Chiang Mai University Journal of Humanities

Academic Freedom and the Poverty of Rights Talk

Patrick Keeney — 2025-02-14

This essay critiques the dominance of rights-based discourse in contemporary liberal democracies, arguing that while human rights are essential for protecting individual dignity and promoting justice, the exclusive reliance on "rights talk" has negative consequences for public discourse, particularly in the university. It highlights how framing moral and political issues solely in terms of rights can hinder meaningful dialogue, reduce political deliberation to legalistic battles, and promote a hyper-individualistic mindset that undermines the intellectual openness necessary for academic inquiry. In higher education, the elevation of rights claims often stifles debate, marginalizes dissenting viewpoints, and fosters a climate of ideological conformity. Drawing from historical and modern critics, the essay emphasizes the need for a more balanced approach to public morality that includes communal values and virtues beyond individual rights. Exploring the limitations of rights language calls for a richer moral vocabulary that better supports both rigorous scholarship and open intellectual engagement.

Confidence in the strong motherland: heroism, patriotism and Chinese policies in the ‘Wolf Warrior’ films

Nuttawadee Jensiripon — 2025-02-14

The Wolf Warrior (战狼; Zhàn Láng) film series, directed by and starring Wu Jing in 2015 and 2017, is a Chinese action blockbuster that blends high-octane entertainment with ideological narratives. This article examines how the series represents a cinematic effort to promote Cultural Confidence (文化自信; Wénhuà Zìxìn), which emphasized Chinese heroism, patriotism, and collective strength supported by a strong motherland. By analyzing key scenes and dialogues—particularly those in Wolf Warrior 2 (2017)—this study highlights how the films align with President Xi Jinping’s vision of a peaceful rise while juxtaposing China’s adherence to international norms against critiques of Western inefficacy and decline. Moving beyond conventional patriotic themes, the analysis explores the films’ dual roles as cultural diplomacy tools and reflections of China’s evolving global identity. The Wolf Warrior series encapsulates China’s geopolitical aspirations, particularly through narratives tied to the Belt and Road Initiative, while portraying a confident nation asserting its place in the global order. Ultimately, the series transcends its status as commercial entertainment to become a cinematic representation of China’s soft power and ideological ambitions.

Exploring the Representation of Male Homosexuals in Thai Boy Love Series through Critical Discourse Analysis

Dechathorn Pojchanaphong — 2025-02-14

This academic article presents the portrayal and impact of the Boy Love (BL) series within the Thai media landscape, and the social influence on the Thai Boy Love genre. The article explains the representation of Thai Boy Love series through referencing theoretical frameworks and concepts of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Norman Fairclough, illustrating how they can be used in interpreting texts and visuals. Additionally, it discusses the role of media portrayal, audience engagement, and broader cultural impacts on the discourse surrounding the Thai Boy Love series. The reproduction of the sexual traits and roles of male homosexuals, which are argued to follow the binary gender norm in Thai Boy Love series, are also explained. Last but not least, the article elaborates power dynamics, ideological positions, and societal norms embedded in this genre, in hope that the genre of Thai Boy Love and the representation of male homosexuals are explained in a broader aspect, which may lead to a more creative adaptation and realistic portrayal of Thai homosexuals in the of the genre. Despite the insights gained, significant gaps are thought to remain in investigating local cultural and linguistic contexts in the Boy Love series, especially those relating to sexual performativity.

Hybridity in Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s “Farangs” and “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place”

Isaraporn Pissa-ard — 2025-02-14

Drawing on Edward Said’s powerful critique of Orientalism, together with the approach to hybridity adopted by Homi Bhabha, Dean Chan, Jacqueline Lo, and Ien Ang, this article examines Thai-Western relationships portrayed in Thai-American author Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s two remarkable short stories, “Farangs” and “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place.” The two short stories attempt to expose the racism at work in Thai-Western interactions and simultaneously draw attention to a form of hybridity that challenges a colonial mindset and racial stereotypes. Thai-Western relationships portrayed in “Farangs” are marred by unequal power relations but those relationships are not strictly confined to the domination-subordination models foregrounded by Edward Said in Orientalism. Significantly, “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place” depicts situations in which negotiations and compromises lead to the bridging of cultural divides. Furthermore, this story highlights physical and emotional entanglements or mutual cultural accommodations that echo Ien Ang’s promotion of hybridity, not as an elitist posture, but as a useful and necessary tool to tackle the impacts of colonial legacy in contemporary post-colonial societies.

Is Music a Language?

James Batcho — 2025-02-14

The question—Is music a language?—is an enduring one, not only philosophically, but in the everyday discourse of practicing musicians. This essay revisits the question through a German Romanticist lens. It focuses primarily on the writings of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, plus the work of contemporary scholars such as Langer, Li, Han and Bowie. On one hand, the Romantic Era describes a period in which philosophers and composers were grappling with this very question in regard to its capacity to produce meaning without language. On the other, the Era offered a critique of the primacy of reason and an elevation of our nonlinguistic relationships to organic nature. Rather than remaining strictly within the Romantic framework, however, the essay expands into more modern, structuralist analyses of music to ascertain its constructive elements—that is, whether it has syntax and grammar, and whether “meaning” comes from these components. Recognizing that music has its structure and signifiers, much like language, the thesis offered is that music is not a language. It is rather a form of expression that defies and transcends the identification and meaning that language requires. Language is a way of thinking, one that has a different process than the thinking elicited by an engagement with music. To this end, Asian traditions are brought into the fold as is a discussion of the ineffable qualities of the sublime. The essay closes by considering the relationships between harmony and poetry and the improvisational nature of jazz performance.

An Analysis of Grammatical Content in Teaching Materials Used by High School Spanish Teachers in Northeastern Thailand

Fuangket Tongwanchai — 2025-02-14

The increasing popularity of the Spanish language at the secondary and high school levels, particularly in the Northeast of Thailand, has been notable over the past decade. Currently, eight schools offer Spanish either as a full program or as elective courses. As Spanish is one of the most recent additions to the high school curriculum, the selection of teaching materials varies significantly due to the absence of standardized textbooks, specifically for Thai high school students. This study seeks to analyze the alignment of grammatical content in these teaching materials, using the A1-level grammatical topics outlined in the Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes (PCIC) as a reference framework. The findings indicate that none of the schools fully covered all the grammatical content prescribed by the PCIC. Notably, schools offering Spanish as a program included fewer grammatical content in their materials, whereas schools offering Spanish as an elective course demonstrated higher levels of content completion. It is, therefore, recommended that Spanish teachers at the high school level develop teaching materials that comprehensively cover the grammatical content specified by the PCIC. Ideally, teachers should collaborate in create a textbook that meets the A1 standard, thereby establishing a new benchmark for the teaching of Spanish in Thailand.

Knowledge Elicitation for Spoken English Teaching through the Design Thinking Process

Shiyi Zhang — 2025-02-14

As the international lingua franca, English serves as a communication medium for people from diverse linguistic backgrounds. In China, junior high school marks the beginning of systematic English learning for most students. However, spoken English receives insufficient attention, and this phenomenon is particularly evident in public junior high schools. This research employed the five steps of the Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test in design thinking to explore challenges and elicit insights for improving current spoken English teaching in public junior high schools in Chengdu. Firstly, the current standard of spoken English teaching was analyzed using a combination of questionnaire data from students and English teachers, which was structured according to the Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) model. Additionally, the key problems and root causes of these problems in current spoken English teaching were identified through thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with experienced English teachers. Subsequently, divergent information on how to effectively address the identified problems was derived by organizing interview data and reviewing relevant literature. Furthermore, important knowledge was elicited by considering the diverse obstacles faced in spoken English teaching in public junior high schools. Finally, the advantages and applicability of the elicited knowledge were validated through a comparison with the current teaching practices. The findings highlighted the significant gap between the actual practices and ideal standards of spoken English teaching and proposed actionable knowledge to bridge this gap. This research is intended to provide valuable insights for English teachers to enhance their spoken English teaching skills and support the positive development of spoken English education in public junior high schools.

The Emergence of A Child of the Northeast in the Capitalist World-Economy: Reading Isan/Thai Literature as World Literature

Ram Prasansak — 2025-02-14

This research article offers a mode of reading that challenges a parochial view of Kampoon Boontawee’s A Child of the Northeast (1976) as a repository of authentic Isan culture. Combining the theory of world literature by the Warwick Research Collective with the concepts of the bildungsroman and chronotope by M. M. Bakhtin, it argues that the novel’s coming-of-age narrative registers the child protagonist’s transition from a predominantly subsistence economy to the modern capitalist world-system, where he aspires to become a member of the bourgeoisie. In the novel’s chronotopic design, the formation of the child of the Northeast is mapped onto the development of Siam/Thailand as a capitalist society. Such a mapping culminates in the protagonist’s heartfelt recitation of a famous Thai verse, “Knowledge as Commodity,” which marks not only the integration of Siam/Thailand into the capitalist world-economy but also the uneven development in Siam/Thailand.

Verbal morphology and negative constructions in Nocte

Syed Iftiqar Rahman — 2025-02-14

This study explores the verbal morphology and negative construction mechanisms in Nocte, a language belonging to the Northern Naga subgroup of the Tibeto-Burman family, spoken by the Nocte community in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Based on data from the Haʔwa variety of Nocte, the research provides an in-depth analysis of the Nocte verbal morphology, with a focus on hierarchical agreement, inverse marking and cislocative. Unlike prior analyses that categorized tense and agreement markers as verbal suffixes, this study identifies agreement words as independent entities that carry tense, aspect, mood, and negation functions. The paper also highlights the complexity of negative constructions in Nocte, identifying multiple negative markers and structures that vary according to tense, context, and sentence structure. This work advances the understanding of Nocte's post-verbal morphology and situates its linguistic characteristics within the broader context of Tibeto-Burman languages.

Editorial

2025-02-14

Guidelines for Manuscript Preparation for Submission to "Chiang Mai University Journal of Humanities"

2025-02-14