Linguistic Items Research Articles

Sexism in Language: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective

Language plays a crucial role in perpetuating sexism and gender inequality. The research draws on the Critical Discourse Analysis, an Interdisciplinary Approach to the study of discourse that views language as a social practice, to explore the existence and nature of sexist language in Kamba Popular Songs. Specifically, this study anchored itself on Grice’s Second Theory of Conversational Implicature (1991). The research had two objectives: to investigate sexist implicatures in Kamba Popular Songs and describe sexist inferences in the lyrics. The study used the descriptive research design and purposively sampled eight songs from the ten most popular Kamba bands with the youths. Besides, the research used content analysis to identify the possible sexist expressions classified into implicatures and inferences. Further, the researcher categorized the two linguistic items into negative and positive sexism, and the number of each type was counted up and described. The study concludes that popular Kamba songs project a sexist perception of women. This research recommends eliminating sexist language in both written and spoken discourse because it contains a lexicon and grammatical structure that trivializes and perpetrates biases against women.

Linguistic Distance and Translation Differential Item Functioning on Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study Mathematics Assessment Items

The 2015 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) involved 57 countries and 43 different languages to assess students’ achievement in mathematics and science. The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether items and test scores are affected as the differences between language families and cultures increase. Using differential item functioning (DIF) procedures, we compared the consistency of students’ performance across three combinations of languages and countries: (a) same language but different countries, (b) same countries but different languages, and (c) different languages and different countries. The analyses consisted of the detection of the number of DIF items for all paired comparisons within each condition, the direction of DIF, the magnitude of DIF, and the differences between test characteristic curves. As the countries were more distant with respect to cultures and language families, the presence of DIF increased. The magnitude of DIF was greatest when both language and country differed, and smallest when the languages were same, but the countries were different. Results suggest that when TIMSS results are compared across countries, the language- and country-specific differences which could reflect cultural, curriculum, or other differences should be considered.

Insideout project: Using big data and machine learning for prevention in psychiatry

IntroductionSocial Media might represent an amazing and valuable source of information on mental health and well-being. Several researches revealed that adolescents aged 13 to 17 years old go “online” daily or stay online “almost constantly”.ObjectivesThe aim of this project is to identify distress in pre-clinical stages using Social media screening methods. The system can be modelled to centre on different several health-related topics.MethodsWe created a digital system able to analyse scripts written by adolescents on Twitter. InsideOut works using machine learning techniques and computational linguistic items to catch significant and sense of written messages and it improves its performances with iterations. The system is able to automatically identify semantic information relevant to different topics: in this case “distress in teenagers”.ResultsThe task of our system is considered correct when it is able to identify triples of Life Event, Sentiment and Experience of a tweet in agreement with the Gold Standard established among the annotators. The system has around 70% of accuracy in identifying triples. The analysis has been carried out both in Italian and English collecting over 4 million Italian tweets and 30 million English tweets. Comparative analysis with self-report questionnaires show that tweet analysis is able to suggest similar statistics.ConclusionsThis study analyzed contents of messages posted on Social Media Twitter meta-dating them with psychological and health-related information. Using InsideOut, we can plan clinical intervention in district and regions where high levels of uneasiness are revealed.

Language Use: Code Mixing, Code Switching, Borrowing, Pidginization, and Creolization

This study was conducted to gather sufficient information on the language use: code mixing, code switching, borrowing, pidginization, and creolization. The method used in this study is through a literature study that collects several previous studies to answer about code mixing, code switching, borrowing, pidginization, and creolization purposes. The results of this study that code can be a variety related to the element of language like sentence, clause, phrase and word which have the limitation because the code which is chosen by the speaker based on his/her necessity in communicating. CodeMixing is the mix of code from two languages or more in some content of conversation in form of a sentence, while Code-Switching defined as a term which is used to indicate exchange of two or more languages, varieties of language, and can be also an exchange in style. Moreover, Borrowing is the process of importing linguistic items from one linguistic system into another, a process that occurs any time two cultures are in contact over a period of time. Furthermore, Pidginization is a simplification of code of language which has arisen as the result of contact between people of different languages usually formed a mixing of the languages. When pidgin develops to creole, it is described as creolization. Creole is a pidgin which is modified and appropriated in its structure and vocabulary.

On the reciprocity between one’s language and identity

Language learning is a life-changing event with far-reaching individual, social, and cultural consequences. Along with advancing linguistic abilities comes enhanced awareness of one’s identity and development of a (renewed) language self. On the more general level, it determines one’s identification with particular social groups and impacts on educational, social, economic, and cultural processes such as inclusion, acceptance, recognition, and integration. On a narrower scale, becoming familiar with even a single linguistic item opens up new perspectives and thus enriches one’s everyday life experience. In either case, the expansion of one’s identity via language is inevitably a holistic and comprehensive individual experience, cutting across one’s views, actions, emotions, and conceptualisations of the world. The very existence of linguistic varieties (identities) poses a significant challenge to be addressed by modern educational systems, which – in order to remain relevant and consequently practical, too – need to adopt novel, transdisciplinary approaches and methods of teaching and learning. Such is the case with (Django and Paris’s) concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), the emergence of which we have recently observed as a respectful and productive critique of previous formulations of asset pedagogies. As one of the proposals admitting linguistic identities into education, it exemplifies concepts which point out the salience of language not only for one’s multi-faceted development, but also the advancement of education and society as a whole. It is through this admission of linguistic identities that the diversity of linguistic capital is recognised, which is of paramount importance in light of the fact that the linguistic dimension of learners’ and teachers’ identities proves to determine their status, success, and quality of life.

On C-E Translation of Culture-Specific Items from the Perspective of Eco-translatology—A Case Study of Howard Goldblatt’s Red Poppies

<div>This thesis researches the translation of Chinese culture-specific items in <em>Red Poppies</em> from the perspectives of Eco-translatology. Eco-translatology, which was put forward by Chinese scholar Hu Gengshen, adopts some concepts of ecology in translatology and provides a new perspective for translation study and practice. <em>Red Poppies</em> is a novel by Alai whose contents covers a wide range of Tibetan culture and history, which is praised as Tibetan encyclopedia. On one hand, the study focuses on the definition and features of culture-specific items, and their classification of in Red</div><div>Poppies. Based on Nida’s classification of five categories of sub-culture, those culture-specific items are classified into five groups, namely linguistic culture-specific items, material culture-specific items, ecological culture--specific items, social culture-specific items and religious culture-specific items. On the other hand, this thesis explores how Goldblatt deal with those culture-specific items from the perspective of three-dimension transformation in eco-translatology, and it finds translator adopts a combination of foreignization strategy and domestication strategy, and the former plays a dominating role. Besides, various translation methods are adopted such as free translation, transliteration, transliteration plus annotation, and amplification and so on.</div>

The Descendants of the Sîn-lēqi-unnīnī during the Late Achaemenid and Early Hellenistic Periods – A Family of Priests, Scribes and Scholars and Their Archival and Learned Texts

Abstract It is by now well established that authors and copyists of scholarly works also drafted legal documents, if only occasionally. This article examines newly available prosopographical information concerning the scribal activities of the Sîn-lēqi-unnīnī during the mid to late fourth century BCE. It offers new datings of learned texts that have been known to academic circles for a long time and argues that the extant archival texts from Early Hellenistic Uruk mainly belonged to the archives of the Aḫûtu and Ekur-zakir families. In addition, it presents cases of transference of linguistic items peculiar to one or the other genre, giving rise to some general remarks on cross-genre imprints.

A social Beaufort scale to detect high winds using language in social media posts

People often talk about the weather on social media, using different vocabulary to describe different conditions. Here we combine a large collection of wind-related Twitter posts (tweets) and UK Met Office wind speed observations to explore the relationship between tweet volume, tweet language and wind speeds in the UK. We find that wind speeds are experienced subjectively relative to the local baseline, so that the same absolute wind speed is reported as stronger or weaker depending on the typical weather conditions in the local area. Different linguistic tokens (words and emojis) are associated with different wind speeds. These associations can be used to create a simple text classifier to detect ‘high-wind’ tweets with reasonable accuracy; this can be used to detect high winds in a locality using only a single tweet. We also construct a ‘social Beaufort scale’ to infer wind speeds based only on the language used in tweets. Together with the classifier, this demonstrates that language alone is indicative of weather conditions, independent of tweet volume. However, the number of high-wind tweets shows a strong temporal correlation with local wind speeds, increasing the ability of a combined language-plus-volume system to successfully detect high winds. Our findings complement previous work in social sensing of weather hazards that has focused on the relationship between tweet volume and severity. These results show that impacts of wind and storms are found in how people communicate and use language, a novel dimension in understanding the social impacts of extreme weather.

Effects of a xu-argument based iterative continuation task on an EFL learner’s linguistic and affective development: Evidence from errors, self-initiated error corrections, and foreign language learning attitude

This longitudinal study investigated the effects of a xu-argument based iterative continuation task (XBICT) on an EFL learner’s processing of different English linguistic items, overall EFL achievement (EFLA), and foreign language learning attitude (FLLA). The treatment material was taken from a novel, divided into 19 parts, which the EFL learner was asked to read and then extend. pre-test and post-test scores, frequencies of the different types of errors and self-initiated error corrections (SC), and observations of the learner behaviors were collected as data for analysis. Results show significant correlations among the different errors and self-initiated error corrections, suggesting that EFL learning is an integrated system, where errors in one linguistic item can be strong indicators of errors elsewhere. Results also show significant improvement in the EFL learner’s processing of past temporal morphemes, overall EFL achievement, and foreign language learning attitude, despite the fact that self-initiated error corrections of spellings are the most frequent while corrections of articles are the least common. These findings suggest that XBICT could be an effective approach in EFL learning but its efficacy could vary with reference to different linguistic items. Some pedagogical implications are discussed.

THE INFLUENCE OF L1 (TAMIL LANGUAGE) IN THE WRITING OF L2 (ENGLISH)

This study focuses on the interference of L1 grammatical rules in the writing of L2 with specific reference to the interference of Tamil (L1) in English (L2). Though many research have been done in mother tongue interference, very few research have been conducted in terms of Tamil versus English. This study seeks to find out the components of the L1 (Tamil language) grammar that the students of Tamil schools use interchangeably in their daily writing of L2, namely English. This study will follow a mixture of qualitative and quantitative survey research design, the purpose of which is to find out the influence of mother tongue linguistic items in the writing of English (L2), among the standard 4 students of a selected school. The findings of the study clearly indicated that mother tongue and the national language interfered (negative transfer) in the writing of L2 among Tamil school students. Apart from the interference of L1, the research also found that there is a heavy influence of the national language (Malay) in the writing of students' L2.

Iraq EFL Learners’ Perceptions of Intercultural Communicative Education Through Online Platform

Intercultural communicative competence or intercultural competence (hence ICC or IC) refers to the essential competency or the awareness that EFL learners should have to act effectively and successfully in intercultural situations. However, ICC or IC’s integration in EFL classrooms is often a challenge and remains limited in EFL teaching. This is because language instructors usually tend to focus on knowledge especially the linguistic items of target language rather than its cultural aspects. Hence, the current research reports on a triangulated study aim to explore the Iraqi EFL learners’ perceptions before and after the integration of the ICC in the online course. The study also attempts to show the learners’ attitudes towards the intercultural communicative competence teaching (hence ICCT) model used to improve the learners’ ICC competency. The participants were 40 Iraqi EFL students studying English language at the department of English, College of Arts, University of Anbar. Data were collected via two research instruments, namely a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with the learners. The questionnaire was used for quantitative data collection, while the interviews questions were used for collecting qualitative data. The findings obtained revealed that there was an interesting significant difference in the perceptions of the EFL learners after the ICC’s integration course. This is attributed to the increased knowledge and awareness of the learners about ICC's important role in the English culture. Similarly, learners had positive attitudes towards the ICCT model and its steps. Thus, with the obtained results, the study encourages the integration of ICCT in EFL teaching.

Contrastive Pragmatics in a Diachronic Perspective: Insights from Othello

Abstract The paper provides an overview of the interface of contrastive and historical pragmatics and a case study of Othello’s monologue. The emerging lines of development at the cross-roads of contrastive and historical pragmatics cover, in particular, speech acts, forms of discursive behaviour and stance. In the analysis, German, Swedish, Finnish and Polish translations from different periods are compared to show differences in the above-mentioned features. The illustrations are contextualised in order to show the discursive sensitivity of these linguistic items and their cross-linguistic diversity. The study reveals some tendencies and diachronic developments in translation strategies and underlines the need to include historical analyses in the realm of contrastive research.

Less is More/More Diverse: On The Communicative Utility of Linguistic Conventionalization

We present empirical evidence of the communicative utility of conventionalization, i.e., convergence in linguistic usage over time, and diversification, i.e., linguistic items acquiring different, more specific usages/meanings. From a diachronic perspective, conventionalization plays a crucial role in language change as a condition for innovation and grammaticalization (Bybee, 2010; Schmid, 2015) and diversification is a cornerstone in the formation of sublanguages/registers, i.e., functional linguistic varieties (Halliday, 1988; Harris, 1991). While it is widely acknowledged that change in language use is primarily socio-culturally determined pushing towards greater linguistic expressivity, we here highlight the limiting function of communicative factors on diachronic linguistic variation showing that conventionalization and diversification are associated with a reduction of linguistic variability. To be able to observe effects of linguistic variability reduction, we first need a well-defined notion of choice in context. Linguistically, this implies the paradigmatic axis of linguistic organization, i.e., the sets of linguistic options available in a given or similar syntagmatic contexts. Here, we draw on word embeddings, weakly neural distributional language models that have recently been employed to model lexical-semantic change and allow us to approximate the notion of paradigm by neighbourhood in vector space. Second, we need to capture changes in paradigmatic variability, i.e. reduction/expansion of linguistic options in a given context. As a formal index of paradigmatic variability we use entropy, which measures the contribution of linguistic units (e.g., words) in predicting linguistic choice in bits of information. Using entropy provides us with a link to a communicative interpretation, as it is a well-established measure of communicative efficiency with implications for cognitive processing (Linzen and Jaeger, 2016; Venhuizen et al., 2019); also, entropy is negatively correlated with distance in (word embedding) spaces which in turn shows cognitive reflexes in certain language processing tasks (Mitchel et al., 2008; Auguste et al., 2017). In terms of domain we focus on science, looking at the diachronic development of scientific English from the 17th century to modern time. This provides us with a fairly constrained yet dynamic domain of discourse that has witnessed a powerful systematization throughout the centuries and developed specific linguistic conventions geared towards efficient communication. Overall, our study confirms the assumed trends of conventionalization and diversification shown by diachronically decreasing entropy, interspersed with local, temporary entropy highs pointing to phases of linguistic expansion pertaining primarily to introduction of new technical terminology.

Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices Regarding Assessment in English as a Foreign Language Classrooms in Vietnam

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has generated worldwide popularity as a curriculum innovation, and extensive research has investigated various aspects of the approach. However, little is known about the implementation of classroom assessment in TBLT curricula. This study investigated high school English as a foreign language teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding assessment in a curriculum innovation context in Vietnam. Data comprised in-depth interviews with six teachers, as well as testing documents. The findings revealed a strong impact of the high-stakes exams on teachers’ testing beliefs in that they focused explicitly on linguistic items in the assessed content and forms of assessment. These beliefs were accurately reflected in their testing practices. However, both the teachers’ beliefs and practices were contradictory to teaching principles and the expectations of the intended curriculum. These findings suggest that in-service teacher professional development programs are necessary for innovations like TBLT to have a real change in the classroom.

Conversation Analysis-Informed Instruction of -Nya and -Ni as Stance Alignment Markers

ABSTRACT Stancetaking is a crucial element of a language user's pragmatic competence. This study presents Korean language teaching materials and activities geared to help learners expand their linguistic repertoire for stancetaking. Based on the findings from Jeong's conversation analytic study (2018) on -nya and -ni as divergent and convergent alignment markers, respectively, the present study proposes a 60-minute lesson aimed at teaching the pragmatic functions of -nya and -ni to intermediate level learners of Korean. Included in the lesson are diverse and engaging teaching resources grounded in authentic dialogues as well as dialogues created to reflect relevant research findings. This study demonstrates how conversation analysis (CA) findings of interactional practices or pragmatic functions of linguistic items in Korean can be a useful basis for developing intriguing Korean language teaching materials/activities that reflect authentic language use. The present study is thus a significant attempt to bridge CA findings and Korean language pedagogy to improve Korean language learners' pragmatic competence.

A Stylistic Analysis of Some Linguistic Devices in Newspaper Headlines: Nigerian Newspapers as A Case Study

Media houses have played significant roles in national development. They, among other roles, serve as the intermediary between the government and the masses. The choice they make in their reportage begins from the headlines which may or may not outrightly show the direction of the news. The study examines the linguistic features of the news headlines on fuel subsidy removal and electricity tariff hike in Nigeria. Register analysis is the theory adopted to carry out the study. This is to enable us consider the functions of the chosen linguistic items within the social setting; find out the similarities and differences that exist among the headlines in terms of how they are structured and point out the implied meaning in them. This study, among other findings, reveals that most of the newspaper headlines on fuel subsidy removal and electricity tariff hike relied heavily on positive adjectives to palatably present government policies, actions and steps to the masses. This paper suggests that researchers could adopt Speech Act Theory to analyse the newspaper headlines on fuel subsidy removal and electricity tariff hike so as to find out what journalists are doing with words.

The The Conceptualization of COVID-19 in English and Kurdish Online Newspaper Articles: A Cognitive Semantic Approach

        One of the principles of cognitive linguistics and cognitive semantics is that human language is metaphorical in nature and meaning does not only reside in the linguistic items but also in the language users’ conceptualizations against the situations and events. Metaphor is one means of conceptualization. The cognitive semantic theory of metaphors is known as Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory. According to this theory, metaphor is a mental process of understanding one domain in terms of another. Based on this, the present study is an attempt to examine the ways via which the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been conceptualized in the Kurdish and English e-newspaper articles. The articles have been taken from the online English and Kurdish newspapers such as BBC, the New York Times, Rudaw, NRT, Kurdiu, Kurdistan24, and many others. It has been hypothesized that, like any other concepts, COVID-19 is metaphorically understood and its meaning does not only confine in the term. It has been concluded that this epidemic disease can be, based on the construals and perspectives the conceptualizers take, understood in terms of different concepts such as WAR, FIRE, ADVERSARY, GUEST, REVENGE, DARKNESS, JOURNEY, etc., each of which is based on the background of the subject matter of the online newspaper articles as well as culture and our experiences with COVID-19.    

E-10 Critical Discourse Analysis of Linguistic Items Projected in Pakistani Urdu Newspapers regarding America, West and Islam: A Post 9/11 Study

This work critically analyzes the linguistic items projected in Pakistani Urdu newspapers regarding America, West and Islam after September 11. Data for this research was collected from the three leading Pakistani Urdu newspapers i.e. Daily Jang, Daily Express and Daily Nawa-i-Waqt. Results are generated while applying CDA model projected by Fairclough (1989, 1995) & Dijk (1985) as models, with respect to vocabulary items and newspapers’ ideologies. It was showcased from the data that Nawa-i-Waqat, fanatically employed linguistic items i.e. selected lexical items and literary figures to influence the opinion of its readers regarding the three-part issues. On the contrary, the Daily Jang and the Daily Express showed discernment regarding America and West in their reporting during the said era. Yet the coverage of these two prominent newspapers alleviated the image of Islam inside and outside the country to their bounds.

Exploring the linguistic landscape of Cameroon: Reflections on language policy and ideology

This contribution focuses on the study of Linguistic Landscapes in the Central/Western African state of Cameroon, with particular reference to its capital, Yaoundé. Linguistic landscapes is a relatively recent area of research, and can be broadly defined as the visual representation of languages in public space. This paper will show that the field of linguistic landscapes can act as a reflection of linguistic hierarchies, ideologies and acts of resistance in multilingual and multicultural communities. At the same time, the sociolinguistic situation in the country will be investigated, which is paramount to understanding the linguistic and ideological conflicts between the anglophone minority and the francophone government. Cameroon’s linguistic landscape will be explored via the various spaces that English, French, Pidgin English, Camfranglais and, to a minor degree, indigenous African languages occupy in its sociolinguistic composition. The methodological design is quantitative in nature, involving collecting more than 600 linguistic tokens (digital photos) in various public places mainly in and around the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé. It will be demonstrated that the deployment of languages on signs and linguistic tokens, apart from serving informative and symbolic functions for the audiences or passers-by they target, also has social and political implications in an ethnically heterogeneous and linguistically hybrid society such as Cameroon. Whereas in some other former British colonies there are indications that the public space is being symbolically constructed in order to preserve some of Africa’s indigenous languages (e.g. in Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania), in Cameroon the linguistic landscape almost exclusively focuses on the dominant status and role of one single language, i.e. French, and to a lesser extent English, whose speakers therefore feel marginalized and oppressed by the French government.

Style in the Print Media: Perspectives from the Editorials of a Ghanaian Newspaper

The study employs linguistic stylistic analysis, specifically, Leech and Shorts’ (2007) stylistic categories to identify the stylistic features used predominantly in selected newspaper editorials. The corpus used is made up of thirty editorials which are randomly selected. It employs the qualitative research design to analyse selected texts. The analysis reveals that the editorial of the Daily Graphicabounds in the use of stylistic features through the use of lexical items. Among others, the study discusses that the editorial makes use of major lexical items such as nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs, with nouns dominating the lexical choices and adjectives, the least. It adds that the use of different linguistic and stylistic features in the packaging ofinformation is motivated and purposeful, because the features help in the interpretation and meaning of the editorial. The analysis of lexical items has helped to provide an interpretation to the editorials in addition to showing the communicative relationship between author and reader. Pedagogically, the study is significant in the sense that it provides an avenue for students and teachers of language to observe how the appropriate selection of lexical items helps in text construction and meaning creation. The study recommends that stylistic features are helpful in the packaging and interpretation of texts (editorials included), therefore, language users: writers, teachers, students and other users of language, especially in ESL and EFL contexts, should beguided in authentic use of linguistic items in the packaging of information in the language classroom and in other contexts.This study makes a modest contribution to understanding the relationship between collective action and collective identity in CBNRM and similar institutions.