Foreigner Talk Research Articles

The effect of foreigner talk on children’s evaluations of addressees

Children evaluate others based on how they speak, but do children evaluate others based on how they are spoken to? We examined how U.S. children and adults (N = 170 5- to 10-year-olds, 49 % female; 107 adults; in a city with a foreign population of 17.9 %) evaluated addressees of Foreigner Talk (i.e., slow, loud, simplified speech). In Study 1, children and adults evaluated Foreigner Talk addressees more negatively than Peer Talk or Teacher Talk addressees. In Study 2, adults and older children incorporated Foreigner Talk with additional contextual cues to inform their evaluations: a local peer receiving Foreigner Talk received lower evaluations than a foreign peer receiving Foreigner Talk. With medium to large effect sizes, these studies indicate the importance of speech register in children’s social inferences.

How Foreign Residents Evaluate “Foreigner Talk” —Focusing on both “emotion” and “understanding”—

How Foreign Residents Evaluate “Foreigner Talk” —Focusing on both “emotion” and “understanding”—

Attuning to linguistically less-fluent interlocutors: evidence from convergence in Danish and Finnish foreigner talk

Attuning to linguistically less-fluent interlocutors: evidence from convergence in Danish and Finnish foreigner talk

Can We Witness the (Re)making of a Pidgin in Real Time? Contact in the Russian–Chinese Border Area

The empirical focus of this paper is on the interethnic communication along the Russian–Chinese border. Language contact in this area has a long history; in the 18th century, it resulted in a contact variety, the so-called Kyakhta language, or Russian–Chinese pidgin, which fell into disuse after a century. The contact has resumed recently, and we are currently witnessing the emergence of new contact varieties in real time in the area. The reported research aimed to study language contact as a social practice and gain access not only to linguistic facts but also to speakers’ perceptions of them revealed in interviews and conversations. The discussion is based on field data collected between 2008 and 2010 in Zabaykalskiy Krai in Russia and in the province of Inner Mongolia in China. The study reveals different non-standard varieties emerging through interethnic interactions in the border area, and uncovers linguistic features that were typical of Russian–Chinese pidgin (and impossible in Standard Russian) being ‘reinvented’ now both in the Chinese ethnolect of Russian and in some extreme forms of foreigner talk employed by Russian speakers professionally involved in regular communication with Chinese speakers. The paper stresses the role of the professionalization of communication for pidgin development.

When Native Speakers Meet Non-Native Speakers: A Case Study of Foreigner Talk

This study was triggered by speech modification in English overseas Chinese students encounter and find puzzling. Foreigner talk (FT) is such a type of modified speech used by native speakers (NSs) in their communication with non-native speakers (NNSs) in the form of linguistic simplification and foreigner-directed communication strategies. Based on a case study between Canadian and Chinese students, this study investigated FT through natural NS-NNS conversations and surveyed participants’ views on FT. The findings go beyond illustrating the features of FT in phonology, lexicon, syntax and discourse to unfold native and non-native speakers’ opposing views on FT, a conflict caused by NSs’ and NNSs’ different communicative goals based on communication accommodation theory (CAT), a sociolinguistic framework. This study is significant because a good understanding of this conflict, understudied by existing FT research, is vital to arousing NSs’ and NNSs’ awareness of each other’s attitudes towards FT to promote mutual understanding for effective NS-NNS communication.

Handling language

Abstract This paper addresses the question of how speakers adapt their gestures according to their interlocutor’s proficiency level in the language of the interaction especially in the specific context of foreign language teaching. We know that speakers make changes in their speech when addressing a non-native speaker, called Foreigner Talk (Ferguson, 1975) to make their speech more comprehensible. However, whether and how gestures are also modified along with speech has hardly been addressed in the literature. In this study, we examined the speech and gesture of future teachers of French in a word explanation task to see what types of adjustments they made when explaining a word to a native speaker and a non-native speaker. We had ten future teachers of French explain the same 12 words to a native and a non-native speaker of French and compared the explanations. We found that the future teachers produced significantly more gestures, significantly longer gestures in duration, significantly more illustrative (iconic and deictic) gestures, and significantly larger gestures when addressing a non-native interlocutor. These results show that native speakers make not only speech adjustments but also gesture adjustments in addressing non-native speakers.

Handgebaren in interacties met anderstaligen: een detailanalyse

Foreigner Talk refers to a repertoire of linguistic and non-verbal strategies that a language community regards as appropriate in interactions with less proficient L2 speakers. Such adaptations often include the use of hand gestures, as illustrated by different communication guidelines. However, research on gestures in Foreigner Talk has almost exclusively focused their ability to illustrate concrete actions and objects, limiting our understanding of how more abstract gestures can be helpful in interactions with L2 speakers. In this paper, we propose a qualitative analysis of gestures in four excerpts from a corpus of semi-spontaneous conversations between L1 and L2 speakers and we highlight gestures that motivate their meaning at different degrees of abstraction.

Positive Evidence and Negative Evidence in Second Language Classroom

Second language theories of language learning have to acknowledge the role that input plays a fundamental role in the process of second language learning (SLL) and the benefit of the interaction between participants in the classroom. As it was known, there are two major types of input: Positive Evidence (or Primary Linguistics Data) and Negative Evidence and both are available in second language acquisition. 
 Positive evidence is a kind input that learners receive concerning the target language itself in a natural linguistic environment. It can be provided as authentic input, like what occurs in naturalistic conventions, or as modified input, like what occurs in foreigner talk discourse or teacher talk. To this end, the current paper aims to review and discuss the literature of whether or not each of these input is usable in second language acquisition.

The development of children's identification of foreigner talk.

Although children's use of speech registers such as Baby Talk is well documented, little is known about their understanding of Foreigner Talk, a register addressed to non-native speakers. In Study 1, 4- to 8-year-old children and adults (N = 125) heard 4 registers (Foreigner Talk, Baby Talk, Peer Talk, and Teacher Talk) and predicted who would receive each. By 5 years, children selected the target addressee of Foreigner Talk above chance. In Study 2, 5- to 8-year-old children and adults (N = 94) completed a register match task manipulating 3 addressee cues: language, appearance, and origin. Prior to 7-8 years of age, children did not use the language cue alone when identifying the addressee of Foreigner Talk, and at no age did children use one cue more than another. In contrast, adults made use of language and appearance more than the origin cue. These findings suggest that an understanding of Foreigner Talk emerges by school age yet also undergoes developmental change. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for The Development of Children’s Identification of Foreigner Talk

Supplemental Material for The Development of Children’s Identification of Foreigner Talk

Foreigner Talk in Conversation from YouTube Channel Abroad in Japan

This paper entitled

LANGUAGE ADJUSTMENT ON A CONTACT SITUATIONS BETWEEN NATIVE SPEAKERS AND ADVANCED JAPANESE LEARNERS: A COMPARISON WITH NATIVE SPEAKERS SITUATIONS (母語話者と上級日本語学習者の接続場面における言語調整：母語場面との比較)

The situations where both native and non-native speakers participate in a conversation are called contact situations. In these situations, both native and non-native speakers make verbal behaviour adjustments to achieve a smooth conversation. Adjustments by native speakers usually are made in form of Foreigner Talk (FT) while adjustments by non-native speakers made by performing communication strategies (CS). The common point between FT and CS comes from the lack of language ability or resource deficit. However, higher the non-native speakers’ second language proficiency, the adjustments made by both speakers are expected to be more complex. This paper is aiming to investigate those verbal adjustments made by native speakers in the contact situations with advanced learners / non-native speakers. To do it, this paper is employing n-gram method to gain the database of collocation and its occurrence frequency. The data for this research are Nagoya University Conversation Corpus and Nagoya University Japanese Learners Corpus. From the data, this paper found verbal behaviour adjustments which takes form in expressions such are “un” which coined at the end of own utterance, “tokaitte”, and “sounanda”.

Pidgin as a counterlanguage

AbstractA close-up on the linguistic interactive scene between Arab employers and Asian migrants communicating today in Asian Migrant Pidgin Arabic shows that migrant talk and native Arabs’ foreigner talk are different but interdependent. Here, it appears that the interactants are constantly navigating across one of two continua which sometimes meet and overlap. Arabic Foreigner Talk is further analysed from the perspective of the linguistic strategies deployed by Arabs to exert power over the migrants: self-facilitating, excluding, and mocking strategies. However, from a tool of communication and/or exclusion, the pidgin is also becoming one of transgression used by both Arabs and the migrants to oppose their respective hegemonic cultures – that of the masters for the migrants, that of religion for the Arabs.

The impact of work environment on verbs in Gulf Pidgin Arabic

AbstractIn this paper, I propose that the Arabic-based migrant pidgin Gulf Pidgin Arabic (GPA) is shaped by the initial work environment of its speakers. My data consist of recordings of conversations with 16 GPA speakers living in Oman and the United Arab Emirates, who have learned the language working either as shopkeepers or as maids in private homes. By looking at the use of verb forms, I find that the maids use significantly more verbs derived from imperatives than the shopkeepers, and argue that this is the result of the social context in which they work. I then compare the speech of the maids to the speakers of Pidgin Madam (PM) in Lebanon, who work in a similar environment, and show that while these two varieties share the preponderance of imperative verbs, the feminine-derived forms which make up most of the verbal inventory of PM are comparatively rare in maids’ GPA. I attribute this to the existence of similar yet distinct foreigner talk norms in the Gulf and in Lebanon, each of them reflecting the composition of the migrant population in their respective regions.

Foreigner talk through word reduction in native/non-native spoken interactions

We explore the properties of foreigner talk through word reduction. Word reduction signals that the speaker is referring to the same entity as previously and should be preserved for foreigner talk. However, it leads to intelligibility loss, which works against foreigner talk. Pairs of speakers engaged in a task where native speakers talked either to a native or non-native listener. Natives talking to non-natives performed foreigner talk for duration and intensity. Duration and intensity were reduced for native and non-native listeners equally. These results suggest that word reduction is insensitive to communicative adjustments in the context of foreign talk.

Foreigner Talk and Communication Strategies: A Socio-linguistic Study of Interactions with Foreigners in Saudi Arabia

The study of language is as much a part of linguistics as it is of sociolinguistics. After all, language is a social phenomenon and operates within the paradigm of society and culture. Taking off from here, we observed in the course of our informal interviews and interactions with the native and the foreign populations of Saudi Arabia that communication was at a grave loss as neither of the two could arrive at a language that acted as a facilitator rather than a barrier to communication. More specifically, we undertook the study of a new register, ‘Foreigner Talk’ in order to highlight the problem areas in this type of communication set up. Direct empirical data went on to prove our hypotheses correct: Natives who are in constant contact of ‘foreigners’ needed training in linguistics in order to communicate well with the latter and contribute constructively towards building the image of KSA. In the current situation, there is an atmosphere of suspicion and mis-communication leading to loss of image and, at times, finances to the Kingdom of Saudi Arab. We have ventured into making certain recommendations for optimum correction of the imbalance. The researcher is convinced that sustained effort as recommended will positively influence the situation.

Density and complexity of oral production in interaction: The interactionist approach and an alternative

AbstractThis study examined conversational interaction between second language (L2) learners and native speakers (NSs). While L2 interaction research has traditionally quantified interactional moves – the interactionist approach, the present study examined various surface linguistic indices (e.g., MLUs, number of verb and noun types, and TTRs) and compared learner-learner vs. learner-NS interaction. The results indicated that learners and NSs were comparable in terms of the amount of production but the NSs’ speech contained more grammatical and lexical variability with a larger mean proportion of copula omissions. This foreigner talk was found to be correlated with learners’ errors. When learners’ output in the two conditions was compared, it was found that learners produced more verb (but not noun) types with larger MLUs and TTRs in the peer interaction context.

Unity and diversity across Asian migrant Arabic pidgins in the Middle East

Several pidginized varieties of Arabic developed in the Middle East during the last 40 years between native Arabic-speaking employers and Asian migrants, who are mainly from the Indian subcontinent. This paper postulates the presence of a meta-category called Asian Migrant Arabic Pidgins (AMAP) under which would be grouped all the varieties attested from the Gulf area and from Lebanon, and it proposes to account for both unity and diversity between them in terms of a set of parameters where purely linguistic developments interact with contextual ones. The analysis of the social situation and of the available linguistic data shows that migrants’ mobility across the region is the major factor for homogenizing both native Arabic-speakers’ foreigner talk and migrants’ pidgin Arabic, thus validating the over-arching category of AMAP and proposing it as a useful framework for further studies of said data.

Speaking of the past

In rudimentary communication with foreigners, the most basic need is to express wishes and to give orders. Accordingly, verbal forms in foreigner-directed speech and pidgins often derive etymologically from imperatives or infinitives in the lexifier language. In more developed communication the need arises to refer to past events. In this paper, the development of past time reference from foreigner-directed speech to pidgin is investigated on the basis of data from Arabic-based pidgins, notably from Pidgin Madam, Gulf Pidgin Arabic, and Juba Arabic. These data are compared with the development of past tense reference in foreigner talk registers and pidgins based on other languages.

Fingierte Lernersprachen

Abstract One of the most significant tasks in forensic analysis of written discourse is to examine whether a text is genuine or in some way falsified. In order to deceive the addressee of a blackmail letter, authors often try to disguise their mother tongue by introducing different kinds of artificial errors. The paper firstly deals with the difficulties one has in judging the authenticity of an error, the cognitive conditions of deliberate error production, and its intended purposes. This is followed by a presentation of the results of a study carried out with 98 German native speakers who were asked to write a blackmail letter simulating a non-native speaker identity. The focus of the corpus analysis lies in the description and interpretation of the morphological and syntactical errors produced by the participants. It shows that many participants singled out identical grammatical categories, and produced similar patterns of errors, resembling the defective structures of German foreigner talk. The results from this study suggest that deliberate error production is affected by the cognitive load caused by the asignment, and is automated to a higher degree, and that its patterns are noticeably shaped by the grammatical structures of the mother tongue.