manage classrooms.
‘’I think our professors divide domestic and foreign students too much, even though they sometimes try to mix us, but fail because that never works properly’’ S.C. 16y/o
However, the elementary and high school students feel like teachers treat them the same as others, where on the university level they do not feel the same. Unfortunately, the question about using the native language in classrooms was answered positively on all levels.
’’I sometimes feel sad when teacher speak Bosnian, but I understand a lot, so it is no problem for me’’ A.G. 9y/o ‘’My foreign colleagues and I noticed that most of the professors obey the rule to speak only English in class, but sometimes native colleagues start speaking Bosnian, and then professor continues.'' G.A. 16y/o
The results presented the various approaches to students who are from different cultural background and how they are regarded as neglected compared to other students. By having a diverse classroom, grouping the learners by various types of topics of interest and level of expertise, integrating some gamification elements to foster the discussion and knowledge sharing, peer- learning, include problem solving and inquiry teaching method.
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Potential problems may occur because students have different understanding, background knowledge, learning abilities and cognitive skills, as well as challenges related to comprehension, pronunciation, vocabulary, and language acquisition in general (Dubravac, Brdarević-Čeljo, & Bećirović, 2018). Nowadays, textbooks offer a wide range of features in an effort to help teachers accommodate the learning styles of all the students. In some cases activities or projects are identified as appropriate for as specific learning style (Gardner, 1993). School counsellors, school psychologists, and testing specialists are a sensible resource for information about determining an individual students’ referred learning style (Warner & Bryan, 2001).
The method used was useful, even though it could have been more detailed, but regarding the target audience and the ages in observation, those of younger age might have had problems with understanding what was asked of them, while changing the method for three groups would give different and incomplete results.
5. CONCLUSION
This study found that the student’s ethnical and cultural background played an important role in their overall learning experience. An important role concerning students of diverse cultures has the teacher. The results are in line with the results of McCombs (2001) and Newman (2002) who found that students who feel they have supportive and caring teachers are more motivated to engage in academic work than students with unsupportive and uncaring teachers. Indeed, teachers who learn more about their students’ backgrounds, cultures, and experiences will feel more capable and efficient in their work as teachers and have less difficulty with their students acquiring the English language. During classroom interactions, teachers should keep the special cultural needs of their diverse student in mind, also some educators believe that all children benefit from inclusion because it creates an authentic microcosm of the society students will be participating in once they finish school (Karten, 2010; Rea, McLaughlin, & Walther-Thomas, 2002).
Most of the time students have their own purposes for learning or achieving specific goals within a class (Rizvić & Bećirović, 2017). It is very important to focus on the learning outcomes the teacher wants learners to achieve besides their individual background. Having a classroom with diverse learners is a wonderful opportunity to share knowledge and enrich the classroom and learning experience through different expertise. The 21st century skills aim that learners experience learning across curriculum, meaning that the same topic can be analysed from various perspectives.
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Teachers can improve lives of their students, and they should work hard on that. They can also help in making the multicultural classroom more pleasant place to be in, by changing their approaches to learning. Being flexible is one of the most important aspects of teaching students of diverse cultures (Doyle, 2006). It is of great importance for teachers to investigate the issues of any kind inside the classroom and related to learning processes and to help students reduce the problems, to help students to improve their academic achievements and create a strong relationship with students.
As values underlie every educational practice and behaviour expectations are culturally anchored, conflicts are likely to occur when cultural issues are not appropriate addressed in the classroom (Demir, 2009). That has shown to be the key to effective English language learning with students of diverse cultures. Still, studies found that minority ethnic groups often struggle in academic institutions due to language difficulties, feelings of isolation and having problems adjusting to a new cultural environment (Baumgartner & Johnson-Bailey, 2008). Especially important is that educational institutions support minority students, as well as encourage the creation of initiatives to support multiculturalism in schools. Research should support academic administrators’ efforts to enhance faculty awareness of the impact of culture on minority students’ learning (KaiKai & KaiKai, 1992).
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REFERENCES
Bećirović, S. (2017). The Relationship between Gender, Motivation and Achievement in Learning English as a Foreign Language. European Journal of Contemporary Education, 6(2), 210-220. Bećirović, S. (2012). The Role of Intercultural Education in Fostering Cross- Cultural Understanding. Epiphany, 5(1), 139-156. Bećirović, S, Brdarević Čeljo, A, & Zavrl, I., (2019) Research into intercultural effectiveness in a multicultural educational milieu in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 32(1), 1336-1351, DOI: 10.1080/1331677X.2019.1629329 Böhm A., Davis D., Meares D., & Pearce D. (2002) Global Student Mobility 2025 IDP Education Australia Limited. Sydney Corbett, J. (2003). An intercultural approach to English language teaching. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Dubravac, V., Brdarević Čeljo, A., Bećirović, S. (2018). The English of Bosnia and Herzegovina. World Englishes, 37(4), 635-652. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/weng.12347 Gay. G. (1994). A synthesis of scholarship in multicultural education (Urban Monograph No.RI88062012). Oak Brook, IL. North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Genesee, D. F. (2012). The Home Language: An English Language Learner’s Most Valuable Resource. Colorin Colorado. Retrieved from https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/home-language-english- language-learners-most-valuable-resource Helot, C., & Young, A. (2006). Imagining Multilingual Education in France: A Language and Cultural Awareness Project at Primary Level. Retrieved from http://christinehelot.u-strasbg.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2006- Imagining-Mult-educ-in-France.pdf Nemeth, K. (2009). Many languages, one classroom: Teaching dual and English language learners. Silver Spring, MD: Gryphon House, Inc. of Personality and Social Psychology, 69, 797–811 Pena, R. A. (1997). Cultural differences and the construction of meaning: Implications for the leadership and organizational context of schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 5(10), 1-19. Rizvić E., & Bećirović, S., (2017). Willingness to Communicate in English as a Foreign Language in Bosnian-Herzegovinian EFL Context, European Researcher, 8(3), 224-235
74 Teaching English language to students of diverse cultures Amila Dautbašić & Jasna Saračević
Saenz, D. S. (1994). Token status and problem-solving deficits: Detrimental effects of distinctiveness and performance moni-toring. Social cognition, 12, 61–74 Sechele, J. (2012). Language learning in a multicultural classroom. Retrieved from https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/services/Download/uj:9601/CO NTENT1. Sekaquaptewa, D., & Thompson, M. (2003). Solo status, stereo-types, and performance expectancies: Their effects on women’s public performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39, 68–74. Sleeter, C. E. (2001). Preparing Teachers for Culturally Diverse Schools. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94–106. DOI: 10.1177/0022487101052002002 Steele, C. M., & Aronson, J. (1995). Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(5), 797–811. DOI: 10.1037//0022-3514.69.5.797 Yaman, A. & Bećirović, S. (2016). Learning English and Media Literacy. Imperial Journal of Interdisciplinary Research (IJIR), 2(6), 660-663. Witsel, M. (2003). Teaching and learning issues in the multicultural classroom, Proceedings of Effective Teaching and Learning Conference, Brisbane, 6-7 November, Griffith University, Brisbane, Qld. Zembylas, M. (2010). Teachers’ emotional experiences of growing diversity and multiculturalism in schools and the prospects of anethic of discomfort. Teachers and Teaching, 16(6), 703–716. DOI: 10.1080/13540602.2010.517687.
75 Journal of Education and Humanities Volume 2 (2), pp. 76-93, Winter 2019 Review paper ISSN 2566-4638 © International Burch University https://dx.doi.org/10.14706/JEH2019226
Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima
Asim Šahinpašić Fakultet za edukaciju i humanističke nauke, Internacionalni Burch univerzitet Bosna i Hercegovina [email protected]
Abstract: U okviru ovog rada analizirana je etika javnog Keywords: etika komuniciranja kao platforma za samoregulaciju odnosa s komuniciranja, PR etika, javnostima. U analizi je korištena deduktivna metodologija, a deontologija, utilitarizam, problematika etičke samoregulacije analizirana je na etički kodeksi. prakseološkom, fenomenološkom i ontološkom nivou. Analizirana je primjena etičkih principa i teorija, baziranih na utilitarističkim i deontološkim pristupima na području odnosa s javnošću. Posebnu pažnja posvećena je dilemema u vezi sa primjenom etičkih postulata Article History u komunikacijskoj praksi, a predstavljeni su i etički kodeksi koji se Submitted: 25 November 2019 primjenjuju u PR profesiji kao i osnovne smjernice za primjenu PR Accepted: 30 December 2019 etike u rješavanju komunikacijskih izazova.
Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima Asim Šahinpašić
1. UVOD
Odnosi s javnošću (eng. Public Relations- PR) su disciplina i profesija koja se kontinuirano razvija, i u kojoj su percepcije o akademskoj i profesionalnoj etičkoj utemeljenosti utemeljene na dijametralno suprotnim pozicijama. Na jednoj strani su percepcije javnosti koje smatraju da je PR baziran na spinu, manipulacijama i etičkoj elastičnosti, dok su na drugoj strani PR teoretičari i praktičari koji odnose s javnošću percipiraju kao društvenu, etičku i moralnu savjest organizacija koje predstavljaju (vidi Black, 2003; Bowen, 2007; Kurtić, 2009; Skinner, Mersham, Valin, 2003). Savremeni koncept odnosa s javnostima podrazumijeva da je komunikacija zasnovana na visokim etičkim principima i profesionalnim normama i standardima i zboga toga će u ovom radu biti analizirana etika komuniciranja koja bi trebala da se primjenjuje u profesionalnoj praksi odnosa s javnošću u svijetu i Bosni i Hercegovini (BiH). Fokus analize bit će na PR etici, kao samoregulirajućem okviru javnog komuniciranja, a ta problematika bit će analizirana na teorijskom i praktičnom nivou. Na teorijskom nivou bit će analizirani utilitaristička vizija etike komuniciranja, deontološki pristup etici komuniciranja, komunikacijska etika egalitarizma i relativizam u etici komuniciranja. Na osnovu tih smjernica bit će analizirane dvije najznačajnije teorije filozofije morala, koje predstavlju osnov za razvoj savremene etike komuniciranja u odnosima s javnošću. Prva je utilitarna filozofija i konzekvencionalistički etički koncept odnosa s javnošću, koji je baziran na (dobrim ili lošim) posljedicama PR djelovanja. Druga osnova PR etike je deontološka filozofija i nekonzekvencionalistički etički koncept odnosa s javnošću, koji je baziran na dužnostima.
U okviru analize etike komuniciranja na profesionalnom nivou bit će analizirani kodeksi PR etike koji kreiraju samoregulirajuće okvire javnog komuniciranja. Također bit će analizirani i praktični aspekti etičkih komunikacijskih izazova, koji se postavljaju pred PR djelatnike. Na osnovu te analize bit će prezentirane i smjernice za ocjenu etičnosti javnog komuniciranja koje mogu koristiti komunikolozima i PR djelatnicima u teorijskom i praktičnom radu.
2. TEORIJSKE OSNOVE ETIČKOG KOMUNICIRANJA U ODNOSIMA S JAVNOŠĆU
Etika (gr. ethos, običaj) je nauka o moralu, koja proučava moralne norme i determinira kriterije za moralno i pravedno - etičko vrednovanje u svim sferama ljudskog djelovanja, uključujući i komunikacije (usp. Juka, 2006; Klaić, 1986; Kunczik, Zipfel, 2006; Morin, 2008; Nuhić, 1999; Tucaković, 2004;)
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Cutlip, Center, Broom sugeriraju da svaka diskusija o profesionalnom statusu odnosa s javnošću nužno počinje etikom, i da se pri donošenju etičkih odluka koriste dva pristupa filozofije morala - utilitarizam i deontologija – koji pomažu u procjeni i davanju savjeta vezanih za donošenje etički ispravnih odluka u jednoj organizaciji (2003; 2006).
2.1. UTILITARNA FILOZOFIJA I KONZEKVENCIONALISTIČKI ETIČKI KONCEPT ODNOSA S JAVNOŠĆU
Utilitarna filozofija odnosno utilitarizam zasniva se na principima koje su postavili engleski filozofi J. Bentham i J. S. Mill. Utilitarizam se bavi posljedicama ili ishodima neke odluke, uzimajući u obzir korisnost da bi odredio šta je ispravno a šta ne. Na osnovu toga mjeri se moralna vrijednost odluke a etički principi temelje se na posljedicama ili unaprijed planiranim rezultatima. Vizija utilitarizma kao principa sreće sugerira da se moralnost može definirati kao skup normi ljudskog ponašanja pomoću čijeg bi ispunjenja bilo ostvareno stanje sreće u najširem opsegu. Utilitarni pristup sugerira da moralno ponašanje proizvodi najveće dobro za najveći broj ljudi. Utilitarizam je fokusiran na rezultate, a ne na motive ljudi koji ostvaruju te rezultate. Očekuje se da će etički ispravni potezi pružiti najveću moguću količinu dobrobiti većini ljudi u društvu, a da će negativne posljedice svesti na najmanju moguću mjeru za druge ljude. (vidi Broom, 2006; Buble, 2006; Cutlip, Center, Broom, 2006; Juka, 2006).
Utilitarizam ima važnu ulogu u etici odnosa s javnošću, i zato PR savjetnici moraju voditi računa o ovom principu prilikom donošenja odluka. „Da bi utvrdio koliko je neki čin moralan, gledano iz utilitarne perspektive, jedan PR stručnjak mora da uzme u obzir sve alternativne odluke i da sagleda koja od ovih opcija donosi najviše dobra najvećem broju ljudi. Bit će izabrana ona opcija kojom se pozitivni efekti iskorišćavaju do maksimuma, a negativne posljedice svode na najmanju moguću mjeru.” (Cutlip Center, Broom, 2006, str. 138)
N. Kurtić smatra da klasična koncepcija utilitarizma ne odgovara situaciji suvremenih društvenih struktura, jer pogađanje volje i interesa većine u situaciji opšte umreženosti ne može više funkcionirati kao vrhunski kriterij dobrog ili društveno prihvatljivog ponašanja, pošto ne vodi računa o zaštiti interesa marginalnih skupina. On smatra da je koncepcija maksimalne sreće (izbjegavanje nesreće) ograničena na korist za organizaciju i dionike, te zbog toga sugerira da PR savjetnici pri procjeni utjecaja PR akcija organizacija na javnosti, moraju uključiti i očekivanja autsajdera (2009). Takav pristup podržavaju i Cutlip, Center, Broom (2006), koji ukazuju da utilitarizam održava status quo u kome je većina srećna, ali nije i manjina, što može spriječiti organizaciju da provede neophodne promjene koje iniciraju različite javnosti i napravi ozbiljne greške tokom utilitarne analize različitih alternativa. Kao jedan od najvećih prigovora utilitarizmu navodi se Kantov argument da opšte dobro ne može biti osnova za
78 Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima Asim Šahinpašić određenje moralnoga jer je nemoguće analizirati sve posljedice neke radnje i procijeniti ih prema njihovoj moralnoj vrijednosti (Juka, 2006).
2.2. DEONTOLOŠKA FILOZOFIJA I NEKONZEKVENCIONALISTIČKI ETIČKI KONCEPT ODNOSA S JAVNOŠĆU
Deontološku filozofiju odnosno deontologiju (grč. deonos = dolično i logos = govorenje) razvio je njemački filozof Immanuel Kant determinirajući univerzalne principe moralnosti, temeljene na kategoričkom imperativu, kojeg on definira kao moralni zakon koji se nalazi neposredno u nama kao apriorni zahtjev našeg uma, koji on svojom strukturom postavlja volji (Juka, 2006). Prema Cutlip, Center, Broomu, deontološka etika se temelji na moralnim principima, i ne zasniva moralnu ispravnost neke PR odluke na projektovanim rezultatima. Deontologija je teorija etike koja dužnost postavlja kao temelj morala. Zbog toga se deontološki pristup zove nekonsekventalistički jer PR etikom upravlja osjećaj dužnosti, a ne posljedice i ishodi odluke. Kategorički imperativ ima univerzalnu primjenu, jer se pri odlučivanju odluka razmatra kao univerzalni zakon primjenjiv u svim sličnim situacijama (vidi 2006). Na to ukazuje i sam Kant: „Pošto sam volji oduzeo sve pobude, koje bi za nju mogle proizaći iz pokoravanja bilo kojemu zakonu, ne preostaje ništa osim opće zakonitosti djelovanja uopće, koja jedino treba služiti volji kao načelo, to jest, ja uvijek trebam postupati tako da mogu htjeti, da moja maksima postane općim zakonom” (Kant prema Juka, 2006, str. 188-189).
Cutlip, Center, Broom (2006) smatraju da dobre strane deontološkog pristupa, u odnosu na utilitarni, posebno dolaze do izražaja u etički spornim situacijama pošto se odluke donose na osnovu onoga što je dobro ili loše, a ne na osnovu principa ko ima najviše koristi.
N. Kurtić (2009) odgovor na etičke izazove nalazi u vraćanju izvornim filozofskim postulatima etike, i daje praktično viđenje odnosa utilitarističkog/konzekvencionalističkog pristupa s jedne i deontološkog/ nekonzekvencionalističkog koncepta s druge strane:
Problem laganja, prevare, neiskrenosti, nepoštenja u središtu je svakog etičkog diskursa, pa i onog o etičnosti odnosa s javnostima. Postoje li slučajevi u kojima bi korporacija smjela lagati svojim javnostima? Konzekvencionalisti kažu: Da, ako je to način da donese maksimalnu sreću, odnosno izbjegne nesreću (sebi ili većini svojih javnosti). Nekonzekvencionalisti kažu: Da ako je „laganje“ općeprihvatljivo načelo, koje organizacija može prihvatiti i u odnosu prema sebi. Ipak, budući da organizacija ne može funkcionirati na temelju dezinformacija i laži, odgovor je NE. Ne lagati ni u kojim uvjetima. Prevara (laž) ne može se opravdati nikakvim krajnjim ciljevima. Ne lagati odlučan je zahtjev koji ne trpi iznimke. (str. 133.)
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Etika komuniciranja djeluje kao korektivni faktor u okviru jednog, prethodno keriranog moralnog okvira, koji je važan i za samo funkcionisanje javnosti i javnog mnijenja, a u praksi odnosa s javnostima to se temelji na profesionalnim etičkim kodeksima.
3. ETIČKI KODEKSI - INSTRUMENTI SAMOREGULACIJE U ODNOSIMA S JAVNOŠĆU
Odnosi s javnošću omeđeni su sa dva regulatorna okvira. Jedan je zakonski i normativni, a drugi, samoregulirajući, etički okvir. Ova dva sistema normi i principa određuju i uređuju „pravila igre“ u svijetu savremenih javnih komunikacija. Na taj način pravo i etika definiraju normativno okruženje u kojem se odvijaju odnosi s javnostima, i osiguravaju poštivanje pravila od strane svih učesnika u procesima javnog komuniciranja.
“Da bi ste stavili pravna pitanja u kontekst neophodno je prvo shvatiti razliku između „zakona” i „etike”, navode Cutlip, Center, Broom (2006), i elaboriraju: “Fundamentalno, zakon je sistem pravila koji upravlja određenim društvom. S druge strane, etika uključuje odluke koje ljudi donesu u svom privatnom i profesionalnom životu. Pojedinci utvrđuju etičke norme za svoje sopstveno ponašanje, od kojih neke uključuju dobrovoljno pridržavanje normi koje su utvrdile neke profesionalne grupe (npr. PRSA- Američko PR društvo).” (str. 169).
Lakićević (2004) smatra da su moral i pravo komplementarni, ali ne i identični, jer je moralna osuda nedovoljna da bi društvo opstalo (str. 212). Po njemu, glavni problem je u ravnoteži, koju on opisuje kao osetljivi i teško dostižni balans između slobodnog djelovanja i prihvatanja pune odgovornosti koja iz toga proizilazi, i uključuje slobodu izražavanja mišljenja, ali i potpadanja pod sankcije za zloupotrebu javne riječi (str. 209).
PR djelatnici se često nalaze u dilemi da li je dovljno samo poštivanje zakonskih odredbi ili je neophodno, pored pravnih normi, voditi računa i o etičkim principima. Po Tomiću, pridržavanje zakona ne jamči etične postupke zato što je zakon napisan tako da pokrije samo osnovne slučajeve, a PR profesionalac mora se osloniti na više standarde za donošenje odluka nego što je samo slovo zakona (2008). Kada je riječ sankcionisanju prestupa, etika i pravo imaju različite pristupe rješavanju tog problema. „Etika za razliku od prava, računa na moralne sankcije, dakle na unutrašnje osećanje pravičnog postupanja, koje je poduprto moralnim kodeksom zajednice.“ (Lakićević, 2004, str. 211).
Etički postulati u javnom komuniciranju važni su, za organizacije, medije i javnosti, a posebno za one koji posreduju u tim komunikacijskim procesima -za stručnjake i savjetnike koji se bave odnosima s javnostima i medijima. Ni u teoriji
80 Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima Asim Šahinpašić ni u praksi odnosa s javnošću, ništa nije prepušteno slučaju i samo dobroj volji PR-ovaca, jer je etičko ponašanje definisano profesionalnim PR kodeksima.
„Etički kodeks je skup normi koje propisuju određene organizacije i udruženja da služe kao smjernica u pogledu ponašanja njihovih članova“ (Tucaković, 2004, str. 83). Etički kodeksi imaju posebnu važnost pri samoregulaciji odnosa s javnošću, kao profesije. Po Cutlip, Center, Broomu „pridržavanje kodeksa profesionalne etike ono je što jednu pravu profesiju odvaja od ostalih zanimanja“ (2006, str. 137). PR profesionalci koji žele da uspostave funkciju odnosa s javnošću, kao etičku savjest u svojim organizacijama, moraju poznavati i slijediti uzuse i standarde profesionalnog, etičkog PR djelovanja koji su kodificirani u kodeksima PR etike. „Etički kodeks stoji u službi zaštite klijenata i privilegiranog položaja struke u društvu. Normalno je da pri tome imaju zakonsku snagu!“ (Tomić, 2008, str. 519)
3.1. KOMPARATIVNA ANALIZA ETIČKIH KODEKSA U ODNOSIMA S JAVNOŠĆU
Etički kodeksi koje su usvojile međunarodne i nacionalne PR asocijacije, udruženja i instituti važni su za profesionalni razvoj odnosa s javnošću, kao društveno odgovorne poslovne funkcije. Etički kodeksi služe zaštiti klijenata i privilegovanog položaja PR struke u društvu, i zbog toga bi trebali da imaju zakonsku snagu, smatra Z. Tomić (2008). Etički kodeksi kodificiraju profesionalno regulisanje etičkih pitanja u savremenom PR-u. Bowen (2007) smatra da stanje etike u PR praksi zavisi od etičkih kodeksa kojih se pridržavaju glavne profesionalne PR asocijacije. Svi PR kodeksi su nastali kao instrumentarij etičke samoregulative u vodećim nacionalnim i međunarodnim organizacijama koje se bave odnosima s javnošću. Profesionalna PR udruženja postavljaju kriterijume, kodekse i uslove akreditacije članova i time doprinose profesionalizaciji odnosa s javnošću, na etičkim osnovama, a u nastavku su ukratko predstaviljeni referentni kodeksi PR etike.
Teoretičari i historičari odnosa s javnošću smatraju da je Deklaracija načela, koju je 1906. godine napisao Ivy Lee, bila i prvi etički kodeks za odnose s javnošću, u kojem je istaknuto: „Sav naš rad je otvoren javnosti. Naš cilj je osigurati vijesti. (...) Mi jamčimo točnost.” (prema Tomić, 2008, str. 519).
Jedno od prvih dostignuća na etičkom planu bilo je usvajanje IPRA kodeksa ponašanja na sastanku u Veneciji 1961. godine. Postao je poznat kao Venecijanski kodeks (eng. Code of Venice) i specificirao je preduzimanje etičkog ponašanja od strane PR djelatnika širom svijeta. Cilj je bio etabliranje prihvaćenih standarda profesionalne etike i ponašanja na polju odnosa s javnošću, kojih bi se pridržavali svi članovi ovog udruženja, širom svijeta. Venecijanski kodeks je
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služio kao inspiracija i osnova za slične kodekse ponašanja, koje su usvojile mnoge nacionalne PR asocijacije, na nivou države (IPRA, 2019).
Etički pozicija i pristup koji su inkorporirani u Venecijanski kodeks, dalje su prošireni usvajanjem Međunarodnog etičkog kodeksa, koji je neformalno poznat kao Atinski kodeks (eng. Code of Athens), koji je IPRA vijeće usvojilo u Atini, 1965. godine. Taj kodeks predstavlja moralnu povelju udruženja IPRA, a principi kodeksa bili su inspirisani UN-ovom Univerzalnom deklaracijom o ljudskim pravima (IPRA, 2019).
Briselski kodeks (eng. Code of Brussels), usvojen 2006. godine, nastavlja tradiciju Venecijanskog i Atinskog kodeksa, i posebno specificira uslove za etičku praksu u javnim poslovima (public affairs) (IPRA, 2019).
Prva evropska PR asocijacija formira se 1959. godine pod imenom Europska konfederacija za odnose s javnostima (Confederation Europeenne des Relations Publique - CERP). CERP je usvojio dva etička kodeksa kojima se regulira praksa ponašanja u odnosima s javnošću i to međunarodni –Atinski kodeks i Evropski –Lisabonski kodeks (usp. Brkić, Husić, 2005).
Međunarodna komunikacijska konsultantska organizacija (The International Communications Consultancy Organisation - ICCO), u skladu sa svojom Profesionalnom poveljom, deklarira se kao glas PR konsultanata širom svijeta. Članovi ICCO-a rade zajedno na podizanju standarda kvalitete, razmatranju etičkih pitanja, harmoniziranju profeisonalne PR konsultantske prakse, i razmjeni znanja. Kada je riječ o standardima, sve zemlje članice slijede najviše standarde koji su iskazani u Štokholmskoj povelji, koja predstavlja profesionalni kodeks ICCO-a, a nakon 2005. godine usvojena je i Povelja IPRA-e o medijskoj transparentnosti (usp Brkić i Husić, 2005).
Štokholmska povelja predstavlja kodeks profesionalnih standarda koji ima za cilj da definira industriju komunikacijskih konsultantskih organizacija. Štokholmska povlelja regulište etičke standarde u osam područja i to: objektivno savjetovanje i zagovaranje; otvoreno društvo koje podrazumijeva slobodu govora i slobodnu štampu; povjerenje između klijenta i organizacije; integritet infomracija; ispunjenje obećanja; regulisanje konflikta interesa, predstavljanje, te upravljanje i poslovna praksa. U skladu sa poveljom konsultantske PR organizacije su posvećene etičkom ponašanju i implementaciji najbolje poslovne prakse pri radu sa svojim javnostima (Štokholmska povelja ICCO, 2019.).
ICCO 2005. godine je formalno usvojila Povelju IPRA-e o medijskoj transparentnosti (the IPRA Charter on Media Transparency). PR konsultantske organizacije, koje su udružene u ICCO putem svojih članskih trgovačkih asocijacija, očekuju da oni koji pišu uredničke kolumne, uvodnike i komentare, (editorial) vode računa o tome da je taj medijski uradak nastao kao mišljenje
82 Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima Asim Šahinpašić novinara ili urednika, te kao takvo ne uključuje plaćanje od strane treće osobe (IPRA povelja o medijskoj transparantnosti, 2019).
Američko društvo za odnose s javnošću (Public Relation Society of America/ PRSA) je najveća svjetska organizacija profesionalnih PR djelatnika, koja omogućava profesionalni razvoj, postavlja standarde izvrsnosti i promiče etičke principe među svojim članstvom. U Deklaraciji principa navodi se da članovi PRSA baziraju svoje profesionalne principe na osnovnim etičkim vrijednostima i dostojanstvu ličnosti, smatrajući da je poštivanje ljudskih prava, naročito slobode izražavanja i slobode štampe, bitna pretpostavka za obavljanje prakse odnosa s javnošću. Radeći u interesu klijenata i poslodavaca, članovi PRSA nastoje da ostvare bolje komuniciranje, razumijevanje i kooperaciju između različitih pojedinaca, grupa i institucija u društvu, pružajući svima jednake mogućnosti za rad u profesiji odnosa s javnošću. Radi uvođenja i održavanja visokih standarda u javnoj službi i radi poštivanja etičkih normi među članovima, PRSA je usvojila 14 odredbi kojima se reguliše postupanje u skladu sa pravilima etičkog kodeksa (prema Brkić, Husić, 2005; PRSA, 2019).
Institut za odnose sa javnošću - (The Chartered Institute of Public Relations- CIPR) je vodeća profesionalna institucija PR industrije u Velikoj Britaniji i najveće PR udruženje u Evropi. Članovi Instituta za odnose sa javnošću – CIPR (The Chartered Institute of Public Relations) usvojili su set etičkih principa, i suglasili se da održavaju najveći standard profesionalnog truda, integriteta, povjerenja, vlasništva nad kapitalom i ličnog rukovođenja, te da poštuju i podržavaju etički kodeks i slične upute izdate od CIPR-a i ohrabruju ostale da se isto tako odnose. U kodeksu su navedene i osnove dobre prakse odnosa s javnošću koje determiniraju principe poštenja, sposobnosti i povjerenja. Takođe kodeksom je regulirano i održavanje profesionalnih standarda i naglašeno da članovi CIPR-a pomažu širenju svjesnosti i svijesti profesije odnosa s javnošću gdje god je moguće (prema Brkić, Husić, 2005; CIPR, 2019).
Međunarodno udruženje za odnose sa javnošću (The International Public Relation Association- IPRA) predstavlja najveću svjetsku međunarodnu grupaciju PR djelatnika, a promoviranje visokih standarda i etičkog ponašanja u praksi odnosa s javnošću, predstavljao je jedan od glavnih ciljeva zbog kojih je IPRA i osnovana. Dosljedno tome, ta posvećenost je vodila do usvajanja etičkih kodeksa, s ciljem da se istaknu etički, moralni i društveno odgovorni aspekti PR profesije (IPRA, 2019).
Međunarodna asocijacija poslovnih komunikatora (the International Association of Business Communicators- IABC), predstavlja profesionalnu mrežu poslovnih komunikatora, koji rade u više od 60 zemalja, širom svijeta. IABC je razvila Etički kodeks za profesionalne komunikatore (IABC Code of Ethics for Professional Communicators), koji se zasniva se na tri principa, koji
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ističu da je profesionalna komunikacija legalna, etična, i u okvirima dobrog ukusa (IABC, 2019).
Društvo Arthur W. Page (The Arthur W. Page Society) je profesionalna asocijacija visoko pozicioniranih direktora za odnose s javnošću i korporativnu komunikaciju, koji žele da obogate i osnaže PR profesiju. Društvo Arthur W. Page posvećeno je jačanju menadžerske uloge PR djelatnika, i podržava koncept etičkog PR menadžementa poznat kao Page-ovi principi: „Govori istinu. Dozvoli da javnost sazna šta se događa i precizno prikaži karakter, ideale i djelatnost kompanije. Dokaži to kroz djelovanje. Slušaj kupca. Da bi kompaniji dobro služio, moraš slušati i razumjeti šta javnost želi i šta joj je potrebno. Misli na sutra. Vodi odnose s javnošću kao da cijela kompanija zavisi od njih.” (vidi Cutlip, Center, Broom, 2003; 2006, str. 154; Arthur W. Page, 2019).
Global Alliance for Public Relations and Communications Management Association (Globalna alijansa asocijacija za odnose s javnošću i komunikacijski menadžment), formirana je 2000. godine na Svjetskom PR kongresu, kao asocijacija koja okuplja lidere 22 međunarodne PR organizacije, s ciljem podizanja strandarda PR profesije, napravila je komparativne analize (2002a; 2002b) etičkih kodeksa izabranih PR udruženja i instituta, i ispitala dobro i loše strane njihove provedbe. Ključno istraživačko područje koje je identificirala Globalna Alliance, i cilj istraživanja bio je ustanoviti koje zemlje i nacionalna PR udruženja i instituti, imaju etičke kodekse. Tu inicijalnu studiju koja je trajala dvije godine, od 2000. do 2002. godine, proveli su Kanadsko društvo za odnose s javnošću i PR institut Južne Afrike. Rezultati istraživanja u kojima je učestvovalo 17 PR asocijacija širom svijeta, pokazali su da 60% udruženja koristi izvorni Atenski kodeks, dok neke organizacije, kao što je PRSA-a, imaju svoj kodeks (vidi Skinner, Mersham, Valin, 2003). Rezultati istraživanja predstavljeni su u tabeli 1:
Tabela 1. Usporedba odabranih etičkih kodeksa PR organizacija, adaptirano prema Global Alliance (2002a)
Karakteristike Društvo Vijeće PR Global IABC NIR PRSA Arthur firmi Alliance I Page Iskrenost x x x x x x Zagovaranje / x x x x x x ekspertiza Nezavisnost x x Lojalnost x x x Poštenje x x x Slobodan protok x x x x informacija Konkurencija x x x
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Otkrivanje x x x x informacija Poverljivost x x x x Sukobi x x x x interesa Poboljšanje PR x x x x x x profesije Obaveza poštivanja PR x x x x kodeksa Provedba PR kodeksa i x x x sankcije
U narednoj fazi istraživanja, izvršene su uporedne analize sličnosti etičkih kodeksa kako bi se identificirale ključne riječi, te koncepti u definiranju PR asocijacija. Analizom je utvrđeno da se u etičkim kodeksima najviše koriste sljedeći pojmovi: vrijednosti, iskrenost, transparentnost, lojalnost i ponašanje (vidi Skinner, Mersham, Valin, 2003). Cilj je bio identificirati ključne riječi i koncepte koji bi se mogli primijeniti pri izradi buduće univerzalne deklaracije o PR etici.
Rezultati istraživanja predstavljeni su u Tabeli 2, uz napomenu da su uključene i karakteristike za etičke kodekse PR udruženja iz Hrvatske (HUOJ, 2019), Srbije (DSOJ, 2019) i Bosne i Hercegovine (PRIBA, 2019):
Tabela 2. Sličnosti u etičkim kodeksima PR organizacija, adaptirano prema Global Alliance (2002b), uz dodane podatke za Hrvatsku, Srbiju i Bosnu i Hercegovinu.
PR organizacija PR kodeks Vrijednosti Iskrenost Transparentnost Lojalnost Ponašanje
CERP Atinski x x x x Estonija Venecijanski x x x x x IPRA Atinski x x x x x Italija Atinski x x x x x Novi Zeland Atinski x x x x x Portoriko PRSA x x x x x PRSA PRSA x x x x Atinski i Švedska x x x x x Venecijanski IPR Atinski x x x x x Irska Atinski i Lisabonski x x x Južna Afrika x x x x x Slovenija Atinski x x x x Kanada Atinski x x x x x Australija x x x x x
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Atinski Mađarska Venecijanski i x x x x x Teheranski Uganda IPRA x x x x Hrvatska x x x x x Srbija Atinski x x x x x Bosna i Atinski x x x x x Hercegovina
Skinner, Mersham, Valin navode da su u studijama razmotrene prednosti i nedostaci u vezi s provedbom nacionalnih etičkih kodeksa, a posebno primjena sankcija za nepoštivanje etičkih odredbi u kodeksima. Rezultati istraživanja su pokazali da se praktički svaka udruga razlikuje u načinu na koji provodi svoj kodeks, da je primljeno vrlo malo žalbi na neetičko ponašanje, te da se ne preporučuje praktičarima i udruženjima pokretanje skupih parnica na sudu. Oni koji su imali iskustva sa parnicom zalagali su se drugačiji (vansudski) pristup, pošto ishodi sudskih parnica nisu bili zadovoljavajući, velikim dijelom zbog neuređenog stanja PR profesije i nejasnih pravila o ulasku u članstvo, barem s pravnog stanovišta (vidi 2003).
Na osnovu inicijalnih studija i analiza etičkih kodeksa u PR organizacijama širom svijeta Global Alliance je na sastanku u Novom Zelandu 2003. godine usvojila Globalni protokol o eitici u odnosima s javnošću (vidi Skinner, Mersham, Valin, 2003). Globalni protokol sadrži Deklaraciju principa, Kodeks profesionalnih standarda, Kodeks PR prakse, kao i Prinicipe vodilje zaetičku praksu u odnosima sa javnošću, te studije slučaja u kojima su praktično elaborirani ti principi (vidi Global Alliance, 2019).
Nakon predstavljanja referentnih analiza PR kodeksa, važno je istaknuti da etički kodeksi ne bi trebali da budu samo formalno napisane izjave određene PR asocijacije ili organizacije, već principi djelovanja PR profesionalca u svakodnevnom radu. Kodeksi profesionalne etike bi trebali da budu osnovne smjernice, i inspiracija svim onim koji se bave odnosima s javnostima i medijima. „Kodeks o profesionalnom ophođenju je dobar vodič za korektno ponašanje, ali njegova vrijednost leži u strogoj privrženosti njegovom slovu i duhu” (Black, 2003, str. 202). Etički kodeksi koji su prezentirani u ovom radu, mogu se komparirati u skladu sa modalitetima rada PR organizacije koja ih je usvojila i primijenila. Tako kodeksi nekih organizacija, poput Američkog PR društva PRSA, nastoje da ponude smjernice praktične, profesionalne prirode, usmjerene prema PR praktičarima u agencijama, dok drugi kodeksi pokušavaju da identificiraju opšte moralne principe etičkog ponašanja, kao što su fokusiranje na dignitet, poštovanje i ljudska prava, što se može ilustrovati primjerom podrške Atinskom kodeksu, koju su dali IPRA i CERP (Bowen, 2007). Kruckeberg (1993, prema Bowen, 2007) navodi da etički kodeksi mogu biti razvijeni tako da
86 Etika komuniciranja kao platforma samoregulacije u odnosima s javnostima Asim Šahinpašić zadovoljavaju univerzalne uslove ili principe, a Bowen (2007) smatra da kada se implementiraju sa dobrim namjerama, etički kodeksi mogu biti korisna alatka za razvoj organizacijske kulture koja podržava etičko donošenje odluka. Etički kodeksi u odnosima s javnošću, generalno, podržavaju koncepte poštenja, pravednosti i neugrožavanja drugih, kao univerzalne interkulturalne moralne principe.
Međutim, postoji i druga strana medalje. Tako neki akademski istraživači, poput Parkinsona i Wrighta (prema Bowen, 2007), kritikuju etičke kodekse zato što ne doprinose ostvarenju ideala koje zagovaraju u tim kodeksima. Neki PR praktičari smatraju da su etički kodeksi često suviše uopšteni da bi im koristili u karijeri. Jedan od ključnih nedostataka je u tome što većina etičkih kodeksa ne osigurava implemetaciju odredbi prinudnim putem, niti adekvatan postupak u slučaju kršenja kodeksa, što ih čini neefikasnim mehanizmom, koji jedino može rezultirati povremenim oduzimanjem članstva u asocijaciji. (vidi Bowen, 2007). S druge strane, neki teoretičari poput Kruckeberga, zastupaju mišljenje da ako su PR praktičari etični, onda nema ni potrebe za nametanjem etičkih kodeksa, dok drugi poput Bowen i Parkinsona, zastupaju stav da je jednostavna etička izjava sve što je potrebno, jer je dobra namjera mnogo rigorozniji vodič, nego sam etički kodeks. Ova debata nalazi svoje izvorište u Platonovoj etici, što ilustruje i Parsons u svojoj izjavi: „Dobri ljudi ne trebaju zakone da im kažu da se ponašaju odgovorno, dok će loši ljudi uvijek naći način da zaobiđu zakone” (prema Bowen, 2007).
4. KOMUNIKACIJSKI IZAZOVI I ETIČKI ODGOVORI U PR PRAKSI
Praksa etičkog komuniciranja, predstavlja osnov za primjenu teorijskih i filozofskih postulata, kao i profesionalnih kodeksa u radu djelatnika za odnose s javnošću. Bez empirijskog vrednovanja, ni teorije etike, ni moralna filozofija, ni etički kodeksi, ne bi imali kredibilitet kakav zaslužuju. Zato PR profesionalci moraju inkorporirati etička načela i strukovne kodekse u svakodnevne aktivnosti javnog komuniciranja. „Etika mora imati ključnu ulogu u komunikacijama. Etična komunikacija je ispravna, a ne-etična može biti i štetna,” (Tomić, 2008, str. 516).
„Bez sumnje, za neke odnosi s javnošću imaju negativnu konotaciju neetičke profesije. Neki kritičari su otišli toliko daleko da smatraju da je profesija odnosa s javnošću nužno zlo, izjednačavajući je sa „muljanjem“, propagandom i manipulacijom“, upozoravaju Cutlip, Center, Broom (2006), te daju odgovor na ovaj etički izazov odnosima s javnošću: „U stvari, PR je suštinski dobar: olakšavanje dijaloga, promovisanje razumijevanja i uspostavljanje međusobno dobrobitnih veza su nastojanja vrijedna poštovanja, pa se čak mogu nazvati i plemenitim. Međutim, da bi zavrijedili ovakve epitete, stručnjaci moraju da
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sprovode odnose s javnošću uvijek imajući na umu društvenu odgovornost i etiku.“ (str. 137)
Međutim šta da rade oni koji nisu sigurni šta je to ispravna stvar. To pitanje naročito je važno za PR praktičare koji se u svom svakodnevnom poslu suočavaju sa brojnim etičkim dilemama. Svi oni mogu se pozvati na neke od utilitarističkih ili denotoloških terijskih principa, na pravila iz etičkih kodeksa PR udruženja, ili na zakonske normative, i međunarodne konvencije. Ali i tada bi još uvijek vjerovatno bilo otvorneih pitanja koja su regulirana na suviše uopšten načina, i ostavljaju prostora za različita tumačenja time i neetičke manipulacije.
Zbog toga je potrebno determinirati prinicipe, savjete “formule” koje će pomoći PR djelatnicima, i drugim javnim komunkatorima, u pronalaženju etičkih odgovara na komunikacijske izazove u PR praksi. Da bi mogli donijeti ispravne etičke odluke komunikatori trebaju znati postaviti prava pitanja. Prema Blanchardu i Pealu, (prema Black, 2003), PR-ovci treba da odgovore na nekoliko ključnih etičkih pitanja, pri donošenju komunikacijskih odluka:
• Da li je legalno? – da li ću prekršti građansko pravo ili politiku kompanije? • Da li je izbalansirano?-Da li je fer za sve, kratkoročno i dugoročno? Da li se zalaže za pobjedničke odnose? • Šta ću misliti o samom sebi?-Da li ću se dobro osjećati kada se moja odluka objavi u štampi?
Kao dobar podsjetnik pri donošenju etičkih odluka i rješavanju etičkih dilema, javni komunikatori treba da odgovore na test sa četiri pitanja koji je kreirala međunarodna rotarijanska organizacija:
• Da li je to istina? • Da li je fer prema svima zainteresovanima? • Da li će doprinijeti istraživanju dobre volje i prijateljstva? • Da li će zainteresovani imati koristi? (prema Black, 2003)
Etika komuniciranja djeluje kao korektivni faktor u okviru jednog, prethodno keriranog moralnog okvira, koji je važan i za samo funkcionisanje javnosti i javnog mnijenja. „Proučavanje etike ne bi imalo smisla ako ne bi promovisalo razumijevanje, a razumijevanje se najbolje može postići razmatranjem etičke situacije iz perspektive slijedećeg komunikacionog procesa,“ navodi Day (2004), i predstavlja model baziran na opisu Richarda Johannesena: „moralni agent (komunikator) sa konkretnim motivom čini neko djelo (verbalno ili neverbalno) u nekom određenom kontekstu usmjeren ka konkretnoj osobi ili publici, obično uz neke posljedice (str. 22).
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Dej (2004) predstavlja i model moralnog rasuđivanja koji je baziran na idejama da je moralno rasuđivanje sistematičan proces i obuhvata brojne faktore koji se mogu grupisati u tri kategorije:
1. Definicija situacije 2. Analiza situacije, uključujući primjenu moralnih terija 3. Odluka ili etički sud
Na osnovu početnih slova ovih faktora, Dej (2004) je napravio akronim DAO i nazvao to DAO formula, koja po njemu, služi kao dragocjena alatka u pravljenju diskursa među medijskim profesinalcima, a posebno je prilagodljiva potrebama početnika u moralnom rasuđivanju. DAO formula omogućava komunikatorima da razmotre prednosti i nedostatke donošenja odluka na bazi različitih etičkih teorija.
Deontološki trougao etički ispravnog odlučivanja baziran je na postavkama etičkih odgovora na komunikacijske izazove, koje su razradili Cutlip, Center, Broom (2006):
• Dužnost: Da li radim ispravno i ne nanosim nikakvu štetu? • Namjera: Da li nastupam sa moralno ispravnom dobrom voljom? • Poštovanje i uvažavanje: Da li se prema drugima odnosim sa poštovanjem i uvažavanjem?
U okviru svakog trougla nalazi se jedna kategorija i postavljeno je po jedno pitanje na koje komunikatori treba da odgovore, a u središnjem trouglu postavljeni su oni sa kojima komuniciraju i na koje utiču donesene etičke odluke: moje lično ja, interesne grupe u javnosti, javnosti, organizacija, društvo (vidi, Cutlip, Center, Broom 2006).
Deontologija iz procesa odlučivanja uklanja predrasude koje jedna organizacija ima, i dozvoljava odnosima s javnošću da savjetuju rukovodstvo šta je najbolje činiti, ali na osnovu moralnih principa, a ne na osnovu cijene i troškova, ličnog interesa ili koristi.
Etika komuniciranja u odnosima s javnošću i poslovanju nije zasnovana samo na teoriji i formalnom usvajanju etičkih kodeksa. Black (2003) smatra da stvarne aktivnosti treba da daju podršku etičkim ciljevima, napisanim u u kodeksima, jer to može otvoriti put za prihvatanje tih ciljeva u cijeloj organizaciji. Etički postulati i kodeksi trebaju biti primjenjivi i primjenjivani u praksi, a ne samo u programskim smjernicma i dokumentima organizacije. Oni trebaju biti vidljivi u svemu onome što organizacija poduzima, jer etički principi trebaju biti integrisani u sve aspekte poslovanja.
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5. ZAKLJUČAK
Savremeni koncept odnosa s javnostima podrazumijeva da je ta komunikacija temeljena na visokim etičkim principima i standardima. Etičko postupanje preduvjet je svakog komuniciranja pa time i onog koje organizacije provode s javnostima i medijima. Kada je riječ o profesionalnom komuniciranju ono podliježe strogim kriterijumima poslovne etike, te etičkim kodeksima koje ima svaka struka. Odnosi s javnošću posebno su senzibilni prema poštivanju etičkih načela i kodeksa u radu, jer od toga zavisi i ugled cijele organizacije. Stručnjaci za odnose s javnošću u cijelom svijetu, pa i u Bosni i Hercegovini moraju da dobro poznaju teorijske postulate ali i načine praktične primjene etičkih prinicipa, standarda i kodeksa, pri komuniciranju sa svojim strateškim javnostima.
U radu je analizirana teorijska osnova etike komuniciranja u odnosima s javnošću, bazirana na utilitarnoj filozofija i konzekvencionalističkom etičkom PR pristupu, sa jedne i deontološkoj filozofiji i nekonzekvencionalističkom etičkom konceptu odnosa s javnošću, sa druge strane. Analizirane su prednosti i nedostaci praktične i teorijske primjene etike komuniciranja bazirane na posljedicama u odnosu na one PR aktivnosti zasnovane na dužnostima. Bez davanja preferencija jednom ili drugom pristupu smatramo da oba ova koncepta PR etike imaju svoje mjesto u radu PR djelatnika, i mogu poslužiti kao dobra osnova za dalja akademska istraživanja institucionalnog i individualnog pristupa PR etici. U okviru rada je analizirana uloga etike komuniciranja kao korektivnog faktora u odnosima s javnošću. Prezentirani su i analizirani kodeksi PR etike, te dobre i loše strane tih etičkih kodeksa, kao i mogućnosti i problemi primjene u PR praksi. Predstavljeni su i principi za teorijsku i praktičnu ocjenu uspješnosti i djelotvornosti primjene PR etike u javnom komuniciranju.
Javni komunkatori, koji žele da uspostavljaju i održavaju uspješne odnose sa svojim strateškim javnostima trebaju da poznaju, razumiju i poštuju dva regulatorna okvira: normativno-pravni i etički. Normativno-pravni okvir, koji uključuje međunarodne konvencije, ustavne odredbe i zakonska rješenja, predstavlja bazu na kojoj se temelji javna komunikacija i odnosi s javnošću u savremenom svijetu. Međutim, normativno-pravni okvir je, u osnovi, tek prvi korak ka cjelovitoj regulaciji PR profesije, jer bez poznavanja, razumijevanja i primjene etičkih načela i kodeksa primijenjene PR etike, ne može ni biti uspješnih odnosa s javnošću. Na osnovu analize jasno je da etika komuniciranja predstavlja referentni okvir i platformu za samoregulaciju odnosa s javnostima.
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