Search results for "Sociolinguistic"
showing 10 items of 301 documents
VOT in French as a foreign language : A production and perception study with mono- and multilingual learners (German/Mandarin-Chinese)
2016
This study addresses the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in French as a foreign language (FFL). The learners are young multilingual learners who speak Mandarin Chinese as a heritage language along with German. To determine potential effects of the learners’ multilingual background, these multilingual learners were compared to three control groups: (1) monolingual German learners of FFL, (2) monolingual Mandarin Chinese learners of FFL, and (3) native speakers of French (L1). In addition, a perception experiment was carried out to find out to what extent the VOT values measured in the production data contribute to the perception of foreign accent. Our results show that multilingual lear…
Never saw one – first-person null subjects in spoken English1
2016
While null subjects are a well-researched phenomenon in pro-drop languages like Italian or Spanish, they have not received much attention in non-pro-drop languages such as English, where they are traditionally associated with particular (written) genres such as diaries or are discussed under a broader umbrella term such as situational ellipsis. However, examples such as the one in the title – while certainly not frequent – are commonly encountered in colloquial speech, with first-person singular tokens outnumbering any other person.This article investigates the linguistic and non-linguistic factors influencing the (non-) realisation of first-person singular subjects in a corpus of colloquia…
Children’s beliefs about bilingualism and language use as expressed in child-adult conversations
2017
AbstractThe aim of this article is to describe young children’s beliefs about language and bilingualism as they are expressed in verbal utterances. The data is from Swedish-medium preschool units in three different sites in Finland. It was generated through ethnographic observations and recordings of the author’s interactions with the children. The meaning constructions in the interactions were analyzed mainly by looking closely at the participants’ turn taking and conversational roles. The results show that children’s beliefs of bilingualism are that you should use one language when speaking to one person; that languages are learnt through using them; and that the advantage of knowing more…
Software as ideology
2016
Software has become ubiquitous in higher education, especially often taken-for-granted Microsoft Word. Educational writing involves more than horizontal lines of text, but also multimodal representations. When students write in Word, the affordances of the program constrain what multimodal representations of knowledge they can and cannot make. Software such as Word is not neutral tool-kits, but also historical and semiotic constructs loaded with social values and ideologies. By taking a social semiotic approach to Word and SmartArt, this article shows how this software is pre-loaded with values and styles from office management. These values are then infused into education, in the case this…
Beware of the dog! Private linguistic landscapes in two ‘Hungarian’ villages in South-West Slovakia
2015
This study demonstrates how a single type of sign can be connected to language policy on a larger scale. Focusing on the relationship between language policy and language ideologies, I investigate the private Linguistic Landscape (LL) of Hungarians living in two villages in Slovakia. Through an examination of ‘beware of the dog’ signs, it is shown how such signs can be indicative of different language policies. In Slovakia, the Hungarian public LL is often referred to as a threat to the state language and public order. This ideology is reflected on the LL so that there are mostly Slovak-only public signs in bilingual and Hungarian dominant villages. The private realm is the only significant…
Affordances and constraints: Second language learning in cleaning work
2016
This paper examines opportunities for language learning in a cleaning job, which is a typical entry-level job for immigrants. An ethnographic case study approach is taken to investigate examples of the conditions that allow or prevent language learning for the focal participant, a sub-Saharan man who works as a cleaner in Finland. This case illustrates on a micro-scale the impact of the new economy on a worker in a company that has outsourced its cleaning services. Theoretically and methodologically, the study applies van Lier’s (2004) ecological approach to language learning and Scollon and Scollon’s (2004) nexus analysis. The analysis of interaction order shows that within outsourced clea…
Analysing metaphor in the family register through scripted sitcom conversations
2017
Abstract This study looks into the patterns of metaphor use in the family register of scripted sitcom conversations. Previous studies of metaphor in conversation adopted different approaches to the concept of register, resulting in a rich but complex picture (Cameron, 2003, 2007, 2008; Deignan, Littlemore & Semino, 2013; Kaal, 2012). This research attempts to reduce such complexity by using an approach to register based on closely defining communicative settings and the participants’ roles (Giménez-Moreno, 2006). In this way, we were able to focus on the register used by family members and close friends and the contexts of private oral communication, as opposed to other possible registe…
ROLES AND REGISTERS IN DIGITAL FORUM INTERACTION: DEVELOPING A COMMUNICATIVE IDENTITY-BASED APPROACH TO REGISTER VARIATION
2017
espanolEl presente articulo estudia como los roles y registros comunicativos se expresan de forma interdependiente, influenciandose mutuamente en los actuales foros digitales. En la primera parte, y a partir de la combinacion de estudios previos sobre variacion de registros comunicativos, la teoria de la identidad social y la linguistica cognitiva, se proponen tres nuevos conceptos para el analisis discursivo: ‘Rol Modulador de Registro’ (RMR), ‘brujula del registro’ y ‘registro-pivote’. La forma en la que funcionan en el discurso digital se ilustra en la segunda parte, con el analisis de un corpus de foros de discusion. Los resultados demuestran que cada perfil de foro despliega una gama d…
“Languaging the worker : Globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”
2016
In the introduction to the special issue “Languaging the worker: globalized governmentalities in/of language in peripheral spaces”, we take up the notion of governmentality as a means to interrogate the complex relationship between language, labor, power and subjectivity in peripheral multilingual spaces. Our aim here is to argue for the study of governmentality as a viable and growing approach in critical sociolinguistic research. As such, in this introduction, we first discuss key concepts germane to our interrogations, including the notions of governmentality, languaging, peripherality and language worker. We proceed to map out five ethnographically and discourse-analytically informed ca…