The Volapük Qur’an: language, scripture, and nineteenth-century German universalist provincialism

Exploring the Possibilities for the Emergence of a Single and Global Native Language

This paper examines excerpts from interviews in which informants from six European border communities formulate explicit or implicit reflections on the ‘linguistic universe’ – including language use, linguistic diversity and language variation. Our results show that not only is linguistic diversity considered a fundamental element of ethnic and cultural identity, but that the very concept of diversity is used to assert, confirm or defend power interests. Evaluation of the individual languages is legitimated through apparently rational arguments incorporating marks of prestige or stigma which emerge from language attitudes based on linguistic prejudice and stereotyping. The linguistic ideology at work here is founded both on the concept of the ‘mother tongue’ (informants on both the east and west sides of the border claim that the unique ‘character’ or ‘mentality’ of each ‘people’ is created by their mother tongue), as well as on the ‘one nation, one language’ principle. This linguistic ideology gives rise to three key issues of linguistic ecology: the restriction of societal bilingualism to minority groups; the risk of minority language endangerment or obsolescence; and the close ties between the prestige or stigma of the language and resulting social power. In general, communities on the western side of the border are not interested in learning the language of their eastern neighbours. Eastern communities, on the other hand, are strongly motivated to learn western languages. The importance attributed to English as the ‘language of globalisation’ is common to both sides.

Reviewed by: Perspectives on English as a world language ed. by David John Allerton, Paul Skandera, Cornelia Tschichold Richard W. Hallett Perspectives on English as a world language. Ed. by David John Allerton, Paul Skandera, and Cornelia Tschichold. (International Cooper series in English language and literature 6.) Basel: Schwabe AG, 2002. Pp. xiv, 175. ISBN 3796517404. €33.50. With the goal of presenting various case studies of how English is used around the world, the editors of this volume included selected papers from the 1999 meeting of the Joint Advanced Studies Group in Linguistics along with other invited contributions. [End Page 873] The first five chapters of the book concern native varieties of English. In Ch. 1, ‘Scottish English: A hybrid between Scots and Southern British English’ (1–13), Martina Häcker presents a brief history of Scottish English and discusses its phonology, vocabulary, grammar, status, and future. In Ch. 2, ‘RP and general American: A parting of the ways’ (15–29), Patricia Buccellato focuses on the phonological differences between the prestige varieties in the UK and the US. Brigitte Halford offers an overview of the phonology, vocabulary, syntax, and morphology of Canadian English in Ch. 3, ‘Canadian English: Distinct in North America?’ (31–44). Similarly, Sarah Ebner offers insight into Australian phonology, vocabulary, and grammar in Ch. 4, ‘English in Australia’ (45–61). In Ch. 5, ‘English in New Zealand’ (63–78), Marianne Hundt presents the history, phonology, lexicon, and grammar of the variety of English found in New Zealand. The next four chapters constitute the section of the book on nonnative varieties of English. In Ch. 6, ‘English in the Caribbean’ (79–91), Andrea Sand outlines the history of the use of English in Bermuda and Barbados, among other Caribbean nations, and offers Jamaica as a case study in Caribbean English. Paul Skandera provides a three-part classification of English in Africa, with specific references to Liberia, South Africa, and Tanzania, in Ch. 7,‘ A categorization of African Englishes’ (93–103). In Ch. 8, ‘When France refuses English’ (105–14), Albert Hamm outlines the evolution of French language legislation. In Ch. 9, ‘English in Switzerland: From foreign language to lingua franca’ (115–23), Urs Dürmüller offers two models of the status of the English language in Switzerland. The last four chapters make up the section on the functional aspects of English as a world language. In Ch. 10, ‘Learner English’ (125–33), Cornelia Tschichold examines the abilities of contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage, and markedness to explain the difficulties in the acquisition of English by nonnative speakers. Pius ten Hacken raises the question of which standard/which variety of English should be chosen in the creation of a dictionary in Ch. 11, ‘Dictionaries of non-British varieties of English’ (135–47). In Ch. 12, ‘C. K. Ogden’s “Basic English”: A critical assessment’ (149–58), D. J. Allerton criticizes the short-sightedness of the development of Basic English and ends the chapter with a call for a modern, more soundly based Basic English. Finally, in Ch. 13, ‘The continuing spread of English: Anglo-American conspiracy or global grassroots movement?’ (159–69), Christian Mair examines the two predominant theories as to why the English language continued to spread in the twentieth century despite the demise of the British Empire and a momentary US weakness during the Cold War. Though more broad than deep, this book can serve as a supplement to classes on World Englishes and language policy. Richard W. Hallett Northeastern Illinois University Copyright © 2004 Linguistic Society of America

Globalization is a “hot topic.” While language figures prominently in debates, its complexity defies descriptions of globalization adequate for other subjects. Increasingly diverse ethnicity in nation states alters the status of once dominant vernaculars—what Dante called the parlar materno —as factors of cultural and social cohesion. Language and religion, rather than nation, now serve as elective markers of identity. Inevitably, however, to assert global status for a language conveys overtones of linguistic, and thus cultural, hegemony. From this perspective, Carl Schmitt’s dictum that “all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts,” resonates in the sphere of language. For when Schmitt refers to modern concepts of state as theological in origin, his thought speaks directly to the concept of global language. For “global” is only a slightly attenuated variant of “universal,” whose totalizing connotation we find somewhat embarrassing today. And yet, historically, the myth of a lost universal language has played an important role in traditional cultures that value creation accounts. The latter evoke a mythic moment, in illo tempore , when all humans spoke a common language for the simple reason that the origin of the one implicated the emergence of the other. Perhaps no one thought so profoundly about the question of global or universal language in this sense as Dante Alighieri in his philosophical treatise on the illustrious vernacular, the De vulgari eloquentia (c. 1304 CE, DVE ). Unlike proponents of global language today who seek to extrapolate a (pre)dominant language from among hundreds of dialects, Dante recognized multilingualism as an historical contingency, a product of the linguistic fall at Babel. At that point, universal language—the speech co-created by God and the first man in Genesis—disappeared, fractured into linguistic shards representing the diversity of human culture. Dante’s anthropology of language thus imitates the division of the first human into an infinite series, each unit different from others, but all containing an originary “DNA,” identified in Genesis 1:26–27 as divine similitude. Likewise, Dante proposes that all human language possess a common “deep structure,” a set of principles for a universal grammar that act as the formal cause of language. Dante calls this capacity for language the forma locutionis , the innate capacity for speech, which defines humans. For Dante, only the vernacular or mother tongue can embody this essence. Jointly created by God and the first man, it has the potential to incarnate the highest aspiration of human speech, the volgare illustre or illustrious vernacular. Although Dante lays out his anthropology of the vernacular in De vulgare eloquentia —arguing that one must look to the most refined vernacular poetry for examples—he defers demonstrating the concept fully until Purgatorio and Paradiso . There he deploys text networks invoking Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and diverse vernacular poets and philosophers to showcase the volgare illustre as a universal vernacular—a forma locutionis in which the meaning, aura, and affect of speaking take precedence over language of origin.

Background, aims & objectives: Attendance monitoring is very important in attaining students? academic engagement which in turn improves students? academic performance at university level. Visa tied students face different criteria in terms of attendance monitoring and the level of recorded study contact points or hours. One area of action research that such requirement raises is to investigate whether quantitative attendance translates into quantitative student outcomes in terms attempts to assignment or exam success at study-unit or module level and the final overall classification of academic-degree attained. Methodology: We use the case study approach, where we present a case study of an overseas student who presented with an excellent quantitative attendance record that had not translated into academic engagement or success. The aim is to determine whether and if so what intervention could bridge the gap between quantitative attendance and academic performance.Findings: For the case study subject we found that qualitative consultative management helped to resolve the observed disconnect between quantitative classroom attendance and quantitative student academic outcome. Conclusions and Implications: We conclude that monitoring quantitative engagement, in the form of quantitative class attendance, is singularly unlikely to be a useful tool that can be used to gauge students? academic engagement. For the case studies qualitative interaction with academic staff held the key to the student achieving the required academic engagement that produced noticeable quantitative academic outcomes.The insight gained from this case study may be of interest to institutions that especially serve overseas students who, by virtue of UKVI statutory requirements and institutional regulatory requirement are mandated to present with a minimum quantitative ?class? attendance record whence this does not necessarily translate to a similarly good quantitative academic outcome in terms of grade of degree and sometimes, time to completion of their studies.

The present article studies the prospects of the further development of globalization process in the context of translation activities. The article also discusses the controversial nature of the concept of globalization with its pros and cons. The establishment of a global language is quite an appealing prospect for international structures, which spend vast amounts of money on translation services. In the event of such development of the world situation, the translators’ specialty could even disappear altogether, as the global language could give an opportunity of free and unlimited communication at inter-society and inter-state levels, and the need for translations would naturally decrease. However, the current reality of the globalization process inevitably reveals the fact, that today national identity, state sovereignty, national language and culture are at stake and can be either absorbed or destroyed because of this process, and that seems to hinder the integration of humanity in the frames of globalization. Since language and culture are indissoluble notions, the global universal language can never lead to the establishment of global culture due to the so-called “human factor”, which includes national mentality and standards of value, behavior peculiarities and a number of other factors that constitute the elements of national culture. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly evident at present, that we should not promote the idea of spreading one global language, but emphasize and attach greater importance to the role of professional translators in the further development of humanity.

Social media has been gaining popularity among university students who use social media at higher rates than the general population. Students consequently spend a significant amount of time on social media, which may inevitably have an effect on their academic engagement. Subsequently, scholars have been intrigued to examine the impact of social media on students' academic engagement. Research that has directly explored the use of social media and its impact on students in tertiary institutions has revealed limited and mixed findings, particularly within a South African context; thus leaving a window of opportunity to further investigate the impact that social media has on students' academic engagement. This study therefore aims to investigate the use of social media in tertiary institutions, the impact that the use thereof has on students' academic engagement and to suggest effective ways of using social media in tertiary institutions to improve students' academic engagement from students' perspectives. This study used an interpretivist (inductive) approach in order to determine and comprehend student's perspectives and experiences towards the use of social media and the effects thereof on their academic engagement. A single case study design at Rhodes University was used to determine students' perceptions and data was collected using an online survey. The findings reveal that students use social media for both social and academic purposes. Students further perceived that social media has a positive impact on their academic engagement and suggest that using social media at tertiary level could be advantageous and could enhance students' academic engagement.

Word classes (‘parts-of-speech’, ‘syntactic categories’, ‘lexical categories’) are the fundamental building blocks of linguistic expressions in all natural human languages. They have been investigated since antiquity and continue to play a central role in modern linguistics. Today an increasingly important role is assigned to the information that is specified in the lexical entry of a word in the lexicon (including, of course, information about its category membership), both in formal and in functional approaches to grammar. Furthermore, there is a growing awareness that the traditional set of word classes is biased towards the better studied European languages and needs to be revised to accommodate unfamiliar word classes in nonEuropean languages.

Developing adequate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academic writing skills is of paramount importance for students’ success in higher education in Oman. The traditional teaching approaches adopted in writing courses often lead to students’ disengagement, however. Although several studies have examined students and teachers’ perceptions of flipped instruction in various EFL courses, no study has examined the impact of flipping on students’ engagement in writing courses. This practice-based research project, where the instructor was the researcher, explored the impact of flipped teaching on 57 General Foundation Program (GFP) EFL learners’ behavioural, cognitive, emotional and agentic engagement in academic writing in a higher education institution in Oman, and the variations that exist in students’ engagement according to gender, age, English language proficiency and technology skills. The study adopted a mixed-methods design and used a student engagement questionnaire, focus group interviews and participant observations to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics and deductive and inductive analytical procedures were used to analyse the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The study presents new practicable knowledge about the implementation and implications of flipped instruction for Omani EFL students’ engagement in academic writing at the GFP level. It proposes flipping as an instructional approach which helps to address GFP students’ lack of 4 behavioural, cognitive, emotional and agentic engagement in writing courses in the Omani context. Behaviourally, students in the flipped classroom experience increased effort, improved concentration levels, persistence, communication and collaboration, and amelioration in their attitude to class attendance. It is reasonable to conclude that learners undergo cognitive growth and develop self-regulatory strategies and meta-cognitive awareness. At the level of emotional engagement, learners initially experience negative emotions such as anger and frustration, and then more positive emotions such as contentment and increased interest in the subject as they adapt to the flipped teaching-learning model. Flipping also seems to influence students’ autonomy and ability to ask questions and express opinions. It appears, however, that this approach does not influence students’ capacity to contribute to their own learning resources and activities. This study makes a valuable contribution to knowledge about students’ engagement in EFL writing courses. It revealed that a strong positive correlation exists between students’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement, and that a positive correlation exists between students’ technology skills and linguistic proficiency and several aspects of their engagement. The study demonstrated, however, that no correlation exists between gender and age and students’ engagement in the flipped classroom. Furthermore, this practice-based research indicated that although flipped instruction helps to address the problem of students’ disengagement in writing courses in our context, factors such as students’ linguistic proficiency and technology skills should be taken into consideration before implementing this instructional approach in the current setting.

This case study looked at the transition of preservice teachers from world language education methods courses at a major U.S. university to a 5‐week field experience in secondary school classrooms. Data included lesson plans and self‐critiques of two lessons implemented during the field experience, world language teaching philosophies the preservice teachers wrote, e‐mail correspondence between the preservice teachers and their supervisor reflecting on the field experience, a final reflection paper, and responses to an open‐ended survey after completion of the field experience. Analysis of the data served to identify three teacher profiles: the communicative (CLT) teacher, the grammar‐translation teacher, and the hybrid teacher (a mix of the two other profiles). The article concludes with discussion of the findings and their implications for university methods courses, field experiences, and professional development.

The concept of abstract art as “world language” became famous after documenta II (1959). Abstract art was considered as universally comprehensible and independent of cultural, political or historical contexts. However, this was never explicitly tested empirically. If these assumptions were true, there should be higher intersubjective coherence in perceiving abstract paintings compared to representational art. In order to test this hypothesis, the authors recorded the eye-movements of 38 participants and collected information on their cognitive and emotional evaluations. The results suggest that the concept of abstract art as a universal language was not confirmed and needs to be revised.

PurposeOnline learning is an effective training strategy to help students, as one of the success factors is academic engagement. Therefore, the use of online training courses to influence academic engagement and performance in emotional intelligence learning experiences is worthy of investigation. This study explores the influence of emotional intelligence as an online training course and its impact on academic engagement and learning outcomes–performance.Design/methodology/approachThe authors used a quasi-experimental study with two groups of participants who were randomly assigned (experimental e control) and with pretest–posttest measurements of the online training. The emotional intelligence online training (for the experimental group) was conducted during a single semester, with eight hours of training. The methodology of reflective, role-playing, case study and group work was followed. Measurements of student academic engagement and emotional intelligence were collected before (one week before the training) and after the intervention (on the last training session). Performance was measured after the intervention.FindingsThe mean scores improved for all the variables, with the differences being statistically significant. The students assessed their learning positively. The results also showed that emotional intelligence was positively related to academic engagement but not to performance. This means that emotional intelligence training was effective in increasing the academic engagement of university students.Practical implicationsThe results are promising in terms of the students retaining the competencies acquired. Therefore, this type of online training is recommended for the emotional intelligence and academic engagement of future human resources professionals. Moreover, according to the results, it would be possible to use emotional intelligence training programs in schools, besides other programs, to promote the academic engagement and performance of students.Originality/valueThe design of the study provides evidence that is an added value for higher education institutions.

Reviewed by: When languages die: The extinction of the world's languages and the erosion of human knowledge Andrew Nevins and Adam Roth Singerman When languages die: The extinction of the world's languages and the erosion of human knowledge. By K. David Harrison. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. 304. ISBN 9780195372069. $17.95. A linguist dedicated to documenting languages in the field and to raising awareness of language endangerment, K. David Harrison offers in When languages die (WLD) an exploration of how 'traditional' or 'indigenous' (terms we introduce in quotes, recognizing their fragility) languages encode vast ecological, astronomical, topological, and mathematical information. Neither a how-to-save-languages guide nor a treatise on technical linguistic theory, this book aims to synthesize diverse academic fields through the prism of language structure and vocabulary, echoing [End Page 398] Sapir's (1921) view of language as 'the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and unconscious work of anonymous generations' (220). Examining how languages encode knowledge of taxonomy, geography, and calendrics via linguistically and culturally specific terminology, H asks, 'is it unique, irreplaceable knowledge, or merely common sense knowledge uniquely packaged? Could such knowledge ever be adequately captured in books and video recordings in the absence of any speakers? Once vanished, can such knowledge be re-created, will it re-emerge spontaneously after a while, or is it forever unrecoverable?' (9–10). Whereas much linguistics research examines languages so as to understand typology and constraints on grammatical structure, WLD focuses on the useful, practical knowledge of environment, of local species and technologies, and of numerical cognition that languages may encode. The dual interest in cultural knowledge and individual indigenous peoples leads to an intercalary structure for the book, with chapters and paired case studies organized by kinds of knowledge. The case studies, which focus on individual communities and speakers, highlight the very human side of language loss, though they sometimes have only a tenuous relationship with the chapters that they accompany. Both chapters and case studies provide many human-centered anecdotes and examples, with a sizeable number from H's extensive fieldwork. The first chapter sets the scene with an introduction to language death, examining correlations and divergences between language extinction and biological extinction. It provides a useful demonstration of 'language hotspots'—those areas with the highest indices of language diversity and extinction—and discusses how just a handful of languages have an enormous number of speakers, whereas an enormous number of languages have only a handful of speakers. Ch. 2, 'An extinction of (ideas about) species', which focuses on biological taxonomies and ethnobiology, asks an intriguing question: even though any 'ideas can be expressed in any language' (24), how do some languages efficiently organize such ideas so as to optimize the packaging of information? Drawing on his own fieldwork in Siberia, H shows how the Tofa utilize highly precise vocabulary that specify age, sex, fertility, and domestic usefulness to identify individual reindeer in large herds (27). While the concept 'five-year-old male castrated rideable reindeer' requires a loaded noun phrase in both Russian and English, the Tofa chary transmits the same information in a morphologically opaque but highly efficiently manner. Some endangered languages describe natural phenomena via very transparent etymologies, as shown in the following contrast between the Solomon Islands and England: 'Only 30 percent of West Nggela fish names are opaque, or lexically unanalyzable, meaning that for speakers of Nggela they convey no information about a fish's appearance, behavior or habitat. By contrast, a full 55 percent of English names for native Thames River fish are opaque, packaging no ecological information' (42). The Nggela, like other peoples who live in close proximity to their natural environment, store significant, readily available information about flora and fauna in their lexicon. H discusses research that shows how diminished use of an indigenous language correlates with reduced ethnobotanical knowledge, as in the case of the Barí of Venezuela (53), and reiterates the significance of 'folk taxonomies', such as that held by the Wayampi of Brazil: although independent from the Linnaean classification scheme, the Wayampi categorization of birds makes fine-tuned, useful distinctions between species. Ch. 3, 'Many moons ago...

At the 10th Media for All conference, the meagre representation of minoritized languages (including sign language) in audiovisual media on streaming platforms was tackled. In this way, the very ideal of media for all was challenged. Global streaming platforms tend to adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach in limiting their language settings to a minimum. While the users of minoritized languages often are proficient in the dominant language of their country, it is absolutely crucial that content is available in their smaller — and often endangered — languages as well. Some streaming platforms of local public service broadcasters try to accommodate this need. Still, the questions remain: to what extent do not only minoritized languages users, but also the speakers of the majority languages encounter these minoritized languages in audiovisual content, how linguistically diverse and inclusive is this content, but also: what role can audiovisual translation play here? In this article, the importance of audiovisual translation in and out of minoritized languages, with a special focus on revoicing, is discussed. The children’s content broadcast by Swedish public service broadcaster in the national minority languages and sign language is used as a case study. Lay summary People who speak less common languages or use sign language cannot always access audiovisual media in these languages. The reason for this is that the content, but also the language settings offered by streaming platforms often tend to be rather limited in this regard. For minoritised language communities, however, it is important that audiovisual media is available in their languages, as it can help safeguard these often endangered languages. Likewise, it is important that majority language users become more aware of these languages through audiovisual media. This article explores how streaming platforms can become more inclusive and also provide content in such minoritized languages for both the minoritised and majority language communities. The children’s programmes of Swedish public broadcasters that offer content in minoritised languages for both the majority language, Swedish speaking community, and the minoritised language communities are analysed and discussed as a case study. Yet, it looks at the agency of individuals who try to make a difference. The focus is on (partial) revoicing, yet (partial) subtitling and sign language interpreting are also discussed.

It is true that languages differ, but they can only be different as the universal principles and parameters allow. Professor Hiroshi Aoyagi is interested in linguistic curiosities and the universality of language. He and his research team in Japan are investigating the possibility that proto-Korean and proto-Japonic languages branched off from a common source thousands of years ago. Japanese and Korean have grammatical similarities but the typological relationship between the two is yet to be determined. Aoyagi is seeking to substantiate the hypothesis of a common origin for the two languages and, in doing so, will contribute to the typology of the three major languages in the Far East: Japanese, Korean and Ryukyuan. In his 1999 book, Shiro Hattori stated that Korean may have a kinship relation with Japanese (next to Ryukyuan) and the two languages must have split more than 4,000 years ago. Aoyagi believes that this conjecture, if tenable, accounts for the presence of double causatives, the absence of the benefactive auxiliary verbs and the absence of exclusive/adversity use of the passive morphemes in Korean and Ryukyuan. His studies involve an explanation of the core morpho-syntactic characteristics of the Japanese and Korean languages. A similarity between Japanese and Korean is that they are both head-final agglutinative languages. Aoyagi will conduct a comparative study of how functional morphemes are combined in Japanese and Korean. In his work, he is using the principles and parameters approach proposed by Noam Chomsky; namely Universal Grammar (UG).