Metalinguistic Activity Research Articles

A comparative study of developing L1 and L2 writers’ metalinguistic activity in collaborative writing tasks among young Basque immersion learners

ENGLISH ABSTRACT Studies analysing the metatalk generated in collaborative writing (CW) tasks have primarily targeted secondary or adult students who wrote either in L1 or L2, and have seldom examined the process of their writing in two languages. Furthermore, these analyses have mostly focused on accuracy discussions and have ignored discussions aimed at making stylistic decisions. This study compared the metalinguistic activity of 65 bilingual Spanish-Basque Primary school students (at the age of 10–11 years) writing in L1 (Spanish) and L2 (Basque). Students’ conversations in the two languages were scrutinised and later compared for Language-Related Episodes (LRE). Similarities were observed between the two languages regarding the number of LREs and their correct resolutions. However, differences arose regarding the focus of the LREs: more morphosyntactic LREs were produced in L2 Basque, whereas spelling LREs were the most common in L1 Spanish. Additionally, L2 Basque had more accuracy-driven LREs and L1 Spanish had more stylistic LREs. The results are discussed in terms of maturity and proficiency: more attention is paid to spelling at younger ages owing to the immature development of transcription rules, and more discussions are made on style as language proficiency increases.

Linguistic Reflection in Children with Different Language Acquisition Strategies (Based on the Study of Spontaneous Speech)

This article presents the results of a case study of linguistic reflection among children with different language acquisition strategies based on the analysis of spontaneous speech recordings obtained from them. A distinction was made between linguistic reflection and metalinguistic activity. It was found that the ability to reflect on language develops gradually in children with different strategies of language acquisition. The important role of metalinguistic activity in speech ontogenesis, regardless of language acquisition strategies, was highlighted, as it was exhibited by all the participants. Furthermore, linguistic reflection proved to be group-specific: each group (boys/girls, referential/expressive children) showed unique patterns and trends. It was also revealed that children under the age of five and a half years are more likely to engage in linguistic reflection when they are referential rather than expressive. The same trend was observed in girls compared to boys.

Модусная рефлексия как условие реализации интенции комментирования в виртуальном диалоге

Linguistics of response is a branch of dialog studies that focuses on response lines as part of a conversation, including conditions needed to implement the commenting intent in a virtual dialogue. According to the hypothesis, virtual commenting occurs when the initial line falls into the sphere of modus reflection of the native speaker. This condition realizes itself when the native speaker makes the decision to comment on an event. Modus reflection is a manifestation of the native speaker’s emotional and evaluative attitude to the original message. In this case, modus reflection appears as a metalinguistic activity. The descriptive analysis involved 614 response comments to an online news article entitled Subway Crossings: Street Gangs Where Flower Stalls Should Be. The research revealed three conditions when the commenting intent is realized in an online dialog: the initial line falls into the mode of agreement; the initial line falls into the mode of disagreement; the initial line falls into the neutral mode.

Strategies of Lexical Semantization by Foreign Students: Experimental Study of Metalinguistic Activity

Foreign students demonstrate different strategies in interpreting lexical meaning as they struggle to explain new words. This article introduces predominant and secondary semantization strategies in students of Russian as a foreign language. The predominant definition strategy was represented by different models in everyday practice of lexical semantization. Interpretations developed according to two models: 1) denotation and verbally-logical differential characteristics; 2) denotation and visually-efficient differential characteristics. The research hypothesis presupposes a certain correlation between the level of Russian vocabulary acquisition and the default semantization strategy. The research objective was to describe predominant and secondary semantization strategies using general and specific scientific methods. The linguistic experiment involved specific vocabulary of the Russian language, i.e., lexemes house, book, ring, table, and lantern. The results could be used in teaching Russian as a foreign language, as well as to expand the boundaries of research in the ways of foreign vocabulary acquisition.

Let my speakers talk: metalinguistic activity can indicate semantic change

Abstract In the absence of a diachronic corpus or a synchronic corpus tagged for speakers’ age, substantiating the presence of semantic change and the stage of change ― initial or advanced ― are challenging tasks. In the present study I introduce three methods for overcoming such difficulties by extracting various kinds of evidence from a synchronic corpus not tagged for speakers’ age. All three methods are based on speakers’ metalinguistic activity. Two of them are of a psycholinguistic nature and the third is of a sociolinguistic nature. Not only do these methods provide data hitherto overlooked by researchers for detecting semantic change, but they can also minimize the researchers’ need for interpretative interventions with regard to speakers’ communicative intentions, thus improving the quality of the analysis.

Формирование метаязыковой деятельности у младших школьников с общим недоразвитием речи

The article focuses on the theoretical and practical issues of metalinguistic skills in primary school children. Metalinguistic activity is an important parameter of linguistic personality assessment since its analysis can reveal various language impairments. The authors described the metalinguistic level of third-grade primary school students with general speech underdevelopment and specified the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic components for each level. The research was based on such cognitive operations as identification, analysis, synthesis, and generalization. The obtained statistics on the interrelation of metalinguistic components made it possible to develop a typology of phonological and morphological exercises based on practicing the corresponding cognitive operations. The article outlines the main directions of speech therapy, which may be of interest to primary school teachers and speech therapists.

Логопедическая работа по формированию метаязыковой деятельности у учащихся начальных классов с тяжелыми нарушениями речи

The study aims to substantiate the possibility of forming phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic components of metalinguistic activity in younger schoolchildren with a severe speech impairment based on the author’s speech therapy programme. The paper analyses the essence of the notion of “metalinguistic activity”, determines the structure of metalinguistic activity, analyses and presents the results of a learning experiment demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed author’s programme for teaching Russian to schoolchildren with a severe speech impairment. Scientific novelty of the study lies in defining the structure of metalinguistic activity, which includes: the subject, which is the language system; the method, which is cognitive operations; the product, which is knowledge of language and the ability to operate with it; and the result, which is readiness for conscious text perception and text generation. As a result, the author’s programme for younger schoolchildren with a severe speech impairment has been developed and tested in order to form phonological, morphological, syntactic and pragmatic components of metalinguistic activity in Russian language teaching; the principles of teaching younger schoolchildren with a severe speech impairment when organising speech therapy have been formulated.

Metalinguistic Activity of Wordplay Creator in Classroom Bilungual Dialogs

The article introduces the reader to the phenomenon of wordplay in the dialogues of classroom bilinguals with a high level of the English proficiency, who practice this foreign language either in classroom environment, or in real communication. It is emphasized that the dialogues around the facts of wordplay become the locus of metalinguistic utterances of the participants in this speech act. The purpose of this article is to identify the metalanguage utterances of the wordplay creator which open access to the creator’s metalanguage consciousness through the identification of his speech strategies. The novelty of the research is that a foreign language speech is used as the wordplay source, and the wordplay is equated with the phenomenon of the metalanguage nature. The author presents the concept of normema as a standard language unit of the target foreign language, which turns out to be a trigger for the creation of non-standard language units or igremas. It is noted that the wordplay creator uses both the purely formal and meaningful wordplay, and the non-standard language units created by him function as socially directed at a specific addressee. A detailed systematization of the creator’s metalanguage comments accompanying the wordplay input is given, namely, the linguistic and communicative comments, which demonstrates the metalanguage logic of constructing a speech act.

Metalinguistic exchanges in child language development

In everyday speech, language is often the topic of talk. In this paper we aim to draw attention to the role of such metalinguistic activity in early language development. We approach this topic through an ecological lens. To achieve this goal, we examine observational data from a single child participating in conversational episodes concerning linguistic phenomena—episodes which we term “metalinguistic exchanges”—at 2 and 3 years old. We draw attention to how this child, at 2 years old, participates in naturally-occurring metalinguistic exchanges without yet having a productive command of metalinguistic vocabulary. The sequential organization of the metalinguistic exchanges enables her caregivers to scaffold her participation. We then compare the child's participation in metalinguistic exchanges recorded at 2 years old with a second set of exchanges recorded when she turned 3. This comparison shows that the child's participation in metalinguistic exchanges becomes increasingly skillful and agentive as she learns to initiate metalinguistic exchanges herself. We end the paper with recommendations for future research in an ecological approach to language development. We suggest that, in order to investigate the role of metalinguistic activity in language development, it is crucial to look at children's increasingly skillful and agentive participation in naturally-occurring metalinguistic exchanges.

Метатекстові висловлювання діалектоносіїв Східного Полісся: діалектне мовлення

The article deals with the problem of the study of the dialectal personality phenomenon and analyzes Eastern Polissian dialectal material, which testifies about actualization of the dialectal speakers’ metalinguistic consciousness. It is noted that the territory of Eastern Polissia borders on Belarusian and Russian languages, on the border of which scholars notice a special “surge” of metalinguistic activity, although they indicate that dialectal speakers’ metatextual utterances are not frequent in everyday communication. The purpose of the study is to identify the metatextual utterances of the Eastern Polissian dialect that reflect their knowledge and evaluation of the dialectal speech. The source of the study is the dialectal material recorded by the author in Chernihiv and Sumy oblasts during 2009–2019 and recorded dialectal texts; metatextual utterances are fixed occasionally. It is established that metatextual utterances in the dialectal communication arise spontaneously in the condition of communicators’ / speakers’ language norm contravention, understanding the opposition “his own” — “foreign”, relocation of dialectal speakers to another language environment and explorer’s provocation with direct questions. Revealed manifestations of oppositions “the Ukrainian literary language (or dialectal speech, which, according to dialectal speakers’ opinion, is close to literary)” — “the dialectal speech”, “the town speech” — “the village speech”, “the speech of educated people” — “the speech of village people” reflect the folk classification of idioms. It is determined that Eastern Polissian dialectal speakers, comprehending the dialectal speech, define in general its locality, peculiarity (e.g. га|монитʼ па-с|войему, па-с|войему разга|варʼуйем, тара|торим па-с|войему), mixed character (e.g. |мʼешана |мова, |мова |путана, пе|ремис’) and the language belonging of dialectal words in particular (e.g. гово|ритʼ, кур|сʼіроватʼ, наж|раўсʼа). The negative and positive axiology of dialectal speech is determined, in particular negative estimation is prevalent. Pointing to a mixed type of the dialectal speech — a combination of the Ukrainian, Russian or Belarusian language elements, dialectal speakers identify themselves with the khokhols; also they identify themselves with Ukrainians. Neutral or negative dialectal speakers’ estimations of the name of khokhol are fixed partially. The study outlines vistas of further research into dialectal metatextual utterances.

Dan Shen's Rhetorical Narratology and Umberto Eco's Semiotic Theory of Interpretation

Dan Shen's Rhetorical Narratology and Umberto Eco's Semiotic Theory of Interpretation

La enseñanza del verbo y la actividad metalingüística de los alumnos. Dos investigaciones en aulas de Secundaria

La investigación en Didáctica de la lengua persigue entender las relaciones entre la perspectiva de la enseñanza, la perspectiva del aprendizaje y la de los contenidos trabajados en el aula de Lengua. Este artículo pone el foco en el verbo como contenido gramatical a partir de dos investigaciones centradas en la actividad metalingüística de los alumnos de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria. En la primera, los estudiantes intentan explicar las diferencias entre los tiempos verbales del pasado como paso previo para utilizarlos en la escritura. En la segunda, la reflexión se centra en el subjuntivo a partir de una actividad de pares mínimos que tiene como objetivo comprender cómo conceptualizan la noción de modo verbal. Los datos de aula, en ambos casos, permiten entender los logros y las dificultades que los estudiantes encuentran cuando reflexionan sobre las nociones gramaticales. Ofrecen asimismo información valiosa para entender los problemas a los que ha de responder una gramática pedagógica, es decir, una gramática que sea útil para el aprendizaje en la enseñanza no universitaria.

La actividad metalingüística en una tarea de escritura colaborativa en Educación Primaria

Diversos estudios destacan el valor de la actividad metalingüística que se genera en tareas de escritura colaborativa para el desarrollo de la competencia escrita del alumnado. Sin embargo, pocos la han analizado en el contexto educativo de primaria. Este artículo investiga el contenido de la actividad metalingüística que nueve parejas de 5º curso (10-11 años) generan en las fases de preescritura, escritura y revisión de la producción colaborativa de una fábula tras una intervención didáctica sobre este género textual. Para ello, se identificaron los episodios metalingüísticos generados en las interacciones orales, y se analizó su contenido y su frecuencia. Los resultados muestran que la mayor parte de los episodios se refiere a aspectos textuales y mecánicos, y que su contenido varía de acuerdo al objetivo propio de cada fase de la tarea: la organización textual en la fase de preescritura, y la corrección, meramente ortográfica, en la fase de revisión. Los resultados obtenidos se discuten en relación con los efectos de la intervención didáctica, de la madurez cognitiva del alumnado y del tipo de corrección habitual en la escuela. Finalmente, se ofrecen algunas recomendaciones didácticas.

Review. Research and teaching at the intersection: Navigating the territory of grammar and writing in the context of metalinguistic activity, edited by Anna Camps and Xavier Fontich, 2020

Review. Research and teaching at the intersection: Navigating the territory of grammar and writing in the context of metalinguistic activity, edited by Anna Camps and Xavier Fontich, 2020

Aprender gramática mientras se escribe: Actividad metalingüística y proceso de escritura cooperativa en el marco de una secuencia didáctica

Este artículo explora la actividad metalingüística que se desencadena en el proceso de composición escrita cooperativa de una reseña por parte de alumnos de secundaria en el marco de una secuencia didáctica. La intervención combina tareas de reflexión metalingüística explícita con tareas de uso de la lengua en situación de escritura en pequeño grupo. Los resultados del análisis de esa actividad metalingüística evidencian que este tipo de colaboración promueve una reflexión sobre la lengua valiosa en la que todos los alumnos hablan sobre lengua, aunque poniendo el foco en aspectos dispares y con grados de participación diferentes. Ello invita a pensar que la investigación debe orientarse a explorar de qué maneras guiar la reflexión de alumnos con capacidades distintas.

К вопросу о разграничении метаязыковой деятельности и языковой рефлексии детей

К вопросу о разграничении метаязыковой деятельности и языковой рефлексии детей

Metalinguistic comments as a tool for bottom-up language policy

Abstract This article demonstrates that analyzing evaluative metalinguistic comments on linguistic features can be a valuable diagnostic tool in understanding how emergent varieties develop and conventionalize. The paper provides a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of metalinguistic activity as part of the diverse sociolinguistic research disciplines. It then discusses what constitutes an evaluative metalinguistic comment, and classifies metalinguistic comments. Subsequently, the paper discusses data of a developing variety (Turkish-Dutch mixed speech). These data suggest that insiders monitor implicit norms, and reprimand transgressors, and/or deliberately transgress these norms (mostly in a humorous way), which amounts to the same thing: a keen awareness of these norms. Outsiders notice linguistic elements which contrast with their own variety.

Teaching & Learning Guide for: “L1 Grammar Instruction and Writing: Metalinguistic Activity as a Teaching and Research Focus”

Teaching & Learning Guide for: “L1 Grammar Instruction and Writing: Metalinguistic Activity as a Teaching and Research Focus”

Grammar instruction in the Hispanic area: The case of Spain with attention to empirical studies on metalinguistic activity

Grammar instruction is an unresolved issue in the Hispanic area, having long been approached from within the disjunction between rhetoric (teaching how to use language, especially writing) and grammar (teaching the grammar content). Over time grammar instruction has generated an intense debate around two positions: direct instruction on grammar content, versus instruction devoted to prompting reflection on grammar and language use. There has been an insistent and recurring tendency towards the former, a situation that still prevails. More recently, however, certain research trends in Spain, albeit a minority, have crystallized in a research trajectory on metalinguistic activity, opening up new possibili-ties for rethinking instruction based on grammar reflection to support writing. Within such a trajectory, innovative ways to promote grammar reflection within language use are explored, and metalinguistic activity becomes the focus of research and pedagogy. Crucially, some of the empirical studies developed within this trajectory suggest that grammar knowledge may not be a condition for reflection about language but its consequence, leading to a consideration of metalinguistic activity as a promising avenue for rethinking the debate on the role of grammar instruction.

Disputes over the Pronouns Sei and Onyi (Russian ‘This One’ and ‘That One’) in the History of Russian Culture and Standard Language in the 18th–19th Centuries

Under all circumstances, native speakers continue to evaluate the state of standard language during various stages of its existence. Reflection about written language composition, its rules, and its stylistic features can result in changes in at least some elements or links of the system. In the history of the standard Russian language, which had absorbed the Church Slavonic and Russian language environments, the Slavism issue has been causing disputes since the 1730s. Different attitudes toward Slavisms acquired ideological qualities; some of the most archaic linguistic units became symbols of the fight for freeing the language from the old, for its modernization, and for bringing it closer to the spoken word. The pronouns sei and onyi acted as such symbols for almost a century. The stylistic characteristics of demonstrative pronouns turn out to be inextricably intertwined with basic cultural oppositions: ours‒theirs, new‒old. The article utilizes well-known sources containing various kinds of speculations about the possibility and impossibility of using archaic pronouns, as well as sources that are less known or have not been used previously. This complex approach to analyzing one link of the language system is based on the close collaboration between the language and the culture during the evolution of the standard form of people’s language, and takes into account the influence of metalinguistic activity (expressed language reflection) on changes in the standard language.