EVENT | Does our language shape who we are?

On the second day of the International Summit of Languages and Cultures, the debate was focused precisely on that, the relationship of languages and their cultural behaviour and consequences. How do languages shape our identity? Is it something that needs to be legally regulated or else should we believe in the power of its users? Can the use of a certain language be understood as a political act? These are some of the questions that arose during the discussion.

As an international summit, for me it was very valuable to know the stories of people with such different backgrounds; people whose mother tongue was minoritized, people who did not speak in what “should be” (in the sense of being born in the country where the language is the official one) their mother tongue, and people who understood language as a political tool. This environment truly reflected how something as common as languages is really a matter of discussion, perhaps not always given the attention it really deserves, since every single person has their own mother tongue.

For me, one of the most interesting topics were minority and minoritized languages. The difference between these two terms relies on the fact that the first one refers to a language whose users are a minority in terms of users; however, the latter term has a more political approach and refers to the systematically (by the government, associations, society, etc.) undermined and persecuted language. This has direct repercussions to users’ identity, and it is a complete violation of human rights. Languages are used to express emotions, contradictions, fears, dreams and to communicate with other people. Therefore, an attack on your mother tongue is automatically an attack on your cultural heritage and on your identity as a community; sadly, we have seen and we still see this kind of vulnerations in Latin America, in southern Asia and in several African countries.

At the same time, I believe the spread of technology, Artificial Intelligence and social media, in general, will help to raise awareness on these topics that should not only concern those affected but everyone as language users. Creating an online community could help users to develop their skills and to normalise and prompt their mother tongues. It is true that English has become the lingua franca par excellence and that its learning is important, but we should not forget to also boost the use of our mother tongue and everything it implies. At the end of the day, the more languages you learn, the more perspectives you have on life.

LIFE+ | To become a world person

Hello, let me introduce myself first. I am Hasan Oğulcan Herel. Last year, I completed my psychology undergraduate education at Toros University. I'm 24 years old. I have two cats. I like watching movies, playing video games, but my favorite hobby is coast fishing because I'm a Mediterranean person and because I live in Mersin now.

When I passed my first Erasmus exam, I had the opportunity to do an internship at a children's center in Prague. Later I realized that I did not want to work in this field in the future and I learned ICDET through my girlfriend.

ICDET is located in Sofia and this fact made me very happy. Because, since my family lives in Edirne, the city close to Bulgarian border so actually, Bulgaria was not a foreign country for me. I was very excited to be part of the human resources department here, because I wanted to further my career in this field in future.

I researched the vision, mission and working environment of this place on the association's page and decided that it would be the perfect internship place for me and made my application.

After applying, I realized that there was a very good communication and I started to wait for the day I will go to Sofia.

I know that doing an internship here, working with people from many countries and many cultures in an international environment will be an excellent addition to my future career. It will improve both myself and my foreign language and at the same time help me to become a world person.

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Hasan Oğulcan Herel, intern@ICDET

USE+FUL | Petty Murders

What is this thing we call murder? Should there be a corpse, a murderer and evidence for murder? What if I say that people die from murder every day in the world without a corpse, murderer and evidence?

I can hear you say how it can happen. That is, a person does not need a knife, weapon or other tools to kill another person. People's words and actions can also lead them to commit a murder. As we know today, the use of technology is quite common. With the development of technology, now everyone can communicate with each other faster, they can make friends and exchange information faster.

We agree that technology provides us a lot of convenience, but as everything else, technology also has a dark side. With such easy access to technology, the behavior of using digital communication tools to bully a person has started to increase. The concept called cyberbullying; These are behaviors that are deliberate, repeated and adversely harmful to the other person using technological tools.

Thanks to the advantage of concealing identity, communication established with these tools enables easy victim selection and facilitates the rapid spread of hurtful messages containing swearing, insults and threats to a large number of people (Strom & Strom, 2004). Belsey (2006) defined cyberbullying as “a type of bullying that includes deliberate, repetitive and hostile behavior designed by an individual or group to harm others using information and communication technologies”. In the study conducted by Arıcak (2009), it was found that the group who did not commit cyberbullying and was not exposed to cyberbullying showed less psychiatric symptoms than cyber bullies and victims. Hinduja and Patchin (2009) found that when cyber victimization is combined with stressful living conditions, individuals exhibit behaviors that can lead to suicide.

In addition to being exposed to cyberbullying, it has been determined that cyberbullying is also related to various problems. Arıcak (2009) found that having feelings of hostility to other individuals and psychoticism positively predict cyberbullying. In fact, cyberbullying is face-to-face bullying in daily life on the internet. The only difference is that the communication medium is the internet and is made through technological devices. Although there is no victim or a murderer in cyberbullying, the victim is psychologically damaged and kind of massacred. According to the research; While 1 out of every 4 children is exposed to cyberbullying, 1 out of 6 children commit cyberbullying. It is possible to mention several types of cyberbullying.

The first of these is "disclosure". What we call disclosure is a type of cyberbullying done to cause victim's photos and videos to spread without permission and cause them to lose their dignity. Trolling, targeting and lynching, humiliating the individual in a virtual environment are also types of cyberbullying. There are signs that show children and young people experiencing cyberbullying. Among these signals; a rapid change in the child / young person's eating, sleep and mood, constant irritability, abruptly moving away from technological devices while using technological devices, feeling anxious when a mail or a message arrives, and changing routine habits. So how can we protect our child from cyberbullying?

As a precaution, if she encounters any problems on social media and networks, you can talk about her sharing it with you. You can tell your child about the advantages and disadvantages of technology. So if your child is a cyberbully? In this case, banning the internet and social media completely will not give you a permanent result. You should turn to the source of the problem, explain in a simple language that even the smallest thing he says will have a very negative effect on the other side, and get help from an expert in this regard.

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Ece Can, intern@ICDET