Multilingual Speakers Research Articles

Translanguaging practices in complex multilingual spaces: A discontinuous continuity in post-independent South Africa

AbstractWhereas the use of discursive linguistic resources among multilingual speakers has been closely scrutinized in recent years, highly complex multilingual spaces have not been adequately documented in research. This article reports on new sociolinguistic developments in post-Apartheid South Africa and explores how people mobility and integration of a historically divided society produces hybrid ways of identifying and making sense of the world. Analysis of self-recorded student interactions from five townships in Johannesburg shows that traditional language boundaries have blurred and given way to a complex and multilayered variety, referred to as

English: its role as the language of comity in an employment programme for Canadian immigrants

This study explores the experiences of a culturally and linguistically diverse group of immigrant adult students as they attended a 12-week employment preparation course for newcomers to Canada. The main aim of the course was to equip the immigrants with knowledge and skills, including English for employment purposes, which are necessary to be competitive in the labour market. Using ethnographic methods, mainly participant observation with audio recording, to collect data, this paper analyses the communicative strategies that this group of multilingual speakers and their Canadian teachers deployed to discursively construct a ‘heterotopia’ defined here as ‘intensely affective spaces that redefine the experiential feeling of being and becoming’. Analysis of transcribed audio recordings reveals that despite differences in communication conventions and sociocultural backgrounds, the research participants from Congo, Haiti, India, Bangladesh, Jordan and the Philippines managed to establish a socially cohesive team that emphasises shared relational identity and in-group membership. The findings show how they creatively mobilised previously acquired pragmatic strategies and resources from their L1 to suit the demands of the ongoing interaction in English. It is suggested that language teaching in the context of preparing immigrants for labour market integration entails a pedagogical approach that foregrounds the affordances of English not only as the language of employment but perhaps more importantly as the ‘language of comity’. It is therefore suggested that the teaching of the host country's language should focus less on grammatical correctness and focus more on providing the adult learners with opportunities to activate existing pragmatic resources and strategies which have to do with establishing rapport and friendly relations.

Age of acquisition and naming performance in Frisian-Dutch bilingual speakers with dementia.

Age of acquisition (AoA) of words is a recognised variable affecting language processing in speakers with and without language disorders. For bi- and multilingual speakers their languages can be differentially affected in neurological illness. Study of language loss in bilingual speakers with dementia has been relatively neglected.ObjectiveWe investigated whether AoA of words was associated with level of naming impairment in bilingual speakers with probable Alzheimer's dementia within and across their languages.MethodsTwenty-six Frisian-Dutch bilinguals with mild to moderate dementia named 90 pictures in each language, employing items with rated AoA and other word variable measures matched across languages. Quantitative (totals correct) and qualitative (error types and (in)appropriate switching) aspects were measured.ResultsImpaired retrieval occurred in Frisian (Language 1) and Dutch (Language 2), with a significant effect of AoA on naming in both languages. Earlier acquired words were better preserved and retrieved. Performance was identical across languages, but better in Dutch when controlling for covariates. However, participants demonstrated more inappropriate code switching within the Frisian test setting. On qualitative analysis, no differences in overall error distribution were found between languages for early or late acquired words. There existed a significantly higher percentage of semantically than visually-related errors.ConclusionThese findings have implications for understanding problems in lexical retrieval among bilingual individuals with dementia and its relation to decline in other cognitive functions which may play a role in inappropriate code switching. We discuss the findings in the light of the close relationship between Frisian and Dutch and the pattern of usage across the life-span.

Lead With Languagesin 2015

Foreign Language AnnalsVolume 47, Issue 3 p. 373-375 President's Message Lead With Languages in 2015 Mary Lynn Redmond, Mary Lynn RedmondSearch for more papers by this authorMartha G. Abbott, Martha G. AbbottSearch for more papers by this author Mary Lynn Redmond, Mary Lynn RedmondSearch for more papers by this authorMartha G. Abbott, Martha G. AbbottSearch for more papers by this author First published: 18 August 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12095Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume47, Issue3Fall 2014Pages 373-375 RelatedInformation

Provenance-Assisted Classification in Social Networks

Signal feature extraction and classification are two common tasks in the signal processing literature. This paper investigates the use of source identities as a common mechanism for enhancing the classification accuracy of social signals. We define social signals as outputs, such as microblog entries, geotags, or uploaded images, contributed by users in a social network. Many classification tasks can be defined on such outputs. For example, one may want to identify the dialect of a microblog contributed by an author, or classify information referred to in a user's tweet as true or false. While the design of such classifiers is application-specific, social signals share in common one key property: they are augmented by the explicit identity of the source. This motivates investigating whether or not knowing the source of each signal (in addition to exploiting signal features) allows the classification accuracy to be improved. We call it provenance-assisted classification. This paper answers the above question affirmatively, demonstrating how source identities can improve classification accuracy, and derives confidence bounds to quantify the accuracy of results. Evaluation is performed in two real-world contexts: (i) fact-finding that classifies microblog entries into true and false, and (ii) language classification of tweets issued by a set of possibly multi-lingual speakers. We also carry out extensive simulation experiments to further evaluate the performance of the proposed classification scheme over different problem dimensions. The results show that provenance features significantly improve classification accuracy of social signals, even when no information is known about the sources (besides their ID). This observation offers a general mechanism for enhancing classification results in social networks.

WUJUD ALIH KODE DALAM MASYARAKAT TUTUR KONJO DI SINJAI

Bilingual or multilingual speakers are often code-switch from one language to another, especially when two or more languages are used in the environment. This article explores the potential theoretical explanations for this language behavior and the role of language dominance in the direction of switch. The data consists of primary and secondary data. The primary data were collected from daily speech events in the various domains. The secondary data is any information other than the primary data which support the primary data. In short, code-switching follows the functional and the grammatical principles and is a complex, rule-governed phenomenon. The use of Buginese language (BDS), Malayic-Buginese language (DMB), and Indonesian language (BI) have led to the functional elaboration of all language beside Konjo language (BK) in the Konjo speech community in Sinjai. There are some factors governing the code-switching process in the Konjo speech community in Sinjai. They are: (1) the language abilities of the speaker and the addressee, (2) the setting and the situation, both official and non-official, (3) the participants in the interaction, and (4) the aim of the speech act.

A influência grafo-fônico-fonológica na produção oral de multilíngues e o papel da proficiência: uma abordagem dinâmica.

This study aims to look into multilinguals’ transfer of graphemic and phoneticphonological patterns during vowel production, taken the role of proficiency in this process. For that purpose, 5 male multilingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (L1), Spanish (L2) and English (L3) participated in the study. Their proficiency levels were assessed by validated tests, and they were found to be advanced in Spanish (L2) and intermediate in English (L3). Theparticipants also took part in three reading aloud tasks, one in each language. In each task, they were asked to read carrier sentences (say word), in which the words were high frequency. The participants’ vowels were measured – F1, F2, and duration values – in the software Praat. The vowels produced by the multilingual participants in each language were compared, considering their orthographic and phonetic-phonological similarities. The findings are discussed in the perspective of the Dynamic Systems Theory.

Asymmetrical hyperpolyglot potential in women? – Looking at linguistic chauvinism in the twenty-first century

Abstract This article focuses on renditions of hyperglossia in a recently published popular linguistics text entitled Babel No More. The article aims to examine in detail the seemingly asymmetrical portrayal of female polyglot prowess relative to spotlighted male linguistic proficiency in the extensive diachronic and synchronic case studies presented in the text and presents historical evidence of female polyglot contributions – past and present – to fill a perceived gap in the proffered record in this widely circulating twenty-first-century text. The seeming contrast of awe for language accumulators versus doubt for actual multilingual competence in a book bearing the subtitle The Search for the World’s Most Extraordinary Language Learners it is argued needs discoursal scrutiny both for what is says and for its brilliant use of covert linguistic strategies to revive and reconstruct eighteenth-century accounts of global asymmetry in women’s cognitive potential 300 years later. By examining three brilliantly crafted critical discourse strategies of Underdefinition, Underreportage; and Selective Visualization, which author Erard employs to simultaneously and systematically “other,” marginalize and trivialize some multilingual speakers while privileging past and present male hyperpolyglots in particular regions of the world, we understand how global exhibitionism of power and cultural knowledge is both revived and sustained in a seemingly interconnected and deterritorialized world of “cosmopolitan” access in the twenty-first century. Eventually then, this article seeks to examine what we lose when we limit ourselves to agenda rather than the pursuit of actual historical and present-day truths with globally spanning rather than regionally oriented evidence. Indeed, the article prods readers to consider what we risk to lose in fields as esoteric as linguistics when current analyses fail to focus on 51% of the world’s population – women.

The Importance of Bridging

In this article, I will discuss the importance of the fundamental aspect of “bridging” in the wider context of language teaching. I will use “bridging” particularly in terms of cultural differences and underline the pivotal role of specific techniques, in a language class as well as in a pedagogy class or seminar, to help finding common ground between groups of people with different backgrounds. In this sense, I will highlight the beneficial role that multicultural native speakers play in language departments, as examples of successful integration in another culture, as “bridges” between two cultures who physically embody the joining of two or more backgrounds and effectively erase the distance between the two, and as travellers who have geographically bridged the distance between two countries. Drawing from my experience both as a multicultural native speaker and as an instructor in a language class, I will illustrate a few examples of in-class strategies aimed at promoting multiculturality, ranging from simple vocabulary presentations to role playing and target language discussion groups focusing on controversial differences between the countries, and discuss the importance of the mediating role of multicultural instructors. Finally, I will argue that multilingual and multicultural native speakers are key players of globalization, and are able, in class, to transmit with their own physicality the very condition of our globalized society, which rests on the ability to bridge cultural gaps and accept a less determined, more fluid identity.

Language and youth identity in a multilingual setting: A multimodal repertoire approach

This article is based on a study of a community of multilingual adolescents in Johannesburg which examines participants’ linguistic repertoires and how they use their linguistic resources as a basis for identity construction, integration and performance. This kind of linguistic multiplicity lends itself to subtle and occasionally subversive positioning, as well as the creation of complex identities. Multilingual speakers call into play different aspects of their linguistic identity according to what particular circumstances dictate. For the most part, learners use their repertoires, which in some cases include non-standardised, mixed forms such as Tsotsitaal, to integrate and negotiate; and they are open to learning and accommodating other languages, with perhaps (in this data-set) one exception, namely Xitsonga. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to language use in educational settings.

Do Multilingual Speakers Understand the Bible Best in Their Heart Language? A Tool for Comparing Comprehension of Translations in Vernacular Languages and Languages of Wider Communication

It has been argued that speakers who are fluent in a vernacular and language of wider communication (LWC) will inevitably understand the Scriptures better in their “heart language.” I designed an experiment to determine the validity of that argument, using comprehension checks of seven passages in the New Testament that are difficult to comprehend. Preliminary results suggest that bilingual speakers performed better during checking sessions conducted in the LWC than they did while using the receptor language (RL), but their ability to identify key themes in either language was equivalent. While the experiment calls into question the validity of the “heart-language argument,” I conclude that there are several other more compelling reasons for producing vernacular Bible translations.

Exploiting Films in Detecting Semilingualism among Multilingual Speakers in Kazakhstan

In the era of globalization and international communication speaking a few languages has become rather a necessity than an advantage, and multinational multilingual Kazakhstan is no exception. However, proficiency in the verbal communication is sometimes neglected by bilingual speakers which results in code-switching and semilingualism. According to Hansegard, semilingualism is a concept, where individual has deficit in six language areas: size of vocabulary, grammatical correctness, automatism, language creation, mastering functions of language and in meaning and imagery. By using film extracts in this study, we attempted to detect areas in which Kazakhstani multilinguals experienced insufficiency. To accomplish our research goals we had two groups of multilinguals watch film clips in the original English and dub them into Russian and Kazakh. Afterwards, we checked their works with the studio dubbing and compared the quality of their translation. The research showed that dubbing from English into Russian was easier owing to several factors such as similar structure of the languages and settled technical terms, while translating into Kazakh was more difficult due to the learners’ deficit size of vocabulary.

Language Switching Makes Pronunciation Less Nativelike

It is well known that multilingual speakers’ nonnative productions are accented. Do these deviations from monolingual productions simply reflect the mislearning of nonnative sound categories, or can difficulties in processing speech sounds also contribute to a speaker’s accent? Such difficulties are predicted by interactive theories of production, which propose that nontarget representations, partially activated during lexical access, influence phonetic processing. We examined this possibility using language switching, a task that is well known to disrupt multilingual speech production. We found that these disruptions extend to the articulation of individual speech sounds. When native Spanish speakers are required to unexpectedly switch the language of production between Spanish and English, their speech becomes more accented than when they do not switch languages (particularly for cognate targets). These findings suggest that accents reflect not only difficulty in acquiring second-language speech sounds but also the influence of representations partially activated during on-line speech processing.

Code-switching in multilingual aphasia

Code-switching in multilingual aphasia

Overt Language Attitudes and Linguistic Identities among Multilingual Speakers in Northern Belize

Abstract The current study examines Mestizo adolescent and post-adolescent speakers’ overt language attitudes towards their language varieties and bilingual/trilingual codeswitching. Results show that contrary to previous studies where code-switching has typically been negatively perceived even by the speakers themselves, codeswitching has thrived in Belize, particularly among post-adolescent speakers, because they are positively predisposed to code-switching and associate it with their multilingual identity. In contrast, the use of monolingual varieties of Spanish is marked and pejoratively perceived, especially among high school speakers. Interview data revealed that an incipient trend among younger high school speakers is to employ more Belizean Kriol and less Northern Belizean Spanish and codeswitching. This is a trend which merits further investigation as it may be pointing to the genesis of a strong pan-Afro-Belizean linguistic identity among younger Belizeans which cuts across ethnic lines, and which consequently holds implications for issues of language dominance, language shift, and language policy and planning in Belize.

A , hello and bonjour: a postcolonial analysis of Arab media's use of code switching and mixing and its ramification on the identity of the self in the Arab world

Code switching is a practice exercised by multilingual speakers. Linguists define the term as the simultaneous use of more than one language. Code switching is prevalent in postcolonial countries in which the colonial language has continued to exist alongside the native language. In the past, code switching in the Arab world has been confined to those educated in the missionary schools set up by the colonial powers. However, with the changes of media, its domain has grown to include a larger number of people. The linguistic-anthropologist Edward Sapir's hypothesis of linguistic relativity has stressed the important role that language has played in the formation of the individual. I partly look at the role of the Arab media and its effect on identity formation drawing on postcolonial theory to situate the practice of code switching historically.

How parents in multicultural families perceive multilingualism for their children : from the cases of SeoRae Maul in Korea

This study was designed to explore how multicultural families, whose mother is Korean and whose child goes to French International school, perceive multilingual competence for their children. The researchers focused on five multilingual families who live in SeoRae Maul (French Village in Seoul), in order to understand how their perceptions of multilingualism facilitated and/or constrained the way their children learn different languages, including their mothers’ first language, Korean. Qualitative enthnographic study was adopted for data collection because it was suitable for uncovering the nature of educational experience for the homogeneously grouped multilingual families in SeoRae Maul. The results indicated that the way in which the children responded to their rich opportunities to speak multiple languages were managed by their parents’ positive beliefs in, and great efforts made towards multilingualism for their children. To their parents, multilingual speakers were viewed as lucrative social beings whose complex identities would be paid off in the future.

Multilingual speakers and language choice in the legal sphere

AbstractThis paper explores the effects of linguistic diversity on equality before the law, by surveying sociolinguistic and applied research that investigates interaction between speakers of different languages in a variety of legal institutions, including genres such as courtroom talk, police interrogations, and asylum interviews. While the institutions have official languages that are used by agents working in them, many people who interact with them speak other languages and have limited or no proficiency in the official language. The paper examines how language choice is determined in such settings, considering factors such as legal statutes, language proficiency assessments, and language ideologies. It then investigates the indexical and pragmatic consequences of language choice for lay participants, whether they speak in the official language (their L2) or in another language (often their L1), but mediated by an interpreter. Demonstrating how interpreter-mediated interaction differs from interaction in the same language, the paper challenges the common assumption that competent interpreting can put a person in the same position as a speaker of the official language would be. Finally, alternative approaches to multilingualism in interaction and entextualization are explored, which address some of the disadvantages that speakers of non-official language face.

Emotional force of languages in multilingual speakers in Finland

ABSTRACTThe aim of the present study was to investigate whether the better recall of emotional words applies to both native and later-learned languages. In a mixed design, 41 native Finnish speakers, who were substantially less proficient in their later-learned languages, which were English (second language) and Swedish (third language), were shown negative/taboo, positive, and neutral words in the three languages. Their memory for the words was assessed in an unexpected free recall test preceded by a depth of processing task (deep or shallow). The results revealed that an emotion-word advantage was visible for negatively valenced words (negative/taboo) in the native language, Finnish, and the second language, English. However, the nature of the processing task had no significant effect on recall. Additional self-report measures indicated that English was perceived as more emotional and more frequently used than Swedish. These results suggest that the amount and frequency of everyday exposure to a particular language are two critical factors in determining the degree of emotionality of that language for the speaker.

GRAMMATICAL CONSTRAINTS ON INTRASENTENTIAL CODE SWITCHING: EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH-AFRIKAANS CODE SWITCHING

Code switching is a sociolinguistic phenomenon that is found wherever two or more language varieties are used in a speech community. Bilingual or multilingual speakers who speak two or more language varieties often switch fluently between these linguistic codes, sometimes even within the same utterance, a phenomenon that is generally referred to as code switching. Various grammatical constraints on intrasentential code switching have been proposed in the literature. In this article, I will critically examine, using English-Afrikaans code switching data, the empirical predictions of two of these constraints, viz. Poplack's (1980) Free Morpheme Constraint and Belazi, Rubin & Toribio's (1994) Functional Head Constraint. I will suggest possible explanations for aspects of the data that appear to be unaccounted for in Poplack's (1980) and Belazi et al.'s (1994) frameworks. I will also characterise another approach to code switching, namely a Minimalist approach, and examine some of the advantages of such an approach by re-examining the data.