Search results for "languages"
showing 10 items of 2101 documents
Spelling out consequences : conditional constructions as a means to resist proposals in organisational planning process
2016
Organisational planning processes often materialise as a series of meetings, where the future of the organisation is jointly discussed and negotiated as a part of local decision-making sequences. Using conversation and discourse analytical approaches, this article investigates how proposals concerning the future can also be resisted by employing a specific device, a conditional construction ( if X, then Y). The data for the study originate from a city organisation, whose customer services are being developed. The results show how the conditional constructions work in two interrelated ways. First, by introducing a problematic hypothetical situation, they outline the undesirable consequences…
Salvador Pons Bordería (ed.): Discourse Segmentation in Romance Languages. Ámsterdam/Filadelfia, John Benjamins, 2014, 276 páginas. ISBN: 97890272565…
2015
La segmentacion del discurso en unidades es una cuestion de interes y de suma importancia para los estudios que versan sobre el discurso o que lo toman como muestra. Dividir el discurso en unidades permite observar ciertas regularidades y distribuciones de fenomenos linguisticos que, de otra forma, pasarian desapercibidas. En las lenguas romance existe toda una corriente de investigacion dedicada a la busqueda de modelos teoricos y unidades de analisis que, a lo largo de los ultimos quince anos, ha ido desarrollandose y concretandose en diferentes propuestas de segmentacion para lenguas como la espanola, la italiana o la francesa. La obra resenada ilustra el desarrollo de esta corriente y c…
Multimodal literacy practices in the indigenous Sámi classroom: Children navigating in a complex multilingual setting.
2013
This article explores multimodal literacy practices in a transforming multilingual context of an indigenous and endangered Sami language classroom. Looking at literacy practices as embedded in a complex and shifting terrain of language ideologies, language norms, and individual experiences and attitudes, we examined how multilingual Sami children navigate and appropriate meaning-making resources available for them while designing their own picture books. We adopted a discourse ethnographic approach to analyse these multimodal picture books and found three different but interrelated orientations to the making of the books, each organising and valuing multimodal resources in his or her own wa…
Learners’ identifies at stake: Digital identity texts in the ELF classroom
2018
Author/s María Dolores García-Pastor GIEL – Universitat de València, Spain ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the study of identity in digital identity texts produced by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners within a specific subject of the Teacher in Primary Education (English) degree at a Spanish university. To this end, 51 digital identity texts were analysed following a “positioning perspective”, which views identity in terms of “reflexive” and “interactive” positions (Davies & Harré 1990). Results show that learners constructed non-unitary identities whose subject positions were often contradictory. They also associated certain positions with silencing identities, transition ident…
Constructions of bilingualism in Finnish Government programmes and a newspaper discussion site debate
2014
The concept of bilingualism in Finnish political discourse is predominantly used in the meaning of official or state bilingualism, focussing on the two constitutionally defined ‘national languages’; i.e. Finnish and Swedish. Legally, both Finnish and Swedish speakers have a right for public services, such as schooling or health care, in their first language. On the other hand, several language ideological debates have taken place in recent years, challenging especially the status of Swedish in administration and education. These debates have reshaped the discourses on what counts as bilingualism. This paper analyses on one hand the historical discursive development of the “official will” pr…
Characteristics of Weak and Strong Readers in a Foreign Language
2016
This study investigated the cognitive (first language [L1] and foreign language [FL]), linguistic (L1 and FL), and motivational characteristics of weak FL readers in contrast to strong readers in 3 groups of L1 Finnish-speaking learners of English, aged 10, 14, and 17 years. This cross-sectional study covered a wide range of potential correlates, and therefore predictors, of FL reading based on previous research on reading in first, second (L2), and foreign languages. The weakest and strongest FL readers (1 standard deviation below or above the mean reading score) in each age group were selected for the comparisons reported in this article. The FL (English) skills other than reading were fo…
Frozen actions in the Arctic linguistic landscape: a nexus analysis of language processes in visual space
2011
Abstract This article examines the linguistic landscape (LL) of seven villages above the Arctic Circle, in the region called North Calotte. The area forms a complex nexus of contested and changing multilingualism, particularly as regards to endangered indigenous Sami languages and Kven and Meankieli minority languages. Viewing LL as a discursively constructed space and consequently signs as ‘frozed actions’ by various actors, and by adopting a Nexus analytical approach we examine three interrelated aspects of Arctic LLs: (1) the synchronic aspect by addressing the question of how languages are used in the landscapes of northern villages in the year 2008; (2) the historical aspect through id…
Hybrid practices meet nation-state language policies: Transcarpathia in the twentieth century and today
2016
AbstractFrom the early twentieth century to the present day, Transcarpathia has belonged to several states: the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, Czechoslovakia, the Hungarian Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and finally to Ukraine. The status of what counts as a minority and a majority language has changed each time the state affiliation has been changed. Based on the long term research by Csernicskó, and on the one-month fieldwork carried out by Laihonen in 2012, our goal is to provide an autonomous critical account and discourse analysis of the linguistic situation in Transcarpathia. We draw examples especially from the linguistic landscape, which documents the hybrid practices difficult to catch w…
Handling knowledge: Using classroom materials to construct and interpret information requests
2015
Abstract This article contributes to the recent conversation analytic interest in exploring the mechanisms of action formation and ascription by investigating how embodied interactional practices involving material objects relate to the organization of social action. Using as data information request sequences in student–student interaction, the study highlights the material nature of an interactional context and examines how students orient in talk and by bodily-visual means to their and their co-conversants’ textual documents during individual task work. Sequential analyses illustrate how the manual handling of such everyday learning materials as handouts and tasks sheets is not only an i…
Keskustelukumppanin kehuminen suomalaisessa keskustelussa
2013
Artikkelissa tarkastellaan suomalaisen arkikeskustelun kehuja kolmen peruskysymyksen kautta: 1) millaisia kehut ovat rakenteeltaan, 2) miten kehut otetaan vastaan ja 3) millaisissa tilanteissa kehuja esitetaan ja mita niilla tehdaan? Tutkimus on metodiltaan keskustelunanalyyttinen: kehuja analysoidaan osana aitojen keskustelujen toiminnallista kudosta. Kehu maaritellaan tutkimuksessa vastaanottajaan tavalla tai toisella kohdistuvaksi myonteiseksi arvioksi. Kehu voi arvioida vastaanottajaa monella tavalla: kehuttavana voi olla esimerkiksi puhekumppanin luonne, hanen toimintansa tietyssa tilanteessa tai vaatetus, hiukset tai asunto. Aineistona on seka nauhoitetuista arkikeskusteluista poimitt…