• Korean Journal of English Language and Linguistics
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.411-426
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• 2003

I report on the case of a polyglot ‘savant’ (C), who is mildly autistic, severely apraxic, and of limited intellectual ability; yet who can read, write, speak and understand about twenty languages. I outline his abilities, both verbal and non-verbal, noting the asymmetry between his linguistic ability and his general intellectual inability and, within the former, between his unlimited morphological and lexical prowess as opposed to his limited syntax. I then spell out the implications of these findings for modularity. C's unique profile suggested a further project in which we taught him British Sign Language. I report on this work, paying particular attention to the learning and use of classifiers, and discuss its relevance to the issue of modality: whether the human language faculty is preferentially tied to the oral domain, or is ‘modality-neutral’ as between the spoken and the visual modes.

• SUVANNABHUMI
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.91-129
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• 2023

This paper reports the findings of a multimodal study conducted on 10 travel blog posts about Vietnam by seven British professional travel bloggers. The study takes a sociolinguistic view to tourism by seeing travel blogs as a source for linguistic and other semiotic materials while considering language as situated practice for the social construction of fundamental categories such as "human," "society," and "nation." It borrows concepts from Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics for interpersonal metafunction to develop an analytical framework to study how the co-occurrence of text and still images in these travel blog posts formulated the portrayal of Vietnam as a tourism destination and indicated the main sociolinguistic features of the blogs. The analysis of appreciation values and interactive qualities encoded in evaluative adjectives and still images show that Vietnam is generally portrayed as a country of identity and diversity. It provides tourists with positive experiences in terms of places of interest, food and local lifestyles and is cost-competitive. Strangerhood and authenticity are two outstanding sociolinguistic features exhibited in these travel blog posts. The findings of this study also underline the co-contribution of the linguistic sign, in this case evaluative adjectives, and the visual sign, in this case still images, as interpersonal meaning-making resources. To portray Vietnam, still images served as integral elements to evidence the credibility of verbal narrations. To unveil sociolinguistic characteristics of travel blogs, still images supported the linguistic realizations of authenticity and strangerhood on the posts, and in some case delivered an even stronger message than words. Not only does the study present a source of feedback from international travelers to tourism practice in Vietnam, but it also provides insights into multimodal analysis of tourism discourse which remains an under-researched area in Vietnam.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.15-24
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• 2022

The article clarifies the conditions for information, digital and educational accessibility for higher education seekers with disabilities in terms of distance learning caused by quarantine restrictions. It is established that such conditions are regulated by international and Ukrainian legal documents (The Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Sustainable Development Goals, Law of Ukraine "On Education", Law of Ukraine "On Higher Education", Strategy for the Development of Higher Education in Ukraine 2021-2031, Development Strategy areas of innovation for the period up to 2030, Development strategy of the sphere of innovation activity for the period up to 2030). As a part of information barrierlessness, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) should provide access to information in various formats and using technologies, in particular Braille script, large-type printing, audio description (audio descriptive commenting), sign language interpretation, subtitling, a format suitable for reading by screen access programs, formats of simple speech, easy-to-read formats, means of alternative communication. The experience of Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University is described. In particular, special attention is paid to the study of sign language: in view of this, the initiative group implemented the project "Learning to hear and overcome social isolation together" with the financial support of the British Council in Ukraine. Within the framework of digital accessibility, the official website of the Faculty of Social and Psychological Education has been adapted for the visually impaired in accordance with WCAG 2.0 World Standards. In 2021, Pavlo Tychyna Uman State Pedagogical University implemented the project "Cultural, Recreational and Tourist Cherkasy Region: Inclusive Social 3D Map" funded by the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation; a site with available content for online travel in the region to provide barrier-free access to the historical and cultural heritage of Cherkasy region was created. Educational accessibility is achieved by increasing the number of people with special educational needs, receiving education in inclusive groups; activities of the Center for Social and Educational Integration and Inclusive Rehabilitation Social Tourism "Bez barieriv" ("Without barriers"); implementation of a research topic for financing the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine: "Social and psychological rehabilitation of children and youth with special educational needs by means of inclusive tourism"; implementation of the project "Social inclusion of distance educational process"; development of information campaigns to popularize the ideas of accessibility, the need for its implementation, ongoing training programs and competitions, etc.