Search results for " Languages"

Variation in the use of constructed action according to discourse type and age in Finnish Sign Language

2022

This paper presents a study of the use of constructed action (CA) in the stories and conversations of adult Finnish Sign Language (FinSL) signers of different ages. CA is defined here as a type of depiction in which a signer enacts the actions, feelings, thoughts and utterances of discourse referents with different parts of their body. Most studies on CA in sign languages have been done on the basis of signed storytelling, and little is known about how the use of CA varies in different discourse types. The use of CA has also been noted to vary between individual signers, but we do not yet know much about the socio-individual phenomena that may be linked to this variation. In the present stu…

Speaking English in Finnish content-based classrooms

2007

:  CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is a term widely used in Europe to refer to different forms of content based education, often conducted in English. Earlier research on CLIL has tended to focus on matters of language learning or content mastery rather than on details of classroom interaction. This paper investigates how English is used in Finnish biology and physics CLIL classrooms. Classrooms are approached from a discourse-pragmatic perspective which involves close attention to social and interpersonal aspects of language use as it unfolds in authentic settings. The findings suggest that CLIL students claim ownership of English by the way they confidently use it as a res…

Assemblage of art, discourse and ice hockey : designing knowledge about work

2021

This article examines speculative design's capacity to co‐produce knowledge about contradictions and potentialities of work in professional ice hockey. Building on the Deleuzian concept of assemblage, speculative design has been used for two purposes: (a) to bring together the perspectives of art, anthropology, discourse studies, and professional sports in co‐constructing knowledge about hockey work; and (b) to analyze and present the key findings of an ethnography on hockey work through an art exhibition of speculative hockey memorabilia. As such, these art pieces showed the intertwined relationships of material, discursive, and affective aspects in hockey work as well as the multiplicity …

Multi-sited and historically layered language policy construction: parliamentary debate on the Finnish constitutional bilingualism in 1919

2018

In this article, we analyse the construction of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in the aftermath of gaining independence, a traumatic civil war and during the construction of a new republican polity based on regulated parliamentarism in 1917–1919. We take a multi-sited and historically informed approach to the dynamics of political discourse at the parliamentary level, analysing the discursive cycles of people, nationality and nation. We demonstrate the interconnectedness of language policy discourses with historically and spatially multi-sited and highly complex contexts and show how language policy confrontations can add important dimensions to increase our understanding of power stru…

Music video covers, minoritised languages, and affective investments in the space of YouTube

2017

AbstractWhile interest in affective processes has led to an affective turn in cultural studies, in sociolinguistics this perspective has been given less attention. This study takes up the ‘lens of affect’ and directs it on two cases exemplifying the circulation of minoritised languages in new media spaces: music video covers from two minority-language contexts, Irish and Sámi, uploaded on YouTube. Combining recent theorising on affect with insights from sociolinguistic research, the study investigates how the YouTube users’ affective investments contribute to a (re)evaluation of the two minoritised languages, their speakers, and the related ethnic/national belongings, and how these investme…

P. S. Ureland & I. Clarkson (eds.): Scandinavian Language Contacts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1984. 340 pp., 19 maps. ISBN 0521 2568…

1987

Naming pseudowords in Spanish: effects of syllable frequency.

2003

Three naming experiments were conducted to examine the role of the first and the second syllable during speech production in Spanish. Facilitative effects of syllable frequency with disyllabic words have been reported in Dutch and Spanish (Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994; Perea & Carreiras, 1998). In both cases, the syllable frequency effect was independent of-and additive to-the effect of word frequency. However, Levelt and Wheeldon (1994) found that words ending in a high-frequency syllable were named faster than words ending in a low-frequency syllable, whereas Perea and Carreiras (1998) found a facilitative effect of syllable frequency for the initial syllable. In Experiments 1-2, we manipulate…

Tonos condicionados por la estructura métrica y pies mínimamente recursivos en Chugach Alutiiq

2016

This article presents a reanalysis of the foot-based phonology of Chugach Alutiiq (henceforth CA), a language that displays a complex mixed ternary–binary rhythm, as well as metrically conditioned distributions of pitch, fortition and vowel lengthening. Elaborating on earlier analyses of CA that had posited some kind of ternary constituent (Hewitt, 1991, 1992; Leer, 1985a, 1985b, 1985c; Rice, 1992), we propose CA should be analyzed by means of the Internally Layered Ternary (ILT) foot, a minimal recursive foot (Prince, 1980; Selkirk, 1980), which was recently revived in a typological study of binary–ternary stress (Martínez-Paricio & Kager, 2015). It will be argued that ILT feet capture CA’…

När barnet blir expert: Förklaringar av ord och procedurer i det digitala spelet Growtopia

2019

The ability to explain word meanings is central to a child’s language development and socialisation into different domains of language use. In previous research explanations have been shown to be linked to cognitive and linguistic development as well as academic language and discursive skills. This paper analyses what kinds of linguistic and discursive competences are put to use in explanation activities in interactions between an 8-year-old bilingual child (Albin) and his mother around a digital game. The data comes from a larger data set of video-recordings and field observation of children’s interactions around games. The analysis focuses on explanation sequences in which the child expli…

The impact of input and output domains: towards a function-based categorization of types of grammaticalization

2015

Abstract A wide variety of semantic–pragmatic processes have been linked to grammaticalization, such as pragmatic enrichment (Hopper and Traugott, 2003) and the loss of pragmatic meaning (Heine and Reh, 1984). As this example shows, not all of these subprocesses are compatible with each other. It therefore makes sense to assume that different subprocesses may be linked to different stages, different input or different output types of grammaticalization processes. In the present paper, various types of changes will be analyzed with respect to the semantic and pragmatic changes that typically accompany them, using mostly examples from English, German and the Romance languages. On this basis, …