Linguistic Ecology Research Articles

A Study of English Informative Teaching Strategies Based on Deep Learning

The rapid development of artificial intelligence brings new development opportunities and challenges to English teaching university. This paper explores the concept of “smart education” and the path of building an ecological information-based teaching model of English college by interpreting the concepts of artificial intelligence, deep learning, ecological linguistics, and language education. Artificial intelligence, especially deep learning, will be promising in many aspects, such as the analysis of individual differences of language learners, customized learning content, diversified and three-dimensional teaching media, the role of teachers as smart classroom designers, and multidimensional and dynamic formative assessments. By relying on the data mining technology of deep learning to analyze learners’ characteristics, the smart classroom design, the promotion of language learners’ independent learning, and the establishment of dynamic and complete learner profiles, the language learning process is no longer a linear process but an evolving open loop, ultimately forming a harmonious development of various ecological niches in the language learning process. In this paper, we study and design a deep learning-based English informatics teaching system to develop a deep learning-based scoring prediction model. The model incorporates deep learning models based on word embedding and text convolutional networks, which can uncover the hidden interest features of academics for English. The experimental research results prove that the online e-learning service platform cannot only effectively meet the diverse and personalized English learning needs of university students, but also improve the learning efficiency of teachers and students.

Evaluating English Textbook: A Sociolinguistic Perspective

This paper examines an English textbook used in Turkey within the context of sociolinguistic issues. Various studies on book evaluation can be found in the literature; however, there seems to be very limited research analysing the course books from a sociolinguistic perspective. By employing the qualitative research design, the 3rd grade English book Just Fun English (Tiras, 2019) published for public primary schools was analysed using the Sociolinguistic Textbook Evaluation Rubric (Atar & Erdem, 2020). Within the framework of the six criteria of the rubric, the results indicate that the textbook is hardly in conformity with the sociolinguistic matters. Though the textbook considers the linguistic ecology of learners and makes learning English accessible to the public, there are no examples of non-native and non-standard accents of English, non-native-non-native interaction, and successful bilinguals. This study contributes to a growing body of literature by evaluating a textbook concerning the sociolinguistic issues and it offers some insights into the improvement of the textbook.

São Tomé and Príncipe’s toponymy

gabrielaraujo@um.edu.mo
 ABSTRACT. This study describes the toponymic profile of the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe (STP), a former Portuguese colony. Here, we consider (i) its linguistic contact situation, reflected in the toponyms of non-Portuguese etyma (mainly from national languages), and (ii) the structure of the toponymic syntagma in Portuguese. Toponyms are created according to a place's geographic, social, historical, and linguistic reality. Therefore, STP's toponyms are the locus of the Santomean linguistic ecology and memory. Due to its linguistic diversity, the study of Santomean toponymy is transdisciplinary. It contributes to understanding different languages that share São Tomé and Príncipe's ethnicity and linguistic heritage, including multilingual synchronic and/or diachronic conjunctures and the political importance of Portuguese. STP's toponymy expresses a multilingual conjuncture common to the country since the arrival of the Portuguese and (mainly) enslaved Africans from different regions of Africa. Although the Portuguese language and culture have influenced most local toponymy, the Santomean toponymic profile contains endemic linguistic and cultural specificities. Thus, natural phenomena, along with political and historical events, among others, play a role in forming toponyms and characterizing the local toponymy as unique.

Educational language policy in an African country: Making a place for code-switching/translanguaging

Abstract In Ghana, plurilingual language use is the norm rather than the exception. It follows that the multilingual linguistic practices of bilingual and multilingual Ghanaians should be reflected in language planning and languages-in-education policies. The study explores the nature of Ghana’s complex sociolinguistic ecology and details the shifts in language-in-education policies from the colonial era to the present. A closer look at the policies presents two opposing models: policies that draw on monolingual ideologies involving the use of English only as a medium of instruction from pre-school to higher levels, and policies that promote a bilingual approach where Ghanaian indigenous languages and English are used concurrently in the lower grade classes (grades 1–3), with a transition to English-only instruction from grade 4 onwards. The paper argues that instabilities in languages-in-education policies occur through the effects of ideology and policy formulation that do not take into account the linguistic ecologies of different communities, or indeed, the linguistic ecology of the Ghanaian classroom. It is proposed that rigid policies can be productively modified by recognizing the reality of code-switching in classrooms and shifting focus to the creative learning possibilities that translanguaging opens up.

Turning Songs into Poems and Poems into Songs: Intersections of Literary Sinitic and Vernacular Korean in Chosŏn Literature

Abstract This article investigates the dynamic intersections of Literary Sinitic and vernacular Korean and their impact on the innovations in poetry and song in fifteenth- through nineteenth-century Chosŏn Korea. More specifically, it traces the evolution of poetry or song discourse and explores the different strategies employed by Chosŏn poets and songwriters to render oral songs into text. It also investigates the differing views on the function of poetry and song, musical and textual preservation, and emotional and lyrical immediacy, which influenced the composition and translation of song-poems. The article probes the creative collaboration and competition between Literary Sinitic and vernacular Korean, and the fluid relations between translation and vernacularization. On the whole, it explores the ways in which the evolution of poetry-song discourse and the ensuing literary innovations contributed to Chosŏn's complex linguistic ecology.

Creole Prosodic Systems Are Areal, Not Simple.

This study refutes the common idea that tone gets simplified or eliminated in creoles and contact languages. Speakers of African tone languages imposed tone systems on all Afro-European creoles spoken in the tone-dominant linguistic ecologies of Africa and the colonial Americas. African speakers of tone languages also imposed tone systems on the colonial varieties of English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese spoken in tonal Africa. A crucial mechanism involved in the emergence of the tone systems of creoles and colonial varieties is stress-to-tone mapping. A typological comparison with African non-creole languages shows that creole tone systems are no simpler than African non-creole tone systems. Demographic, linguistic, and social changes in an ecology can lead to switches from tone to stress systems and vice versa. As a result, there is an areal continuum of tone systems roughly coterminous with the presence of tone in the east (Africa) and stress in the west (Americas). Transitional systems combining features of tone and stress converge on the areal buffer zone of the Caribbean. The prosodic systems of creoles and European colonial varieties undergo regular processes of contact, typological change and areal convergence. None of these are specific to creoles. So far, creoles and colonial varieties have not featured in work on the world-wide areal clustering of prosodic systems. This study therefore aims to contribute to a broader perspective on prosodic contact beyond the narrow confines of the creole simplicity debate.

Assessing ecological literacy and its application based on linguistic ecology: a case study of Guiyang City, China.

To address the frequent emergence of ecological problems, ecology has intersected with various disciplines. From the perspective of linguistic ecology, ecological literacy is an important concept that combines the subjects of ecology and linguistics. It not only discusses ecological issues, but also establishes a linguistic framework. Here, we constructed a quantitative method of assessing ecological literacy from the perspective of linguistic ecology. Ecological literacy was divided into five parts: ecological knowledge literacy, ecological awareness literacy, ecological ethics literacy, ecological emotional literacy, and ecological behavioral literacy. Each of these was set with four quantitative indicators that were evaluated through eight questions. A case study was conducted to investigate the ecological literacy of the inhabitants of Guiyang City, one of China’s top ten ecologically advanced cities. The results showed that the proposed assessment method was an effective way to evaluate the level of ecological literacy comprehensively. In the case analysis, the overall ecological literacy level of Guiyang inhabitants was relatively good, and the levels of the five specific dimensions of them in descending order were as follows: ecological ethics literacy, ecological emotional literacy, ecological awareness literacy, ecological knowledge literacy, and ecological behavioral literacy. The results of this study are conducive to the production of targeted ways to improve the level of ecological literacy for sustainable development.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-021-16753-7.

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

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

The Even Language: Studying, Teaching and Linguistic Ecology Challenges

The article is devoted to the history of the study and teaching of the Even (Lamut) language in Russia in the period from the 17th – to the beginning of the 21st century. Special attention is paid to the problem of linguistic ecology. The fundamental and applied researches in the synchronic and diachronic aspects, as well as issues of teaching the Even language in families, pre-school educational institutions, colleges and higher educational institutions of Russia are studied. Ethnolinguistics is considered as a possible tool of language preservation and development, i. e., the Even language teaching in the close connection with traditional and modern material and spiritual culture. In this way, the role of vocabulary reflecting the song and dance creative activity, decorative and applied art, ceremonies (of life cycle: birth, wedding, funeral) and economy (hunting, fishing, reindeer breeding), taboo and euphemisms, folk knowledge (metrology, meteorology, space orientation, medicine, calendar, food and cuisine, etc.), as well as the words of religious beliefs (animism, shamanism, Christianity) in the formation of a language picture of the world and the Evens’ mentality is being determined. The role of state institutions, civil society organizations, as well as the members of small-numbered ethnic groups per se in the preservation and development of their language and culture is described. The attention is paid to the translation as the tool of a unique language preservation

The Even Language: Studying, Teaching and Linguistic Ecology Challenges

The Even Language: Studying, Teaching and Linguistic Ecology Challenges

LINGUISTIC NUANCES AND CREATIVE TECHNIQUES IN CHIKA UNIGWE'S SELECT NOVELS

This paper examines the practical application of linguistic and creative tools in Chika Unigwe’ s On Black Sisters’ Street and Night Dancer. This study relies significantly on the notion of stylistics, with its creative and linguistic naunces, to enhance a more holistic understanding and appreciation of the select texts. Based on linguistic evidence, the novels reveal the physical and psychic effects of the postcolonial realities on the post-colonial subjects. The descriptive system of the texual analysis shows that the artistic values of the novels are illuminated primarily through the language and creative techniques employed by the author in the select novels. Unigwe’s creative manipulation of languages in the select texts shows that most Nigerian writers in particular have eventually arrived at a linguistic compromise between the target and the indigenous languages as well as pidgin. This does not just reflect the dexterousness of the author as a story teller with exciting linguistic, stylistic, and structural awareness but indeed, the nature of Nigeria as a dense linguistic ecology. The author’s skillful manipulation of the English language in such a way that it still encapsulates the indigenous knowledge and culture, as well as the striking creative techniques employed makes her message vigorous and captivating to the readers since they invoke clear mental pictures, code variation, linguistic appositioning/substitution, transliteration, narrative framing and other stylistic peculiarities, all for linguistic foregrounding, artistic beauty and signification. It is the opinion of this paper that more African writers, especially young and developing writers should creatively use the languages both foreign and indigenous at their disposal not just to suit the African milieu or experience but to promote the indigenous languages, and also widen and deepen the aesthetic taste of their artistic productions.

Identifying space for mainstreaming multilingual pedagogies in European initial teacher education policies

This study sought to explore the ideological and implementational spaces for mainstreaming multilingual pedagogies (MPs) in initial teacher education (ITE) policies and curricula across the European Union. The concept of linguistically sensitive teaching (LST) was used as a lens to examine inclusive, equity-centred MPs in ITE. A multi-sited comparative case study was conducted to collect data in nine locations. As a result, a general trend of ideological spaces was observed for MPs in language-in-education policies at the European and (sub)national levels. However, this ideological space was not always implemented in ITE. As a second result, explicit mentions of MPs and LST were identified in the ITE curricula of seven sites, and in each of the nine cases, a potential space for implementation was observed. As a third result we found that the greatest potential for opening implementational spaces for MPs lies in courses that aim to develop general pedagogical and sociolinguistic knowledge as well as professional beliefs in future teachers. In conclusion, we contend that the linguistic ecology and the organisational structure of education systems (decentralisation) are factors that help explain the successful mainstreaming of MPs in ITE institutions.

Políticas Linguísticas de Moçambique: Controvérsias e Perspectivas

Neste trabalho, analisamos o contexto histórico, político-ideológico e sociolinguístico a partir do qual Moçambique adoptou as suas políticas linguísticas, tendo em conta a diversidade linguístico-cultural que caracteriza o país e problematizar a sua eficácia decorrente das ambivalências geradas em torno da oficialização do Português Europeu sem o nacionalizar e da nacionalização das línguas autóctones sem as oficializar. Além disso, observamos o facto de a lógica do que está institucionalizado estar a ser subvertida pela prática consuetudinária dos usos da linguagem, isto é, o Português Europeu como norma-padrão no país está nativizado e endogeneizado à ecologia sociocultural e linguística concomitante à moçambicanidade, pelo que devia ser normatizado e consagrado como língua oficial e nacional de Moçambique. Isso se deve ao fato de que a norma-padrão europeia é uma hipóstase e cada vez menos relacionada com as dinâmicas sociolinguísticas e culturais em curso. Essa afirmação pode ser constatada por meio de estudos já consolidados de linguistas como Firmino (2006) que apontam para a consolidação de características específicas desta outra língua portuguesa nas áreas do léxico, sintaxe e semântica.

Translanguaging Practices in Local Employees’ Negotiation to create Linguistic Space in a Multilingual Workplace

This study explores the language practices and beliefs of local employees at a Shanghai-based subsidiary of a German multinational company. We conducted a seven-month ethnographic study and collected data from the company’s publicly accessible documents, meeting transcripts, semi-structured interviews with five employees, and ethnographic notes. Qualitative data analysis revealed that local employees frequently utilized translanguaging practices despite the company’s implicit assumption that English would be used as the common corporate language. Four major translanguaging practices were identified: key terms in English, bilingual label quest, cross-language recapping, and cross-language alternation. In addition, local employees perceived language as both a resource and an obstacle, often engaging in translanguaging practices to establish their own linguistic and communicative spaces, indicating that translanguaging is a complex multilingual practice influenced by internal and external factors, subject to social milieu, personal language competence, and beliefs. Ultimately, this study extends the notion of translanguaging and probes its analytical benefits for understanding fluid and discursive activities in multilingual workplaces and the sustainability of linguistic ecology and knowledge dissemination.

Two types of language contact involving English Creoles

The two African English-lexifier Creole languages Krio (Sierra Leone) and Pichi (Equatorial Guinea) are closely related. A close look at specific aspects of their grammar, however, shows divergence due to differing contact ecologies since their split in the 19thcentury. Krio has been spoken alongside itslexifier(the main lexicon-providing language) andsuperstrate(the socially dominant colonial language) English since its beginnings and Pichi alongside its superstrate Spanish for almost two centuries, but not alongside English. Resulting differences in contact outcomes transpire in the expression of tense, aspect, and mood, and the use of prepositions for the marking of participants. In these two areas, Krio has converged more with English than Pichi with Spanish because existing overlaps between Creole and lexifier forms have facilitated transfer from English. There is therefore evidence for different contact outcomes in Creoles depending on whether they continue to be in contact with a superstrate that is simultaneously the lexifier (in this case English), or not. No previous work has compared Krio and Pichi nor looked at these two Creole languages from the viewpoint of their differing linguistic ecologies and their resulting differentiation.

Linguoecological parameters in teaching Russian as a foreign language

This article is structured on the intersection of two paradigms, namely, two basic ideas – linguoecology and optimal teaching of Russian as a foreign language, which is dictated by the peculiarities of communicative and speech situation in Russia of the XXI century, a fundamental change in the category of normativity and expansion of the boundaries of usage, which actively includes all elements of the substandard. Thus, the development of lexical competence among foreign students becomes a pressing issue. The methodology of teaching Russian as a foreign language advances by deepening links with linguistics, at the current stage – with such important area of linguistic science as linguoecology. Over the past decade, linguistic ecology turned into an independent branch and clearly formulated its difference from cognate disciplines, such as rhetoric, stylistics, and speech culture. If the category of norm revolves around the concepts of “appropriate” / “inappropriate”, the ecology of language, or ecological linguistics, is concerned with the question of usefulness or harmfulness of a particular phenomenon for the language, its development and prosperity, in other words,  its “eco-friendliness”. Considering the fact that this direction is a new direction in linguistics, and even its basic terminology is yet to be established: the terms ecological linguistics, language ecology, linguoecology, and ecolinguistics are used in a close sense. However, the sphere of interests of the new direction is clearly outlines: on the global scale, this is the problem of endangered languages and cultures of indigenous small-numbered peoples, and within the framework of a living functioning language, these processes are destructive specifically for it.

ЕКОКОНЦЕПТИ У ЦИКЛІ РОМАНІВ ДЖ. МАРТІНА «ПІСНЯ ЛЬОДУ І ПОЛУМ’Я» В АСПЕКТІ ЇХНЬОГО ПЕРЕКЛАДУ УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ МОВОЮ

The formation of the present-day translation discourse is stipulated by the influence of interdisciplinary research, including the development of environmental discipline in the humanities, in the connection with which the emergence of the ecology of translation is natural and relevant. The work contains the results of the analysis of the dynamics vectors of ecosences embodied by a number ecoconcepts by means of their implementation in the series of novels by J. Martin "A Song of Ice and Fire " in its translation into Ukrainian. The study is based on the laws of the present-day linguistic ecology and the theory of harmonization of the translation space. In accordance with the positive dynamics vector of translation the harmonization of the translation space is achieved by preserving the identifies ecosences. In accordance with negative dynamics vector of translation the harmonization of the translation space is not achieved: ecosences are lost.

The Future of English and Its Varieties: An Applied Linguistic Perspective

In recent years, the rapid growth and unprecedented dominance of the English language has transformed the world's linguistic ecology and promoted anxiety and debates about its future. The language has developed into a leading international lingua franca used by millions of speakers in different linguistic and cultural contexts worldwide. This paper examines an applied linguistic conceptual interest concerning the future of English and its varieties in light of its current status, the challenges it experiences, and the conspicuous threats to half of the world’s languages. The paper draws on the significance of broadening the study of the English language history by examining the linguistic consequences associated with its changes and the users’ experience, expectations and attitudes. The study also calls for a better understanding of the features of lesser-known English varieties and the less researched domains of its use.

Filaments in Time and Space: Lien Heng’s Elegant Words and the Linguistic Ecology of Taiwan in the 1930s

Abstract This article revisits the debate which occurred in the early 1930s regarding ‘Taiwanese Language Writing’ to argue that these discussions represented an extended interrogation of the linguistic ecology of the island: how written scripts and spoken sounds functioned in Taiwan to make meaning in relation to a larger environmental, animistic, and social whole. Set against the backdrop of this debate, the 1932 work Elegant Words by the famed intellectual Lien Heng stands out as an important text. Lien Heng’s vision of Minnan as a historically grounded yet broadly cosmopolitan language was a particularly enabling expression of Taiwanese consciousness, which presented an island that could face many directions at once, absorbing the textual signs of a deep Sinographic past while remaining vitally open to a complex and increasingly integrated world. Lien Heng’s cultural criticism presaged many of the debates about language, history, and identity that would take place in subsequent decades in Taiwan, and as such his work continues to have resonance today for thinking critically about Taiwan’s place in the modern world.

ECOLOGY OF PRESSURES AND LINGUISTIC VITALITY OF THE YOREMNOKKI LANGUAGE IN SINALOA

The study of endangered languages is still of great importance, however, on one hand, the methods of analysis aren’t always presented in an integrated or holistic manner, and on the other hand, the languages aren’t always available to be studied; this is the case for the yoremnokki language in the northwest of Mexico, for which a holistic study is presented using UNESCO’s linguistic vitality and ecology of pressures. The linguistic shift of the yoremnokki language is a fact; To study this phenomenon, an ethnographic study was carried out in 2019 in the North of Sinaloa, Mexico in the yoreme mayo region. We found that there are more factors for the displacement of the yoremnokki language than there are for its maintenance. The centennial restriction generational transmission is one of the factors that most influence the movement of the linguistic yoremnokki; Although the yoreme mayo population grew from 1985 to date, in proportion to the total population, it is decreasing. There are fewer and fewer spaces in their domain; the last refuge is that of festivals and rituals. New spaces have been opened, radio, telephones, internet and higher education, but they are limited. Few written materials are available but the recent establishment of the writing standard represents a major step in maintaining it. Even though the language doesn’t appear as officially high risk in Mexico, urgent measures should be taken to revitalize this language.