Multilingual Forms Research Articles

La comunicazione turistica plurilingue: il Progetto “Museo poliglotta"

Tourism communication, especially since the digital turn, has registered several attempts to open to new forms of multilingualism. For instance, the traditional multilingual experience offered by guided tours and audio guides has now been enhanced by social networking tools. Recent research points to the need of interdisciplinary work at the crossroads of linguistics, media sciences and museum studies to investigate communication strategies and linguistic devices by means of which an international audience of tourists can be addressed and get involved in museums in the digital age. The present paper illustrates the first findings of the project “Museo poliglotta”, a project run by two universities in the Italian towns of Bergamo and Brescia in cooperation with local museums with the goal of producing digital multilingual contents for international museum visitors. The empirical part of the paper describes a workshop activity in which students developed Instagram reels in Italian, German and English on the figure of the well-known Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. A number of observations lead to the conclusion that synergies between language research and foreign language teaching on the one hand and museum institutions on the other can bring about important benefits for all parties involved, in particular the possibility to offer professionalising training in the academic world and stimuli to innovate and improve multilingual communication in the museum sector.

Geographical Effect against Linguistic Landscape on Coffee Shop Signboards in West Padang Subdistrict

Language mapping is a new perspective in a linguistic landscape as a novelty of this research. This research described the variation and domination of language use on coffee shop signboards through language mapping and analyzed how the geographical situation and conditions can affect the use of that language. There were 60 coffee shop signboards in the West Sumatra Subdistrict, which is divided into three regions: the city center, taplau, and pondok cino (China town), which became the data population of this research. Several data were selected using random sampling to analyze the reason for language use based on geographical conditions or situations. The research uses qualitative methods to collect data and analyze results using GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and Adobe Photoshop. Using the two software as instruments is an innovation in the method of the linguistic landscape (LL). The analysis began with quantifying language usage, including monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual forms on coffee shop signboards. Subsequently, language mapping was conducted to illustrate language variation and highlight linguistic dominance in specific areas. Finally, the study delved into the rationale behind language selection, considering geographical conditions and situational context evident in the language mapping. Findings revealed the presence of 12 languages on coffee shop signage, including Indonesian, Minangkabau, Javanese, English, Arabic, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish and Chinese. The use of foreign languages was attributed to global influences and societal preferences for modernization and prestige. Moreover, the research underscored the influence of geographical conditions and situational context on linguistic landscapes, impacting shop naming, cultural identity, and commercial objectives within a region.

Language Plurality and Practices of Translation in Sigmund Freud's Work: Another Chapter in the History of Multilingualism in the German-Speaking Lands

abstract: By bringing together various examples of multilingualism in Freud's work, this article addresses the question of how experiences of linguistic diversity and translation might have affected the development of psychoanalytic language thinking. In a historical perspective, by conceiving of humans as essentially polyphonic and every language as ambiguous, Freud's theory stands in remarkable opposition to the romantic conception of a unique mother tongue and the long-standing cultural devaluation of multilingualism in the German-speaking lands. It therefore deserves to be reassessed and integrated into current research on the history of cultural and literary forms of multilingualism.

Literary Mapping of Migration and Multilingualism in São Paulo’s Bom Retiro Neighborhood

Abstract This article examines literary representations of migrant experiences in São Paulo, with a focus on the neighborhood of Bom Retiro. To study how Bom Retiro’s migrant communities of Jews, Koreans, and Bolivians demand new forms of multilingualism, I focus on the 2019 Bolivian novel Seúl, São Paulo by Gabriel Mamani Magne in comparison to Eliezer Levin’s 1972 novel Bom Retiro: o bairro da infância. Whereas Levin employs restricted multilingualism to depict a Jewish diaspora rooted in Brazil, Mamani Magne focuses on migratory flows between Bolivia and more prosperous Latin American countries. By occasionally incorporating unmarked Portuguese and Aymara words into his Spanish prose, Mamani Magne illustrates how movement between languages and places unsettles fixed forms of identity. Taken together, Bom Retiro and Seúl, São Paulo depict how multilingual gestures as part of a minor transnationalism reveal the hierarchies and misunderstandings that constitute life in the global city of São Paulo.

Multilingualism in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater and Zahra Patterson’s Chronology

Multilingualism is one of marginalised authors’ strategies to express their stories and identities when writing in what bell hooks labelled ‘the oppressor’s language’. It allows them to navigate language imbued with contradictions: the language that connects and provides terminology for some marginalised identities while being infused with various oppressive regimes. This article discusses the forms and roles of multilingualism in two queer life-writing texts: written in English and interwoven with African influences, Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater (2018c) is an autobiographical novel; Zahra Patterson’s Chronology (2018) is an experimental autobiographical essay. The scope and the forms of multilingualism differ: in Chronology, a significant part of the text is written in Sesotho; in Freshwater, the passages in Igbo are comparably scarce. Emezi, however, also adopts a non-Western register in the English passages as another strategy of postcolonial writing ‘in character’. The article argues that while the concrete strategies vary, the authors employ multilingualism for similar political and aesthetic purposes: they utilise it to challenge the presumed universality of the Western conceptualisations of identity, gender, and sexuality, to express hybridity and heterogeneity of the narrated identities, and for its potential to create intimacy in the language.

Kontak bahasa dalam lanskap linguistik di Kota Bandar Lampung

This research aims to describe the forms of language phenomena such as monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual in the linguistic landscape of Bandar Lampung city. As one of the major cities in Sumatra, Bandar Lampung is a melting pot of various communities with different backgrounds. Bandar Lampung is also a student city in Lampung Province, which leads to language contact phenomena that arise in Bandar Lampung. The Linguistic Landscape can be used to observe these phenomena. This research is qualitative in nature, and data is obtained from observations made through the Google Maps application. The data collection technique used is note-taking and observation. Data analysis techniques used in this research include data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and concluding. The results of this research indicate the presence of monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual forms in the linguistic landscape of Bandar Lampung. These forms can be seen in syntactic structures such as words, phrases, clauses, and even sentences. The emergence of these three forms is influenced by economic, religious, ethnic, and educational factors. In this research, the researcher restricted the data collection to texts outside of enclosed spaces. Keywords: Bandar Lampung City, bilingual, linguistic landscape, monolingual, multilingual

Promote equal access to COVID19 vaccination: strategies of the Local Authority Toscana SudEst, Italy

Abstract Background In the area of the Local Health Authority Toscana Sud-Est (LHA) 13,5% of residents are foreigners. We aim to assess the impact of our intervention to COVID-19 vaccination coverage. Methods Since summer 2021, LHA has promoted vaccination sessions dedicated to foreign residents with free walk-in access, multilingual forms, flyers and TV interventions, cultural mediators and trained healthcare workers. We collected data about vaccination status of residents (28 December 2020-31 January 2022) and we analysed them using the software STATA to assess vaccine coverage by nationality and the effectiveness of our intervention. The results were adjusted for age and sex. We set significance level at p < 0.05. Results On 31 July 2021, 78% of Italian residents (N = 685289) had received the first dose of vaccine, compared to only 43% of foreign residents (N = 106370). There was a 35% gap. On 31 January 2022, after our intervention, 89% of Italian residents and 71% of foreign residents had received the first dose of the vaccine. The gap was 18%. On 31 January 2022, 50% of residents of all nationalities had received two doses of the vaccine. A significant difference between Italian and foreign residents is still observed after adjustment for age and sex (OR 0.41 95% IC 0.40-0.41). Vaccination adherence is lower in females than males, for both Italian (OR 0.90 0.89-0.91) and foreign residents (OR 0.82 0.79-0.84). This is accentuated within some ethnic groups: Macedonians, Kosovars, Pakistanis. Conclusions The creation of dedicated service guaranteed to reach a high vaccination coverage in all the nationalities and to reduce the gap between host and foreign residents. In foreigners it is lower than in the hosts, so it is necessary to investigate possible cultural factors that may influence hesitancy. A lower vaccination coverage in females, especially in foreigners, may be due to an inferior participation in social and working life as a consequence of the gender gap. Key messages • The creation of dedicated interventions guaranteed to achieve high vaccination coverage in all nationalities. • A lower vaccination adherence in females than males, especially in foreigners, may be due to an inferior participation in social and working life as a consequence of the gender gap.

Multilingualism in the North: From Baklava to Tre Kronor

This article explores processes of place-making through the study of the linguistic landscape of a small-size town in Northern Sweden. The analysis of signs is used as a tool for examining the role and visibility of actors in the landscape. For this purpose, we examine who the authors are, what forms of multilingualism can be observed, and who has agency in the place-making of the public space. Our documentation consists of photos and fieldnotes from observations, encounters, and conversations with people during ethnographic fieldwork in 2019. Using a mixed-methods approach, all signs were first analysed quantitatively according to the categories of authors and function. Regression analysis was used to explore correlations between the categories. Secondly, multilingual signs were analysed qualitatively regarding their function and purpose in relation to their contexts. Our results illustrate a city centre with a strong presence of the Swedish language. Multilingual signs target specific groups and are intended for information, advertisement, rules and regulations; moreover, our findings indicate that the opportunities for private actors to influence the linguistic landscape are limited. The form of multilingualism in this context—visible multilingualism present mainly through English—is different from the one we can see in the socio-demographic data.

The Multilingual Pragmatics of New Englishes: An Analysis of Question Tags in Nigerian English

This paper presents a variational pragmatic analysis of multilingual question tags in Nigerian English, combining a corpus-pragmatic analysis of the Nigerian component of the International Corpus of English with a survey study on the preferences and attitudes of Nigerian students toward different question tag forms. The corpus study highlights multilingual pragmatic variation in terms of form and function of variant as well as English and non-English (i.e., derived from indigenous Nigerian languages) invariant question tags in six text types: conversations, phonecalls, classroom lessons, broadcast discussions, broadcast interviews, and legal cross-examinations. Nigerian speakers combine a wide range of English and non-English invariant forms, whereas variant question tags only play a marginal role and are not characteristic of Nigerian English. Text type influences the overall frequency of question tags and – together with the pragmatic function – constrains the use of individual forms. The survey study shows diverging results as the participants generally prefer variant over invariant question tags and show a strong dispreference for indigenous Nigerian forms when speaking English. Nevertheless, their preferences for specific forms over others are guided by the communicative setting and requirements of a given situation. The students also hold most positive attitudes toward variant question tags, while non-English tags are rated less positively on items reflecting decency. However, all question tag forms are valued in terms expressiveness. Hence, Nigerian students’ dispositions toward multilingual question tag use are guided by a prescriptive ideology that is biased toward canonized English forms. While indigenous Nigerian forms are well integrated into question tag use, indicating a high degree of nativization of Nigerian English at a pragmatic level, acceptance for these local forms is lagging behind. In general methodological terms, the paper shows that question tags – or discourse-pragmatic-features in general – have high potential for studying multilingual variation in New Englishes. However, studies on the multilingual pragmatics of New Englishes need to consider the full range of multilingual forms, take into account variety-internal variation via text type, and should ideally also study the users’ perspectives.

Meertaligheid als strategie voor zelfontplooiing in de briefwisselingen van Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni en Isabelle de Charrière

In Enlightenment Europe multilingualism was an omnipresent fact. Even the correspondences of eighteenth-century writers gave clear evidence of – often strategically chosen – forms of multilingualism. Up until today, the question arises as to why early modern writers used (various forms of) multilingualism in their letters. This paper investigates, for the first time, the hypothesis that early modern writers used multilingualism in their letter writing as a strategy for intellectual and authorial self-fashioning. To that end, it explores the multilingual dimensions of two women writers’ correspondences. Studying the way in which Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni (1713-1792) and Isabelle de Charrière (1740- 1805) actively (re)shaped their intellectual authority and authorial identity by means of multilingualism will prove to provide an excellent stepping stone towards more (comparative) research on the forms and functions of multilingualism in the (life) writing of eighteenth-century male and female writers.

Die drei Ortssprachen Estlands in Edzard Schapers Roman Der Henker und in seiner estnischen Übersetzung

The Three Local Languages of Estonia in Edzard Schaper’s novel The Executioner and in its Estonian Translation. This article analyses the reflection of everyday multilingualism in Edzard Schaper’s novel Der Henker (The Executioner, 1940) and its translation into Estonian by Katrin Kaugver (Timukas, 2002). The novel deals with the 1905 revolution in the current Estonian territory, which was at that time a province of the Russian Empire. The novel was written shortly before the outbreak of World War II and translated into Estonian 60 years later after the end of the Soviet era. The complexity and the fluctuation of the contextual elements between the storyline of the novel, the time of its writing and the time of the translation make the novel a rewarding object of research into settings of multilingualism in everyday life. The article focuses on the manifest and latent forms of multilingualism, on the functions of the local languages, as well as on the question whether it helps to analyse language use in real life situations. It also looks at how local multilingualism, dominated by three local languages – German, Russian and Estonian – has been translated from one local language (German) into another local language (Estonian). The examples chosen in the article highlight some regularities in the use of the local and other languages, and offer a cultural-historical and socio-political interpretation of the use of multilingualism.

Gjin taalsoarch yn de soarch. De rol fan Frysk en Meartaligens yn de soarch- en wolwêzenssektor yn Fryslân

This article discusses how university-level healthcare and welfare course programs in the official bilingual Province of Friesland/Fryslân can best be aligned with healthcare practice regarding the use of Frisian and the inclusion of other forms of multilingualism. 15 interviews with healthcare and welfare professionals confirm previous findings on the significant role of minority languages in the healthcare and welfare sector. When minority languages, such as Frisian, are used the bond between healthcare recipient and care provider is strengthened and the patient is better able to communicate. However, the 9 interviews with lecturers, directors and team leaders of healthcare and welfare programs in Fryslân show that these pay little attention to Frisian and multilingualism in their curriculum. At the same time, it appears that those involved in the teaching understand the importance of addressing communication in Frisian and other languages and recognise that this aspect should be embedded in courses that focus on properly connecting with the personal context of the care recipient. These results will be discussed by providing recommendations for healthcare and welfare programs in higher education on how to incorporate minority languages, in particular, and multilingualism, in general.

Religious performance in Malang, Indonesia: Linguistic landscape on worship sign

The name of worship place is closely related to history, ideology, power, and social. Naming a worship place is a symbol of how power represented through text in public spaces. This study aims to look at an environmental print by investigating the performance of religions in Malang, Indonesia, through the use of language in the names of worship places. Data was taken through photography totaling 157 names of worship place including mosques, churches, Buddhist temples, Hindu temples, and Chinese temples. Linguistic landscape analysis carried out to investigate information and symbolic functions. The results show that writing the name of a place of worship involves seven languages, namely Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, English, Javanese, Sanskrit, Dutch, and Chinese. Monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual forms emerge with Bahasa Indonesia involvement in all patterns. These findings indicate that Bahasa Indonesia has a high level of language competence in society, in addition to language policy, power, and prestige. Bahasa Indonesian used in all places of worship. It also found in English. These two languages combine to support the existence of religious ideologies in the region. Other languages are only able to characterize religious and ethnic identities.

Literacy and literacy practices: Plurilingual connected migrants and emerging literacy

Recent migration towards Europe is characterized by the massive presence of adults whose educational paths have been interrupted and who are thus developing literacy for the first time in a new language. A literacy test elaborated at the University of Palermo, Italy, showed that, on a sample of 774 migrants, about 30 percent could not read and/or write short words. This test assessed the learners’ abilities to read and write, whether in the Roman alphabet or in other writing systems, and whether in Italian or in other languages of learners’ repertoires. These learners with emergent literacy mostly came from sub-Saharan Africa, an area characterized by diverse forms of multilingualism, and are representatives of “connected migrants” due to the centrality of digital communication practices in their migration experience; hence, the importance of research on such communication practices. This study examined the multilingual writing on Facebook of 10 migrants in Italy with emergent literacy. Findings demonstrate that these learners engage in multilingual practices which enhance their literacy competence by adopting strategies reflecting the general process of acquisition in naturalistic contexts. However, emerging writing on Facebook does not reflect participants’ interlanguage and literacy levels elicited through the test.

Governing complex linguistic diversity in Barcelona, Luxembourg and Riga

AbstractContemporary migration has entailed the emergence of new forms of multilingualism in many European cities. The article uses the concept of complex diversity to analyse this dynamic. The concept points at settings where historical forms of multilingualism and more recent patterns of linguistic heterogeneity interact in ways that lead to particularly rich cultural configurations. The authors assess how local authorities deal with multilingualism in three cities that represent ‘most complex’ cases of diversity politics: Barcelona, Luxembourg and Riga. The focus is on policies related to public communication and on the approaches adopted to promote social and political inclusion in ever more multilingual urban environments. In normative terms, the article concludes that political responses to complex diversity should aim both at overcoming linguistic status inequalities based on historical structures of domination and at creating common spaces of communication for diverse citizens.

Why multilingual, and how to keep it-An evolutionary dynamics perspective.

While many languages are in danger of extinction worldwide, multilingualism is being adopted for communication among different language groups, and is playing a unique role in preserving language and cultural diversities. How multilingualism is developed and maintained therefore becomes an important interdisciplinary research subject for understanding complex social changes of modern-day societies. In this paper, a mixed population of multilingual speakers and bilingual speakers in particular is considered, with multilingual defined broadly as zero, limited, or full uses of multiple languages or dialects, and an evolutionary dynamic model for its development and evolution is proposed. The model consists of two different parts, formulated as two different evolutionary games, respectively. The first part accounts for the selection of languages based on the competition for population and social or economic preferences. The second part relates to circumstances when the selection of languages is altered, for better or worse, by forces other than competition such as public policies, education, or family influences. By combining competition with intervention, the paper shows how multilingualism may evolve under these two different sources of influences. It shows in particular that by choosing appropriate interventional strategies, the stable co-existence of languages, especially in multilingual forms, is possible, and extinction can be prevented. This is in contrast with major predictions from previous studies that the co-existence of languages is unstable in general, and one language will eventually dominate while all others will become extinct.

The EU Regulation on Public Documents

The EU Regulation on Public Documents, which has been applicable in the EU Member States since 16 February 2019, seems as yet to be relatively unknown in practice. This is despite the fact that the new rules provided for by the Regulation are designed to facilitate the cross-border circulation of public documents, and in so doing also make the free movement of people within European Union borders considerably easier. As a result, an Apostille is no longer necessary for certain public documents, especially those relating to the area of civil status, as the Regulation means such documents must be recognised as genuine in other Member States without the need for an Apostille. A further benefit is that the need for a translation falls by the wayside too in most cases. Certain public documents may have multilingual forms attached to them to provide a translation guide. As a result, such public documents can be presented directly to the authorities of other EU Member States. This heralds the first steps towards the abolition of the Apostille within EU borders.

Bilingual (English to Bengali) Technical E- Dictionary for Aviation OOV Words

E-dictionaries, quite common today are available for multiple languages in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual forms. In NLP they form the core of a series of tools that are used to understand words, sentences and in turn the language itself. These E-Dictionaries work well for any language domain as a whole. For almost all languages E-dictionaries are available, but once specialized technical domains are encountered these E-Dictionaries are quite useless. Aviation is one such specialized domain for which no E-Dictionary, translation or transliteration tool exist. On the other hand the need for such tools for specialized domains are increasing. The tool discussed in this paper is an attempt to bridge the gap that currently exists between English and Bengali languages.

Participatory research for developing health promotion campaigns for migrants and host community in Berlin, Germany

Abstract Background During the current refugee crisis, hundreds of refugees left their homes and fled to Europe. The country that received the highest rates of refugees was Germany, which above all presented a challenge to the healthcare system. This study aimed to inform the development of a pilot intervention to improve migrants healthcare access in Berlin, Germany. Methods A Metaplan© qualitative technique was applied to ensure the community participation, with three sessions with refugee and asylum seeking women and youth in Arabic, Somali and German languages, and one with professionals. With each group, participants identified issues in migrants’ healthcare, then suggested solutions to address these issues and prioritized these solutions. Results The migrants (n = 30) were mainly from Syria (n = 4), Somalia (n = 14) and other African countries, mainly females (17-53 yrs) and youth (16-18yrs). The professionals’ group (n = 13) included an interdisciplinary team of a psychiatric day clinic. All groups prioritized language barriers as a crucial problem and suggested to work with interpreters to facilitate the communication. Professionals are additionally confronted with cultural differences in the treatment of refugees. Somali women prioritized raising the awareness about Female Genital Mutilation in the healthcare system and also in their community. Other suggestions included supervisors for unaccompanied minors, multilingual forms, increased intercultural competence of health care providers and reducing waiting time for an appointment. Conclusions Future interventions should focus on intercultural competences for professionals and health-promoting information in the specific sociocultural context of migrant communities. This would include the dissemination of multi-lingual doctors’ brochures, interactive training for health care providers as well as informational workshops for migrants to increase their health literacy and promote health-enhancing behaviors.

Zur Rolle der Zweisprachigkeit in ausgewählten Textsorten

The paper deals with the role of multilingualism in selected text types. The reflections on forms of multilingualism and occasions for using multiple languages in a text lead to the creation of a typologythat distinguishes between obligatory and optional use of multiple languages in text types. The obligatory multilingualism is constitutive in dictionaries, textbooks and teaching materials. Optional multilingualism, which was examined using the example of German advertising texts and grave inscriptions from Germany and Denmark, reinforces the main function of the text.