Patterns Of Language Choice Research Articles

Socio-Cultural Factors Influencing Language Use and Identity Construction Among Women in Kitui West Constituency, Kenya

This research seeks to examine and describe the complex interaction between language and identity in the lives of the women of Kitui West Constituency, Kitui County, Kenya. Grounded in ethnography, this study explores the cultural and social factors that inform language variations and identity construction in diverse women’s collectives. The targeted institutions include church-related organizations, SACCOs, and informal community-based organizations. The combined focus on qualitative and quantitative methodology: in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and sociolinguistic questionnaires fills a gap in knowledge pertaining to language and identity in multilingual African settings and provides impetus for reflections on language policy as well as women’s rights and emancipation reveal the gendered interdependence between the patterns of language choice and societal factors such as education, religion, urbanization, and economic activity. The analysis of the data provided shows that women in Kitui West have diverse linguistic resources that they negotiate every day while juggling between cultural and socially imposed roles and rights. Consequently, it fills a gap in knowledge pertaining to language and identity in multilingual African settings and provides impetus for reflections on language policy as well as women’s rights and emancipation.

Sour soup, Tom Yum, or Dongyin? What can a menu tell us about linguistic capital and multilingual development in contemporary Thailand?

ABSTRACT In Bangkok, Thailand, one of the top tourist destinations in the world, foreign language skills in the tourism industry are seen as a form of linguistic capital. Drawing upon the theoretical notion of ‘linguistic capital’, this study aims to investigate the patterns of language choice on Thai food menus and examine the relationship between the language used on a menu and the average price of four selected dishes in Thai restaurants. Fieldwork data were collected from 117 Thai restaurants located in three districts of Bangkok. The findings reveal that Thai-only menus are the most prevalent in Thai restaurants, while Thai-English bilingual menus and Thai-English-Chinese trilingual menus are less common. However, Thai restaurants with bilingual menus have higher average prices than those with monolingual Thai menus and trilingual menus. By triangulating linguistic ethnography with historical documents, this study argues that English-Thai bilingualism will continue to function as linguistic capital in contemporary Bangkok for the foreseeable future. In comparison to the English language, Chinese is merely an additional script on the menu without a superior economic perception. This demonstrates how linguistic values are shaped by glocalised commercial powers, which can help us understand the changing dynamics of linguistic hierarchy in multilingual Asia.

The Method of Application of Mini-corposes for the Analysis of Language Variation of Etiquetial Expressions in Bilingual Language Situations in the Sociolinguistic Aspect.

The author examines the process of creating and methodology of applying the mini-corps to solve the problems in the field of language choice learning in the sphere of speech etiquette. The different stages of compiling a mini-corps from the peculiarities of material collection to the construction of theoretical models of language use of speech etiquette are considered. The terminological apparatus of the study is introduced. The features of different methods are compared and the need for a comprehensive approach to compiling a mini-corpus is substantiated. The shortage of corpora for the study of language choice in a bilingual situation is stated. Advantages and disadvantages of the chosen methodology are described. In particular, the necessity of selecting authentic examples of spontaneous speech taken from videos based on the method of non-included observation is pointed out. The place of the mini-corpus technique in the set of methods used in this study is shown. The result is a corpus-based description of the algorithms of speakers' use of etiquette expressions in a particular language under the influence of various configurations of factors and parameters of the social context. It is concluded that this method allows, on the one hand, to obtain the necessary and sufficient material for the analysis, on the other hand, it does not involve the use and processing of a large array of data. The prospect of researching the method is to apply it in other situations of bilingualism in order to complement and correct the theoretical models obtained in the course of the study. Thus, the method of compiling bilingual mini-corps makes it possible to reach the level of generalization of linguistic facts, sufficient to build universal models for interpreting the patterns of language choice of etiquette expressions in bilingualism.

Polish-German preschoolers develop and use heritage Polish differently depending on whether they heard German from birth or not.

This study assessed the language proficiency and use of a hitherto under-investigated group, viz., 3.5-year-olds growing up with Polish as a heritage language and German as societal language. All children (N = 28) heard Polish from birth in the home but half the children also heard German from birth (Bilingual First Language Acquisition, BFLA) while the other half added German through preschool (Early Second Language Acquisition, ESLA). All children attended German preschools. Data collection relied on an online survey filled out by 28 mothers and 20 fathers. There were large discrepancies between parental answers to general versus detailed questions regarding language use (choice) amongst parents and children. This has important repercussions for much of questionnaire based bilingualism research. Children were developing productive language as expected but BFLA preschoolers spoke German better or spoke both languages equally well whereas ESLA preschoolers spoke Polish better. Apart from BFLA children's much longer and daily exposure to German from birth, these BFLA-ESLA differences in relative Polish proficiency may relate to different current patterns of language choice, with (1) Polish less present in parent-child interactions involving BFLA than ESLA preschoolers, and with (2) BFLA but not ESLA preschoolers mostly hearing Polish from just a single parent. The BFLA-ESLA difference thus made a difference to children's heritage Polish development and use already at age 3.5.

PEMILIHAN BAHASA DALAM CERAMAH AGAMA ISLAM DI TEMBILAHAN, RIAU

Tembilahan is the capital of the Indragiri Hilir regency in Riau and is nicknamed a worship city because of the Islamic influence brought by the ulama from South Borneo. Its community consists of various ethnic groups, such as Banjar, Malay, Buginese, Javanese, Minangkabau, and others, with the majority adherents of Islam. This diversity raises problems regarding the choice of language in the religious setting. This paper examines language choice patterns and the factors that determine the choice of languages. The data are drawn by using document analysis and the introspection method. The ethnography of communication approach was used to analyze the data. It reveals that five languages were used (Indonesian, Arabic, Banjar, Riau Malay Coastal dialect, and Javanese) by applying code-switching and code-mixing, thus forming nine patterns of language choice. The factors that determine the choice of those languages are ethnic and language background, the speaker's language competence, the speech's situation, and the speaker's purposes. The purposes of language choice are to emphasize, teach, respect, give an example, pray, quote Al-Quran and Hadith, praise Allah, quote others' statements, and humour. The conclusion is Banjar language is used as the dominant language. Even though there is still no found language use with a single variation in the Islamic sermons in Tembilahan, it shows that the Tembilahan community is classified as a multilingual society that can use more than one language.

Exploring Two Cases of Amazigh Maintenance and Shift in a Moroccan Higher Education Institution

The study of Language Maintenance and Shift (LMS) is mainly concerned with exploring the effects of contact between two varieties or more on the speakers' "habitual use" of these varieties. This paper focuses on investigating two cases of LMS among native Amazigh-speaking youngsters who were enrolled at a higher education institution in the city of Agadir, Morocco. With regard to their linguistic background, the two cases are bilingual in an Amazigh variety (Tashlhit) as their mother tongue and Moroccan Arabic (Darija) as their L2. The purpose of the study is to explore the possible determinants of LMS among these two cases by exploring both their language choice patterns and social networks in particular language use domains (family and school). The instruments utilized to collect data included 'natural speech' recordings, self-report questionnaires, and interviews. The collected data were analyzed and interpreted in the light of Domain analysis and Social Network theories. The results revealed inconsistency in the case studies' patterns and determinants of LMS. Accordingly, the study concluded by recommending adopting more comprehensive models to better comprehend the dynamics of LMS in indigenous settings.

Language choice of Vietnamese ethnic minority students in family and community interactions: implications for minority language maintenance

ABSTRACT This article examines Vietnamese ethnic minority students’ experiences of language choice in communication with people of different ages and in different relations to them in their family and ethnolinguistic community. Concepts of power, solidarity and marked and unmarked choices are adapted to examine the students’ strategies of language choice. Interviews with a group of students are used as the main data source. Findings suggest that the mainstream language was set up as the generational solidarity code among young members while the L1 was considered the power code associated with older members of the family and community. These emerging patterns of language choice may result in disruption of everyday in-group language practices among different generations and perpetuate language shift. It is suggested that explicit L1-promotion policies in the community and minority language support in public domains may encourage young people to engage in language management efforts and empower minority languages in the polity.

A longitudinal investigation of language mixing in Spanish-English dual language learners: the role of language proficiency, variability, and sociolinguistic factors.

This study examines language mixing in 26 Spanish-English dual language learners over the course of their first year of preschool. The children's patterns of language choice while interacting in monolingual language contexts were analyzed at age 3;6 and 4;5 to examine: (1) whether the frequency of language mixing changed during the year; (2) whether mixing was related to proficiency as measured by utterance length and lexical diversity; and (3) whether there were different subgroups of children, among the participants, with similar proficiency and language use patterns. The results indicate that language mixing, which was low at both ages, was related to limited lexical resources only at 3;6. However, by age 4;5, language choice was more constrained by sociolinguistic variables - children's awareness of the language prescribed by the majority culture - than by proficiency. An exploratory cluster analysis further reveals different profiles of learners sharing similar proficiency and language mixing characteristics.

Transnational Traders’ Discourse: Informal Language Policy Emerging in a South African Chinatown

Recent Chinese trade expansion into many African countries has brought new communities of Chinese migrants into the region. In the “China Town” shopping centres established in the Western Cape, many employ African migrants as shop assistants. This study considers the notion of “language policy” as it is applied in developing a foundation for business communication in a setting where interactants have mutually unintelligible first languages and relatively low English lingua franca proficiency. Taking an ethnographic approach, this article investigates the linguistic diversity of such a market place where workers rely on English as the workplace language, developing patterns of language choice regarding which languages and styles occur in different kinds of conversational events and sequences. We focus first on the nature of the communicative practices in such a multilingual trading centre and, second, interpreting these observed practices, we indicate how an informal business language policy tacitly develops.

Lobster, tourism and other kinds of business. Economic opportunity and language choice in a multilingual village in Belize

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the interaction of economic opportunity and language choice. On the basis of ethnographic and interview data, I show language ideologies and patterns of language choice in a multilingual Belizean village to be related to economic activity. In the case in question, fishing, international tourism, transnational trade and work migration are crucial in understanding complex patterns of language ideology and use. The main argument is that economic practice is central in the development of social relations and thus of language ideologies. On a theoretical level, this implies that the discursive construction of a language (as Spanish, English or German) is linked to economic conditions. Where economic and political power structures co-occur, the emergence of clearly defined cultural and thus linguistic categories seems to be more likely.

Changes in language use with peers during adolescence: a longitudinal study in Catalonia

ABSTRACT This article presents a longitudinal panel study analyzing the evolution of a sample of more than 1000 informants in the language practices with peers during the period between the end of primary education and the end of secondary education in Catalonia. Results led to the identification of five clusters of informants according to their linguistic trajectories. Three of them, which together accounted for 75% of all informants, combined the strong predominance of a single language —respectively Catalan, Castilian, and other languages— and a remarkable stability in patterns of language choice during the five years’ period under scrutiny. The other 25% of informants, grouped in two different clusters, declared more bilingual/multilingual behavior and underwent more significant changes that may be related to linguistic mudes [Pujolar, Joan, and Isaac Gonzàlez. 2013. ‘Linguistic “Mudes” and the Deethnicization of Language Choice in Catalonia.’ International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism]. The study also explores the relevance of the transition between primary and secondary education as a social moment favorable for linguistic mudes and concludes thata small but still significant percentage of informants went through such changes in that transition.

The use of Arabic in Kuwaiti EFL classrooms: An exploratory study on the patterns and functions of language choice

This study examines the relationship between the functions and patterns of language choice in EFL classrooms in a Kuwaiti primary school. It applies the overall order model, specifically the medium...

The vitality and diversity of multilingual repertoires: Commentary on Mufwene

In this commentary, we argue that examining the topic of language endangerment and loss requires close attention to culturally specific local factors that influence patterns of language choice and that shifting the emphasis of investigation from language endangerment to language vitality can yield significant research insights. Drawing largely on lessons from the investigation of patterns of multilingualism in rural Africa, we also suggest that examination of language ideologies and the use of ethnographic methods in language documentation can play an important role in understanding global patterns of language vitality.

Can Internet Data Help to Uncover Developing Preferred Multilingual Usage Patterns? An Exploration of Data from Turkish-Dutch Bilingual Internet Fora

This paper discusses the extent to which two characteristics of digital data make such data suitable for detecting preference patterns in code switching: an absence of paralinguistic disambiguation- cues and its extra-linguistic ‘context-freeness’. This paper reports on the exploration of a 219,536 word Dutch-Turkish digital data corpus compiled from bilingual internet fora. It describes both macro-sociolinguistic patterns of language choice as well as micro-linguistic contact features in bilingual data, comparing both macro and micro results with what is known from the sociolinguistic literature in general, and Turkish-Dutch code switching and contact linguistic literature in particular. The data are analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. Focus is on the analysis of densely bilingual data of the type that has been called in the literature ‘mixed language’ (Auer, 1999), ‘intimate switching’ (Poplack, 1980), or ‘unmarked switching’ (Myers-Scotton, 1983; 1993b). It is argued that data of this type of intensive language mixing should display a certain degree of predictability since it is generally perceived of as the most effortless way of speaking by its users. It is demonstrated that recurring patterns can be found in the data, both on the macro-level of language choice and the micro-level of lexical choice, as well as in code switching patterns, and lexico-semantic choices, and it is argued that in these patterns principles of transparency and frequency of exposure may be an explanatory factor.

Multilingual islands in a monolingual sea: language choice patterns during group work

ABSTRACTThis study explores language choice patterns during group work of bilingual pupils (Turkish–Dutch) in two mainstream primary schools in Flanders (Belgium). In each school, a group of four children performed eight different tasks, related to different subjects of the curriculum. During task performance, they were exceptionally invited to use their mother tongue (Turkish), which ran against the rules of the monolingual school. Language choice data in these temporary ‘multilingual islands in a monolingual sea’ were gathered. Results indicate that Turkish was used for purposes related to task performance throughout all tasks. The results challenge the view, currently prevalent in Flemish education, that a submersion approach is the only viable option for bilingual pupils speaking a minority language.

Language choice, language alternation and code-switching in the Mercator-Hondius Atlas

The atlas of Gerardus Mercator (Gerard de Cremer), or the Atlas sive cosmographicae meditationes de fabrica mundi et fabricati figura, is one of first modern atlases and one of the most famous of those compiled in the Netherlands. The first (unfinished) edition was published in 1595, but the copperplates were later acquired by Jodocus Hondius (Joost de Hondt) and his business associates. The revised Mercator-Hondius Atlas was published for the first time in 1606 with added maps and texts. The texts printed on verso of the maps were written by Petrus Montanus (Pieter van den Berg), who was a brother-in-law of Hondius and a Latin teacher. Many subsequent editions of the atlas were produced in the years that followed. The first editions were in Latin, but versions in European vernaculars such as French, German and Italian were produced later as well. The present article focuses on the multilingual nature of the Mercator-Hondius Atlas (1613, editio quarta) by discussing language choice, language alternation and code-switching patterns in different parts of the atlas. The dominant language of the descriptive texts is Latin, but there are also switches into many other languages, including Greek (written in Greek script) and several vernaculars. Furthermore, the map pages tend to indicate the names of different types of area (e.g. cities, seas, and oceans) in different languages. The aim of the present article is to provide a preliminary exploration of the possibilities of approaching the atlas with the aid of concepts and ideas derived from modern code-switching studies. I demonstrate how these concepts can be used to describe the language choice patterns in the text and discuss some of the challenges the data poses for a linguistic approach.

The patterns of language choice at the border of Malaysia-Thailand

Any activities conducted at the boundary area between countries will only be successful if the community of speakers has mutual understanding in terms of language, especially those involving business. This study focuses on a community in the northern part of Malaysia near the Thailand border where majority of people are bilingual in Malay and Thai. This study aims to investigate the patterns of language used by speakers in the Malaysia-Thailand border, in the context of language maintenance and language shift. Both countries use different languages; with Malaysians use Malay and the Thais use Thai language. In this cross-border context, activities pertaining to business, visit or personal matters will have an impact on the development of the two languages. This study presents the findings on the language choice from a survey involving 202 respondents that was conducted in two border towns at the Malaysia-Thailand border, namely Rantau Panjang (Malaysian side) and Golok (Thailand side). By utilizing the domain concept that was introduced by Fishman (1972), this study focuses on two domains namely, business and family. In addition to the questionnaire, participant observations and interviews were also conducted as supplements. The data on the patterns of language choice were analyzed statistically. The findings show that although Malaysians and Thais speak two different languages, Kelantanese dialect, which is a variety of the standard Malay, was the most dominant language at the border. This study also found that age was a significant factor in determining the patterns of language use. The younger generations were using Kelantanese dialect and Thai language in domains where older people would only use Kelantanese dialect. This points to the occurrence of language shift at the border. However, the community at the Thai side of the border tends to choose Kelantanese dialect in their daily activities, which seems to indicate language maintenance in this area. These findings suggest that language can serve as a marker of identity, especially for those communities in Golok as most of them are originally from Malaysia. Finally, this study has contributed empirical data on language usage at the Malaysia-Thailand border.

English-Malay Code-Mixing Innovation in Facebook among Malaysian University Students

INTRODUCTION:University students in the early twenty -first century use home computers and notebooks for communication at remarkable rates in ever -enlarging virtual communities (Tagliamonte, 2008).Taking into consideration, Facebook - the largest virtual community, has become one of the main communication media university students utilize to keep in contact with friends and acquaintances. Thus, this makes it an appealing medium of spoken -written language to identify trends of among university students in informal social domains.This paper aims to scrutinize a current language phenomenal trend in Malaysia by investigating Malay-English language alternation in the spoken -written language through the medium of Facebook. This is in contrast to previous research, has mostly studied language alternation in face -to-face informal conversations (Chan, 2004; Muysken, 2000; Myers -Scotten, 1992; Wei, 1998) with few studies in the context of Computer Mediated Communication i.e., CMC (Danet & Herring, 2003; Durham, 2003; Goldbarg, 2009; Ho, 2006; Huang, 2004).LANGUAGE ALTERNATION:The distinction between code-switching and is one of the most perplexing debates in the study of language alternation (Cardenas-Claros and Isharyanti, 2009; Myers -Scotton, 1993). Clyne (1991 as cited in Cardenas -Claros and Isharyanti, 2009) claimed that code -switching and refer to the same phenomena in which the speaker stops using language A' and employs language B' (p.161). Wei (1998) clarified that if language alternation occurs at or above clause level, it is considered as code-switching and if it occurs below clause level then it is considered as are the definitions adopted in this study.CODE-MIXING:Code-mixing is the change of one language to another within the same utterance or in the same oral/written text. Muysken (2000) defines as the lexical items and grammatical features of two languages that in the same sentence. According to Li (1998; 2000), code-mixing refers to any admixture of linguistic elements of two or more language systems in the same uttera nce at various levels: phonological, lexical, grammatical and orthographical.According to Muysken (2000), the term can be referred as when the features of grammar and lexical items of two or more languages are in the same sentence. In a multilingual society such as in Malaysia, is regarded as a common phenomenon generates mixed language or the localized term 'rojak' language. This phenomenon has given significant impact not only among language users in their daily normal day conversations, but have influenced sentence use in online social network such as Facebook. In this study, the narrow focus is on the language alternation of English morphemes into Malay lexical items where patterns of language choice are investigated. Language choice depends on the participants whether to choose Malay or English for their online postings, whilst morpheme insertion is in English language.Such communicative functions of code-switching can also be listed according to the functions that they try to accomplish. Among these, the following ten functions have been described in a study (Malik, 1994): Lack of Facility, Lack of Register, Mood of the Speaker, To emphasize a point, Habitual Experience, Semantic significance, To show identity with a group, To address a different audience, Pragmatic reasons and To attract attention.STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM:In the past decade, people are communicating around the world without boundaries with the aid of technology. According to Crystal (2001), this type of communication has prompted new concepts of language contact. This has attracted many researchers to study on language contact via Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) especially in bilingual communities (e.g., Paolillo, 2001;Su, 2003;Hinrichs, 2006 as cited in Huang, 2009). …

Mind the gap: What code-switching in literature can teach us about code-switching

This article argues that contrary to sociolinguistic practice which emphasizes spontaneous speech as the main or only source of evidence, the study of literary code-switching (CS) can be relevant to an understanding of CS in general. CS is first distinguished from other forms of literary multilingualism and from borrowing. We then consider how CS fits in with the mimetic function in literary dialogue, and how its functions can be compared with those of natural speech. We will see that literary CS can provide a wealth of sociolinguistically relevant information on speech modes found in various communities, and is particularly apt to portray postcolonial tensions. More stylized CS in poetry and drama can also embody complex multicultural identities and patterns of language choice, even in the absence of strict verisimilitude.

Language choice and code-switching among Hong Kong’s Hakka speakers

Abstract This paper examines the language practices among speakers of Hakka in Hong Kong, a minority Chinese variety still found in the territory. These speakers were largely monolingual a few decades ago but are now primarily bilingual in Hakka and Cantonese as the community shifts towards the latter, the dominant societal language. To explore the process and dynamics of this language shift, the present study adopted an ethnographic approach for observing the actual bilingual behaviours of individuals and families in the community. The informant sample comprised 32 speakers aged between 9 and 82 from nine separate families across Hong Kong. Data was collected through a combination of participant observation, informal interviews and conversational exchanges in the informants’ homes. Examination of their patterns of language choice and language use shows that most of the speakers use Cantonese-dominant patterns, and are ‘shifters’ rather than ‘maintainers’ of the Hakka language; the shift is clearly generation and age-related. The paper also illustrates how bilingual speakers make use of code-switching between Hakka and Cantonese to achieve various discourse purposes in their everyday conversations, suggesting that even among the ‘language shifters’, Hakka remains an important linguistic resource.