Maria Salazar

Religion and spirituality (R/S) serve as coping mechanisms for circumstances that threaten people’s psychological well-being. However, using R/S inappropriately to deal with difficulties and problems in daily life may include the practice of Spiritual Bypass (SB). SB refers to avoiding addressing emotional problems and trauma, rather than healing and learning from them. On the other hand, coping strategies may be determined by the cultural context. This study aims to describe the presence of SB in individuals who may have experienced stressful situations and to understand the influence of culture on SB by comparing SB in two culturally different groups. The sample consists of a total of 435 people, 262 of Honduran nationality and 173 of Spanish nationality. Both groups are approximately equivalent in age and gender. The degree of SB, stressful events, perception of social support and spiritual well-being are examined, respectively, through the Spiritual Bypass Scale, and specific items and subscales from the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - Spiritual Wellbeing. The results showed a higher spiritual well-being and use of SB in the Honduran sample as compared to the Spanish sample, but similar social support and stressful events. Furthermore, some of the factors predicting SB were different between the two samples. While age and a greater number of R/S practices were important in both samples, for the Honduran sample the variables that best explained SB were being a Christian, having greater social support, fewer stressful events, and greater attendance at church or temple. For the Spanish sample, however, the variable that best explained SB was studying R/S texts. Therefore, SB must be understood within the culture in which it develops, since in different cultural contexts it appears to relate to differing factors. Thus, SB becomes a possible functional or dysfunctional coping strategy depending on the social context.

Resumen El artículo tiene como objetivo revisar y analizar los pasajes referentes al territorio chileno en los poemas épicos que cantaron la Guerra de Arauco en el siglo XVI. Aun cuando su argumento central consistió en los acontecimientos bélicos, algunos pasajes dieron cabida a la descripción del espacio como un paisaje épico. Así como se demostrará, su representación no solo se configuró atendiendo a las condiciones fisonómicas del territorio, sino también a los recursos literarios propios de la epopeya que caracterizaron al sur de Chile como un escenario desafiante y peligroso, espacio histórico y a la vez literario, representativo de la condición heroica e indomable del Reino de Chile.The aim of this article is to review and to analyze the passages relating to the Chilean territory in the epic poems that reported Arauco's War in the 16th century. Even if their central argument consisted of the warlike events, some passages gave content to the description of the space as an epic landscape. As it will be demonstrated, the representation of the territory not only was formed attending to the physical conditions of the land, but also to the literary resources of the epic that characterized to the south of Chile as a challenging and dangerous scene, historical and simultaneously literary space, representative of the heroic and indomitable condition of the Kingdom of Chile.

The relevance of social norms for understanding appropriate behaviour in context has taken central stage in politeness research in recent years, and particularly in studies of workplace interaction. As an example of this research, this paper explores the way in which a group of nurses interacting with their colleagues negotiates complaints. The data were collected in a ward of a public healthcare institution in New Zealand and consist of audio and video recordings of four roster meetings involving nurses and nurse managers. Instances of nurses’ complaints are explored from an interactional sociolinguistic point of view, allowing the researcher to investigate emergent facework. The findings suggest that multiple ingroup and outgroup memberships, achieved through the dynamic use of personal pronouns, enact preferred politic behaviour for both, transactional and relational goals. In addition, nurses’ convergence in their display of socio-pragmatic norms governing their complaining practices suggests that this group of nurses belongs to the same workplace community. Finally, strong emphasis is placed on the role that complaining plays in the positive presentation of nurses’ identities.