Bilingual Community Research Articles

A syntactic approach to gender assignment in Spanish–English bilingual speech

In this paper I argue for a syntactic analysis to gender assignment in codeswitched speech. To sustain this claim, I examine gender assignment in Spanish Det(erminer)–English noun switches (i.e., el bishop ‘the.m’) in 76 sociolinguistic interviews of approximately one hour each from a bilingual community in Southern Arizona, U.S. (The CESA Corpus, Carvalho 2012). Based on the findings from this dataset, I demonstrate that the distribution of gender assignment in codeswitched speech poses a serious challenge to current models of the bilingual architecture rooted in the distinct-lexicons perspective (MacSwan 2000 et seq.). Rather, I show that biological gender (interpretable gender) plays a crucial role in the assignment mechanism and the representation of gender features in the bilingual architecture. Taking gender assignment as a case study, I outline a single-lexicon approach to the bilingual grammar compatible with a Late Insertion view of the morphosyntactic model (Halle & Marantz 1993). In particular, I highlight the crucial relevance of a theme position at the morphological module to guide the bilingual speaker to the insertion of phonological matrices (language exponents) when codeswitching.

Translanguaging Together: Building Bilingual Identities con Nuevos Amigos

AbstractIn this article, the authors share their experiences creating and implementing a unit focused on supporting bilingual identities through integrating language domains and translanguaging with authentic writing experiences. Two dual‐language first‐grade teachers from Colombia and the US worked together to model, celebrate, and support the use of translanguaging as a meaningful communicative practice that encourages bilingual students to draw on all of their linguistic resources. The article includes the instructional progression used to support emergent bilingual first graders with writing letters and creating interactive videos with the purpose of making new international friends and learning about each other's communities. Practical suggestions with examples provide ideas for building supportive bilingual communities, selecting and reading aloud texts with translanguaging practices, building contextualized vocabulary, developing oral language, supporting letter and video creations, and engaging with and responding to bilingual peers.

Factors that motivate ecuadorian public school english teachers to code-switch in the english as foreign language classroom

Code-switching is a sociolinguistic phenomenon that usually occurs in bilingual or multilingual communities. Regarding English Language teaching contexts, it seems that code-switching also occurs in EFL classrooms. Therefore, this paper attempts to find out and describe the factors that motivate Ecuadorian English teachers to code-switch as well as establish the foundation for further researches about the code-switching effect and the role that L1 should play in the EFL classroom. This descriptive, combined, and ethnographic research gathered data through a surveys compound by 6 questions framing the Likert scale, which were answered by 17 Ecuadorian English teachers. The results show that the factors that motivate them to code-switch are related to pedagogical and affective purposes; nevertheless, it seems that its usage is neither planned nor applied to get pedagogical purposes that let them know how and when code-switching might enhance the SLA process.

Nahuatl and Spanish in Contact: Language Practices in Mexico

The study reports on adults’ linguistic use of Nahuatl in the bilingual community of Santiago Tlaxco, Mexico. Using a survey approach, adults were asked to indicate their language choices (i.e., Spanish, Nahuatl or both languages) when interacting with people in various linguistic domains including personal, public, occupational, and educational. Findings showed that Nahuatl was used predominately with family members, with the exception of children aged 12 and younger with whom bilingual use was the norm. Similarly, in the public domain, bilingual language use was preferred for interactions with young people (less than 18 years), indicating a trend toward a gradual displacement of Nahuatl. However, Nahuatl was still the preferred language for interactions in the occupational domain, in places of worship and within social circles. Spanish was preferred for the educational domain, at the clinic, and in unfamiliar settings, such as with strangers. While adult use of Nahuatl facilitates language maintenance, there is a need for increased intergenerational transmission. Results are discussed in the context of language planning.

Bilingual brand communities? Strategies for targeting Hispanics on social media

PurposeThis paper aims to explore different strategies used by brands to target the Hispanic market via social media from the lens of the Spanish language in a multicultural country like the USA.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses a netnographic approach by drawing information from a study of the Facebook pages of 11 brands belonging to different industries.FindingsCompanies engage in four levels of cultural identity adaptation using different strategies based on ethnicity: language adaptation, identity elements, identity matching and Latino persona. The study also shows that merely translating Facebook pages do not generate high levels of communitarian interaction.Practical implicationsThis study examines different strategies used by brands in the USA to target the Hispanic audience on social media to provide insights for brand managers to develop online engagement.Originality/valueWith the increase in cultural diversity in different countries and the rise of social media platforms, brand researchers need to better understand how cultural identity permeates marketing strategies in online spaces. Social media platforms such as Facebook offer flexible environments where strategies beyond product- and brand-related aspects can be used. This study extends the literature by showing the heterogeneity of cultural identity-based strategies used by companies to ensure customer engagement and brand loyalty and the impact of such strategies on users.

Development and pilot testing of a training for bilingual community education professionals about hereditary breast and ovarian cancer among Latinas: ÁRBOLES Familiares.

Cancer health disparities remain a significant problem in the USA, compounded by lack of access to care, language barriers and systemic biases in health care. These disparities are particularly evident in areas such as genetics/genomics. For example, Latinas at high risk for hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC) have extremely low rates of genetic counseling/testing. Long-standing barriers and inequities in access to services such as genetic counseling and testing require innovative solutions. One solution can involve training community outreach and education professionals (CORE-Ps) to bridge the gap between underserved communities and genetic specialists. We sought to develop and pilot test a training program for English-Spanish bilingual CORE-Ps to reduce disparities in access to and uptake of genetic services among Latino populations. Guided by Adult Learning Theory and with input from multiple stakeholders, we developed ÁRBOLES Familiares (Family Trees), an in-person and online training program for bilingual CORE-Ps to facilitate identification, referral, and navigation of Latinas to genetic counseling/testing. We conducted a pilot test of 24 CORE-Ps recruited from across the United States and assessed knowledge, genetic literacy, and self-efficacy at baseline and follow-up. At follow-up, participants in the pilot with complete baseline and follow-up data (N = 15) demonstrated significant improvements in HBOC knowledge, genetic literacy, self-efficacy and reports of fewer barriers to identify/navigate Latinas (ps < .05). Qualitative assessment identified ways to improve the training curriculum. Pilot results suggest ÁRBOLES is a promising approach for training CORE-Ps to identify and refer high-risk Latinas to genetic services. Next steps involve further refinement of ÁRBOLES, development of an online toolkit, and adaptation for virtual delivery.

Dimensions of social categorization: Inside the role of language

The present pre-registration aims to investigate the role of language as a dimension of social categorization. Our critical aim is to investigate whether language can be used as a dimension of social categorization even when the languages coexist within the same sociolinguistic group, as is the case in bilingual communities where two languages are used in daily social interactions. We will use the memory confusion paradigm (also known as the Who said what? task). In the first part of the task, i.e. encoding, participants will be presented with a face (i.e. speaker) and will listen to an auditory sentence. Two languages will be used, with half of the faces always associated with one language and the other half with the other language. In the second phase, i.e. recognition, all the faces will be presented on the screen and participants will decide which face uttered which sentence in the encoding phase. Based on previous literature, we expect that participants will be more likely to confuse faces from within the same language category than from the other language category. Participants will be bilingual individuals of two bilingual communities, the Basque Country (Spain) and Veneto (Italy). The two languages of these communities will be used, Spanish and Basque (Study 1), and Italian and Venetian dialect (Study 2). Furthermore, we will explore whether the amount of daily exposure to the two languages modulates the effect of language as a social categorization cue. This research will allow us to test whether bilingual people use language to categorize individuals belonging to the same sociolinguistic community based on the language these individuals are speaking. Our findings may have relevant political and social implications for linguistic policies in bilingual communities.

Reconstituting U.S. Spanish language education: U.S. Latinx occupying classrooms

ABSTRACT This paper aims to redefine Spanish language education in the U.S. by showing how the increased presence of Latinx Spanish-speakers in classrooms brings into question the traditional way in which Spanish language teaching is divided into three, separate fields: as a foreign language, in bilingual education, and as a heritage language. It proposes that Spanish language education focuses on the ways in which the numerous U.S. Latinx perform language, and the reasons for their ways of languaging. The article explores the linked histories of Spanish language education in the U.S and racialization of the U.S. Latinx community. A review of how Spanish language education has constituted itself as three separate fields is then presented, as the cracks in the divisions today are analyzed. The article then proposes a reconstitution of Spanish language teaching by appropriating two concepts that have been increasingly making inroads in the education of minoritized bilingual students: undoing raciolinguistic ideologies and leveraging the translanguaging of Latinx bilingual communities. It concludes with a series of practical recommendations for Spanish language teachers.

Supporting Newly Arrived Migrant Mothers: A Pilot Health Literacy Intervention.

Experiencing migration can create or exacerbate vulnerability to ill health, particularly during pregnancy and new motherhood. Providing a culturally appropriate health literacy intervention to new migrant families may increase social support and the skills and confidence to access health care services and information. This study developed and piloted a health literacy intervention, in the form of culturally redesigned new parent classes, in a culturally diverse location in Australia. The intervention was delivered over a 4-week period by Child and Family Health Nurses, with the help of interpreters and Bilingual Community Researchers, to Bangladeshi and Mandarin-speaking Chinese mothers and grandmothers with a baby age 0 to 1 year. A mixed-methods evaluation was conducted to measure (1) recruitment and attendance of participants, (2) feasibility of the intervention, (3) health literacy of participants, and (4) provider understanding of barriers to health care access. Thirty participants were recruited, and 18 women attended at least three of the four group sessions. Nurses viewed the program as being within the scope of their usual role, demonstrating intervention feasibility. Health literacy scores were higher post-intervention than pre-intervention. Nurses described having increased awareness of barriers to health care access after facilitating the intervention. The program has potential to be scaled up to other areas and languages. [HLRP: Health Literacy Research and Practice. 2021;5(3):e201–e207.]

Exploring language dominance through code-switching: intervocalic voiced stoplenition in Afrikaans-Spanish bilinguals.

The present study examines the relationship between the two grammars of bilingual speakers, the linguistic ecologies in which the L1 and L2 become active, and how these topics can be explored in a bilingual community undergoing L1 attrition. Our experiment focused on the production of intervocalic phonemic voiced stops for L1-Afrikaans/L2-Spanish bilinguals in Patagonia, Argentina. While these phonemes undergo systematic intervocalic lenition in Spanish (e.g., /b d ɡ/>[β ð ɣ]), they do not in Afrikaans (e.g., /b d/>[b d]). The bilingual participants in our study produced target Afrikaans and Spanish words in unilingual and code-switched speaking contexts. The results show that: (i)the participants produce separate phonetic categories in Spanish and Afrikaans; (ii) code-switching affects the production of the target sounds asymmetrically, such that L1 Afrikaans influences the production of L2 Spanish sounds but not vice versa; and (iii) this L1-to-L2 influence remains robust despite the instability of the L1 itself. Altogether, our findings speak to the persistence of a bilingual's L1 phonological grammar despite cross-generational L1 attrition.

Societal multilingualismà la balkanique: The Montenegrin Velja Gorana and beyond

Aims and objectives:The goal of the article is to explore the properties of bilingual and multilingual situations with balanced, or non-polyglossic, relationships between languages in the modern Balkans. A comparison with non-balanced, or polyglossic, settings aims at determining the factors that support balanced bilingualism in one Balkan community and result in different dominance configurations in the others.Methodology:We focus, on the one hand, on the community’s inner diversity and the variation in linguistic competence among its individual members, showing how the differences of the various groups of speakers contribute to the maintenance of bilingualism in the community across several generations. On the other hand, we consider speech community as a unit of study and see how factors such as geographical location, size, and presence or absence of ties with the surrounding region, contribute to the loss or maintenance of community bilingualism and multilingualism in different parts of the Balkan linguistic area.Findings:The main case that is scrutinized is the situation of “balanced language contact” in a small-scale village community of Velja Gorana (Montenegro). Its analysis is based on field observations made in the bilingual families of Velja Gorana in 2013 to 2015. Besides, we overview a range of Balkan bilingual and multilingual communities, based on the existing literature, and analyse the patterns of (socio)linguistic dominance of the languages spoken in each community.Originality:The article provides a description of a balanced situation in the modern Balkans and offers a model for understanding of the Balkan bilingualism and multilingualism, taking into consideration several factors interacting at different levels, from individual speaker to the speech community.Implications:The proposed model explains the diversity of bilingual and multilingual situations of the modern Balkans. This enables us to make predictions about the ways of development of these situations and suggest how the past Balkan situations could have been organized.

Multilingualism in eastern Indonesia: linguistic evidence of a shift from symmetric to asymmetric multilingualism

Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions:The Alorese in eastern Indonesia are an Austronesian community who have inhabited two Papuan-speaking islands for approximately 600 years. Their language presents a paradox: contact with the neighbouring Papuan languages has led to both complexification and simplification. This article argues that these opposite outcomes of contact result from two distinct scenarios, and formulates a hypothesis about a shift in multilingual patterns in Alorese history.Design/Methodology/Approach:To formulate a hypothesis about the discontinuity of multilingual patterns, this article first sketches the past and present multilingual patterns of the Alorese by modelling language contact outcomes in terms of bilingual optimisation strategies. This is followed by a comparison of the two scenarios to pinpoint similarities and differences.Data and Analysis:Previous research shows that two types of contact phenomena are attested in Alorese: (a) complexification arising from grammatical borrowings from Papuan languages, and (b) morphological simplification. The first change is associated with prolonged child bilingualism and is the result of Papuan-oriented bilingual strategies, while the latter change is associated with adult second language (L2) learning and is the result of universal communicative strategies.Findings/ConclusionsComplexification and simplification are the results of two different layers of contact. Alorese was first used in small-scale bilingual communities, with widespread symmetric multilingualism. Later, multilingualism became more asymmetric, and the language started to undergo a simplification process due to the considerable number of L2 speakers.Originality:This article is innovative in providing a clear case study showing discontinuity of multilingual patterns, supported by linguistic and non-linguistic evidence.Significance/Implications:This article provides a plausible explanation for the apparent paradox found in Alorese, by showing that different outcomes of contact in the same language are due to different patterns of acquisition and socialisation. This discontinuity should be taken into account by models of language contact.

Coping in a Bilingual Community: Sixth Graders in Châteauguay, Québec

As part of a larger study of bilingual and monolingual children in Châteauguay, Québec, interviews were conducted with Grade 6 students from five types of home and school language backgrounds to compare their varying view of their own linguistic competence in confronting a world of two languages. Questions focussed on their self perceptions of their skills in English and French, their past experiences in both languages, and their reactions to real-life and hypothetical situations. Results were discouraging in that children of all five backgrounds report intermixing without interacting.

Recruitment, Training, and Roles of the Bilingual, Bicultural Navegantes: Developing a Specialized Workforce of Community Health Workers to Serve a Low-Income, Spanish-Speaking Population in Rhode Island.

Clínica Esperanza/Hope Clinic (CEHC) employs Navegantes, who are specially-trained bilingual Community Health Workers (CHW), as key team members who improve the ability of the clinic to provide care for and improve the health status of a large population of uninsured Spanish-speaking patients in Providence, Rhode Island. Given the growing demand for CHWs at the clinic and in the broader healthcare sector in the state, CEHC developed the Advanced Navegante Training Program (ANTP). The ANTP prepares community members to become certified CHWs who are equipped to provide patient navigation and lifestyle coaching as well as professional medical interpretation services. The ANTP is developed and taught by CEHC Navegantes who themselves are bilingual and bicultural peers of trainees as well as the population that CEHC serves. Upon graduation, ANTP trainees have been able to attain higher-paying and fulfilling careers in a range of healthcare and other community settings. The ANTP offers a low-cost, community-based model for training CHWs who are uniquely prepared to promote health and well-being among medically underserved patients.

On Sino-Turkic verbal functional expressions

AbstractTurkic conquest and rule of China since 386 CE for nearly two hundred years had exerted its profound and long-lasting influence on many levels of Chinese society. Turkic sinification policy had induced the Xianbei National Language (XNL), which was Turkic language with selected set of Chinese characters for phonetic spelling. XNL, being spelt in Chinese characters, managed to function in Turkic-Chinese code-mixing in the bilingual communities as evidenced in bianwen變文. Because of the Turkic politico-socio-economical dominance, some the Turkic elements in the code-mixing eventually gained prominance and have become permanent part of the northern vernacular, predecessor of modern Mandarin. This paper discusses twelve such Turkic-rooted verbal functional expressions: (1). The causative-passivequ取; (2). Transitive passivesha殺,sha煞,si死; (3). Causativedou鬥,dou逗; (4). Continuativehai還,que卻; (5). Resultativeque卻; (6). Reflexivenə呢(7). Positive indirectivemo shi莫是; (8). Negative indirectivebu dao不道; (9). Future participlecai才,cai纔; (10). Conditionalyao shi要是,yao要,yao bu shi要不是; (11). INDUCE-basenong弄; (12). The speech quote verbdao道.

The skill of natural interpreting in a trilingual child

Abstract The present work seeks to contribute to the fields of translation and bilingual acquisition focusing on the particular case of natural translation/interpreting of a single Slovak/English/German balanced trilingual child between 0;03 and 8;01 years. Natural interpreting is a strategy used by bilinguals whereby a message expressed in one language (source language = SL) is reproduced in another (target language = TL). Our study is based on two premises: 1. Translation in a bilingual child is an innate skill which can be acquired without formal training and is developed through guidance and practice (Harris, 1978); and 2. Natural interpreting can occur within different combinations of languages. We address the issue of bilingual competence and in particular the relationship that exists between linguistic competence and performance in the process of interpretation activity in the bilingual child. The first aim of the study is to reveal the social-academic context and the main sources of linguistic input, which had an important effect on the speech development of the child. The second aim of the study is to show that a trilingual child was able to become a sophisticated interpreter as she gradually moved through stages of pre-translation, autotranslation and transduction to more complex forms of interpretation (Harris and Sherwood, 1978; Harris, 1976 and 1978). The third aim of the study is to document the types of errors produced by the child and through error analysis and statistical data reveal whether these errors may hinder the communication of accurate meaning in the TL. The translation competence of the bilingual child is analysed via different types of spontaneous, elicited and experimental data gathered from the child’s longitudinal production recorded by the researcher in diary annotations, audio recordings and video recordings. Examples of the child’s interpretations presented in this paper are transcribed in the CHAT format. The results of our study demonstrate that a trilingual child acquiring three languages in a bilingual community with the bilingual-monolingual interaction strategy used by parents at home can become a competent interpreter by the age of 8;01 years and deliver messages quite accurately in the TL regardless of the directionality of interpretation. The results of error analysis show that the type of errors produced by the child in the process of interpretation are mainly morphological and occasionally syntactic or intrusion errors, which do not lead to misinterpretation of the meaning of original message in the TL.

Associations Between Dietary Quality and Inflammation Among Bhutanese Refugee Adults Eligible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

ObjectivesTo quantify the associations between adherence to U.S. dietary guidelines and inflammation among Bhutanese refugee adults who are eligible to receive SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits. MethodsA convenience sample of Bhutanese refugee adults (n = 53, mean age = 47 ± 2 years, 83% female) residing in New Hampshire was recruited. A bilingual community health worker conducted study visits. We estimated diet using the average of three 24-hour recalls. Adherence to U.S. dietary guidelines was defined using the 2015 Healthy Eating Index (HEI), where a higher score indicates greater adherence to guidelines. A fasting blood sample was analyzed for inflammatory biomarkers, IL-6 and TNF-α. The HEI score and score components were expressed in tertiles, and related to biomarkers using ANCOVA. Food rankings were conducted to identify contributors to HEI components. ResultsOn average, participants lived in the U.S. for 7.8 ± 0.5 years, with a household size of 3.8 ± 0.2 members. The prevalence of overweight/obesity and type 2 diabetes was 82% and 41%, respectively. In multivariate adjusted models, individuals with higher HEI scores had significantly lower IL-6 concentrations (3.1 ± 0.5 pg/mL, 2.5 ± 0.4 pg/mL, and 2.0 ± 0.5 pg/mL by increasing HEI tertile, P-trend = 0.019). In examining the individual HEI components, greater consumption of total fruit (P-trend = 0.02) and whole fruit (P-trend = 0.017) was related to lower IL-6 concentrations, whereas refined grains was associated with higher values (P-trend = 0.036). We observed null associations with TNF-α. The top 5 contributors to fruit consumption were bananas (21.5%), apples (15.5%), mangos (15%), avocados (9.6%), and kiwis (8.8%); those for refined grains included parboiled rice (78.8%), white rice (6.1%), pasta (4.6%), crackers (1.3%), and white bread (1.3%). ConclusionsIn this cross-sectional study of low-income Bhutanese refugee adults, greater adherence to U.S. Dietary Guidelines, particularly for fruit and refined grain consumption, was associated with lower IL-6 concentrations. Over 70% of fruit and 90% of refined grains were represented by only a few foods, which can inform cultural tailoring of SNAP Education interventions in this understudied population. Funding SourcesThe New Hampshire Agricultural Experiment Station.

¡Hola! Nice to Meet You: Language Mixing and Biographical Information Processing.

In bilingual communities, social interactions take place in both single- and mixed-language contexts. Some of the information shared in multilingual conversations, such as interlocutors’ personal information, is often required in consequent social encounters. In this study, we explored whether the autobiographical information provided in a single-language context is better remembered than in an equivalent mixed-language situation. More than 400 Basque-Spanish bilingual (pre) teenagers were presented with new persons who introduced themselves by either using only Spanish or only Basque, or by inter-sententially mixing both languages. Different memory measures were collected immediately after the initial exposure to the new pieces of information (immediate recall and recognition) and on the day after (delayed recall and recognition). In none of the time points was the information provided in a mixed-language fashion worse remembered than that provided in a strict one-language context. Interestingly, the variability across participants in their sociodemographic and linguistic variables had a negligible impact on the effects. These results are discussed considering their social and educational implications for bilingual communities.

Translanguaging as a rhizomatic multiplicity

ABSTRACT Translanguaging is an increasingly popular concept used in the description of multilingual practices and in language policy and language pedagogy research. In this paper, I argue that the main reason for the rapid increase in the use of this concept is that it has rhizomatic characteristics. My argument is supported by evidence supplied by a project conducted among members of a Romani-Hungarian bilingual Roma community in a small town in Hungary. After introducing Deleuze and Guattaris’ rhizome-metaphor (1987) and its reception in sociolinguistics, I survey dimensions of translanguaging and point out that its interpretation as a rhizomatic multiplicity opens up new possibilities for the description of multilingual practices and helps to understand the versatility of the concept. Based on evidence supplied by the project referred to above, I claim that the concept of translanguaging, in virtue of its rhizomatic features offers new emphases in the interpretation of multilingual linguistic practices, and that the concept itself has the characteristics of a rhizomatic multiplicity, enabling it to connect to other multiplicities. Such an understanding of translanguaging may help determine pedagogical stance or influence and shape efforts made to maintain minority languages.

Code-switching in parents’ everyday speech to bilingual infants

Code-switching is a common phenomenon in bilingual communities, but little is known about bilingual parents' code-switching when speaking to their infants. In a pre-registered study, we identified instances of code-switching in day-long at-home audio recordings of 21 French-English bilingual families in Montreal, Canada, who provided recordings when their infant was 10 and 18 months old. Overall, rates of infant-directed code-switching were low, averaging 7 times per hour (6 times per 1,000 words) at 10 months and increasing to 28 times per hour (18 times per 1,000 words) at 18 months. Parents code-switched more between sentences than within a sentence; this pattern was even more pronounced when infants were 18 months than when they were 10 months. The most common apparent reasons for code-switching were to bolster their infant's understanding and to teach vocabulary words. Combined, these results suggest that bilingual parents code-switch in ways that support successful bilingual language acquisition.