Search results for "language and linguistics"
showing 10 items of 3275 documents
If you can defend your own point of view, you're good : Norms of voice construction in student writing on an international Master's programme
2019
Abstract This ethnographically oriented study followed the writing experiences of four students on an international masters programme in Finland. Gathering a range of data, the study set out to examine what counts as good writing on a programme with a very diverse student body in which English is used as a lingua franca. Both teachers and students emphasised the importance of arguing one's ‘own point of view’ in academic writing, and teachers often formed impressions of students on the basis of their texts, drawing attention particularly to their use of metadiscourse markers (e.g., self-mentions, attitude markers and hedges). The present article therefore combines a quantitative analysis of…
The emotional journey of being and becoming bilingual
2017
This article examines the foreign language learning biographies of six Finnish English speakers who reflect on their journey towards a bilingual identity. In this article language learning is examined as a process that is intrinsically emotional as emotion connects individuals with the world as well as being a movement within oneself. The data analysis is based on dialogical and narrative approaches. Through the analysis two key story types were named: Bilingualism as striving and Bilingualism as a gift. In the striving stories English was held up as an ideal, as a way of engaging with the wider world but moreover as a way of finding a better ‘me’. In the gift stories, English was experienc…
Homescape
2020
Abstract This article presents the redefined concept of the homescape as space where transnational, newly arrived, and settled families can provide agency for their identity framing through multisensory discourse resources. The study investigated the experiential, non-interactional multisensory discourse resources in the homescape. The homescape extends from the Linguistic Landscape and houses temporal and spatial components, which occur over time. The yearlong ethnographic case study of three Nepalese families (two transmigrant Ghurkha families and one immigrant family) included 150 hours of observational data triangulated with qualitative interviews. The study posed two questions: How do …
‘It has given me this kind of courage…’: the significance of CLIL in forming a positive target language self-concept
2019
This article sets out to broaden the understanding of foreign language self-concept in CLIL context. The few existing studies on self-concept in CLIL have been quantitative and provided somewhat discrepant results, highlighting the need for approaching the topic qualitatively. The data of the present study are in-depth interviews with 24 former Finnish CLIL pupils who retrospectively reflected on their CLIL experiences. The participants had received English-medium CLIL for nine years during their comprehensive school in the 1990s. The data were analyzed qualitatively using thematic analysis. The participants generally felt that CLIL had had a significant role in contributing to their very p…
Learners’ attitudes to first, second and third languages pronunciation in structuring multilingual identity
2022
Abstract This paper investigates multilingual learners’ attitudes to native (L1 – Ukrainian), second (L2 – Polish) and foreign (L3 – English) languages’ pronunciation, and discusses them from the perspective of structuring multilingual identity. In the study, the choice of the sample has been controlled in terms of the participants’ nationality and the context in which they acquire their second and foreign languages – variables that are interwoven in shaping identities. More specifically, the 40 Ukrainian individuals, taking part in the study, are in the process of a foreign language acquisition, English, embedded in the context of their second language, Polish. The attitudes to L1, L2 and …
Migrant women, work, and investment in language learning : Two success stories
2019
Abstract In the media, migrant mothers are often portrayed as uneducated, having trouble learning a new language, and preferring to stay at home rather than entering paid employment. This article offers a contrasting point of view as a result of examining how two migrant women narrativize their experiences of language learning and working-life-related integration during a three-year period. Specific attention is paid to how the women make sense of their language use over time, and how this may have contributed to their integration into working life and the wellbeing of their families. Interview data was analyzed using the short story analytical approach, focusing on both the content and the…
Hope and equilibrium in the dystopian world of The Hunger Games
2021
This paper provides evidence of the fruitfulness of combining analytical categories from Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis for the analysis of complex literary characterizations. It does so through a detailed study of the “tributes”, i.e. the randomly selected children who have to fight to death in a nationally televised show, in The Hunger Games. The study proves the effectiveness of such categories to provide an analytically accurate picture of the dystopian world depicted in the novel, which is revealed to include a paradoxical element of hope. The type of dehumanization that characterizes the dystopian society of Panem is portrayed through an internally consistent se…
ELF and migrant categorization at family clinics in Finland
2019
Artikkelin tavoite on selvittää, miten neuvolan terveydenhoitajat käyttävät puheessaan kieltä, erityisesti englannin kieltä, ei-suomea-puhuvien asiakkaidensa kategorisointiin. Tutkimuksessa hyödynnetään jäsenkategoria-analyysiä (Schegloff, Emanuel A. 2007. A tutorial on membership categorization. Journal of Pragmatics 39(3). 462–482) osoittamaan, miten englannin kielen osaaminen maahanmuuttostatuksen ja syntyperäisen englannin puhujan normin ohella näytti olevan määräävin tekijä siinä, miten terveydenhoitajat kategorisoivat siirtolaistaustaisia asiakkaitaan. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat kuinka vahvasti jäsenkategoriapohjainen luokittelu näkyy institutionaalisessa päätöksenteossa, ja ne koros…
Towards understanding nonmanuality : A semiotic treatment of signers’ head movements
2019
This article discusses a certain type of nonmanual action, signers’ head movements, from a semiotic perspective. It presents a typology of head movements and their iconic, indexical and symbolic features based on Peircean and post-Peircean semiotics. The paper argues for the view that (i) indexical strategies are very prominent in head movements, (ii) iconic features are most evident in enacting, while non-enacting description is less common, (iii) symbolic types for tokens are infrequent, although some movements—such as nodding and shaking the head—may become more conventional or schematized, and (iv) different types of head movements involve different proportions of iconicity, indexicalit…
Teacher agency within the Finnish CLIL context : tensions and resources
2017
Recent discussion indicates that the initial enthusiasm of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) teachers can be undermined by the demands of foreign-language mediated education. However, there is a lack of research on the resources and tensions that respectively support or limit the professional agency of CLIL teachers. By means of semi-structured interviews with fourteen participants, this study seeks to better understand how teacher agency is experienced by CLIL teachers working in Finnish primary schools. To examine tensions and resources in CLIL teachers’ work lives, a holistic and dynamic theoretical conceptualization of teacher agency is suggested, paying particular attenti…