Gayane Hovhannisyan
30+ years in different branches of Applied Linguistics: language education, language policy, psycholinguistics, forensic voice and speech identification, human/digital communication, ethnopsycholinguistics.
Interests: Language Personality studies, cognitive, ontogenetic, social, cultural, intercultural aspects. Consciousness. Knowledge construction. Bilingual and multilingual personality - Learning, Translation, Digitalization. Language Assessment. Language development. Cognition and categorization of emotions.
Supervisors: Natalia Ufimtseva, Gevorg Djahukyan, Alexei A. Leontiev. Eduard Atayan.
Interests: Language Personality studies, cognitive, ontogenetic, social, cultural, intercultural aspects. Consciousness. Knowledge construction. Bilingual and multilingual personality - Learning, Translation, Digitalization. Language Assessment. Language development. Cognition and categorization of emotions.
Supervisors: Natalia Ufimtseva, Gevorg Djahukyan, Alexei A. Leontiev. Eduard Atayan.
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Books by Gayane Hovhannisyan
In the context of globalizing higher education the concepts quality standards and cultural norms often seem to appear in an irreconcilable contrast, when considered from the point of view of ethics and immediate measurable outcomes. It is especially evident in language and communication studies, where inability to link the local norms with the global requirements might cause failure in either aspect. For one thing, rationalizing quality to measurable outcomes might rest in a quantitative collection of decontextualized criteria adopted from other universities and communication cultures. For another, many cultural norms of high context countries may be found incompatible with the western understanding of quality. Whereas these norms work as system regulators and indicators of a culture, they remain not recognized in cultures of explicit ethics and pedagogical communication. The problem discussed is how to meet international academic quality standards, remaining culturally relevant. The objective of the paper is to showcase the process of skill transfer and expansion of student competences from undergraduate language and culture study to internationally accepted doctoral research of language and culture acquisition and international.
The study of language and mind, and verbal consciousness, through the utilization of diverse linguistic and interdisciplinary methods is recognized particularly efficient within the frameworks of Vygotsky’s historical-cultural theory and its sprouts proposed by his successors. Analyzing the contextual semantics and diverse understandings of the categories norm, quality and value in language education, we assume that acquisition of verbal consciousness is a central value in the formation of language identity and the study of its formation is the value added to the concept cultural identity. Given that formal education is an institutional organization of culture transition from one generation to another, the route to a culturally unique quality of education and research culture originates in the studies of the lingual-cultural self, substantiated in the ontogenetic acquisition of language identity, and in the verbal manifestation of historically constructed culture-specific thinking and categorization. What are the advantages of such research objectives and methods?
The language education research in Oman is mainly focused on sociolinguistic and related issues of ELT. However, for, and before building up a second language layer of linguistic competence, students majoring in language and linguistics need to be firmly aware of language and culture acquisition processes in general. Second, mastering research methods of verbal consciousness, speech perception and production, system relations and neural-semantic networks will generate incentives for the development of the culturally unique quality of professions involving verbal communication, such as Education, Journalism, Diplomacy, Law, Psychology, Sociology et c. Third, intercultural competence is grounded in the linguistic awareness of the structural and functional texture of one’s own cultural and conceptual archetypes and their correlation with universal and other cultural categories. Hence, comparative study skills in cognitive and cultural semantics need to be developed in tertiary students, having Vygotsky’s principles of the Zone of Proximal Development in mind. Finally, coming back to our immediate tasks, the awareness of own cultural-psychological dominants may help to define the culturally relevant criteria of quality education. The practice of rooting research of cultural conceptualization, speech perception and production will prepare culturally relevant grounds for high level studies in Humanities.
Papers by Gayane Hovhannisyan
In the context of globalizing higher education the concepts quality standards and cultural norms often seem to appear in an irreconcilable contrast, when considered from the point of view of ethics and immediate measurable outcomes. It is especially evident in language and communication studies, where inability to link the local norms with the global requirements might cause failure in either aspect. For one thing, rationalizing quality to measurable outcomes might rest in a quantitative collection of decontextualized criteria adopted from other universities and communication cultures. For another, many cultural norms of high context countries may be found incompatible with the western understanding of quality. Whereas these norms work as system regulators and indicators of a culture, they remain not recognized in cultures of explicit ethics and pedagogical communication. The problem discussed is how to meet international academic quality standards, remaining culturally relevant. The objective of the paper is to showcase the process of skill transfer and expansion of student competences from undergraduate language and culture study to internationally accepted doctoral research of language and culture acquisition and international.
The study of language and mind, and verbal consciousness, through the utilization of diverse linguistic and interdisciplinary methods is recognized particularly efficient within the frameworks of Vygotsky’s historical-cultural theory and its sprouts proposed by his successors. Analyzing the contextual semantics and diverse understandings of the categories norm, quality and value in language education, we assume that acquisition of verbal consciousness is a central value in the formation of language identity and the study of its formation is the value added to the concept cultural identity. Given that formal education is an institutional organization of culture transition from one generation to another, the route to a culturally unique quality of education and research culture originates in the studies of the lingual-cultural self, substantiated in the ontogenetic acquisition of language identity, and in the verbal manifestation of historically constructed culture-specific thinking and categorization. What are the advantages of such research objectives and methods?
The language education research in Oman is mainly focused on sociolinguistic and related issues of ELT. However, for, and before building up a second language layer of linguistic competence, students majoring in language and linguistics need to be firmly aware of language and culture acquisition processes in general. Second, mastering research methods of verbal consciousness, speech perception and production, system relations and neural-semantic networks will generate incentives for the development of the culturally unique quality of professions involving verbal communication, such as Education, Journalism, Diplomacy, Law, Psychology, Sociology et c. Third, intercultural competence is grounded in the linguistic awareness of the structural and functional texture of one’s own cultural and conceptual archetypes and their correlation with universal and other cultural categories. Hence, comparative study skills in cognitive and cultural semantics need to be developed in tertiary students, having Vygotsky’s principles of the Zone of Proximal Development in mind. Finally, coming back to our immediate tasks, the awareness of own cultural-psychological dominants may help to define the culturally relevant criteria of quality education. The practice of rooting research of cultural conceptualization, speech perception and production will prepare culturally relevant grounds for high level studies in Humanities.
The Guide contains summaries of all the lectures, references and other useful sources for both students and the lecturers.
Hovhannisyan, G. (2001). The Psycholinguistic Concept of Time. Yerevan: Paruys Sevak Press. (in Armenian)
Questions of mind and cognition have interested people since the earliest times, when homo sapience gained consciousness, separated the “I” - ego from the rest of the world as the unique bearer of such a tool of survival, as consciousness. The study of consciousness in philosophy was a process of determining it as a tool of cognition (thinking) and its product (knowledge). The process of thinking is observed in speech, discursive and substantive activities, while the product of thinking is all that comprises civilization.
Cognitive processes and consciousness represent two basic forms of activity: substantive and symbolic. For example, social activity broadly consists of a certain amount of substantive activities (production, construction, applied arts and crafts etc) and communication, a symbolic-semiotic activity based on minimal substance involvement, starting with writing systems, electromagnetic signals, up to modern digitalized information technologies. From this perspective, all societal processes can be regarded as diverse types of communication, where verbal thinking and consciousness have the lion share.
The psycholinguistic study of verbal consciousness is important in the solution of a number of practical and theoretical issues of Linguistics, Psychology, Culture Studies and Anthropology. These issues may range between the teaching of languages and understanding social and ethnodynamic processes, from language pragmatics and various aspects of communication such marginal issues between Philosophy and Psychology as language-and-though, verbal and non-verbal thinking.
The Speech theory of A. A. Leontiev this pair of sense and meaning is regarded as a dynamic whole with its corresponding internal and external systemic attributes. He considers the movement of sense to meaning to be a process of exteriorization of blended and generalized units of perception, leading it to communicative motivation. The opposite movement of perceptual stimuli into the human mind and memory is known as interiorization and has the psychological value of cognition. These opposing processes of interiorization and exteriorization are linked and governed by continuous identification and evaluation of events and meanings in the brain.
Evaluation is another key psychological process providing an adaptive function of the brain and body to situation change. This means that the same events and meanings communicated may obtain different semiotic values in different states of the subject and situations. It plays a double role in the process of categorization of verbal consciousness. On the one hand, it filters out the semantic features and components of the object of perception and forms its categorical carcass, on the other, it infiltrates and forms its situational value as a concept, which is the field of connotations. The latter, being subject to constant affective-emotional changes, generates an endless number of associations and their semantic values, thus providing an opportunity for changes of interiorization trajectories, senses, conceptualization, meanings, and categorization tendencies. This is briefly the description of the dynamics of meaning.
Based on the statement that meaning and sense are the pivotal concepts describing the process between perception and verbalization, it will be useful to first clarify the relationship between sense and meaning through defining each of them from at least four points: cognition, communication, and later – ontogenesis and social-cultural and historical development.
As it may be clear from the said above, the notion of sense is relevant to cognition and interiorization leading to cognition and recognition, while the notion of meaning is relevant to exteriorization leading to communication.
It is worth mentioning that so far, we have not seen any studies of this unit of consciousness – meaning – in its both historical and ontogenetic plains, and generally, there have not been observed any studies to parallel these two systems, although one can presumably conjecture some kind of interdependence among them. However, considering the premises given below, that kind of research synthesis is quite realistic. Moreover, the multidisciplinary approach becomes an urge for the research of human mind, thinking and communication.
One such category of mind is time, which has long been considered a physical dimension and attributed not to the mind but to the physical reality. However, the XX c. research sprouted in ideas challenging this well-rooted in scientific mind assumption and now, due to applied linguistic research of time and temporal categories, at the rise of tec
The proposed framework suggests discussion to adjust to diverse learning contexts.
Քաղաքակրթությունը գիտելիքը, կամ ավելի ճիշտ` ին֊ ֆորմացիան աստիճանաբար վերածել է առևտրի ենթակա առարկայի։
Վերջին տասնամյակում ինչ-որ կախարդական ձևով մենք դադարեցինք նկատել «չափելի որակ», այսինքն «քանակական որակ» արտահայտության պարունակած աբսուրդը։ Միջակության տոնահանդեսը զավթեց շուկայի վերածված գիտությունը, կրթական հաստատությունները, դարձավ առաջնորդության դերակատար։
Մի պահ նայեք այսօրվա հաշվելի դարձած կրթության էությանը։ Որպեսզի ձեզ տան կրթության վկայական, պահանջում են կատարել գործողություններ, որոնք դուք հետագայում գուցե երբեք էլ չկրկնեք։ Ձեզ համար քննություն են սահմանում, դնում կատարման արհեստական պայմաններ, որոնք ամբողջապես չափելի են՝ ժամանակը, նյութի քանակը, ձևերը, ձեզնից ակնկալվող միանշանակ պատասխանին տրվող միանշանակ միավորը․․․ զավեշտալի չէ՞։ Գնահատման պարանոյա, որը ծիծաղելի կլիներ, եթե սոսկ անմեղ հետևանքներ ունենար։