Language Ownership Research Articles

Nursing and midwifery students’ ethical views on the acceptability of using AI machine translation software to write university assignments: A deficit-oriented or translanguaging perspective?

This paper focuses on tertiary English as an additional language (EAL) students' ethical choices, and the factors impacting on them, when deciding whether to engage with artificially-intelligent (AI) machine translation (MT) tools for the writing of university assignments. It also investigates how student responses align with either deficit-oriented or translanguaging theoretical perspectives. Via semi-structured interviews, the voices of 23 EAL nursing and midwifery students indicate an array of ethical positions which are based on three key areas of consideration: 1) ownership of language and ideas; 2) fairness and respect; and 3) personal growth. The study highlights the scalar, strategic and dynamic nature of students’ ethical decisions and shows that questions of ethicality tap into individual, social and institutional constructs of fairness and respect, skills recognition, lifelong learning and language dominion. The findings also indicate that discussions of fairness should focus not only on differences between non-EAL and EAL students, but also inequalities within EAL cohorts. Student responses provide evidence of both deficit-oriented and translanguaging perspectives. The researchers call for universities to create clear policies concerning use of MT that recognise the levels of reflection that students engage in when writing their assignments and value the full linguistic repertoires that students bring to global educational settings.

Enemies by kinship: securitizing language and the Russian diaspora in escalated gray zone conflict

ABSTRACT Russia’s February 2022 intervention in Ukraine transformed the socioeconomic landscape for the Russian diaspora most profoundly since the Soviet Union’s collapse. Diaspora members have been labeled as a security risk and acting as Moscow’s “agents.” Since Russia’s militarized intervention in Ukraine, Kyiv and the European Union closed their borders with Russia, limiting the movement of people. In turn, this has severed families and longstanding sociocultural and economic ties with the homeland. However, Russia’s militarized intervention should not be treated in isolation from the preceding eight years of hostility with Kyiv and NATO which occurred predominantly in the “gray zone.” This paper explores language policy conditions in Ukraine, Latvia, and Estonia that enabled Russia’s unconventional and militarized interventions. The paper argues that by rejecting ownership of the Russian language and assigning it to Moscow, Kyiv, Riga, and Tallinn weaponized language and empowered Russia’s “compatriots protection” policy. In other words, militarized deterrence against Russia has achieved limited success while the underlying factors enabling Moscow’s interventions remained outside the deterrence discussion. Thus in an era of gray zone conflict, deterrence must incorporate civilianized institution-building mechanisms. To prove this, the paper compares minority language policies and their connection to the intensity of Russia’s intervention.

HOW READY ‘INDONESIAN ENGLISH’ IS TO LAUNCH: AN EMIC PERSPECTIVE

This is a qualitative study investigating the strength of the proposition of Indonesian English (Indolish) as a potentially emerging English variety from the outer/expanding circle from an emic perspective. This proposed variety does not yet exist even as a de facto English variety spoken in Indonesia or elsewhere. Nonetheless, the growing spread of English used by Indonesians has frequently prompted the idea of promoting the establishment of Indolish as a new English variety in the World Englishes areas for Indonesians. To clarify this early signal, an exploratory study was conducted to investigate the perspective of Indonesian postgraduate students who pursued their higher degrees in some Australian universities and whose overseas learning and language contact experience should bring them into a direct contact with a wide range of English varieties and thereby allowing them to better reflect on the significance of creating a special type of English for Indonesians. Seven participants responded to the three open-questioned survey questionnaire sent to two mailing list groups of Indonesian Postgraduate students. Two participants prefer to have Indolish while five others disagree with the idea. Majority of the participants show a strong nationalistic identity indicating a stagnant foundation process in Schneider’s Dynamic Model in Indonesian context. Nevertheless, the participants demonstrate a strong dependence on English NS norms which confirm Kachru’s proposition and indicate their rejection of Norton’s notion of ownership of English language. In conclusion, these participants view that Indonesian English does not seem ready to launch yet.

Monikielisen toimijuuden tukeminen koulun toimintayhteisössä

This chapter discusses multilingual agency and its construction in the school. Regarding multilingualism, we describe five discursive spaces that organize interaction in the communities of practice: monolingualism, parallel monolingualism, situational multilingualism, institutional multilingualism, and a hybrid space with new ethnicities. The teacher’s actions and the chosen pedagogical approach transform the discursive and spatial norms; transforming norms and practices go hand in hand. The teacher can facilitate individual students in becoming autonomous agents, in interaction with the community. Developing multilingual agency requires student reflection, and dynamic feedback provided by the teacher. Including pupils with different backgrounds in learning is crucial in times of transnational lives. Thus, the practices of the school communities must be grounded in social justice and equity. Translanguaging and linguistically responsive pedagogies offer inquiry-based practices for inclusive language education that supports the pupils’ multilingual selves and language ownership.

Climate & Language: An Entangled Crisis

Abstract Rising ocean levels threaten entire communities with relocation. The continued erosion of Arctic coastlines due to melting ice sheets and thawing permafrost has forced Inuit communities to move to more secure locations. Each move dislodges Indigenous peoples and their languages from ancestral landscapes and ways of knowing, obligating communities to adopt colonial or majority languages. Scholars and activists have documented the intersections of climate change and language endangerment, with special focus paid to their compounding consequences. We consider the relationship between language and environmental ideologies, synthesizing previous research on how metaphors and communicative norms in Indigenous and colonial languages and cultures influence environmental beliefs and actions. We note that these academic discourses-as well as similar discourses in nonprofit and policy-making spheres-rightly acknowledge the importance of Indigenous thought to environmental and climate action. Sadly, they often fall short of acknowledging both the colonial drivers of Indigenous language “loss” and Indigenous ownership of Indigenous language and environmental knowledge. We propose alternative framings that emphasize colonial responsibility and Indigenous sovereignty. Finally, we reflect on emergent vitalities and radical hope in Indigenous language movements and climate justice movements.

The discursive construction of language ownership and responsibility for Indigenous language revitalisation

AbstractUnpacking the possible ramification of how ownership of language and the responsibility of language revitalisation is perceived and how this may impact language revitalisation, this study uses a critical discourse studies approach to examine how the speakers negotiate their language ownership, which eventually leads to the question ‘who is responsible for language revitalisation’. The data of this study comes from semi‐structured interviews with 11 Indigenous participants in Taiwan. The findings suggest that, when deciding who can ‘do’ language revitalisation, only those who are deemed legitimate by the speakers have the power to act. However, the speakers view the non‐Indigenous speakers as potential speakers and, thus, were also assigned language revitalisation responsibility. Thus, by encouraging non‐Indigenous speakers to become speakers of an Indigenous language via language acquisition, language ownership is shared. This study shows the complexity of how the speakers negotiate language ownership and how this has an impact on language revitalisation efforts.

Self-Reflection: A complex Connection among Language, Culture, Identity, and Difference

The identity-taking process involves a complicated push-and-pull relation from different related aspects like language, culture, and differences. To understand this concept deeper, a self-study is required to explore how one’s life experience of encountering diverse cultures, language barriers, and differences can trigger themselves to define who they are and what relation they have with their surroundings. This is study is a self-reflection based on the author’s personal life experience to ignite the challenges of constructing identity due to cultural barriers, language ownership, and social relations with other people involved.

The English Language Limits Me! Connecting Third Space to Curriculum Transformation in a South African University, Expanding Epistemological Landscapes?

Many studies were conducted on conventional colonial heritage; however, less attention examines the developing concept of curriculum decolonisation in South African universities. This paper advocates for a hybrid literacy between traditional conceptions of academic literacy and instruction for students’ sociohistorical lives, affluent and less affluent. I discuss and illustrate the hegemony of English in high-learning institutions and the post-apartheid mainstream education system. Alongside my previous work in the language field, I interrogate the impasse of language policy in high education and South African schools. This paper is an ethnographic study congruent with the interpretivism paradigm, employing the semi-structured interview for data collection. The third space supports it as a theoretical framework. It affords the provision and guidance for classroom instruction and autonomous learning modes balance, where developing new knowledge is heightened, allowing students’ voices. It is a response to the 2015-2016 student protests on South African university campuses, where several were perplexed on how to respond to the demands of the students to end violent protests against western disciplinary norms that devalue non-centre practices and themes. Biliteracy and translingualism are empathised as the concepts against ownership of language and culture, and its territorialisation, challenging the traditional contrast of ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ speakers and its connection to a particular nation-state.

Language, education, and transformation in Bianca Marais’s Hum If You Don’t Know the Words

In this article, I analyse Bianca Marais’s debut novel Hum If You Don’t Know the Words (2017). I consider first its relation to the historical events of the Soweto Uprising of 1976, and then examine its methods of composition. The issue precipitating the Soweto Uprising, when hundreds of black schoolchildren were gunned down by the police, was the refusal of blacks in Soweto to be taught in Afrikaans rather than in their home languages. Their revolt was both tragic and triumphant: tragic because of the sacrifice of young lives, triumphant because it marked Sowetans’ new power to insist on their ownership of language. In the spirit of this linguistic autonomy, Marais celebrates the power of language to create intercultural and intergenerational encounters, scripting dialogue which marries social diversity with linguistic elasticity. In this marriage her writing is strongly consonant with the work of the Russian linguist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, whose text Art and Answerability examines the ethics of writing and helps the reader to piece together the agency of the implied author. Searching for the perspectives of the implied author reveals Marais’s political activism as well as her mastery of dialogue. Her novel belongs to the tradition created by writers in the 1970s and 1980s—when apartheid was in full force—to anticipate a post-apartheid world. Marais’s novel illustrates a political, cultural, and linguistic reinvention through its manipulation of narrative.

A Tale of Language Ownership and Identity in a Multilingual Society: Revisiting Functional Nativeness

A Tale of Language Ownership and Identity in a Multilingual Society: Revisiting Functional Nativeness

Intimate engagements with language: creative practices for inclusive public spaces in Iceland

ABSTRACT The article discusses an artistic event “Emotions Icelandic Awakes” organized by the Reykjavik City Library as part of the national celebrations for Icelandic Language Day. It examines the potential of affording genuine attention to language as a matter of emotional inquiry for the process of intercultural exchange. We reflect on the role of public institutions in providing an inclusive space that facilitates intercultural communication and where agency and language ownership is discursively determined by the participants. We consider inclusive public spaces as places of ‘enacting hospitality‘ and counterspaces that may help to deconstruct the hegemonic position of Icelandic language in contemporary public discourse regarding immigrants in Iceland.

Pluricentricity and minority languages: the difficult case of North Frisian

Abstract Common definitions of pluricentricity rely on the notions of centre, nation, and norm, frequently without, however, offering sufficient detail on what precisely these mean. These terms are often applied to classify languages as pluricentric or not, without adequately recognising intra-linguistic variation and dynamics of power within a speaker community (language ownership). Using the example of a national minority language from North-West Germany, North Frisian, this article discusses how a narrow reading of the definition of pluricentricity would deny such a status to this language, when in fact the sociolinguistic situation of North Frisian matches that of many acknowledged pluricentric languages. Instead, the article suggests that the term nation should no longer be equated with state, that the term centre be further specified to determine what institution or which individuals have authority over language, and that the term norm be more clearly articulated to account for the variability in “correct” language use.

Indescribable: The Construction and Enregisterment of Korean American Ethnolinguistic Identity

ABSTRACT This paper examines how young Korean Americans conceive of the relationship between their ethnic identity and linguistic behavior, focusing on metalinguistic commentary given on the topic of Korean American English (KAE). I argue that the ongoing enregisterment of a unique KAE variety is characterized by the fact that Korean Americans disagree on both what this variety sounds like and where the variety is spoken or where it comes from. Yet, a majority still contend that KAE exists. I connect this paradox to the historical struggle that Korean Americans have over language ownership and hybrid cultural identity.

Our Language—Linguistic Ideologies and Japanese Dialect Use in L1/L2 Interaction

This study uses conversation data and ethnographic interviews to examine the role of meta-talk in speaker legitimacy for L2 Japanese speakers. Autoethnographic analysis of conversation data demonstrates how an L2 speaker is co-constructed (jointly positioned) as a (non)legitimate speaker of Japanese Dialect. The researcher, an L2 Japanese speaker, recorded Japanese conversations with L1 interlocutors, namely, her L1 Japanese spouse and in-laws. Two contrasting cases of L2 Japanese Dialect use are examined. In the first case, L1 interlocutors respond to the L2 speaker’s dialect with meta-talk about “our language,” co-constructing the L2 speaker as a non-legitimate dialect user. In the second case, the L2 speaker’s dialect use is affirmed when the L1 interlocutor uses similar dialect; no meta-talk occurs. The conversation data is supplemented with ethnographic interview data which underscores the prevalence of meta-talk. Meta-talk reveals speakers’ beliefs about legitimate speakerhood in which “our language” does not include L2 speakers. Conversely, the absence of meta-talk affirms the L2 speaker’s dialect use and depicts dialect as a shared form of “our language.” This study contributes to understanding linguistic ideologies, demonstrates how language ownership and speaker legitimacy manifest in Japanese interactions, and adds to research examining Japanese Dialect use by L2 speakers.

Diversity, Inclusivity, and the Importance of L2 Speaker Legitimacy

This commentary builds on the work presented in Mori et al. (this volume) and considers diversity and inclusivity in the context of L2 speaker legitimacy in Japanese-language education. A discussion of linguistic ideologies, native speaker bias, language ownership, and speaker legitimacy is followed by a brief introduction of key research findings which demonstrate the persistence of native speaker bias for L2 speakers of Japanese. I argue that as Japanese-language educators, we must make a commitment to overcoming native speaker bias with regard to each other and especially with regard to our students. I conclude with some suggestions of steps we can take to become models for our students and demonstrate the legitimation of speakers regardless of linguistic background, so that we may begin to eliminate native speaker bias in our profession and in our classrooms.

World Englishes, translingualism, and racialization in the US college composition classroom

AbstractThis paper examines the connection between language ownership and racialization as discussed in world Englishes (WE) and translingualism. WE and translingualism have expanded both epistemological and ontological spectrums in understanding how Englishes have been used, understood, and transformed in different global contexts, challenging a monolingual orientation to language and literacy. Yet, less questioned is how the very approach to various ways of ‘owning’ Englishes contributes to WE and translingualism's work of linguistic justice. In this regard, we argue that the issue of racialization needs to be foregrounded in these two bodies of scholarship to better account for racialized students’ language practices and ownership. Situating this examination in the US college composition classroom, we discuss how the conceptualization of language ownership can extend monolingual and racializing ideologies. We conclude by calling for a more linguistically just view of language ownership as a way to undo the racial‐linguistic stratification in educational contexts such as the writing classroom.

An analysis of business English coursebooks from an ELF perspective

Abstract This study analysed a series of business English coursebooks published and used in the Chinese context from an English as a lingua franca (ELF) perspective. The analysis was conducted from four aspects: language ownership, language exposure, language activities, and cultural representations. These address four key issues in the debate over the practicality of ELF-informed materials. The findings show an orientation towards native English speakers as representatives of English users, a dominance of native-speaker Standard English in language exposure, a lack of ELF-informed activities, and a limited representation of Chinese culture. This article concludes that the coursebooks merely introduce ELF as a cultural and linguistic phenomenon. Despite some attempts to present the role of ELF in the global business community, there is a paucity of ELF exposure and ELF-informed activities. The implications of these findings for the selection and evaluation of ELF-informed materials are discussed.

Improper communities in the work of Roberto Esposito and Jacques Rancière

Recent theories of community (Nancy, Agamben, Esposito) aim to think the term beyond its definition as the ownership of shared identity, language, culture or territory. For Esposito, to reduce community to a property whose possession distinguishes members from non-members undermines the commonality the term implies. The common opposes what is proper or one’s own; it belongs to everyone and anyone. Rather than securing identity and belonging, community, defined by its impropriety, disrupts them so that we are in common. While his work successfully illustrates the incompatibility of the common and the proper, it leaves unanswered the question of how communities come to experience their impropriety. Through a comparison with Rancière’s improper community, we can identify and gesture beyond this limit. Its members intervene in proper communities by exercising the right to decide on common matters despite officially having no right to do so. Their actions, by demonstrating the openness of the common to anyone and everyone, turn its privatisation into a shared wrong that connects community with non-community. By supplementing Esposito’s work with Rancière’s, we see how communities relate to what they have deemed improper in a way that both challenges and revitalises their sense of commonality.

Improper communities in the work of Roberto Esposito and Jacques Rancière

Recent theories of community (Nancy, Agamben, Esposito) aim to think the term beyond its definition as the ownership of shared identity, language, culture or territory. For Esposito, to reduce community to a property whose possession distinguishes members from non-members undermines the commonality the term implies. The common opposes what is proper or one’s own; it belongs to everyone and anyone. Rather than securing identity and belonging, community, defined by its impropriety, disrupts them so that we are in common. While his work successfully illustrates the incompatibility of the common and the proper, it leaves unanswered the question of how communities come to experience their impropriety. Through a comparison with Ranciere’s improper community, we can identify and gesture beyond this limit. Its members intervene in proper communities by exercising the right to decide on common matters despite officially having no right to do so. Their actions, by demonstrating the openness of the common to anyone and everyone, turn its privatisation into a shared wrong that connects community with non-community. By supplementing Esposito’s work with Ranciere’s, we see how communities relate to what they have deemed improper in a way that both challenges and revitalises their sense of commonality.

Language teacher identity

The topic of language teacher identity receives strong attention in current scholarly literature. Understanding the complexities of identities that second/foreign language teachers construct is crucial because the ways teachers perceive themselves as professionals impact teacher development (e.g., Kanno & Stuart, 2011*), interactions with peers and colleagues (e.g., Kayi-Aydar, 2015*), pedagogical choices or classroom practices (e.g., Duff & Uchida, 1997*), and access to power and ownership of language (De Costa & Norton, 2017*; Varghese et al., 2016*), ultimately undergirding or undermining second/foreign language teaching (Varghese et al., 2016*).