Host Language Research Articles

“Our Needs Our Solutions”: Workshop with Migrant Adolescents on Their Emotional and Relational Needs

Migrant adolescents face unique emotional and relational challenges that can hinder their well-being and development. While prior research has identified many of these challenges, there is limited work exploring migrant adolescents’ perspectives on their needs. This study aims to bridge that gap by adopting a participatory approach to investigate the emotional and relational needs of migrant adolescents in Spain and the solutions they propose to address them. Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory as the theoretical framework, we conducted qualitative participatory research with migrant adolescents. They identified their emotional and relational needs, which were categorised into six thematic areas distributed across the ecological levels. The themes include supporting their families, receiving recognition and emotional support from relatives, improving school and societal experiences, learning the host language, gaining empathy from the local population, and regularising their legal status. The key actors identified to help meet their needs include parents, teachers, peers, society, and policymakers. The participants proposed self-directed solutions to these challenges, such as fostering peer relationships and advocating for policy reforms. The findings suggest that migrant adolescents have valuable insights into their emotional and relational needs, emphasising the importance of involving them in shaping interventions that support their inclusion and mental health.

“Bridging cultures with love”: Spirituality in fostering intercultural effectiveness. The effects of language

Abstract Research yields contradictory results on the relationship between an individual’s spirituality, that is, the relationship with God/the Transcendent, and their cultural development. To address this gap, we conceptualize a model that investigates the effects of two spirituality dimensions, namely felt love for God and love for others, on the behavioral aspect of intercultural competence, that is, intercultural effectiveness (IE), through ethnocentrism. This model undergoes testing using a sample of 144 international students who self-identify as Christians, Muslims, belonging to other religions, and non-religious. The results confirm the positive impact of spirituality on IE by reducing ethnocentrism. We establish suppressing effects of both love for God and love for others, suggesting intricate dynamics of these two spirituality dimensions within the intercultural communication model. Furthermore, we identify the direct effects of host language and English as a lingua franca proficiency on IE. We also define the mitigating effect of host language proficiency on the adverse impact of ethnocentrism on IE. This study underscores the importance of higher education institutions to nurture students’ relational spirituality and support them in overcoming ethnocentric perspectives.

Developing a Graphical Domain-Specific Modeling Language for Efficient Lightweight Block Cipher Schemas Configuration: LWBCLang

The lightweight block cipher is an encryption technique with negligible computational overhead. Despite its advantages, it faces a substantial challenge. Correct handwriting of the script code for the cipher scheme is a challenge for programmers. In this research, we suggest a new graphical domain-specific modeling language to make it easier for both non-technical users and domain specialists to implement lightweight block cipher schemes. The proposed language, called LWBCLang, is a modular and extensible language that offers graphical components for constructing three essential types of inner block cipher structures. Seven different methods of keystream generation and all the tests of the NIST suite with performance analysis are provided. In the context of its meta-model, LWBCLang's abstract and concrete syntaxes are specified. LWBCLang has been implemented as an internal DSML with Python as the host language. The evaluation of LWBCLang is based on qualitative analysis to demonstrate the language's effectiveness and efficiency. Further benefits of this proposed language are evaluated and discussed in depth in this research.

Blending BDI Agents with Object-Oriented and Functional Programming with JaKtA

The popularity of multi-paradigm languages is on the rise, enabling developers to select the most appropriate paradigm for each task. While object-oriented and functional programming are commonly combined, other paradigms can also be hybridized. This paper introduces JaKtA, an internal Domain-Specific Language designed to support the definition of Belief-Desire-Intention agents in Kotlin. Our work represents an initial exploration into blending Agent-Oriented Programming with other prevalent paradigms, emphasizing the potential benefits of using internal Domain-Specific Languages. We demonstrate, through JaKtA, how this approach facilitates the creation of compact and expressive Belief-Desire-Intention agents that seamlessly integrate with the host language, its libraries, and tooling.

Semantics Lifting for Syntactic Sugar

Syntactic sugar plays a crucial role in engineering programming languages. It offers convenient syntax and higher-level of abstractions, as witnessed by its pervasive use in both general-purpose and domain-specific contexts. Unfortunately, the traditional approach of translating programs containing syntactic sugars into the host language can lead to abstraction leakage, breaking the promise of convenience and hindering program comprehension. To address this challenge, we introduce the idea of semantics lifting that aims to statically derive self-contained evaluation rules for syntactic sugars. More specifically, we propose a semantics-lifting framework that consists of (i) a general algorithm for deriving host-independent semantics of syntactic sugars from the semantics of the host language and the desugaring rules, (ii) a formulation of the correctness and abstraction properties for a lifted semantics, and (iii) a systematic investigation of sufficient conditions that ensure a lifted semantics is provably correct and abstract. To evaluate our semantics-lifting framework, we have implemented a system named Osazone and conducted several case studies, demonstrating that our approach is flexible, effective, and practical for implementing domain-specific languages.

Sensitivity by Parametricity

The work of Fuzz has pioneered the use of functional programming languages where types allow reasoning about the sensitivity of programs. Fuzz and subsequent work (e.g., DFuzz and Duet) use advanced technical devices like linear types, modal types, and partial evaluation. These features usually require the design of a new programming language from scratch—a significant task on its own! While these features are part of the classical toolbox of programming languages, they are often unfamiliar to non-experts in this field. Fortunately, recent studies (e.g., Solo) have shown that linear and complex types in general, are not strictly needed for the task of determining programs’ sensitivity since this can be achieved by annotating base types with static sensitivity information. In this work, we take a different approach. We propose to enrich base types with information about the metric relation between values, and we present the novel idea of applying parametricity to derive direct proofs for the sensitivity of functions. A direct consequence of our result is that calculating and proving the sensitivity of functions is reduced to simply type-checking in a programming language with support for polymorphism and type-level naturals. We formalize our main result in a calculus, prove its soundness, and implement a software library in the programming language Haskell–where we reason about the sensitivity of canonical examples. We show that the simplicity of our approach allows us to exploit the type inference of the host language to support a limited form of sensitivity inference. Furthermore, we extend the language with a privacy monad to showcase how our library can be used in practical scenarios such as the implementation of differentially private programs, where the privacy guarantees depend on the sensitivity of user-defined functions. Our library, called Spar, is implemented in less than 500 lines of code.

Language Hierarchies, Liminality, and Resistance in Canadian and Finnish Integration Educations for Adult Migrants

This article explores the effects of language hierarchies within SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) and LINC (Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada) national integration programmes and how discourses of civic integrationism framed around monolingualism and neoliberalism position adult migrant students in the liminal spaces between belonging and othering. Based on research findings obtained during multiple case study fieldwork in Finland and Canada, I examine the underlying norms and subtexts upon which practices of host language acquisition are founded. How students are positioned depends greatly on who serves as an arbiter over which expressions of linguistic diversity are deemed beneficial or obstructive to integration. Migrant liminality within integration educations could be debilitating while simultaneously fostering resistance in transgressing and reimagining essentialist integration policy and pedagogical goals, thus creating opportunities for transformation.

Host language, guest language or hybrid? Language strategy in destination advertising

ABSTRACT Language constitutes an integral part of destination culture and tourists’ experiences. Although the importance of using host language in destination marketing has been highlighted, the effectiveness of the language strategy in forming potential tourists’ visit intention remains unrevealed. Built on optimal arousal theory, this research examines whether and how the hybrid of host and guest languages (called hybrid language display hereafter) in destination advertising is more useful in attracting tourists. Two experiments were conducted using Xizang and Macau as contexts. Results reveal that the ad featuring hybrid language display works better than monolingual ads (either host or guest language only) in attracting potential tourists. Specifically, hybrid language display in a destination ad increases potential tourists’ visit intention because of higher perceived uniqueness of the destination and then curiosity about it. This language strategy in destination advertising is effective regardless of potential tourists’ self-efficacy though especially useful for increasing visit intention of those who are low in self-efficacy. Accordingly, theoretical and practical implications are offered.

Host Communication Styles and Language Variations in Context of TikTok Live-Streaming Commerce

Live-streaming commerce offers a new experience for people in direct buying and selling activities with host plays an important role as an intermediary between sellers and buyers. This research examined the different communication styles and language variations used by hosts in the context of TikTok live-streaming commerce. It explored how hosts engage with their audiences and the language references they employ. This research used a qualitative approach with content analysis methods. The primary data obtained through digital observations on four TikTok Shop accounts that regularly host live streams while interviews are employed as a secondary data. The results showed that hosts predominantly use a task-oriented communication style with emotive behaviors. This style is reflected in the speed and volume of their speech, frequent greetings, and responsive interactions with consumers. Hosts often use informal language, influenced by their linguistic preferences, such as sociolect, which varies by age. It is beneficial for hosts to develop an idiolect to differentiate themselves from others by creating certain unique words or sentences. Overall, live-streaming commerce has created a unique shopping culture where hosts must quickly and clearly explain product details while maintaining effective communication with buyers for a reciprocal exchange of information.

Health literacy and language teaching: data-based host language lexicons

Using a corpus-based approach, this paper presents methods and results for assessing, extracting, and describing the core vocabulary relevant to healthcare access among migrant populations. The aim is to bridge the gap between the basic information conveyed to people arriving in Portugal and the materials as well as other lexicographic resources used in language teaching. The work includes identifying available resources and/or sources for compiling the relevant dataset for healthcare access; selecting available tools for corpus inquiry; testing and comparing results from different functionalities and different lexical statistics measures available in the tools; manual filtering of the data; and analyzing the results and the extracted lexicon. The obtained results reflect the organization of the extracted lexicon in subdomains, the organization of the items within each subdomain, the relationship with common vocabulary, and the extraction of authentic examples from the corpus.

Naturalistic L2 acquisition and the formation of an immigrant variety of Spanish

Immigrants in their host country sometimes take advantage of the assistance offered in order to learn formally the host country language in a classroom setting. This is not always the case. This contribution examines the variety of Spanish that was created by an immigrant who arrived in Spain to work in the restaurant industry. Because of her work situation, she did not take formal Spanish lessons. Rather, she constructed her own variety of Spanish based on input she received on the job and in her interactions with native Spanish speakers. Three aspects of her grammatical system are the focus: tense-aspect marking, copula use, and the pronoun system. The solutions the immigrant created for communication show she has developed a grammar that is different from that of the native speakers of the host language , and its nature is largely predictable by appealing to frequency and detectability of forms in discourse and the process of L1 transfer.

The Effect of Indian Contact and Glaswegian Contact on the Phonetic Backward Transfer of Glaswegian English (L2) on Hindi and Indian English (L1)

This study examined phonetic backward transfer in ‘Glaswasians’, the ethnolinguistic minority of first-generation bilingual immigrant Indians in Glasgow (Scotland), who present a situation of contact between their native languages of Hindi and Indian English (L1s) and the dominant host language and dialect, Glaswegian English (L2). This was examined in relation to the Revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r) and Speech Accommodation Framework. These predict that the migrants’ L1 sound categories can either shift to become more Glaswegian-like (‘assimilation’ or ‘convergence’) or exaggeratedly Indian-like (‘dissimilation’ or ‘divergence’) or remain unchanged. The effect of Indian and Glaswegian Contact on transfer was also investigated. Two control groups (Indians and Glaswegians) and the experimental group (Glaswasians) were recorded reading English and Hindi sentences containing multiple phones which were examined for multiple phonetic features (/t/—VOT, /l/—F2-F1 difference, /b d g/—Relative Burst Intensity). In both languages, Glaswasian /t/ and /g/ became more Glaswegian-like (assimilation), whereas F2-F1 difference in /l/ became exaggeratedly Indian-like (dissimilation). Higher Indian Contact was associated with more native-like values in /t/ and /l/ in Hindi but had no influence on /g/. Higher Glaswegian Contact was related to increased assimilation of /g/ in English but had no effect on /l/ and /t/.

Borrowing and the Conditions of its Acceptability in French

Linguistics is a vast field of study that is concerned with the study of human language. It is subdivided into several disciplines, among which we should mention lexicology, which deals with the study of the lexicon in its meaning, frequency, structure and evolution. The lexicon can be understood and studied under several aspects such as the study of the phenomenon of borrowing from other languages, the process of their integration into the nomenclature of the host language as well as the linguistic policies put in place to in the face of the interrupted influx of foreign lexies. Certainly the loan meets the needs of the evolution of society to name new extralinguistic realities, however their? massive presence in the lexical structure of a language can constitute a real danger to its very existence. This is the reason why language policies have emerged like (the Toubon Law of 1994). The context must be understood to examine this phenomenon

Language dynamics and agency in multilingual research interviews

AbstractIn a world of increasing linguistic diversity, questions of language use and language ideologies in research interviews are gaining increasing importance. This article reports and reflects on language use in research interviews with former refugees in New Zealand and Sweden. In the interviews, multilingual speakers had the option to engage in the host language (English or Swedish, respectively), to bring their own language support person, or to request a professional interpreter. The article suggests that providing these options enabled participants to engage a greater range of linguistic and multimodal resources to create meaning and construct their identities, and also provided opportunities for language learning in the interviews. The article also highlights the importance of acknowledging the role of interpreters in the co‐construction of meaning and what this means for data collection and findings.

Sociocultural predictors of immigrant adjustment and well-being.

Research shows that culture change may pose risks to immigrant wellbeing. Our study examined adult Georgians (N = 431) residing in Greece, Italy, and Germany, and explored associations between their demographic characteristics, sociocultural adjustment, and psychological well-being outcomes. Conducted via electronic self-report survey, the cross-sectional study measured participants' levels of sociocultural adjustment, psychological adjustment, and depression along with the willingness to interact with host nationals, perceived sense of discrimination, history of being undocumented, age and length of relocation, and fluency in host language. The study also examined differences in three subsamples from the standpoint of intercultural distance. Sociocultural Adjustment Scale, Brief Psychological Adaptation Scale, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale and Host Interaction Scale were used to measure the corresponding variables. Perceived history of discrimination was measured by a Likert-scale question about discrimination in a host country. Intercultural distance was established by Hofstede cultural compass and was estimated to be the smallest with Greece and the largest with Germany. Depression was positively predicted by histories of discrimination and illegal immigration, host language fluency upon relocation, and was negatively predicted by sociocultural adjustment. Psychological adjustment was positively predicted by sociocultural adjustment, willingness to interact with host nationals, and ongoing language fluency, while perceived sense of discrimination, age, and poor financial state acted as negative predictors. Finally, sociocultural adjustment acted as the strongest determinant of wellbeing predicting both lower depression and higher psychological adjustment. Our findings suggested that adjustment in diverse sociocultural domains was the most critical for the immigrants' psychological well-being along with the lack of perceived discrimination. Additional factors associated with the better adaptation outcomes included younger age, willingness to interact with host nationals, language fluency, better financial standing and no history of being undocumented. The results also indicated that host language proficiency upon relocation may contribute to migrant susceptibility, whereas intercultural distance may be overshadowed in importance by acculturation conditions. The findings illustrate the complexity of migration and culture change and point to the superiority of wholistic policies and practices in promoting smooth transition of immigrant populations.

Does language teachers’ intercultural competence influence oral participation in EFL classrooms?: unveiling learner perspectives through a mixed methods inquiry

ABSTRACT The present two-phased sequential explanatory mixed methods study investigates the potential association between foreign language teachers’ (FLTs) intercultural competence and Japanese students’ oral participation through the perspectives of students. In Study 1, a survey questionnaire was administered to second-year advanced-level students at two Japanese universities (N = 115). The participants were asked about their learning styles and FLTs’ teaching practices that promoted and hindered their oral participation based on their prior language learning experiences. The results confirmed the associations between FLTs’ host language proficiency, host cultural understanding, and students’ oral participation. In Study 2, qualitative data were obtained from 21 students to explain and build upon the quantitative results. The findings showed that demonstrating intercultural competence by emphasizing group work, showing tolerance for silence, and using Japanese gestures, personal anecdotes, and stories from Japanese culture could create avenues to students’ own worlds and give them psychological safety to express themselves. The study concludes that FLTs’ intercultural competence needs to be further emphasized in teacher training manuals and school curricula in Japanese EFL settings.

Новый взгляд на проблему заимствований: языковая фрустрация vs маркетинговые стратегии

The article reveals linguocognitive mechanisms as well as social reasons for active functioning of new borrowings in the modern public discourse and in commercial enterprises naming. The material for the analysis is a sample of the most frequent lexis in the micro synchrony that are not yet part of the host language lexicon, and comprises over one hundred and fifty lexical units, selected from the national corpus of the Russian language, public internet discourse, the author's collection of brand names (and names of businesses), radio and television programs. As a result of a comprehensive analysis, two main isomorphic types of borrowing functioning are identified. They are supposed to be motivated by multi-level linguistic, social, and pragmatic factors. Hence, the evidence of linguomental transformations of meaning is linked to the condition of linguistic frustration. This justifies considering it as a state of linguistic personality (at both the first and second levels, according to Yu.N. Karaulov), wherein the constraints of linguistic norms are lifted, and foreign-language word usage is motivated in specific speech act. A tendency of duplicate (native and foreign) naming in explicitly nominative and implicitly subjective-pragmatic functions has been established. It is suggested that the synergy of these functions conveys the speaker's subjective intentions and can be regarded as a marketing strategy of self-positioning in the act of foreign-language use in the nomination process, or as a commercial move, emphasizing the value of the product / service (i.e., commercialization of the nominative unit). Thus, the discourse becomes either status-oriented or conative. The linguistic phenomena under consideration introduce changes into the national concept sphere, as they contain features of a different language world view.

Flan: An Expressive and Efficient Datalog Compiler for Program Analysis

Datalog has gained prominence in program analysis due to its expressiveness and ease of use. Its generic fixpoint resolution algorithm over relational domains simplifies the expression of many complex analyses. The performance and scalability issues of early Datalog approaches have been addressed by tools such as Soufflé through specialized code generation. Still, while pure Datalog is expressive enough to support a wide range of analyses, there is a growing need for extensions to accommodate increasingly complex analyses. This has led to the development of various extensions, such as Flix, Datafun, and Formulog, which enhance Datalog with features like arbitrary lattices and SMT constraints. Most of these extensions recognize the need for full interoperability between Datalog and a full-fledged programming language, a functionality that high-performance systems like Soufflé lack. Specifically, in most cases, they construct languages from scratch with first-class Datalog support, allowing greater flexibility. However, this flexibility often comes at the cost of performance due to the conflicting requirements of prioritizing modularity and abstraction over efficiency. Consequently, achieving both flexibility and compilation to highly-performant specialized code poses a significant challenge. In this work, we reconcile the competing demands of expressiveness and performance with Flan, a Datalog compiler fully embedded in Scala that leverages multi-stage programming to generate specialized code for enhanced performance. Our approach combines the flexibility of Flix with Soufflé’s performance, offering seamless integration with the host language that enables the addition of powerful extensions while generating specialized code for the entire computation. Flan’s simple operator interface allows the addition of an extensive set of features, including arbitrary aggregates, user-defined functions, and lattices, with multiple execution strategies such as binary and multi-way joins, supported by different indexing structures like specialized trees and hash tables, with minimal effort. We evaluate our system on a variety of benchmarks and compare it to established Datalog engines. Our results demonstrate competitive performance and speedups in the range of 1.4× to 12.5× compared to state-of-the-art systems for workloads of practical importance.

Adult refugees' perspectives on the impact of trauma and post-migration hardships on learning.

Background: Research shows that adult refugees' well-being and future in the reception country heavily depend on successfully learning the host language. However, we know little about how adult learners from refugee backgrounds experience the impact of trauma and adversity on their learning.Objective: The current study aims to investigate the perspectives of adult refugee learners on whether and how trauma and other adversity affect their learning.Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with 22 adult refugees (10 women) attending the Norwegian Introduction Programme (NIP). The participants came from six Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and African countries. Two questionnaires were included, one about past stressful life events (SLESQ-Revised), and one about mental health symptoms and current psychological distress following potentially traumatic experiences (PCL-5).Results: Participants held varying beliefs about trauma's impact on learning: that it had a constant impact, that it was situational, or that it had no impact. Other aspects they brought up as having an essential effect on learning and school attendance include psychological burdens from past and present school experiences, and post-migration hardships such as loneliness, depression, ongoing violence, and negative social control. Post-migration trauma and hardships exacerbated the burden of previous trauma and were frequently associated with a greater negative influence on learning.Conclusion: This study adds new insights from adult refugee learners themselves into how post-migration hardships as well as trauma can impact their learning, and the importance of recognising their struggles. A safe space is required for refugees to open up about their difficulties in life and with learning. This knowledge can be used to enhance teaching practices, foster better teacher-student relationships, and inform policy-making decisions, ultimately benefiting both individuals and society.

The Impact of Host Language Proficiency on Migrants’ Employment Outcomes

This paper estimates the economic gains from proficiency in the host country’s language on migrants’ employment outcomes by exploiting the exogenous placement of refugees to Swiss cantons and a sharp language border dividing German- and French-speaking regions. Using administrative data on African refugees who applied for Swiss asylum between 2008 and 2017, I compare French-speaking refugees assigned to the French-speaking region to French-speaking refugees assigned to the German-speaking region and adjust for common regional differences with outcomes from English-speaking African refugees. The results suggest that language proficiency more than doubles the employment level in the first five years after arrival. (JEL J15, J24, J31, J82, R23)