Search results for "languages"
showing 10 items of 2101 documents
Evidentials as a mark of genre
2018
Abstract This paper aims to study the different types and pragmatic functions of the Spanish evidential forms found in four discursive genres, in order to observe if any restrictions apply. All the evidentials are studied in a corpus containing 100,000 words, evenly distributed over colloquial conversations, press news, academic papers, and parliamentary debates. Specifically, together with the pragmatic functions of these evidentials, the four dimensions mode of knowing, type of source, accessibility, and degree of precision are analysed. The results reveal different tendencies in the use of evidentials, depending on the genre, and support the claim that the behaviour of evidentials is con…
Teaching English as a Non-Imperial Language in an Underprivileged Public School in Spain
2018
This article summarizes the processes and findings of a 2-year collaborative action research (CAR) project that analyzed and aimed to counteract some of the most negative educational effects of English linguistic imperialism in the field of English language teaching (ELT) and, more concretely, in the context of English as a foreign language education in Spain. The CAR investigated the ramifications of this phenomenon in a primary school located in one of the most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the city of València. The pedagogical alternative it embraced in order to reverse the underlying tenets of ELT under present-day neoliberal imperialism consisted in combining art and multimodality thr…
Different Languages - Different Sentence Types? On Exclamative Sentences
2016
It is not equally easy for all languages to establish an exclamative sentence type. It seems the easiest for those languages that feature a morphological marking for an exclamative sentence type like Turkish or Vietnamese. English on the other hand is a language that does not mark exclamative clauses with an easily identifiable marker but uses certain preferred constructions, which allow us to separate a class of ‘exclamative sentences’ from other sentence types. However, there is another class of languages for which it is even harder to determine if ‘exclamative sentences’ exist as a sentence type. In those languages, these sentences share a striking amount of formal properties with senten…
Creación de un modelo estadístico predictivo para la determinación de las funciones de atenuación en español hablado
2018
Recientemente, algunos autores han definido distintas variables para caracterizar la atenuación lingüística en el marco de una base de datos multidimensional (Briz/Albelda; Albelda/otros). En este estudio se han seleccionado 982 elementos de atenuación de dieciocho entrevistas de español hablado; todos ellos han sido supervisados por hasta cuatro entrevistadores del proyecto Es.VaG.Atenuación. Finalmente, los datos se han evaluado mediante tres pruebas estadísticas para la clasificación y la reducción de variables: el análisis múltiple de correspondencias, el árbol de clasificaciones y el Random Forest. Las variables más determinantes en la discriminación de las funciones de atenuación han …
Words and images of multilingualism: A case study of two North Korean refugees
2018
Abstract The article analyses the experience of multilingualism in the South Korean context, focusing on the experiences of North Korean refugees. The research participants (N=2) are originally from North Korea, but now live in South Korea, where they face challenges in their adaptation to the new society, its linguistic landscape and its practices and positions with regard to language issues in society and in education. By combining verbal and visual means of data collection, we aim to analyse the multilingual trajectory of the research participants, their experiences of different languages and language learning and, further, the emotions that are attached to these. Our approach is socio-c…
Lügenerwerb und Geschichten vom Lügen
2011
The acquisition of lying is a complex developmental process, where linguistic, cognitive, emotional and moral aspects are intertwined. It is shown that this developmental process is reflected in children’s literature. Since lying is indeed a very important topic in children’s literature, as is shown with regard to children’s books ranging from picture books to books for children in school age to books for young adults, we argue that this topic cannot be well understood when these developmental aspects are not taken into consideration.
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…
Research on first and second language cognition may benefit from small-world network methodology
2010
Le but de cet article est tirer profit de la methodologie des reseaux petits-mondes pour l’investigation des relations linguistiques au cerveau en ce qui concerne la premiere et la seconde langue. Il constitue une introduction a plusieurs travails specifiques par des membres de l’equipe.
Discourse analysis as immanent critique: Possibilities and limits of normative critique in empirical discourse studies
2016
Although discourse analysts often conceive of their work as critical, there is little theoretical discussion regarding the possibility of normative critique in the scientific community of discourse analysis. Rarely are the normative grounds and normative scope of such a critique clear. Thus, this article attempts to find theoretically robust and practical answers to the following question: ‘How is a normative critique possible?’ In seeking my answer, I first provide a short overview of the possibilities of normative critique in critical discourse analysis. Second, I offer an argument in favour of immanent critique while explaining both its advantages and its theoretical and practical probl…
Tongan-English language contact and kinship terminology
2016
‘[D]o all humans mean the same things by words that can be used successfully to point to the same thing?’ (Leavitt 2015: 51). This study shows that the same words used in different English varieties might not have the same meaning. The typological comparison of standardised English and Tongan kinship terminology reveals that the categorisation is based on different underlying features. While standardised English focuses on the concept of ‘core family’, Tongan merges ‘same-sex siblings’ and emphasises the concept of ‘extended family’. The emerging contact phenomenon in Tongan English is the use of English terminology according to Tongan categorisation, that is, a case of semantic transfer.