Community Of Speakers Research Articles

Introduction: Esperantists in the Twentieth Century: Making Connections in an Age of Division

The transcending of borders marked a large part of the political experience of the 20th century. This aspiration took shape in a century that strengthened and multiplied national barriers and that witnessed two world wars. In response to growing nationalism, many individuals, political movements and communities adopted an enlarged identity bound up with cosmopolitanism, internationalism, pan-Europeanism or, more recently, globalism. These categories, often part of a broader political frame of reference, established a connection between estranged nations but still referred to national divisions. Transnational history has shown how these tendencies were experienced not as a withdrawal of the border framework but as a link between nations-states. In this context, a particular and powerful way of abolishing national constraints has remained unnoticed by historians: the community of Esperanto speakers. They emerged at the end of the 19th century as an alternative to internationalizing models. With this aim, they developed a linguistic and cultural space that would not be marked by one specific culture to the detriment of the others. Nevertheless, the international language and the social movement created around it had to face the dominant ideological trends of the time. Through three case studies from the history of the Esperanto movement we propose to deepen the debate on the links between ideology and transnationalism. The first investigates the epistolary relationship between two communists, one Bulgarian and the other Japanese, discussing the trajectory of their political life and most notably their rejection of Stalinism. The second focuses on the link between Esperanto and anticolonial thinking in East Asia during the 1930s and early 1940s. Based on the study of literature and in particular of post-war Esperanto poetry, the third contribution examines the reasons that led a number of authors to choose the international language Esperanto to formulate their own account of WWII and to perpetuate the memory of the collective tragedy.

Communication through popular culture: Analyzing a googi performance on early marriage among the Kusaas of Ghana

This work investigates the use of a popular cultural performance called googi, to advocate against early marriage and its associated cases of adolescent pregnancies in Kusaal speaking communities in Ghana. It highlights how a local cultural artist employs the power of an indigenous language to skillfully address a significant socio-cultural issue. This research analyses the literary techniques employed by the artist in her didactic performance which challenges cultural norms that endorse early marriage. The artist advocates for social transformation through education underscoring the causes of early marriage as including socio-economic and cultural factor. The findings demonstrate that the persuasive use of indigenous language in popular cultural performances serves as great instruments for communication, advocacy and entertainment in rural communities.

A semblance of freedom: Horkheimer and Adorno’s conception of myth

In this paper I argue that the pessimistic reading of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, which suggests reason is ensconced within the domination of myth, misses a key component of the authors' argument. Specifically, it misses the possibility that the liberation from the heteronomy of myth might occur via a critique of myth. Using Owen Hulatt’s reinterpretation of Adorno’s account of the tension between mimesis and self-preservation as a point of orientation, I show that while myth for Horkheimer and Adorno is synonymous with a heteronomous form of life, they simultaneously recognize it as an incomplete but largely untapped mediator of the history of human experience (via language), and thus a promising source of rational self-knowledge. Specifically, myth can illuminate fragments of both the contingent factors that led to human sociality becoming entwined with domination, while also offering momentary reflections of the kinds of life that were relinquished in the drive for instrumentalised survival. I propose that for Horkheimer and Adorno it is myth’s linguistic mediation between a community of speakers and their (often violent and ambiguous) pasts that is unique. It is thus myth’s capacity to offer a meditation on those other possibilities of human existence that presents a renewed chance of enlightenment.

More and Happier Women: On the Political Significance of Wittgenstein and Hinge Epistemology

Abstract The paper presents a Wittgensteinian account of the concept woman, in terms of family resemblance. This approach is deemed superior to the Carnapian account, championed by Sally Haslanger, in that it allows for more inclusivity and to locate the source of sexism not so much in the very concept of woman but in the beliefs sexist people have about women. The compatibility of this account with semantic externalism is explored, as well as its relationship with stereotypes and paradigmatic examples of women. It is further shown how present-day attempts to extend the application of the concept of woman beyond human females may be made sense in terms of a change of hinges—that is, of the rules of evidential significance, which a community of speakers brings to bear on the determination of whether a person is a woman. Finally, it is argued that, despite Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical quietism, such an account is politically significant. This in turn shows that in fact Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical pronouncements far from being inimical to political and societal change may in fact be conducive to it.

Bridging Language Barriers in COVID-19 Research: Descriptive Study of AccesoCovid.com's Reach and User Engagement.

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the challenge of swiftly disseminating research findings to a global audience. Language barriers further exacerbated disparities in access to timely scientific information, particularly for non-English speaking communities. The majority of COVID-19 research was published in English, limiting accessibility for Spanish-speaking populations. This paper aims to assess the reach and effectiveness of AccesoCovid.com, a platform designed to disseminate up-to-date COVID-19 research in both English and Spanish, addressing the language gap in scientific communication. AccesoCovid.com was developed through a partnership between the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). The website's performance and user engagement were evaluated using Google Analytics over a span of 2 years. Key metrics included user language preference, geographical distribution, and site traffic. The website summarized and translated 1032 articles on various COVID-19 topics, such as "Pharmaceutical Interventions and Vaccines." From February 2021 to February 2023, the platform attracted 57,000 users. Of the 43,000 unique new visitors, 84.2% (n=36,219) hailed from Spanish-speaking regions. The majority accessed the site organically through search engines, with 88.4% (n=38,000) of users arriving this way, while 5000 (11.6%) users accessed the site directly. Most users (n=30,894, 72.1%) preferred the Spanish version of the site. The website's most accessed category was "Pharmaceutical Interventions and Vaccines," followed by "Clinical Presentation and Management" and "Mental Health." Regarding language distribution, 72.1% (n=30,894) of users primarily used Spanish; 21.4% (n=9215) used English; and 6.7% (n=2891) spoke other languages, including Portuguese, Chinese, and German. Geographically, the website attracted visitors from 179 countries, with the highest visitor counts from Mexico (n=12,342, 28.7%), Spain (n=6405, 14.9%), the United States (n=4416, 10.3%), and Peru (n=3821, 8.9%). AccesoCovid.com successfully bridged a critical language gap in the dissemination of COVID-19 research. Its success underscores the pressing need for multilingual scientific resources. The platform demonstrated significant user engagement and reach, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries. This highlights the potential for similar platforms to ensure equitable access to scientific knowledge across diverse linguistic communities. Future efforts should focus on expanding to other languages and conducting formal evaluations to enhance user satisfaction and impact.

Lament and Hope: The Function and Utilization of the Metaphors in Psalm 80

In previous studies of Psalms, “metaphors” have often been seen as just ‘poetic ornaments’ rather than as essential elements for conveying messages. However, this study delves into the roles and functions of metaphors within a Psalm to emphasize its dominant theological message. Psalm 80 uses three metaphors—the shepherd, planter, and father—to express its message. These metaphors serve three main purposes. First, they intensify the Psalmist’s sense of lament by deviating from familiar expectations associated with these metaphors, such as ‘leading’, ‘caring for’, and ‘feeding’. Second, they highlight the paradox of lament and hope, as the shepherd and planter metaphors, used for lament, also convey hope for salvation and restoration. Third, the Psalmist intentionally uses these metaphors to articulate the development of Yahweh’s actions and his own self-awareness. An example of this intentional usage could be seen in the use of the father metaphor in 4th and 5th stanza. The functions and roles of these three-metaphors reveal the main theological message of Ps 80 by clarifying the identity of the speaker community as ‘son’.

Dusza człowieka we współczesnym świecie. Dwa ujęcia: Wisławy Szymborskiej oraz Olgi Tokarczuk i ich przemieszczenie w przekładzie

The article offers an analysis of the linguistic-cultural concept of dusza/soul present in two literary works by contemporary Polish Nobel-Prize winners, as well as in their translations to English: Wisława Szymborska’s poem Trochę o duszy and Olga Tokarczuk’s story Zgubiona dusza. Their English translations are, respectively: A Few Words on the Soul (trans. Stanisław Barańczak and Clare Cavanagh) and The Lost Soul (trans. Antonia Lloyd-Jones). Alternative translation attempts by BA translation students at the University of National Education Commission in Kraków are also discussed. The two texts share the idea that today’s world, with its haste, attention deficit, and consumerism, is not a friendly place for the human soul. In their search for the human soul, both authors prompt similar solutions: a person must return to a small world of their own, or their inner reality, far from fast progress and globalisation. The present analysis takes a cognitive-ethnolinguistic perspective and begins by considering the entity named dusza in Polish and soul in English as cultural-linguistic concepts, tracing the similarities and differences conventionalised in the two languages, and thus the status of those concepts in the respective linguistic worldviews. This leads to an interpretation of Szymborska’s poem and Tokarczuk’s story as non-standard, individual, literary realisations of the standard worldview shared by the community of speakers of Polish. In this context, the English translations can be viewed as records documenting the transfer of the Polish concept of dusza to a new cultural-linguistic location. This approach is grounded in the idea of culture as an iceberg, where individual texts are viewed as expressions of an underlying cultural content.

Resemblance by meaning and culture between Singapore English and Singapore Mandarin

Abstract Resemblance between languages could be due to relatedness in terms of etymology. Varieties of the same language or dialects resemble one another in many ways because they are related. The languages within a language family, descendants of a common ancestral language, also resemble one another in some ways. To contemplate resemblance between two languages, one could consider their mutual intelligibility or other kinds of formal similarities. For example, while the Chinese languages are not mutually intelligible, they exhibit very similar grammatical patterns. They are all tonal and share a largely common writing system. This paper, however, proposes another way of appreciating language resemblance. It has been observed in the Singapore context that when two different languages, English and Mandarin, are adopted by a community of speakers as dominant languages, over time, the two languages become nativized and resemble each other in terms of meaning, ways of speaking and the cultural values they embody. The Singaporean bilingual speakers in question are offspring of people from Southern Chinese culture who, as recent as a few generations ago, spoke neither English nor Mandarin as a dominant language. This paper presents evidence to show how Singapore English and Singapore Mandarin, which are mutually unintelligible, may resemble each other in terms of meaning, ways of speaking and cultural values.

Shifts in digital media usage before and after the pandemic by Rusyns in Ukraine

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic touched every corner of the globe, even impacting the sphere of linguistics in terms of communication, lexis, and how linguists conduct their research. However, Rusyn, a minority language in Ukraine’s Transcarpathian region, took advantage of this period in a new attempt at revitalization. Rusyn is spoken in several European countries and has the privilege of being recognized and protected in most of them. Ukraine does not, however, consider Rusyn to be a language, and, therefore, does not protect it. There have been several movements for recognition and autonomy in the past, but all have been unsuccessful. The pandemic gave this small community of speakers a new chance to elevate their work towards boosting the language’s vitality and status through digital platforms such as YouTube and collective writing projects. This paper looks at the before-and-after of the pandemic in relation to Rusyn in Transcarpathia, focusing on the shift in digital approaches to protecting and promoting the language. It concludes that, in fact, a shift has occurred in terms of utilizing digital media in order to promote the language.

Human and Nature Interactions in Kesar Lall’s Folk Tales from Nepal: An Eco-Critical Reading

Folktales are traditional stories orally handed down to the succeeding generations. They portray the co-existence and collaborations of humans, non-human characters and environments. This study explores the relations and interactions of humans, non-humans and nature in Kesar Lall’s Folk Tales from Nepal: The Origins of Alcohol and other Stories from ecocritical perspective. It has used ecocriticism as a theoretical tool. It is a library and qualitative research. The main finding of this study portrays the association and interactions among humans, non-humans and nature. The attitude of humans exploits the biological and physical environment for the sake of humans. Humans have hostile relations with non­­-humans like ogre in the natural world. The folktales demonstrate metamorphosis nature of gods and nagas. They portray the death of human beings as the natural process. They have abundant evidences of environments, and they transfer the value of ecological wisdom more to the readers. This study increases the environmental literacy of youths and expands the Nepali folktales to English speaking communities.

Pronombre o adjetivo demostrativo o este… marcador del discurso: El uso del marcador del discurso este en el español de México

This paper aims to present observations on the pragmaticalized use as well as the concomitant functions of the demonstrative este in Mexican Spanish. Este seems to serve an additional range of functions in Mexican Spanish in particular, but also in other Hispanic American varieties, as it has turned into a quite productive discourse marker that can be considered, among other things, as a hesitation element, an outline signal, and probably also as an evidentiality marker. The specific functional domains (especially with regard to possible evidential functions) will be illustrated in more detail in the paper using oral language data from the speaker community of the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca de Juárez. The study also includes a sociolinguistically oriented quantitative analysis, the results of which will also be discussed in the context of language ideological attitudes towards este.

English Code-Mixings in WhatsApp interactions among Spanish adolescents and their orthographic competence

Aims: The widespread use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) among adolescents has favored the creation of a newly written code called digitalk. This new code includes, among other characteristics, the use of foreign words as textisms, mainly anglicisms. These textisms also serve as a mark of identity among young speakers. The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to describe which are the more frequent anglicisms used by Spanish adolescents in their CMC and the code-mixing pathways of inclusion; second, to examine the possible influence between the use of anglicisms in the CMC of Spanish adolescents and their orthographic competence. Method: Based on an exploratory methodology, a corpus of interactions through WhatsApp of a group of adolescents attending Compulsory Secondary Education in a region of southern Spain has been analyzed. Data analysis: Sketch Engine software was used for corpus analysis, presenting the normalized frequency (1/1,000) of textisms, misspellings, and multimodal elements. Finally, for the descriptive statistical analysis of the data and for the bivariate correlation analysis applying Pearson’s coefficient, IBM SPSS v.26 software was used. Findings: The results indicate that young people use English Code-Mixings (ECM) as discursive framers with an expressive aim and as a sign of belonging to a specific community of speakers. Moreover, no positive correlation is observed between the use of these ECMs and a lower orthographic competence. Implications: ECMs show an important pragmatic function in CMC among Spanish adolescents. Furthermore, they are one of the elements that have been incorporated into the digital norm of Spanish and can be used in Compulsory Education as a resource for the acquisition of communicative competence in adolescents along with other textisms. Originality: This is the first research that analyzes the frequency and function of anglicisms in Spanish CMC and their impact on the orthographic competence of Spanish adolescents.

ОСОБЕННОСТИ ЗАНЯТОСТИ И ТРУДОВОГО ПОВЕДЕНИЯ РУССКОГОВОРЯЩИХ ЖЕНЩИН, ПРОЖИВАЮЩИХ В ЗАРУБЕЖНЫХ СТРАНАХ

The object of the study is the work and employment behavior of Russian-speaking women living in foreign countries. The subject of the study is a set of socio-economic relations that develop in connection with the work and employment behavior of this category of women. The information base for the study is scientific publications, materials from Russian-speaking communities, and indepth structured interviews conducted by the authors. The prerequisites for the term “relocant” and its main differences from the terms “emigrant”, “refugee”, and “expat” are analyzed. Women are classified according to their moving reasons and status in the new country. Two groups of women who left before and after February 2022 have been identified and characterized. The study reveals that the main social interactions during professional fulfillment take place in the Russian-speaking environment, and also that the unofficial employment of Russian-speaking women generally prevails over the official one. The most common areas of employment for Russian-speaking women are described. Features of employment behavior when Russian-speaking women move to other countries have been identified: the desire to start their own business, increase creativity in the workplace, etc. Sources of support for this category of women, including Russian-speaking women's communities, and a classification of such communities have been studied and developed. Based on the research results, the authors conclude that Russianspeaking women successfully join foreign businesses, compete with local entrepreneurs, and find completely new niches for their business projects, but often their employment remains unofficial. Recommendations are made that special support communities for Russian-speaking migrants in receiving countries on the part of local authorities and the public, as well as various Russian speaking communities, would be useful.

Establishment of a Chinese Paremiological Minimum Based on International English Media

Paremiological Minimum (PM) is defined as a set of proverbs that all members of a particular speech community know or an average adult is expected to know (Ďurčo, 2015b). Acquiring such frequently used proverbs will lead to meaningful and effective communication by native speakers or foreign speakers (Mieder, 1993). The study of creating PM has been conducted in many countries globally for at least 50 years, but no researcher has engaged in PM for Chinese language. Classic Chinese proverbs are discourse symbols that embody Chinese values and represent traditional Chinese culture, and are frequently quoted by dignitaries from various countries and overseas media. This study proposes to build a Chinese Paremiological Minimum (CPM) by investigating Chinese proverbs in FACTIVA (2012-2021), from the media of English-language speaking communities with a view to identity the frequently quoted Chinese proverbs. Meantime, four selection criteria are placed emphases on the process of creating CPM: Currency, Internationality, Frequency and Authenticity, namely CIFA frame, different from the previous research approaches which merely focused on the frequency or familiarity for the PM creation. The establishment of CPM is bond to promote a further insight into the Chinese mind, language and culture, resulting in long-term benefits to speakers of other languages and English language learning and teaching in China, for the mastery of PM is an effective way to enhance language proficiency and understanding in intercultural communication.

Manx speakers, language, and identity

Manx, the Goidelic language of the Isle of Man, has no extant traditional native speakers. However, thanks to the efforts of language activists and others involved in language revival, there exists a community of around 2200 people who claim competence in the language (Isle of Man Government 2021), of which a smaller portion will have advanced competence in Manx. All members of the Manx speaker community could be described as ‘new speakers’, having acquired this revitalized minority language primarily through means other than first language transmission in the home (O’Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo 2015: 1). The members of the Manx new speaker community, despite many having acquired “a socially and communicatively consequential level of competence” (Jaffe 2015: 25) in the traditional language of the Isle of Man, vary in terms of their national, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. Postmodern approaches to sociolinguistics challenge the assumption of a straightforward link between identity, especially national identity, and linguistic practice. The complexity of the elationship between language and identity is especially evident in cases of multilingual minority language communities – such as the extant Celtic-speaking communities. The present paper explores the relationship between identity and language use among Manx new speakers. It discusses the following specific question: How do new speakers of Manx understand and identify with ‘Manxness’? The paper uses a corpus of sociolinguistic interview and ethnographic observation data gathered from fieldwork among the Manx new speaker community as part of the author’s PhD thesis. The researcher, a Manx new speaker herself, spent six months gathering data, both through traditional sociolinguistic methods, such as interviews and questionnaires, and through ethnographic methods, namely participant observation in various contexts. The analysis of this novel spoken corpus offers a much-needed view into identity and language use in a 21st-century Celtic language community that lacks extant native speakers.

Materials from Kildin Saami: A trickster tale and a personal narrative

The article presents two folklore texts in Kildin Saami. These texts were recorded in 1960 and 1975, respectively, and have since been stored in EMSUKA. They were transcribed and translated du‑ ring fieldwork in 2022. The texts represent two widespread genres of oral tradition: a trickster tale and a personal narrative about a su‑ pernatural encounter (also called a memorate). The Saami texts are supplemented with a Cyrillic transcription and a Russian translation so as to make the publication available to the community of native speakers.

“That's why I never learned English from Indonesian teachers”:

This study aims to examine the extent to which native-speakerism (NS) is embedded in the comments responding to a YouTube video entitled “Salah Kursus Bahasa Inggris?- Seleb English” by a YouTuber named Sacha Stevenson. The researchers believe that native-speakerism, an ideology that creates a power imbalance favoring native speakers of English over nonnative speakers of English, is present in the video, in which the content creator scrutinizes Indonesian people’s English accents. However, this paper focuses on the comments responding to the video, since they can show to what extent NS is adopted by EFL speakers/learners in Indonesia. The data was retrieved using YouTube Data API and Python programming language, sorted using Microsoft Excel, and categorized by applying three reading steps into four levels which spans from 0 (no indication of native speakerism) to 3 (strong indication of native speakerism). The findings are presented descriptively and analyzed within the theoretical framework on NS. The results suggest that NS is present in the observed comments on all four levels, which suggests how deeply embedded the NS ideology within the community of Indonesian English language learners and speakers. Suggestions on how to counter this ideology are presented in conclusion.

Armenian (Yerevan Eastern Armenian and Beirut Western Armenian)

Armenian (or , /hɑjeˈɾen/, ISO 639-1 hy) comprises an independent branch of the Indo-European language family.1 Its earliest attested ancestor is Classical Armenian in the fifth century CE (see Godel 1975; Thomson 1989; DeLisi 2015; Macak 2016). Modern Armenian is classified into two dialect families: Eastern Armenian (ISO 639-3 hye) and Western Armenian (ISO 639-3 hyw). Eastern Armenian is spoken in modern-day Armenia, and large speaker communities also exist in Georgia, Russia and Iran (shown in Figure 1). Western Armenian was historically spoken in the Ottoman Empire, but now includes varieties spoken throughout the Armenian diaspora in the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas (Donabédian 2018). There are substantial Western Armenian speaker communities in Turkey (Istanbul), Lebanon (Beirut), Syria (Aleppo, Damascus), California (Fresno, Los Angeles County), France (Marseilles), Australia (Sydney) and Argentina (Buenos Aires). There are also recent diaspora communities of Eastern Armenian speakers in California (Karapetian 2014), as well as communities of Western Armenian speakers in Armenia who escaped the Armenian genocide during World War I, who repatriated after World War II, or who fled the ongoing Syrian civil war. UNESCO lists Western Armenian as an endangered language in Turkey, and there are significant language promotion efforts in many diaspora communities that are intended to combat declining use by speaker generations born in the Americas and Europe (Al-Bataineh 2015; Chahinian & Bakalian 2016).

Эвристический потенциал психолингвистических словарей разного типа

The article considers the heuristic possibilities of using psycholinguistic dictionaries (associative and associative-semantic) for modeling fragments of the linguistic consciousness of certain groups (sociocultural communities) of native speakers, and builds a “three-dimensional” model of the subjective semantics of individual stimuli in a comparative slice and trend modes. The authors characterize the main associative dictionaries created on the basis of the results of all-Russian and regional experiments, show the possibilities of “large” and “small” psycholinguistic dictionaries in the aspect of modern scientific research. The implementation of the heuristic potential of regional dictionaries is shown on the example of comparative slice and trend descriptions of the semantics of the stimulus “life”. Associative fields from the “Associative Dictionary of a Teenager” (composed in 2002), the new associative base of this dictionary made up in 2021, associative and semantic experiments conducted by the authors in Omsk in 2010 – 2012 and in 2022 are used as material for such descriptions. To analyze the composition of the fields, it was important to analyze the stable and mobile zones of the subjective semantics of the stimulus, the verbal expression of the semantic areas associated with the stimulus, the behavior of frequency reactions of the respondents of different age and social groups, the prevalence of nonstandard (slang, colloquial) and foreign language reactions.

The Development of Community Education and Language: An Exploration of the Riam Panjang in the Interior of West Kalimantan

The study of the implications of education on societal change is important in social and educational contexts. This study was conducted in that context; it aims to describe how the implications of citizens ' education on their language. Data were collected in Riam Panjang Village, Kapuas Hulu. The place is more in the upper reaches of the Kapuas River, about 400 km from Pontianak, the capital of West Kalimantan province. Data were collected through interviews and observation. Data analysis was conducted with the approach of Cresweell (2015). In conclusion, the rapidly growing education in Riam Panjang has transformed monolingual societies into multilingual ones in the last 30 years. The community of speakers who initially spoke one language (monolingual), namely Malay Ulu Kapuas, became a bilingual community that spoke other Malay languages (Indonesian, Pontianak language), as well as several other languages. Changes are contributed by the need for interaction of society with the outside world, as a result of development and globalization. The implication of this study is the need for specific policies of decision makers about regional language retention. If there is no specific policy, it is feared that regional languages will become extinct, and that means part of the wealth of communal knowledge will also be extinct.