Preliminaries

Conditional constructions (if–then) enable us to express our thoughts about possible states of the world, and they form an important ingredient for our reasoning and argumentative capabilities. Different types and argumentative uses have been distinguished in the literature, but their applicability to actual language use is rarely evaluated. This paper focuses on the reliability of applying classifications of connections between antecedents and consequents of conditionals to discourse, and three issues are identified. First, different accounts produce incompatible results when applied to language data. Second, a discrepancy between theory and data was observed in previous studies, which sometimes discard existing classifications for being detached from actual language use. Finally, language users construct various cognitive relations between clauses of conditionals without being able to rely on overt linguistic features, which poses problems for the annotation of conditionals in argumentation and discourse. This paper addresses these issues by means of comparing theoretical types and actual uses of conditionals, by inspecting the dispersion of types in natural-language corpora, and by conducting an experiment in which the inter-rater reliability of classifications was assessed. The results show that the reliability of classifications of conditionals when applied to language data is low. With respect to the aforementioned issues, different classifications produced incompatible results, a discrepancy between theory and data was indeed observed, and low reliability scores indicated a largely interpretative nature of types of conditionals. Given these results, suggestions for the enhancement of reliability in corpus studies of conditionals and beyond are provided to enhance future classification design.

The models of linguistic networks and their analytical tools constitute a potential methodology for investigating the formation of structural patterns in actual language use. Research with this methodology has just started, which can hopefully shed light on the emergent nature of linguistic structure. This study attempts to employ linguistic networks to investigate the formation of modern Chinese two-character words (as structural units based on the chunking of their component characters) in the actual use of modern Chinese, which manifests itself as continuous streams of Chinese characters. Network models were constructed based on authentic Chinese language data, with Chinese characters as nodes, their co-occurrence relations as directed links, and the co-occurrence frequencies as link weights. Quantitative analysis of the network models has shown that a Chinese two-character word can highlight itself as a two-node island, i.e., a cohesive sub-network with its two component characters co-occurring more frequently than they co-occur with the other characters. This highlighting mechanism may play a vital role in the formation and acquisition of two-character words in actual language use. Moreover, this mechanism may also throw some light on the emergence of other structural phenomena (with the chunking of specific linguistic units as their basis).

Using Jamaica, a former British colony where Jamaican Creole (JC) is the mass vernacular but Standard Jamaican English is the official language, as an illustrative case, this critical ethnographic study in three Jamaican schools examines the theoretical and practical challenges of language education policy (LEP) development and implementation in English-lexified Creole contexts where official recognition of the mass vernacular is absent and politically contentious; standard language ideology is pervasive; language boundaries are blurred; linguistic self-identification does not match actual language use; and language attitudes are deeply entrenched and contradictory. Data were collected and analyzed through classroom observations of six teachers over 9 months, interviews, demographic questionnaires, and curricular documents. Findings reveal conflicting teacher attitudes towards JC, and classroom practices heavily influenced by national examinations, that created a de facto LEP. Teachers simultaneously resisted and appropriated dominant linguicist ideologies in a Creole-speaking environment in response to actual vernacular language use in classrooms, adding a more complicated agentive dimension to Shohamy’s (Language policy: hidden agenda and new approaches. Routledge, New York, 2006) framework linking ideologies to LEP through institutional structures.

The study of the conceptual representations that underlie the use of language is a problem motivated from both a cognitive research point of view and that of construing language models for various language processing tasks. In this work, we organized 600 Finnish verbs using the SOM algorithm. Three experiments were conducted using different features to encode the verbs: morphosyntactic properties, individual nouns, and noun categories in the context of the verb. In general, the morphosyntactic properties seem to draw attention to semantic roles, whereas nouns as features seem to highlight clusters formed on grounds of topics in the text.

The media is a crucial site of the articulation, contestation, and inculcation of beliefs about language, or language ideologies. In media discourse, these ideologies are not only represented in actors' and journalists' judgments about language matters, but also realized in the actual use of language. This article analyzes ideologies of language use which are articulated and embodied in contemporary Ukrainian media discourse. By examining both the presentation of language processes in society and the language practices of the media itself, I show how this discourse presents a rather ambivalent idea of the actual and appropriate language use in post-Soviet Ukraine. On the one hand, Ukrainian is assumed to be the only/primary language of the state and society, a symbolic marker of the nation, and a language that (all) citizens identify with; on the other, Russian appears to be an (equally) acceptable language of virtually all social practices. Thus the media both reflects an ambivalent normality that Ukrainian citizens inherited from the Soviet times and reproduces it in the interests of the dominant political and media elites.

The main concern of this paper will be to demonstrate corpus-based analysis and informants’ intuition as native speakers being mutually essential for a thorough understanding of authentic language use. Corpus-based analysis has been utilised by many linguists to determine appropriate word or phrase usage. However, in such analyses, the statistically imperfect properties of the corpora in question were not considered. Thus, the possibility that the corpora indeed may not appropriately represent language use was ignored. On the other hand, other linguists advocate the validity of informants’ intuition as native speakers, not paying sufficient heed to the deviation of linguistic intuition from actual language use. To clarify the significance of the collaboration of corpus-derived information and informants’ intuition, it will be shown by thorough investigation of ‘NP1 + promise + NP2 + to-clause,’ ‘ill + personal noun,’ and ‘just now’ with the present perfect aspect that the results of corpus-based quantitative analysis and intuition-based qualitative analysis can differ significantly. The matter of corpus representativeness will then be discussed, dealing with the frequency distributions of ‘subject-to-subject raising and extraposed that-clauses controlled by likely,’ ‘major modal auxiliaries’ (will, would, can, could, may, might, should and must) and three synonymous adjectives (big, large and great). Finally an investigation of the use of ‘lest …(should)… ’and ‘introductory which’ will bring to light the deviation of linguistic intuition from actual language use.

In two paper-and-pencil studies on university students and trainees, we studied how general language competence and the motivation to use accurate language are linked to people’s actual and potential gender-fair language use. Overall, participants’ actual gender-fair language use was lower than their potential. The higher the participants’ language competence, the higher their potential. Trainees’ actual gender-fair language use was predicted by the interaction of language competence and motivation to use accurate language, those with relatively high language competence used less gender-fair language the higher their motivation to use accurate language was.

The aim of our study is to investigate possible relevant relationships between declared attitudes toward Spanish borrowing and actual language use among speakers of Nahuatl in the Huasteca Potosina in Mexico. The main source of our quantitative data was a survey collected from 121 speakers, which included questions on attitudes toward borrowing, self-assessed language proficiency, and demographic background, as well as a section inviting respondents to choose between more puristic and more Hispanicised sentence options. Twenty participants of the survey also took part in a visual stimuli-based language proficiency assessment experiment in which we tested for the presence of Spanish loanwords. The results of the quantitative study were confronted with qualitative data involving interviews and participant observation. The analysis of the quantitative data revealed strong negative attitudes toward Spanish borrowing in Nahuatl and a correlation between declared purism, i.e.negative attitudes to borrowing, and preference for puristic sentence options. However, declared purism had little reflection in actual language use in the proficiency assessment experiment. This study demonstrates that use of a variety of materials and careful methodology are needed in order to make advances in thistopic.

While linguistic performance – the actual use of language in speech and writing – is the most natural and empirical manifestation of human language, performance does not sustain the conception of language as a system. Wittgenstein's mature work in the Philosophical Investigations, Jacques Derrida's poststructuralist deconstructions, and Davidson's skepticism about language itself are dramatic instances of the pull of linguistic performance away from the idea of language as a determinant system that can be caught by the net of linguistic theory. In fact, these most recent linguistic turns to language are turns away from linguistic theory altogether. Performance is used to foil the work of theory.

This study aims to identify the difference between ‘atseoseo/eotseoseo’ and ‘aseo/eoseo’ in spoken Korean language from both syntactic and narrative viewpoints, and attempts to organize use of ‘atseoseo/eotseoseo’ in a consistent manner. Use of ‘atseoseo/eotseoseo’ is frequently observed in speech of native Korean speakers, and this study examines whether it is simply a mistaken use of the word or involves a speaker’s specific intention. To do so, we extracted sentences that contained ‘atseoseo/eotseoseo’ as spoken by native speakers, and analyzed them from a syntactic as well as narrative perspective. Based on the analysis, we compared the use of ‘aseo/eoseo’ and ‘atseoseo/eotseoseo’, and organized their respective usages. This study suggests the need for further research on native speakers’ use of language in everyday life as it continues to evolve. It also shows that language education needs to be constantly modified, and is expected to foster language education based on the actual use of language.

This chapter deals with the role of language use and knowledge sharing in the context of international subsidiaries. The chapter analyzes the role of language use for the control and sharing of knowledge in a multicultural organizational setting using findings from an ethnographic field study in a subsidiary. Whilst previous research has addressed how objective, static cultural differences impede communication and knowledge sharing, the perspective of the chapter is on the actual use of language in knowledge sharing. The empirical study thus shows how language use shapes the flow of knowledge in an international subsidiary. The findings describe the use of language differences for controlling knowledge flows and highlight how this affects the execution of long-term corporate strategies of international development. The chapter argues that the management of language use should not be viewed as an outpost of cross-cultural management but as an integral element of the effective management of international operations. This perspective is supported by research in other disciplines covering the use of language and the social dimensions of knowledge communication such as social anthropology.

INTRODUCTIONMichael Walzer begins his seminal Just and Unjust Wars with a linguistic claim: ordinary language use provides evidence about the nature of war.1 This paper explores this claim and the linguistic method as applied to just war theory.I begin with Walzer's central thesis about the language of war, which I call the Adjectival-Adverbial Distinction or the A-A Distinction. This is a two-part claim. Roughly, Walzer first claims that ordinary language distinguishes between adjectival and adverbial claims about just war. Specifically, adjectival uses indicate jus ad bellum considerations, while adverbial uses indicate jus in bello considerations: for instance, ?that was a just declaration of war' versus ?that war was fought justly.' The second part of Walzer's claim is that this language use indicates a deep distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello.In the first section of the paper I attack Walzer's A-A distinction; I argue there is no tight or deep connection between adjectival usage and jus ad bellum considerations and adverbial usage and jus in bello considerations. I begin by arguing that Walzer's own use of war language does not indicate any rigid connection between adjectival jus ad bellum and adverbial jus in bello. I then argue that any adjectival jus ad bellum claim can be redescribed as adverbial and any adverbial jus in bello claim can be redescribed as adjectival.From this first section I conclude that ordinary language use does not support the A-A distinction; as an empirical fact about language use, it appears adjectival and adverbial use does not track a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. In the second section of the paper, I argue for a different usage pattern that tracks the seeming distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello: the former involves primarily considerations about the decisions and actions of groups or individuals of greater status (e.g., President, Legislature, Country), while the latter involves primarily considerations about decisions and actions of groups or individuals of lesser status (e.g., soldiers). I argue ordinary language use provides evidence for this ?Hierarchical Distinction.'In the third section I argue that the Hierarchical Distinction suggests a theoretical distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. On this account, jus ad bellum acts and decisions have a positive role; they change the sociopolitical status from peace to war (and perhaps into even more finely individuated event types). Jus in bello acts and decisions, on the other hand, are framed by the event status that is first determined by jus ad bellum acts and decisions. I also argue that although the A-A Distinction is false in practice (actual language use does not support it), this proposed conception of just war theory makes sense of why some think the A-A Distinction should apply: we tend to think of jus ad bellum in static terms, best described adjectivally, while we tend to think of jus in bello in dynamic terms, best described adverbially.These conclusions imply that the positive power of jus ad bellum acts is fundamental to the ethics of war, and I conclude by arguing for a jus ad bellum requirement of declaration of war. The results of the previous sections imply that jus ad bellum involves an implicit or explicit status-articulation. I argue that declaring war is a paradigm performative speech act: one which itself can change the social-political landscape and ethical considerations of war and one that ought to accompany any jus ad bellum decision to enter war.I. THE ADJECTIVAL-ADVERBIAL (A-A) DISTINCTIONEarly in Just and Unjust Wars, Michael Walzer claims that a feature of ordinary language use maps onto a deep distinction about the nature of war. Specifically, Walzer claims that our linguistic expressions of jus ad bellum (right of war) principles are adjectival in character. On the other hand, our linguistic expressions of jus in bello (right in war) principles are adverbial in character:The first kind of judgment is adjectival in character: we say that a particular war is just or unjust. …

The aim of this project was to integrate two topics of research, identity and language use, within the field of socio-psycholinguistics. This process should help to increase our understanding of the acculturation process involved in promoting Hispanic identity and Spanish language use by second-generation Hispanic adolescents. Berry's Acculturation Theory (1970, 1980, 1990) was the theoretical framework adopted in this project. Each individual who emigrates traverses, one way or another, the process of acculturation, which refers to an individual's experience, influenced by the cultural change that results from continuous contact between two distinct cultural groups. Most changes occur in the non-dominant or acculturating group, as a result of influence from the dominant group or host society. Berry proposed four acculturation groups: assimilation, integration, marginalisation and separation. One hundred and five Hispanic adolescents were involved in the study, and completed a structured questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. The results reported in the thesis included quantitative and qualitative data, analysed separately. The quantitative data were analysed using correspondence analysis, while the qualitative data included coding of specific attitudes from tape-recorded conversations. The quantitative data analysis comprised two parts. First, a correspondence analysis was conducted to explore the correlation between antecedent variables (e.g., age) and consequent variables (e.g., identity). This analysis indicated that Spanish identification and language use were more strongly correlated with length of residence and age on arrival than with sex or country of birth. A second correspondence analysis was conducted with consequences and acculturation groups. This analysis indicated that those participants who used Spanish most of the time tended to describe themselves as Hispanic or bicultural. On the other hand, those participants who used less Spanish tended to identify themselves as Australian or Hispanic. In the qualitative data, participants reported a strong tendency towards integration and separation, rather than assimilation and marginalisation. Results indicated that both integrated and separated participants felt more strongly about maintaining the Spanish language than their actual language proficiency or use would indicate. Taken together, the results provide evidence that language does not determine identity; but does provide a way to express it, and that culture is a salient predictor of ethnic identity.

Using frequency findings from corpus linguistics, this paper explores the relationship between the information presented in ESL-EFL materials and what is known about actual language use based on empirical studies. Three aspects of materials development for grammar instruction are discussed: the grammatical features to be included, the order of grammatical topics, and the vocabulary used to illustrate these topics. For each aspect, we show that there are often sharp contrasts between the information found in grammar materials and what learners encounter in the real world of language use. In our conclusion, we argue that a selective revision of pedagogy to reflect actual use, as shown by frequency studies, could result in radical changes that facilitate the learning process for students.

An examination of the dynamic feature of WTC through dyadic group interaction