Bilingual Community Research Articles

THE PROBLEM OF BILINGUALISM IN AVIATION ENGLISH

THE PROBLEM OF BILINGUALISM IN AVIATION ENGLISH

Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis

Reviewed by: Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis Ricardo Otheguy Bilingualism in the community: Code-switching and grammars in contact. By Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine Travis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 254. ISBN 9781108415828. $110 (Hb). Linguists have long asked whether one finds in bilinguals, in addition to lexical transfer, crosslinguistic influences in morphosyntax. The familiar answer given in most places is: yes (see e.g. Thomason & Kaufman 1988). But in this book the answer, in a revealing dissent, is pursued by Rena Torres Cacoullos and Catherine E. Travis (TC&T) with such seriousness and rigor as to make this substantial volume indispensable. Their answer to the question is that there is no morphosyntactic convergence in bilinguals. Not, at least, in this painstakingly carried out case study of the use of subject personal pronouns by fluent English-Spanish bilinguals in the state of New Mexico in the United States. Subject personal pronouns in Spanish (yo, tú, ella, él, etc. 'I, you, she, he', etc.) and especially the difference between expressed versus unexpressed pronominal subjects in finite clauses (ella camina ∼ camina, both 'she walks') represent a mature research topic (Carvalho et al. 2015). Most studies, like the authors', have been conducted on the basis of speech data under the quantitative variationist paradigm first established by William Labov (1966). Also comprising a large variationist literature is the related matter of the possible influence of English on the use of these pronouns in the Spanish of bilinguals. But scholars plowing this field have mostly concentrated on the presumed target of contact influence, Spanish, and not enough on the presumed source, English. This is because while the expression of subjects is obviously variable in Spanish, it is typically assumed to be essentially categorical in English. Yet TC&T make a point that is no less crucial for its being obvious: unexpressed subjects are also found in English (e.g. He .. took off for .. Big Bear. // You're kidding. // 0 Had no idea where he was going (112); the '0' indicates an unexpressed pronoun). There are other important differences between this book and most work on English-Spanish bilingualism in the US. First, the speakers here are almost all US-born and belong to a 150-year-old bilingual community, thus differing from those of the relatively recent immigrant settings studied in most US bilingual research. This speaker profile facilitates conclusions about long-term linguistic change that are harder to reach when a time depth of only two or three generations is considered. Second, the very frequent code-switching that marks the normal speech mode of many bilingual settings is especially noticeable in the corpus utilized here. This allows TC&T to analyze pronominal use in stretches of both languages produced by the same speakers. In this way the authors take into account more directly than other investigators the familiar dictum that the true locus of crosslinguistic influence is the bilingual individual. And since, more than in [End Page 575] other studies, English here thrives in the mind of a single speaker as much as does Spanish, the authors can expose their central claim of no contact effects to the highest risk of falsification, increasing the value of their conclusions. Moreover, the authors can dismiss the claim that the incidence of crosslinguistic influence of English on Spanish is greater in stretches of Spanish located in the vicinity of English stretches. And of special interest to the wider field of bilingual studies, the characteristics of the corpus lead TC&T to note that our confidence is misplaced in such notions as 'the native language', 'the matrix language', 'the second language', or more generally in what they correctly discount as the belief in 'the regime of ordered first and second language acquisition' (66). A third distinctive trait of the study is that the corpus comes with a prosodic transcription, crucially incorporating into the analysis intonational units, or IUs, that are not always found in this literature. A fourth and final differentiating feature is that the English and Spanish stretches of the bilingual corpus are contrasted with two different English...

Health-Predictive Social-Environmental Stressors and Social Buffers Are Place Based: A Multilevel Example From San Bernardino Communities.

Significant evidence demonstrates the powerful effects social determinants have on health-related perceptions, behaviors, and health outcomes. However, these factors are often studied out of context, despite the acknowledgement that social determinants of health are place based. This research aimed to demonstrate that health-related perceptions are dependent on where one lives. Via a community-based participatory study, participants were randomly selected from 3 residential regions varying distances from a freight railyard (nearest n = 300, middle n = 338, farthest n = 327), all mostly low-income, predominately Latino areas. Interview-administered surveys with adults were collected by bilingual trained community members (87% response) in English/Spanish. Adjusted-logistic regression models assessed residential region as a predictor of stressors (perceptions of community safety, community noise disturbance, health care access, food insecurity) and buffers (3 neighborhood cohesion variables), after adjusting for household income, race/ethnicity, gender, and age. Each region experienced a unique amalgam of stressors and buffers. In general, the region closest to the railyard experienced more stressors (odds ratio [OR] = 1.58; 95% CI 1.12-2.20) and less buffers (OR = 0.69; 95% CI 0.49-0.96) than the region furthest from the railyard. More than half of participants in each region reported 2 or more stressors and 2 or more buffers. In this seemingly homogenous study population, place remained important in spite of traditionally used socioeconomic factors, such as household income and race/ethnicity. Social determinants of health should be studied with regard to their environmental context, which will require interdisciplinary collaboration to improve multilevel research methods. Including the study of social buffers will also promote sustainable, positive change to reduce health disparities.

Dutchified English in an Ohio Beachy Amish-Mennonite Community

This article compares the English spoken by Beachy Amish-Mennonites just outside the Holmes County, OH, plain community with the English of non-plain neighbors. Although there is no previous linguistic research about the Beachys in this region, previous research on the dialects of English spoken by Amish communities suggests that differences from regional standards are influenced by deliberate border maintenance, primacy of language in expressing ethnic identity, and interference from Pennsylvania German, known to speakers as “Dutchified English.” However, little research has examined the English of the Beachys, who, compared to the Amish, occupy a less conservative position between separation from and engagement with broader society. The variables I focus on are initial th-stopping, final obstruent devoicing, and the low back vowel merger. The first two variables are documented for Amish English and various German bilingual communities. Th-stopping is also socially salient and is associated with the more religiously orthodox Amish churches in Holmes County. I collected production and perception data from ten speakers in the Beachy congregation and five non-Anabaptist speakers from the same region, and I present here my findings of the use of th-stopping and final consonant devoicing, both of which are attested, although neither are used categorically, and the low back merger, which is attested categorically in all non-Anabaptists but in only one Beachy speaker. The perceptual data has theoretical implications for the role of community identity and border maintenance between non-plain neighbors and the heavily Amish Holmes County community.

Towards an understanding of the use of English and Malay in Malaysian-Tamil Hip-Hop songs

ABSTRACT This article describes and investigates the phenomenon of code-switching in Malaysian-Tamil Hip-Hop songs, which are often trilingual. Apart from the Tamil language, these songs also contain Bahasa Malay and English, reflecting the linguistic landscape and repertoire of the Malaysian-Tamils. While the bulk of the research on code-switching is limited to the spoken word in bilingual communities, there has been very little research on both the Hip-Hop genre and trilingual communities. This paper argues that in the case of Malaysian-Tamil hip hop songs, while English is often used in these songs to signal genre and fulfil a lexical gap, the Malay language goes beyond merely fulfilling a lexical gap as it allows for the localisation of the Malaysian-Tamil music, adding uniqueness to it. In other words, there is both a local, regional, and transnational dimension to these songs, reflecting the complex hybrid reference points for Tamil speaking youth in Malaysia.

“Siento que siempre tengo que regresar al inglés”: Embracing a translanguaging stance in a Hispanic-serving institution


 
 
 This chapter centers on our reflections and pedagogical moves as two bilingual educators at a Hispanic-Serving Institution on the borderland region of South Texas, a predominantly bilingual and bicultural community. Specifically, the chapter documents how we embrace a translanguaging pedagogical stance. Translanguaging practices are identity markers and represent the complex ways bilinguals use their linguistic repertoire to communicate across contexts and to negotiate social identities (García & Li Wei, 2014; Martinez-Roldán, 2015). Drawing on García, Johnson, and Seltzer’s (2017) conceptualization of a translanguaging “corriente,” we describe our translanguaging stance and moves as we, respectively, design and teach two undergraduate courses: an upper-level undergraduate Foundations of Bilingual Education course and an undergraduate Rhetoric and Composition I course. We identify tensions, as well as commonalities and differences in our experience enacting translanguaging pedagogies and assignments in two different disciplinary areas. We also present two students’ reflections and assignments to illustrate the outcomes of our translanguaging pedagogies.
 
 

АССИМИЛЯЦИЯ ЗАИМСТВОВАНИЯ “HELLBOY” С ГЕНДЕРНЫМ КОМПОНЕНТОМ “BOY” В УСТНО-СПОНТАННОМ РУССКОЯЗЫЧНОМ ДИСКУРСЕ РУССКОЯЗЫЧНЫХ БИЛИНГВОВ

The article is devoted to studying the English loanword “hellboy” and its assimilation in the Russian speech, the comparative aspect of the loanword usage in the oral spontaneous discourse of monolinguals and bilinguals, changes in the original semantic field of this loanword in the Russian-speaking bilingual community. Particular attention is paid to the cross-cultural study of differences in this loanword use depending on such factors as age, the knowledge of English, gender, the sphere of habitual communication.

Bilingualism as a Borderland: Researching Youth’s Practices, Perspectives, and Positioning Between Languages

Seen from a critical intersectional perspective, the experiences of bilinguals are embedded in liminal spaces between language and cultural practices. Yet, rather than leverage these novel and hybrid practices for learning, dominant paradigms in education have historically subtracted nondominant students’ home languages from their communicative resources. To similar effect, current trends in bilingual education promote language separation for equal development of languages severed from each other and from cultural contexts. Such reductive approaches to language education disregard the dynamic and heteroglossic language use documented in bilingual communities. Drawing on in-depth interviews with youth, written reflections, and artifacts of bilingualism, I explore these practices across/between languages by conceptualizing bilingualism as a borderland navigated by Spanish–English bilingual youth. Considering bilingualism as a liminal position foregrounds moments of tension and transition in the language and schooling trajectories of youth as they navigate the anguish and advantage of living in-between. Furthermore, I highlight the methodological implications of framing bilingualism as a borderland to inform research design in language and education fields.

Shaping interventions to address waterpipe smoking in Arabic-speaking communities in Sydney, Australia: a qualitative study

BackgroundWaterpipe smoking is a traditional method of tobacco smoking that is being increasingly practiced worldwide. However, the research evidence describing the practice and prevalence of waterpipe smoking in Australia is limited. Arabic-speaking communities residing in an area of metropolitan Sydney identified increasing rates of waterpipe smoking as a community health concern during a tobacco intervention project. A qualitative research project was conducted to explore community perceptions about waterpipe smoking and the health promotion interventions that would be acceptable to Arabic speaking communities.MethodsParticipants from Arabic-speaking community groups and networks were recruited by trained bilingual community research assistants (BCRAs). Ten focus groups were conducted, eight by the BCRAs and two by the research team, and included a total of 88 participants. Notes were taken during the focus groups by the BCRAs and provided to the research team. The data was coded and managed using NVivo 11, and examined for themes and subthemes.ResultsEleven themes were identified from the data relating to the perceptions of waterpipe smoking (practices, cultural identity, acceptability, social connectedness, knowledge and perceptions of harm, trend and fashion, availability and access) and possible health promotion interventions (health information and social marketing, health education, policy and legislation, intervention target groups and messages). Waterpipe smoking was reported to be widely practiced and was related to a number of factors including feelings of cultural identity and belonging. The study highlighted the misconceptions of harm that exist in communities about the health effects of waterpipe smoking, as well as the significant role of the family in passing on the practice of waterpipe smoking. These factors should be considered in the development of health promotion interventions.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that until waterpipe smoking is perceived as a problem, community readiness for accepting health promotion interventions will be limited. Interventions should focus on debunking the myths that contribute toward a reduced perception of harm. A culturally sensitive approach, that considers the cultural connection to waterpipe smoking, should be taken toward the development and implementation of interventions.

Language use difference and social group differentiation: Immigrants’ negotiation of an imposed category oflauin bilingual Guangzhou

AbstractThis study is situated in a bilingual community of Guangzhou where the local speech Cantonese used to have comparable power to the Chinese common language Putonghua regarding the range of domains, but recently a local concern has emerged over the declining status of Cantonese in association with the large number of immigrants and the vigorous implementation of the state language policy of Putonghua Promotion. This concern has been demonstrated in Guangzhou locals’ boundary-making practices and the categorization of immigrants in relation to language practices. This study aims to investigate the ways in which immigrants take up stances (Du Bois 2007; Alexandra, Jaffe. (ed.). 2009.Stance: Sociolinguistic Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.) to negotiate their identities in response to an imposed category oflau. Immigrants’ narratives of and comments on language use in their interactions with natives are analysed, at both semantic and formal levels, from a perspective of Critical Discourse Studies (e.g. Martin, Reisigl & Ruth Wodak. 2015. In Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (eds.).Methods of critical discourse studies, 3rd edn. 23–61. London: Sage, Fairclough, Norman. 2015.Language and power3rd edn. London: Routledge.). As the analysis shows, immigrants negotiate the imposed identity category through coming to terms with the underlying language beliefs, negatively evaluating the social actors who categorize them, recontextualising the category, and combining Putonghua and Cantonese in one language unit to indicate the symbolic oppositions between social groups and languages.

Can NEG placement have negative consequences (for efficient processing)? A bilingual test case

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relative processing efficiency of two typologically diverse configurations of sentential negation: immediately preverbal NEG and unbounded clause-final NEG. In order to effect a head-to-head comparison, the data are drawn from a bilingual speech community in the Afro-Colombian village of San Basilio de Palenque, in which two lexically cognate languages are in contact, differing principally in the placement of the sentential negator: Spanish (preverbal NEG) and the Afro-Hispanic creole language Palenquero (clause-final NEG). The results of a series of experiments suggest that preverbal negation is quite robust, while processing of clause-final negation is degraded under increased cognitive demands. Contextual and pragmatic cues ameliorate the processing of likely negative utterances, while unbounded clause-final negation is more vulnerable in ambiguous utterances. The contrasting behavior of Spanish and Palenquero negation highlights the possible role of processing mechanisms as contributing to typological differences among languages.

Language Dominance and Cognitive Flexibility in French-English Bilingual Children.

Some studies have reported a cognitive advantage for bilingual children over monolinguals and other studies have not. One possible reason for these conflicting results is that the degree of cognitive flexibility is related to individual differences in language dominance and use. More balanced bilinguals who separate their languages by context might have to learn to reduce inter-language interference and therefore show greater cognitive flexibility. The goal of the present study was to test if language dominance is related to French–English bilingual children’s cognitive flexibility, using three different measures of language dominance: (1) parental reports of dominance, (2) relative scores on vocabulary tests, and (3) knowledge of translation equivalents. We also included two measures of language use: (1) living in a bilingual community (Montreal) or a monolingual community (Edmonton) and (2) language separation. Sixty-two French–English bilingual between 46 and 85 months of age participated. Children’s cognitive flexibility was assessed using the Advanced Dimensional Change Card Sort task. Children’s language knowledge and use was assessed in both French and English using a battery of tests. The results showed that none of the measures of language dominance or language use predicted cognitive flexibility. These results are inconsistent with the claim that individual differences in language dominance and use predict bilinguals’ executive function s.

Teaching Music in English: A Content-Based Instruction Model in Secondary Education

Over the past few years, there has been a growing interest in the teaching and learning of several languages in an attempt to generate multilingual education opportunities, particularly in Europe. In response to the demands of our globalized society, Content-Based Instruction (CBI), which has also been referred to as “immersion and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programs,” emerged as a teaching approach that combines the learning of curricular contents and the communicative competence in the target language. This study was carried out at a public high school set in a Spanish bilingual community, where music is taught through a CLIL approach in English class. The purpose of this paper is to examine how students value their music lessons in English and to check the adequacy of teaching music as a subject in English. To achieve this goal, materials adapted to their level of proficiency and a final questionnaire were designed. Results indicate that students are satisfied with this proposal, since they consider these music lessons to be easier than the regular ones. Not only did they enjoy being exposed to English in these music lessons, but a considerable number of students would also like to take a CLIL program in the near future. Pedagogical implications to this CBI model account for the development of learners’ autonomy, the use of audio-visual aids and further research in bilingual and multilingual regions overseas.

The discursive distribution of subject pronouns in Spanish spoken in Georgia: A weakening of pragmatic constraints?

AbstractThis study examines subject expression from a pragmatic perspective in an emerging bilingual community of Roswell, Georgia, an exurb of Atlanta. Using sociolinguistic interviews conducted in Roswell, first-person singular subject pronoun (SP) usage is analyzed among 10 Mexican speakers within five distinct pragmatic contexts: salient referent, switch focus, contrastive focus, pragmatic weight, and epistemic parentheticals. A comparison is made between Georgia speakers and monolingual Mexican speakers in Querétaro in order to explore the possible weakening of pragmatic constraints due to English contact. Results indicate that a contact hypothesis is not supported in terms of overall overt pronoun usage as evidenced by similar frequencies when compared to monolingual Mexican varieties. However, an increased use of overt SPs in the context of salient referent as well as a diminished use of overt SPs in switch focus contexts is found, suggesting a potential weakened sensitivity to such pragmatic constraints.

Innovations and Challenges in CLIL Research: Exploring the Development of Subject-Specific Literacies

Bilingual education programs are considered to be powerful tools used to foster the development of foreign languages, especially when focusing on language development. In Europe, the adoption of the approach known as content and language integrated learning (CLIL) has spread rapidly as one of the models that best fit the necessities of both bilingual and monolingual communities (Marsh, 2013). However, this model is far from being exclusive and the promotion of the foreign language can also be complemented by a desire to consolidate the linguistic competence of all the languages present in the curriculum, not only the foreign language. This article explores the rationale of a proposal that aims to develop subject specific literacies to promote efficient construction of meaning, and presents a series of practical recommendations at the organizational and methodological level to extend this method to all languages used as a vehicle of instruction in schools.

AN ANALYSIS OF CODE-SWITCHING IN ENGLISH MEETING CLUB (Benteng Panynyua Club in Fort Rotterdam Makassar)

Code-Switching is a phenomenon that may occurs in Bilingual or Multilingual communities. Indonesian students who learn English as Foreign Language tend to find a way to master English by forming or joining an English Meeting Club. Code -Switching occurs when they try to speak English in their conversation. The aim of this study is to describe the type of Code-switching used by the members of English meeting club and reason why they did that switching. This research used qualitative method. The subject of the research was participants of English Meeting Club and the data of Code-switching are taken from recording which was converted into transcription. The result shows that the members of English meeting club did three types of Code-switching. Those are tag-switching, intra-sentential switching and inter-sentential switching. They mostly used intra-sentential switching in their conversation and did the switching to make their utterances acceptable to the hearer.

Code-Switching: A Useful Foreign Language Teaching Tool in EFL Classrooms

In every society, language plays a vital role in communicating with each other as it allows speakers to expand their knowledge, deliver their ideas, opinions and feelings in the society. English, as a global language, provides a platform for communication for people who speak the language. Due to the growing trend in linguistic globalisation, bilingualism has become a very common phenomenon in today’s world. In bilingual communities all over the world, speakers frequently switch from one language to another to meet communication demands. This phenomenon of alternation between languages is known as code-switching. The present study aims to focus on the teachers’ use of code-switching as a language teaching tool in EFL classrooms in Pakistan. It also deals with the functions and types of code-switching in EFL classrooms. Four EFL speaking skill classes were observed, and audio was recorded and transcribed to analyse why and how code-switching was used in the classrooms. The analysis of classroom interaction transcripts revealed that teachers code-switched to maintain discipline, translate new words and build solidarity and intimate relationships with the students before, during and after the lessons. The study found that code-switching from L2 to L1 in the speaking classes did occur although English remained as the main medium of instruction. All the teachers consciously code-switched throughout their lectures. Teachers also code switched to Urdu after the lectures. Three types of code-switching occurred during the EFL classes: tag-switching, intra-sentential code-switching and inter-sentential switching. Hence, code-switching is a useful teaching tool in EFL classrooms to facilitate teaching and learning.

Grammatical change in borderlands Spanish: A variationist analysis of copula variation and progressive expansion in a South Texas bilingual enclave community

Abstract This study investigates variation in the grammatical system of Spanish in the speech of three generations of Mexican Americans living in a community in South Texas, United States, characterized by high levels of bilingualism and long-term, sustained contact between languages. Two variables are studied using quantitative methods: (1) the extension of the copula verb estar into domains traditionally confined to ser and (2) the expansion of progressive forms at the expense of the simple present. The data reported here suggest changes-in-progress that appear to be accelerated by the linguistic and sociocultural conditions of the community including, especially, lack of access to formal education in Spanish. The sociolinguistic patterning for these variables is compared to patterning for the same variables reported in the literature in both monolingual communities in Spain and Latin America and bilingual communities in the United States.

Multilingual professionals in internationally operating companies: tensions in their linguistic repertoire?

AbstractSeveral studies on multilingualism in the workplace have emphasized the role of English as a lingua franca. Other studies have paid attention to the interaction between English and local languages in workplaces where global orientations and local languages co-occur. The present study focuses on internationally oriented workplaces in the bilingual Basque Autonomous Community (BAC). The study aims to analyze the use of the minority language Basque in the workplace and the challenges it faces in an emerging multilingual global context. The promotion and use of the minority language in internationally oriented workplaces is related to language policies of the regional government, the role of ‘new speakers’ of Basque, and the possible tensions between the efforts to revitalize Basque and the use of English as a global language, mediated by the position of Spanish as a strong international language. Our conclusion is that there is a need to establish new policies that are truly multilingual as well as to raise awareness in companies about the importance of adequate language management practices.

Code-mixing and Code Switching in Wylvera W.’s Novel Geranium Blossom: Saat Jarak Menguji Cinta: Their Types and Reasons

.