Journal articles on the topic 'Philippine essays (English)'

This study presents the Filipino ESL senior high school students’ strengths and weaknesses in writing an argumentative essay. In the context of an institution in the Philippines where English is used as a second language by learners with varied L1, and the learners are required to write in academic English, the aim of this study is to identify the language features and the rhetorical moves of the argumentative essays using Hyland’s model (1990). Analyzing the students’ essays as a requirement in the academe across disciplines could provide appropriate scaffolding in guiding the Filipino ESL writers. The original essays written within an hour by 51 (from 108) Filipino ESL senior high school writers were encoded and processed using the Antconc software to identify the language features that characterize the essays. The essays were coded by the researcher and an inter-coder verified the analysis in relation to the stages/parts and the rhetorical moves found in the essays. The top three most commonly used verbs in the argumentative essays of the Filipino ESL writers of English are non-action verbs–is, are, have. In writing argumentative essays, the Filipino ESL senior high school writers of English lack lexical verbs in the lexical level, and the thesis and conclusion parts in the discourse level. They were familiar with the argument part, but lack citation as support to their claims.

- Martin A. van Bakel, C.B. Wilpert, Südsee Inseln, Völker und Kulturen. Hamburg: Christians, 1987. - Leonard Blussé, Leo Suryadinata, The ethnic Chinese in the Asean states: Bibliographical essays, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian studies, 1989. 271 pages. - G. Bos, Cees Koelewijn, Oral literature of the Trio Indians of Surinam, Dordrecht-Providence: Foris, 1987. [Koniniklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Leiden, Caribbean series 6.] 312 pp., Peter Riviere (eds.) - Gary Brana-Shute, Thomas Gibson, Sacrifice and sharing in the Philippine highlands. Religion and society among the Buid of Mindoro, London: Athlone press [Londons school of economics Monographs on social anthropology No 57], 1986. x, 259 pp. - H.J.M. Claessen, Claude Tardits, Princes et serviteurs du royaume; Cinq études de monarchies africaines. Paris: Societé d’Ethnographie. 1987. 230 pp., maps, figs. - Mary Eggermont-Molenaar, Haijo jan Westra, Gerard Termorshuizen, P.A. Daum; Journalist en romancier van tempo doeloe. Amsterdam: Nijgh & Van Ditmar, 1988. 632 pp. - P.C. Emmer, Selwyn H.H. Carrington, The British West Indies during the American revolution, Dordrecht/Providence: Foris publications, 1988. [Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, Caribbean series 8.] 222 pp., bibl. - James J. Fox, R. de Ridder, The Leiden tradition in structural anthropology; Essays in honour of P.E. de Josselin de Jong, Leiden: Brill, 1987., J.A.J. Karremans (eds.) - Silvia W. de Groot, H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen, The great father and the danger; Religious cults, material forces, and the collective fantasies in the world of the Surinamese maroons. Dordrecht (Holland)/Providence (USA): Foris, 1988, 451 pp., W. van Wetering (eds.) - Paul van der Grijp, Frederick Errington, Cultural alternatives and a feminist anthropology; An analysis of culturally constructed gender interests in Papua New Guinea, Cambridge etc.: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 185 pp., Deborah Gewertz (eds.) - Marijke J. Klokke, Annette Claben, Kann die Gupta-Kunst Kalidasas Werke illustrieren? Teil I: Text; Teil II: Abbildungen. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1988. [Marburger Studien zur Afrika- und Asienkunde, Serie B: Asien, Band 11.] 90, XLV pp., 10 figs, 32 pls. - J. Kommers, Michael Young, Malinowski among the Magi. The Natives of Mailu, London and New York: Routledge, 1988. [International library of Anthropology.] viii + 355 pp. - Niels Mulder, Bernhard Dahm, Culture and technological development in Southeast Asia. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988., Gotz Link (eds.) - Jan Michiel Otto, F. von Benda-Beckmann, Between kinship and the state; Social security and law in developing countries, Dordrecht: Foris, 1988. vii + 495 pp., K. von Benda-Beckmann, E. Casino (eds.) - Nigel Phillips, Rainer Carle, Cultures and societies of North Sumatra, Berlin and Hamburg: Dietrich Reimer, 1987. [Veroffentlichungen des Seminars für Indonesische und Sudseesprachen der Universität Hamburg, Band 19.] 514 pp. - R. De Ridder, James J. Fox, To speak in pairs; Essays on the ritual languages of Eastern Indonesia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. [Cambridge studies in oral literature 15.] xi + 338 pp.; bibl.; ills. - Matthew Schoffeleers, Serge Tcherkezoff, Duel classification reconsidered (Translation by Martin Thom), New York/Paris: Cambridge University Press and Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1987, 157 pp. - G.J. Schutte, J.L. Blussé, De dagregisters van het kasteel Zeelandia, Taiwan 1629-1662. Deel I: 1629-1641, uitgegeven door J.L. Blussé, M.E. van Opstall en Ts’ao Yung-ho, met medewerking van Chiang Shu-sheng en W. Milde. [Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, Grote Serie 195.] ‘s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1986. xxi + 548 pp., map, indices - H. Steinhauer, Olaf H. Smedal, Lom-Indonesian-English and English-Lom Wordlists, NUSA Linguistic studies of Indonesian and other languages in Indonesia, Vol. 28/29, 1987. viii + 165 pp. - C.L. Voorhoeve, Janet Bateman, Iau verb Morphology. Jakarta: Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma Jaya, 1986. [Nusa, Linguistic studies of Indonesian and other languages in Indonesia 26.] vi + 78 pp.

This study ascertained specific discourse markers used under the categories of contrastive, elaborative and inferential in the selected electronic essays of freshmen Bachelor of Arts in BA English Language students of a government run university in Tacloban City, Leyte, Philippines. It pinpointed the discourse markers that are used incorrectly by the freshmen students in their writings. Using a qualitative research design, the data were sourced from the sixty-two students’ electronic essays, enrolled in the History of the English Language course during the first semester of academic year 2021-2022. The essays were described, analyzed and interpreted using the framework on discourse markers developed by Fraser in 2009. Results showed that the students used restricted set of contrastive (“but” and “however”), elaborative (“and” and “furthermore”), and inferential (“because (of/this)” and “so (that)”) discourse markers (DMs). Furthermore, multiple incorrectly used DMs were also found as caused by misused, unnecessary, non-functional, and ungrammatical DMs. As use of discourse markers seemed restricted among the language students, the researchers found a gap of familiarization with other discourse markers and their functions among them, hence, limiting them to use common discourse markers (e.g. but, and, so that etc.). Moreover, students are also still incognizant with the basic functions and categorization of discourse markers which somehow affect the quality of their electronic essay outputs.

This study about academic essay writing strategies was conducted in order to propose teachers' lesson guide based on the effective strategies that were ascertained after the investigation. The study used the descriptive-quantitative method of research. The University-approved questionnaire was used to identify the frequency of use of the strategies utilized in students' essay writing activities. There were 126 students and 20 English teachers in Cebu City, Philippines, used as the respondents of the study. It was discovered that the three academic essay writing strategies investigated in the study were always used in both argumentative and informative essay writing, as perceived by the respondents. The first two strategies, traffic light color coding, and planning using informal outline, were found to be very effective in both writing the argumentative and informative essays, while the third strategy, framed paragraph, was also effective to use in both writing the two types of essays. The strategies used, and the students' performance showed a significant relationship. The top barriers in teaching academic essay writing were as follows: teaching essay writing to second language learners, lack of time for explicit instruction, no strategies in place for the part of the students, lack of parental support, and lack of essay structures on the part of the teachers. It was concluded that there were various effective pedagogical strategies that teachers could utilize in teaching academic essay writing. Based on the findings, this study further presents its recommendations.

This essay turns to and through the Philippine vernacular in order to open up the possibility of a new materialist regard of literature, one that specifically stems from the Philippine tropics. It proposes that the opportunity for such a tropical materialism rests on the onomatopoeism observed in the vernacular. Onomatopoeia, as a material linguistic principle, is recognized here to be most instructive in reunderstanding Philippine folk poetry — texts which date back to the precolonial period — in terms beyond mere representation. As a counterpoint to these traditional literary texts, the essay also ruminates on the poetry of Jose Garcia Villa, a prominent Filipino modernist writer, whose works in English are intuited here as demonstrative of the similar onomatopoeism found in Philippine folk poems. Although these literary materials might initially appear to be disparate and disconnected, the reading undertaken here nevertheless seeks to coincide these texts, bringing them into relation to highlight their possible yet understated entanglements, so as to ultimately motivate an intra-activity constitutive of contingent spatiotemporalities that may allow the emergence of a groundwork for a Philippine new materialist poetics.

The current study provides a Contrastive Interlanguage Analysis (CIA) of linking adverbials (e.g., furthermore, in conclusion, on the other hand) in the second language (L2) English academic writing of post-secondary students from three countries: the Philippines, Pakistan, and Thailand. This analysis makes use of 80 essays from each of these three first language (L1) groups by way of data sourced from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learner English (ICNALE); we eschew the use of a native speaker control group in response to recent critiques of the native speaker fallacy. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed several noteworthy production tendencies which distinguish each English variety. These include a generally low frequency of linking adverbial tokens by Filipino writers of English, as well as a comparatively narrow range of linking adverbial types by Pakistani writers of English. In terms of functional category differences, Thai writers displayed a relatively high frequency of listing devices while Pakistani writers showed a low frequency of appositional linking adverbials, and a high frequency of resultative linking adverbials. Methodological and pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.

The researcher in this study attempted to discover whether the inclusion of audio and visual cues of the audience in the writing context will lead to an increase in the quality of persuasive essays among English 2 students of Mindanao State University (MSU) in Marawi City, Philippines. Specifically, the study focused on finding the mean difference between the pretest and the posttest results of the respondents’ quality of persuasive writing under three conditions, namely: unspecified audience, the specified audience without audio and visual cues, and specified audience with audio and visual cues. To measure the quality of student’s writing, a holistic score was obtained using a Focused Holistic Scoring Guide. The score reflected the quality of the test in terms of communication effectiveness and persuasiveness. The findings of the study revealed that the quality of the students’ persuasive essays has significantly improved when the writing task was presented with visual and audio cues of the audience. The results manifested some positive effects of visual and audio cues when used as instructional aids or meditative tools in writing classes.

The ability to communicate entails skill in speaking and confidence. The two can only be achieved when a person is grammatically competent. While some students might be effective English speakers, guidance is still required to become effective authors. Likewise, many students in the Philippines have poor writing abilities as revealed in the results of 2012 National Career Assessment Examination. Thus, the sentence construction is needed. In the academic setting, the researcher observed that not all K12 Technical-Vocational-Livelihood Strand students are grammatically competent yet. These students have been studying English for 11 years and only a few are communicating their emotions or ideas in class confidently and fluently while many do not speak although they have ideas on mind. Evidently, written tests support this weakness. During assessment subject verb agreement, parts of speech, identifying error and essay writing, students can hardly give the correct verb nor construct grammatically correct statements. For this reason, the researcher desires to improve the grammatical competence of these learners. The action research making use of the One Group Pretest Posttest template was carried out to assess the efficacy of the Instruct, Integrate, Involve (3I's) Method in enhancing the sentence construction of Sto. Tomas Senior High School's 25 TVL students for the 2019-2020 school year. A one-tailed t-test on population indicates the use of paired samples was done to fulfill the study objective. This is suitable statistical treatment to be used since the pretest and posttest scores of the respondents are examples of related variables. It is tested in the one-tailed ttest the alternative hypothesis that the mean posttest scores of the respondents is significantly greater than their mean pretest scores. Hence, knowledge building about how the various grammar rules are shaped is a must achieve the desired result. It is not an easy process to create this understanding of grammar skills. The array of ways and uses confuses learners of the English language. Every day they learn new grammar rules but when they speak or write in English, they have trouble applying them. That is why the researcher wants to propose the Instruct, Integrate, Involve (3I’s) Method to enhance the sentence construction of these students. This is a method which will enhance the sentence construction skills by leaning the Subject-verb Agreement Rules and applying these in constructing grammatically correct sentence.

AbstractThis article argues for the validity of using English to express Philippine identities and realities. It is an exercise in substantiating what my father, Philippine poet Gémino H. Abad (and National Artist for Literature since 2022), has written in so many essays about the writing of our literature in and from and through English because: ‘We have our own way of feeling by which we then use this language called English. So that English is ours. We have colonized it too’ (Abad et al.). It accounts for a writer's possible journey or process, as I grapple with what my father means and consider how it might apply in my own writing, particularly in Salingkit: A 1986 diary, set during the EDSA Revolution, and Letters from Crispin, set during both the Philippine Revolution and the EDSA Revolution. In writing these books in and from and through English, I affirm that English becomes less the language of subjugation, and more the language of liberation.

This essay analyses English linguistic imperialism (Phillipson, 1992, 46) in the Philippines and identifies the features of linguistic neo-imperialism in the current era. The study rethinks and investigates how English linguistic imperialism plays a dual role in promoting and destroying the Filipino linguistic ecology. The present situation of English imperialism analyzed in this essay shows that the new stage of English linguistic imperialism embodies language hegemony mainly driven by political influence and business interests. At present, English linguistic neo-imperialism is not confined within post-colonial territories but maintains and expands both the language’s positive and negative influences as the world’s lingua franca. The authors also discuss the Filipino ownership of English and whether linguistic imperialism is entirely applicable to the Philippine context. Evidence shows that the continuing use of English, to a great extent, is Filipinos’ choice, not only for the benefit of the United States

This inquiry aimed to determine the challenges experienced by non-English major teachers in teaching Senior High School English subjects and their utilized coping mechanisms. It also sought to determine the relationship between the challenges encountered and the coping mechanisms applied. Moreover, the study aimed to discover the differences between teachers’ baccalaureate courses, challenges, and coping mechanisms. The patterns and associations of the variables were ascertained by using descriptive-correlational design. The extent of challenges faced and coping mechanisms applied were revealed through the descriptive tool. Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficient was used to know the relationship between the said challenges and coping mechanisms, and the differences between the variables and teachers’ baccalaureate courses were identified using the Kruskal-Wallis H Test. The study also employed the purposive sampling technique. The respondents of the study were the 50 teachers from Tanjay City Division, teaching in Tanjay City and Pamplona, Negros Oriental, Philippines. The researcher utilized a self-made questionnaire. The study revealed that non-English major teachers have challenges in teaching Senior High School English subjects specifically in the following areas: (a) teaching academic writing, (b) teaching writing one scene for one-act play applying the various elements, techniques, and literary devices, (c) teaching writing craft essay; (d) teaching speech writing; (e) selection of relevant resources specifically on choosing materials that are aligned in lesson objectives; and (f) deciding for curriculum-appropriate materials to use. The data also showed that online video tutorials, allowing colleagues/school heads/supervisors to observe their classes, and monitoring students’ performance are the most utilized coping mechanisms. The study concluded that despite the challenges encountered by non-English major teachers in teaching Senior High School English subjects, these teachers are still tough in facing their daily battles, which provide them chances to learn outside their comfort zones.

This study investigated the second language difficulties of Grade 7 students in one national high school in Sorsogon province, Philippines, S.Y. 2023-2024. Specifically, it identified the grammatical errors of students in their narrative essays along with subject-verb agreement and verb tenses. It determined the second language difficulties leading to their grammatical errors and their implications for language teaching and learning. Based on the 45 essays analyzed by the 15 students, the results showed that the grammatical errors identified were along the verb tense, which ranked highest (66%), and subject-verb agreement (42%), indicating a high level of students’ writing difficulty. Several linguistic difficulties that contributed to these errors were vocabulary gaps, limited knowledge of grammatical rules, syntactic differences between the students’ local language (L1) and English language (L2), the challenging learning environment, lack of resources, distractions, and insufficient family support. The students’ L2 difficulties may have implications for teaching and learning, particularly in terms of communicative effectiveness, reading comprehension, shift in teaching approach, and balancing formal and communicative activities.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0977/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Gastrodiplomacy is said to have emerged in Asia as an attempt by an Asian country to differentiate its unique flavor that is often mistaken to be that of a neighboring country. Even before the term gastrodiplomacy was coined, countries have practiced this approach to establish a national identity. Taiwan's Tourism Bureau officially started to emphasize food as a means of attraction in 2009. Although Taiwan's gastrodiplomacy is known as "dim-sum diplomacy," pearl milk tea is also listed under the "snack and beverages” category of Taiwan food for tourists. Tea, on the other hand, is a pivotal part of Asian history, particularly in its economic aspect. For instance, Taiwan’s tropical weather combined with elevated terrains allows the state to produce tea. It was in the early 1980s when the beverage was reinvented - cold and mixed with sweetened tapioca pudding. Thus, the first milk tea was served in Taiwan. The present generation of Filipinos, through a survey conducted, acknowledged milk tea as a product of Taiwan, as Taiwanese milk tea stores also multiplied in the Philippines. Unlike dim-sum, which the Filipinos attribute as Chinese, Filipinos recognize milk tea as a product of Taiwan. With this, it is recommended that Taiwan highlights milk tea in its gastrodiplomacy campaign to contribute to the recognition and preservation of “Taiwan cuisine-consciousness.” The Philippines can also learn from this diplomatic strategy in hopes of joining its neighboring countries in the great practice of gastrodiplomacy. References “16 Most Popular Chinese Dishes,” 24 November 2020. Available in https://food.ndtv.com/lists/10-most-popular-chinese-dishes-740725. Accessed 20 February 2021. Ang, Tiny, “Top 10 Milk Teas Places in Manila (The Ultimate List!),” 2013. Available in https://www.spot.ph/eatdrink/53213/top-10-milk-teas-the-ultimate-list?_ga=2.212317969. 409674221.1575507700-1845411473.1575507700. Accessed 05 December 2019. Castro, Jasper, “Tracking The Local Milk Tea Trend: How Did This Obsession Start?” 2019. Available in https://www.yummy.ph/news-trends/milk-tea-trend-history-philippines-a00261-20190307-lfrm2. Accessed 25 November 2019. Chang, Derrick, “Bubble Tea: how did it start?” 12 July 2017. Available in https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/bubble-tea-inventor/index.html. Accessed 04 December 2019. Cwiertka, Katarzyna, “Serving the Nation: The Myth of Washoku,” In Consuming Life of Post-Bubble Japan, edited by Katarzyna Cwiertka and Ewa Machotka. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. “Defining Generations: Where Millennials End and Generation Z Begins,” 17 January 2019. Available in https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and- generation-z-begins/ft_19-01-17_generations_2019/. Accessed 25 November 2019. Defrancq, Camille, “Taiwan’s Gastrodiplomacy: Strategies of Culinary Nation-Branding and Outreach,” National Chengchi University, Master’s Thesis, June 2018. “Eight Great Gastrodiplomacy Nations,” 2015. Available in https://www.uscpublicdiplomacy.org/story/eight-great-gastrodiplomacy-nations. Accessed 07 November 2019. Immawati, Nurul Amalia, “The Thailand’s Gastrodiplomacy as a Strategy to Develop National Branding (2002-2015),” Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta, Undergraduate Thesis, 2017. Jaaksola, Sara, “A Brief History of Dim Sum in China,” 01 February 2017. Available in https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/a-brief-history-of-dim-sum-in-china/. Accessed 29 November 2019. Lantrip, Brandon Chase, “The Chinese Cultural Influence on Filipino Cuisine,” University of San Francisco, Master Thesis, 2017. Lasco, Gideon, "Why Filipinos have a sweet tooth,” 21 December 2017. Available in https://opinion.inquirer.net/109639/filipinos-sweet-tooth. Accessed 03 December 2019. Lipscomb, Anna, “Culinary Relations: Gastrodiplomacy in Thailand, South Korea, and Taiwan,” March 2019. Available in http://yris.yira.org/essays/3080. Accessed 04 December 2019. Lui, Kwanyin, “Bubble tea takes Taiwan to the world,” 27 May 2011. Available in https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=6,23,45,6,6&post=10286. Accessed 04 December 2019. Nirwandy, Noor and Ahmad Azran Awang, “Conceptualizing Public Diplomacy Social Convention Culinary: Engaging Gastro Diplomacy Warfare for Economic Branding,” Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 130, (2014): 325-332. Niu, Isabelle, “From government to refugees, food is now diplomacy,” 28 December 2018. Available in https://qz.com/1496148/from-governments-to-refugees-food-is-now-diplomacy/. Accessed 07 November 2019. Ordinanza, Deneca, “LIST: The Best Milk Teas in the Metro and Where to Get Them,” 04 January 2019. Available in https://primer.com.ph/blog/2019/01/04/list-the-best-milk-teas-in-the-metro-and-where-to-get-them/. Accessed 05 December 2019. “Taiwan launches gastro-diplomacy drive,” Available in https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/aug/08/taiwan-launches-gasto-diplomacy-drive. Accessed 07 November 2019. “Taiwanese Gastrodiplomacy 2.0,” 03 December 2010, Available in https://taiwantoday.tw/news.php?unit=2&post=1551. Accessed 07 November 2019. “Tasty Taiwan Ties,” 10 August 2010. Available in https://thediplomat.com/2010/08/tasty-taiwan-ties/. Accessed 20 February 2021. “The World Factbook: Philippines,” 20 November 2019. Available in https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rp.html#field-anchor- people-and-society-age-structure. Accessed 05 December 2019. “Top 10 Milk-Tea Places in Manila (2018 Edition),” 24 July 2018, Available in https://www.spot.ph/eatdrink/the-latest-eat-drink/74521/best-milk-tea-manila- 2018-a00198-20180724-lfrm2. Accessed 05 December 2019. “Why do Filipino called food lover,” Available in https://lookupgrade.com/en/blog/english-why-do-filipino-called-food-lover/. Accessed 03 December 2019. Zhang, Juyan, “The Foods of the Worlds: Mapping and Comparing Contemporary Gastrodiplomacy Campaigns,” International Journal of Communication, 9, (2015): 568-591.

It has been fifteen months since the World Health Organisation declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic and the first lockdowns went into effect, dramatically changing the social landscape for millions of individuals worldwide. Overnight, it seemed, Zoom became the default platform for video conferencing, rapidly morphing from brand name to eponymous generic—a verb and a place and mode of being all at once. This nearly ubiquitous transition to remote work and remote play was both unprecedented and entirely anticipated. While teleworking, digital commerce, online learning, and social networking were common fare by 2020, in March of that year telepresence shifted from option to mandate, and Zooming became a daily practice for tens of millions of individuals worldwide. In an era of COVID-19, our relationships and experiences are deeply intertwined with our ability to “Zoom”. This shift resulted in new forms of artistic practice, new modes of pedagogy, and new ways of social organising, but it has also created new forms (and exacerbated existing forms) of exploitation, inequity, social isolation, and precarity. For millions, of course, lockdowns and restrictions had a profound impact that could not be mitigated by the mediated presence offered by way of Zoom and other video conferencing platforms. For those of us fortunate enough to maintain a paycheck and engage in work remotely, Zoom in part highlighted the degree to which a network logic already governed our work and our labour within a neoliberal economy long before the first lockdowns began. In the introduction to The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard identifies a “logic of maximum performance” that regulates the contemporary moment: a cybernetic framework for understanding what it means to communicate—one that ultimately frames all political, social, and personal interactions within matrices of power laid out in terms of performativity and optimisation (xxiv.) Performativity serves as a foundation for not only how a system operates, but for how all other elements within that system express themselves. Lyotard writes, “even when its rules are in the process of changing and innovations are occurring, even when its dysfunctions (such as strikes, crises, unemployment, or political revolutions) inspire hope and lead to a belief in an alternative, even then what is actually taking place is only an internal readjustment, and its results can be no more than an increase in the system’s ‘viability’” (11-12). One may well add to this list of dysfunctions global pandemics. Zoom, in effect, offered universities, corporations, mass media outlets, and other organisations a platform to “innovate” within an ongoing network logic of performativity: to maintain business as usual in a moment in which nothing was usual, normal, or functional. Zoom foregrounds performativity in other senses as well, to the extent that it provides a space and context for social performance. In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Erving Goffman explores how social actors move through their social environments, managing their identities in response to the space in which they find themselves and the audience (who are also social actors) within those spaces. For Goffman, the social environment provides the primary context for how and why social actors behave the way that they do. Goffman further denotes different spaces where our performances may shift: from public settings to smaller audiences, to private spaces where we can inhabit ourselves without any performance demands. The advent of social media, however, has added new layers to how we understand performance, audience, and public and private social spaces. Indeed, Goffman’s assertion that we are constantly managing our impressions feels particularly accurate when considering the added pressures of managing our identities in multiple social spaces, both face to face and online. Thus, when the world shut down during the COVID-19 pandemic, and all forms of social interactions shifted to digital spaces, the performative demands of working from home became all the more complex in the sharp merging of private and public spaces. Thus, discussions and debates arose regarding proper “Zoom etiquette”, for different settings, and what constituted work-appropriate attire when working from home (a debate that, unsurprisingly, became particularly gendered in nature). Privacy management was a near constant narrative as we began asking, who can be in our spaces? How much of our homes are we required to put on display to other classmates, co-workers, and even our friends? In many ways, the hyper-dependence on Zoom interactions forced an entry into the spaces that we so often kept private, leaving our social performances permanently on display. Prior to COVID-19, the networks of everyday life had already produced rather porous boundaries between public and private life, but for the most part, individuals managed to maintain some sort of partition between domestic, intimate spaces, and their public performances of their professional and civic selves. It was an exception in The Before Times, for example, for a college professor to be interrupted in the midst of his BBC News interview by his children wandering into the room; the suspended possibility of the private erupting in the midst of a public social space (or vice versa) haunts all of our network interactions, yet the exceptionality of these moments speaks to the degree to which we sustained an illusion of two distinct stages for performance in a pre-pandemic era. Now, what was once the exception has become the rule. As millions of individuals found themselves Zooming from home while engaging co-workers, clients, patients, and students in professional interactions, the interpenetration of the public and private became a matter of daily fare. And yes, while early on in the pandemic several newsworthy (or at least meme-worthy) stories circulated widely on mass media and social media alike, serving as teleconferencing cautionary tales—usually involving sex, drugs, or bowel movements—moments of transgressive privacy very much became the norm: we found ourselves, in the midst of the workday, peering into backgrounds of bedrooms and kitchens, examining decorations and personal effects, and sharing in the comings and goings of pets and other family members entering and leaving the frame. Some users opted for background images or made use of blurring effects to “hide the mess” of their daily lives. Others, however, seemed to embrace the blur itself, implicitly or explicitly accepting the everydayness of this new liminality between public and private life. And while we acknowledge the transgressive nature of the incursions of the domestic and the intimate into workplace activities, it is worth noting as well that this incursion likewise takes place in the opposite direction, as spaces once designated as private became de facto workplace settings, and fell under the purview of a whole range of workplace policies that dictated appropriate and inappropriate behaviour. Not least of these intrusions are the literal and ideological apparatuses of surveillance that Zoom and other video conferencing platforms set into motion. In the original conception of the Panopticon, the observer could see the observed, but those being observed could not see their observers. This was meant to instill a sense of constant surveillance, whether the observer was there or not. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault considered those observed through the Panopticon as objects to be observed, with no power to turn the gaze back towards the structures of power that infiltrated their existence with such invasive intent. With Zoom, however, as much as private spaces have been infiltrated by work, school, and even family and friends, those leading classes or meetings may also feel a penetrative gaze by those who observe their professional performances, as many online participants have pushed back against these intrusions with cameras and audio turned off, leaving the performer with an audience of black screens and no indication of real observers behind them or not. In these unstable digital spaces, we vacillate between observed and observer, with the lines between private and public, visible and invisible, utterly blurred. Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that the panoptic power of the platform itself is hardly optic and remains one degree removed from its users, at the level of data extraction, collection, and exchange. In an already data-dependent era, more privacy and personal data has become available than ever before through online monitoring and the constant use of Zoom in work and social interactions. Such incursions of informatic biopower require further consideration within an emerging discussion of digital capital. There has also been the opportunity for these transformative, digital spaces to be used for an invited gaze into artistic and imaginative spaces. The global pandemic hit many industries hard, but in particular, artists and performers, as well as their performance venues, saw a massive loss of space, audiences, and income. Many artists developed performance spaces through online video conferencing in order to maintain their practice and their connection to their audiences, while others developed new curriculums and worked to find accessible ways for community members to participate in online art programming. Thus, though performers may still be faced with black squares as their audience, the invited gaze allows for artistic performances to continue, whether as digital shorts, live streamed music sets, or isolated cast members performing many roles with a reduced cast list. Though the issue of access to the technology and bandwidth needed to partake in these performances and programming is still front of mind, the presentation of artistic performances through Zoom has allowed in many other ways for a larger audience reach, from those who may not live near a performance centre, to others who may not be able to access physical spaces comfortably or safely. The ideology of ongoing productivity and expanded, remote access baked into video conferencing platforms like Zoom is perhaps most apparent in the assumptions of access that accompanied the widespread use of these platforms, particularly in the context of public institutions such as schools. In the United States, free market libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute have pointed to the end of “Net Neutrality” as a boon for infrastructure investment that led to greater broadband access nationwide (compared to a more heavily regulated industry in Europe). Yet even policy think tanks such as the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation—with its mission to “formulate, evaluate, and promote policy solutions that accelerate innovation and boost productivity to spur growth, opportunity, and progress”—acknowledged that although the U.S. infrastructure supported the massive increase in bandwidth demands as schools and businesses went online, gaps in rural access and affordability barriers for low income users mean that more needs to be done to bring about “a more just and effective broadband network for all Americans”. But calls for greater access are, in effect, supporting this same ideological framework in which greater access presumably equates with greater equity. What the COVID-19 pandemic revealed, we would argue, is the degree to which those most in need of services and support experience the greatest degree of digital precarity, a point that Jenny Kennedy, Indigo Holcombe-James, and Kate Mannell foreground in their piece “Access Denied: How Barriers to Participate on Zoom Impact on Research Opportunity”. As they note, access to data and devices provide a basic threshold for participation, but the ability to deploy these tools and orient oneself toward these sorts of engagements suggests a level of fluency beyond what many high-risk/high-need populations may already possess. Access reveals a disposition toward global networks, and as such signals one’s degree of social capital within a network society—a “state nobility” for the digital age (Bourdieu.) While Zoom became the default platform for a wide range of official and institutional practices, from corporate meetings to college class sessions, we have seen over the past year unanticipated engagements with the platform as well. Zoombombing offers one form of evil media practice that disrupts the dominant performativity logic of Zoom and undermines the assumptions of rational exchange that still drive much of how we understand “effective” communication (Fuller and Goffey). While we may be tempted to dismiss Zoombombing and other forms of “shitposting” as “mere” trollish distractions, doing so does not address the political agency of strategic actions on these platforms that refuse to abide by “an intersubjective recognition that is based on a consensus about values or on mutual understanding” (Habermas 12). Kawsar Ali takes up these tactical uses in “Zoom-ing in on White Supremacy: Zoom-Bombing Anti-Racism Efforts” and explores how alt-right and white supremacist groups have exploited these strategies not only as a means of disruption but as a form of violence against participants. A cluster of articles in this issue take up the question of creative practice and how video conferencing technologies can be adapted to performative uses that were perhaps not intended or foreseen by the platform’s creators. xtine burrough and Sabrina Starnaman offer up one such project in “Epic Hand Washing: Synchronous Participation and Lost Narratives”, which paired live performances of handwashing in domestic spaces with readings from literary texts that commented upon earlier pandemics and plagues. While Zoom presents itself as a tool to keep a neoliberal economy flowing, we see modes of use such as burrough’s and Starnaman’s performative piece that are intentionally playful, at the same time that they attempt to address the lived experiences of lockdown, confinement, and hygienic hypervigilance. Claire Parnell, Andrea Anne Trinidad, and Jodi McAlister explore another form of playful performance through their examination of the #RomanceClass community in the Philippines, and how they adapted their biannual reading and performance events of their community-produced English-language romance fiction. While we may still use comparative terms such as “face-to-face” and “virtual” to distinguish between digitally-mediated and (relatively) unmediated interactions, Parnell et al.’s work highlights the degree to which these technologies of mediation were already a part of this community’s attempt to support and sustain itself. Zoom, then, became the vehicle to produce and share community-oriented kilig, a Filipino term for embodied, romantic affective response. Shaun Wilson’s “Creative Practice through Teleconferencing in the Era of COVID-19” provides another direct reflection on the contemporary moment and the framing aesthetics of Zoom. Through an examination of three works of art produced for screen during the COVID-19 pandemic, including his own project “Fading Light”, Wilson examines how video conferencing platforms create “oscillating” frames that speak to and comment on each other at the same time that they remain discrete and untouched. We have opened and closed this issue with bookends of sorts, bringing to the fore a range of theoretical considerations alongside personal reflections. In our feature article, “Room without Room: Affect and Abjection in the Circuit of Self-Regard”, Ricky Crano examines the degree to which the aesthetics of Zoom, from its glitches to its default self-view, create modes of interaction that drain affect from discourse, leaving its users with an impoverished sense of co-presence. His focus is explicitly on the normative uses of the platform, not the many artistic and experimental misappropriations that the platform likewise offers. He concludes, “it is left to artists and other experimenters to expose and undermine the workings of power in the standard corporate, neoliberal modes of engagement”, which several of the following essays in this issue then take up. And we close with “Embracing Liminality and ‘Staying with the Trouble’ on (and off) Screen”, in which Tania Lewis, Annette Markham, and Indigo Holcombe-James explore two autoethnographic studies, Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking and The Shut-In Worker, to discuss the liminality of our experience of the COVID-19 pandemic, on and off—and in between—Zoom screens. Rather than suggesting a “return to normal” as mask mandates, social distancing, and lockdown restrictions ease, they attempt to “challenge the assumption that stability and certainty is what we now need as a global community … . How can we use the discomfort of liminality to imagine global futures that have radically transformative possibilities?” This final piece in the collection we take to heart, as we consider how we, too, can stay in the trouble, and consider transformative futures. Each of these pieces offers a thoughtful contribution to a burgeoning discussion on what Zooming means to us as academics, teachers, researchers, and community members. Though investigations into the social effects of digital spaces are not new, this moment in time requires careful and critical investigation through the lens of a global pandemic as it intersects with a world that has never been more digital in its presence and social interactions. The articles in this volume bring us to a starting point, but there is much more to cover: issues of disability and accessibility, gender and physical representations, the political economy of digital accessibility, the transformation of learning styles and experiences through a year of online learning, and still more areas of investigation to come. It is our hope that this volume provides a blueprint of sorts for other critical engagements and explorations of how our lives and our digital landscapes have been impacted by COVID-19, regardless of the instability of our connections. We would like to thank all of the contributors and peer reviewers who made this fascinating issue possible, with a special thanks to the Cultural Studies Association New Media and Digital Cultures Working Group, where these conversations started … on Zoom, of course. References Bourdieu, Pierre. The State Nobility. Stanford UP, 1998. Brake, Doug. “Lessons from the Pandemic: Broadband Policy after COVID-19.” Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 13 July 2020. <http://itif.org/publications/2020/07/13/lessons-pandemic-broadband-policy-after-covid-19>. “Children Interrupt BBC News Interview – BBC News.” BBC News, 10 Mar. 2017. <http://youtu.be/Mh4f9AYRCZY>. Firey, Thomas A. “Telecommuting to Avoid COVID-19? 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