Patterns Of Language Use Research Articles

The lexico-grammar of partnerships: corpus patterns of facilitated agency

This article contributes to the growing body of research that joins critical discourse analysis with corpus analysis. I investigate a one million-word special corpus on US urban redevelopment in an attempt to illustrate that partnerships as popular collaborative coalitions in new capitalism can be identified in representations of social actors at the lexico-grammatical level. Focusing on two recurrent patterns in a Hallidayan framework, I argue that these representations break with the traditional binary of activation–passivation that is frequently used to discuss how key participants are portrayed in discourse. I suggest the category of facilitated agency in order to accommodate representational patterns where actors are depicted as jointly though not necessarily equally contributing to the completion of a process. The analysis further highlights the potential of corpus methods to uncover patterns of language use that may lead to a refinement of CDA's existing analytic repertoire.

Patterns of language use in polyglossic urban areas and multilingual regions and institutions: a Swiss case study

Growing mobility of important parts of the world's population has led to a massive increase in multilingualism in post-modern societies and a lasting change from homoglossic to polyglossic communities with important “deterritorialised” linguistic minorities, mostly plurilingual to a variable degree. Ideologies and practices of communication in old and new multilingual contexts vary largely. The “solutions” for overcoming potential problems go from using a lingua franca (often English), inventing pidgin like emergent varieties, choosing the language of one of the interlocutors known (partially) by the others (namely in the case of immigrants), insisting on receptive competences (everybody uses his or her own language, e. g. in officially multilingual institutions), to various forms of mixed speech and, of course, to interpretation and translation processes. Drawing on extensive field work in bilingual institutions and multilingual companies in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, we propose to discuss various ways of mobilizing multilingual repertoires in situations of cross-linguistic and intercultural communication. The analyzed data will mainly consist of dyadic and polyadic oral interactions. It will also include written texts and signs that are part of the linguistic landscape. Our work is grounded in the assumption that multilingualism is no longer considered a marginal phenomenon, only of interest to specialists, but instead a characteristic of the majority of human beings.

Changing intergroup relations with Mainland Chinese: An analysis of changes in Hong Kong movies as a popular cultural discourse

Hong Kong popular culture played an important role in the construction and consolidation of Hong Kong identity long before the handover to China. In the past few years leading up to the 10 th anniversary of the handover, both Hong Kong and China have undergone numerous changes which seem to be changing their relations. Whilst Hong Kong people had tended to distance and distinguish themselves from China and Mainland Chinese in pre-handover times, they now tend to feel closer to their motherland and their relations with Mainland Chinese also seem to be changing. These transformations can be exemplified by Hong Kong popular culture such as TV programs and films which have been studied in various disciplines. In particular, literature on Hong Kong movies can be found in fields such as film and cultural studies, semiotics and sociology. While language use in the Hong Kong cinema is regarded as one of the unique features that contributed to the formation of local Hong Kong identity (Teo 2000), the patterns of language use of characters in these films have been largely unexplored. Based on an analysis of,film extracts from Hong Kong films, this study examines and compares the Hong Kongers' perceptions of their intergroup relations with Mainland Chinese from an applied linguistic perspective. In doing so, it analyses Hong Kongers' attitudes towards Mandarin before and after the handover to China in 1997 as reflected in the language exchange between Hong Kongers and mainlanders portrayed in film interactions. Findings indicate that Mandarin is becoming a dominant language, and the intergroup differences between Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese are less emphasised.

Language shift or maintenance within three generations: examples from three Turkish–Arabic-speaking families

Where there are two or more languages in contact, language shift is inevitable. Shift or maintenance happens at individual or societal levels due to social and psychological conditions in which community members are in. Pattern of language use in a family and the attitudes of family members towards heritage language or the language of the wider community are also important determining factors. For that reason, language patterns in three Arabic–Turkish bilingual families have been investigated through deep interviews held with third-generation representatives of each families. The results show that shift or maintenance take different directions within three generations because of, mostly, outside factors shaping the attitude of bilingual speakers.

The Vitality of Kabiye in Togo

In Togo, speakers of Kabiye have been in contact with the speakers of Ewe for several decades due to migration. As a result of this language contact, many members of the Kabiye speech community have become bilingual in Kabiye and Ewe. There have been a number of claims that Kabiye “est une langue en péril” (Aritiba 1993: 11). These claims have been based mainly on the observation of Kabiye speakers in Lomé and other major cities, where younger speakers seem to be losing their mother tongue to the benefit of Ewe. However, the extent of the loss of Kabiye is not well known because no extensive sociolinguistic study has been carried out among Kabiye speakers in these areas, and more specifically, in major Kabiye-speaking areas. The current study which has been carried out in Kara, the major Kabiye-speaking city and Awidina, a Kabiye village of the prefecture of Kara, fills the gap. The paper examines Kabiye speakers' reports of patterns of language use in these areas of the Kabiye community.

Language shift in second generation Albanian immigrants in Greece

Albanian immigration to Greece started in the beginning of the 1990s and the second generation of Albanian immigrants is a recent phenomenon. This paper presents the findings of research investigating language maintenance/shift among second generation Albanian immigrants in Athens using as main informants adolescents of Albanian origin. Quantitative and qualitative data on children's language competence and on patterns of language use within Albanian households indicate that the Albanian ethnolinguistic group is undergoing rapid language shift. For the social psychological dimension of the study, data were gathered by utilising the concept of ethnolinguistic vitality and some items of the subjective vitality questionnaire (SVQ). The SVQ data indicate low vitality perceptions among second generation Albanian immigrants. Finally, while Albanian parents express positive attitudes to language maintenance, in practice many do not take the necessary measures for intergenerational language transmission.

English Use Among Older Bilingual Immigrants in Linguistically Concentrated Neighborhoods: Social Proficiency and Internal Speech as Intracultural Variation

This research focuses on patterns of English proficiency and use-of-English among older immigrants living in linguistically concentrated, ethnic neighborhoods. A sample (n = 60) of older Puerto Ricans, who moved from the island to the mainland in their twenties, were divided into English proficiency groups (fluent, high intermediate, low intermediate) via the Adult Language Assessment Scales. Participants then provided self-ratings of their English proficiency (understanding, speaking, reading, and writing), their use of English in social domains (language spoken with own-family, in-laws, spouse, children, neighbors, and workmates), and their use of English in private psychological domains (language of talking to oneself, counting, writing notes to oneself, thinking, dreaming, praying, and expressing feelings). Finally, all participants completed the Puerto Rican Bicultural Scale. Results show a cohort of immigrant elders whose first language is protected by their ethnic neighborhoods but whose domestic and private lives are increasingly permeated by English. In particular, children emerge as powerful forces of language socialization in English for their parents. Further, there are important individual differences by level of proficiency, with a lowest proficiency group that is less acculturated, lower in socioeconomic status, and even more linguistically isolated than groups with higher proficiency. In essence, level of second language proficiency is a potent source of intracultural variation. Methodologically, the paper makes the important point that self-rated patterns of language use are consistent with scores on formal measures of proficiency. The paper also provides empirical verification of the logic of dividing language use into external, social speech and internal, psychological speech.

The future of the Shahdagh languages

Budukh, Kryz, and Khinalug are three Caucasian languages spoken in northeastern Azerbaijan near Mount Shahdagh. The speakers of all three languages are highly multilingual; reports are that they have near-native fluency in Azerbaijani. Furthermore, speakers of all three have been migrating from the mountains to more hospitable plains communities where they interact even more with native speakers of Azerbaijani. All three are endangered to some degree, but there are no detailed descriptions of the sociolinguistic situation in any of these languages. In 2000–2001, a research team investigated patterns of language use, language proficiency, and language attitudes in the three communities. The results suggest that the situation is far from uniform for the three language groups. While massive language shift is occurring in Budukh even in the mountain communities, Kryz is used in most village situations. Finally, a stable diglossia is currently in evidence in Khinalug. In all three communities, however, the traditional languages are definitely being replaced by Azerbaijani.

Motion events in Chinese novels: Evidence for an equipollently-framed language

Motion events typically involve an entity moving along a path in a certain manner. Research on language typology has identified three types of languages based on the characteristic expression of manner and path information. In satellite-framed languages, the main verb expresses information about manner of movement and a subordinate satellite element (e.g., a verb particle) to the verb conveys the path of movement. In verb-framed languages, the main verb expresses the core information of the path of movement, and the manner information is expressed in a subordinate structure (e.g., a gerundive). Both manner and path, however, are expressed by equivalent grammatical forms in equipollently-framed languages. In this paper, we explore the place of Mandarin Chinese in motion event typology through an examination of motion event descriptions in Chinese novels. We find that Chinese writers do not pattern their narrative descriptions of motion events as do writers of satellite-framed languages, nor as writers of verb-framed languages. Rather, Chinese writers follow unique habitual patterns of language use that lead to the contention that Chinese is an equipollently-framed language.

STRUCTURING HIERARCHICAL DEFERENCE AND SOLIDARITY IN THE CONTEXT OF CHANGING COMMUNICATIONS MEDIA

This research examined the extent to which the introduction of communications media triggered shifts in broader structural arrangements as enacted in the distribution of power and as signalled by patterns of language use. It sampled the ongoing communications between the North American managers of an international aid and peace organization and their direct reports located in Africa, as the medium changed from couriered letters to facsimiles to electronic mail over a 12-year period. Differences in hierarchical position and communication medium influenced linguistic choices, which, in turn, formed a complex pattern characterized by a dialectic of control in which there was ongoing tension between autonomy and dependency.

Normal and abnormal aging in bilinguals.

Bilinguals use two different language systems to mediate not only social communication, but also cognitive processes. Potential differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in task-solving strategies and patterns of cognitive decline during normal and abnormal aging have been suggested.Main contributionA research review of the area suggests that normal aging is associated with increased interference between the two languages and tendency to retreat to a single language. General cognitive functioning has been found to be higher in demented bilingual patients if communication is carried out in L1 rather than in L2. Recent research has reported that bilingualism can have a protective effect during aging, attenuating the normal cognitive decline associated with aging, and delaying the onset of dementia.ConclusionsRegardless of the significant heterogeneity of bilingualism and the diversity of patterns in language use during life-span, current research suggests that bilingualism is associated with preserved cognitive test performance during aging, and potentially can have some protective effect in dementia.

Mother tongues, English, and religion in Singapore

ABSTRACT: This paper reports on an investigation of the effect of religion on language use in Singapore. Data come from the Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore, 2006, a large‐scale language survey linked to follow‐up studies. The conceptual framework was based upon Castells' idea of a new social order in the network society; the main research questions were (1): Are Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil a ‘cultural ballast’ in the tide of global English? and (2) Does religion influence language maintenance or shift in an ‘informational society’ that is one of the most globalized nations in the world? Answers to these questions were explored through analysis of patterns of language use in multiple domains. It was found that while English dominates the mother tongues (Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil) in the domains of school and public space and competes with them in the domains of family/friends and media, the mother tongues dominate English in the domain of religion. Results also showed that the means of maintaining the mother tongues within the religious domain differ across the three main ethnic groups of Singapore, that languages are maintained in the Malay and Indian communities along with active acquisition and use of such sacred languages as Arabic and Sanskrit, and that language shift is taking place in the Chinese community.

The Conundrums of Language Policy and Politics in South Africa and Zimbabwe

This article reflects on and reinterprets South Africa's documented human rights-inspired language policy and Zimbabwe's assimilation–tolerance approach to language use. The overall intention is to expose and discuss the intolerant, undemocratic and homogenizing ideologies underpinning language policy in the two neighbouring southern African countries. The article spotlights the ceremonial ‘official language’ status of South Africa's nine African languages and the ‘national language’ status of the Ndebele language in Zimbabwe. It is argued that contrary to rosy policy enunciations, actual patterns of language use and discursive practices of ruling political elites confer higher functional status to English and Afrikaans in South Africa and English and Shona in Zimbabwe. Therefore, as well as being firmly located and resident in political statements of the ruling elites, language policy ideologies are also hidden in the fissures and faultlines of official documents. The article concludes that the documented language policies of South Africa and Zimbabwe epitomize lofty ideals that are not consonant with actual patterns of language use mediated and legitimized by hegemonic discourses of ruling politicians.

LANGUAGE, AUTISM, AND CHILDHOOD: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE

This article reviews recent ethnographic studies on how children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) use language in their everyday lives: how they are socialized into sociocultural competence, how they participate in the social world as members of families and communities, how they draw on structural properties of social interaction to participate in everyday talk, and to what extent the European Americanhabitusof child-directed communication supports or hinders their communicative development. Other studies reviewed in this article examine language use in autism in relation to narrative, question–answer sequences, bilingualism, accountability and morality, and politeness. The studies frame autism more ethno-methodologically than clinically and capture how children with ASD actively participate in the co-construction of their life worlds through communication with others. This perspective makes visible aspects of language use and everyday experiences of children with ASD and their families that are usually obscured in other theoretical approaches to autism. Through participant observation and extensive naturalistic data collection involving video and audio recording of everyday interaction, ethnographic studies reviewed in this article shed light on patterns of language use and link these patterns to particular cultural practices, making language of children with autism more intelligible and interpretable.

Exploring trilingual Chinese children’s language use

This article investigates the patterns of language use among a selected group of trilingual Chinese immigrant children. The study is located in a socio-cultural-linguistic context of a Chinese heritage language school in Montreal, Quebec. Drawing on data collected from classroom observations, I explore how children’s language choices are influenced by their socialization networks, friendship patterns and daily social interactions. The analysis of data is guided by sociocultural theory and the theory of language socialization. The findings indicate that socialization and political institutional contexts can have powerful influences on children’s social and educational development, including language development, identity formation, and mother tongue maintenance and loss.

Language Socialisation and Language Shift in the 1b Generation: A Study of Moroccan Adolescents in Italy

This paper reports on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the language socialisation of a group of Moroccan adolescents who migrated to Italy in the late 1990s. The approach is based on the notion of language socialisation, which sees the process of acquiring a language as linked to that of becoming a member of a culture. The participants live in small towns in a semi-rural area in Northern Italy and were closely observed during their initial contact with Italian Ethnographic observations continued in the following years, and were conducted both in the homes and in school programmes. Five years later, in-depth interviews were carried out on a range of issues dealing with ethnolinguistic identity, and language knowledge and use in a variety of domains and intercultural relationships. Written materials were also collected on personal experiences and attitudes towards Italy and Morocco. These data, taken together, show how socialisation into the new culture is producing a very rapid shift in language use and associated attitudes towards the different languages in the repertoire, i.e. Italian, Moroccan and Standard Arabic, and other European languages. Patterns of language use, linguistic ideologies and ethnolinguistic identity of this multilingual community are discussed in relation to educational policies.

Language, class, and ethnicity in Indonesia

This paper focuses on the role of institutions and everyday talk in the building of associations between language, region, ethnicity and class in Indonesia. In particular, I am interested in exploring how institutions have contributed to the reproduction of language ideologies that link ethnicity and class with language variety. While I argue that institutional activities have helped – often unintentionally – to associate region with language to the extent that both are equated with ethnicity or ethnic identity, these associations do not fully account for the patterns of language use at the local level.

Code-Switching as a Multilingual Strategy in Conversations among Indonesian Graduate Dtudents in the US

Choosing what language to use and what cultural values to adopt may be problematic for international students undertaking cross-border studies in the U.S. This –problem occurs simply because the students bring with them the various cultural values and beliefs, and language-related identities with them in a new linguistic environment. This paper aims at identifying the major patterns of language use among Indonesian students in the U.S. and the reasons of Indonesian students in choosing particular languages in conversations.The study involved eighteen Indonesian students undertaking master and doctoral studies in some American universities. The survey and interview methods are used to gather the data. The results of the survey and interview disprove my previous prediction that the inter-or intrapersonal mechanism, such as community or institutional norms, accommodation, politeness, physical condition such as fatigue or laziness, and rationality may determine the speakers' language choices. This study indicated that that Indonesians in the U.S. might be aware of the importance of influences such as, cultural values that may directly or indirectly impact the language preference, and some unpredictable and violable arrangements for language choice, such as exclusion/inclusion of others in addition to the apparent communal perception of English as the accepted institutional and social password in the U.S. Additionally, I learned that the students' multilingual strategy was reflected in. their ability to 'play safe' in using the languages in multilingual interactions, by selecting the most comfortable languages in conversations without neglecting others who were within their earshot.

Alastair McLauchlan: The Negative L2 Climate: Understanding Attrition Among Second Language Students.

The United Kingdom is a multilingual country. Indigenous languages and generations of migration have built up a complex pattern of language use. Yet the public perception, shaped and reflected by the media, is of a monolingual, monocultural society whose standardised English, universally spoken across the United Kingdom, has proved so attractive to outsiders across the world that Britons have no need to explore other languages. In such a context, it is an uphill task to motivate secondary school students to continue studying a foreign language, once it is no longer compulsory. A generation of quantitative and qualitative studies (reviewed in Coleman et al. 2007, cf. Macaro 2008) have shown that secondary school pupils generally regard the learning of foreign languages as difficult, boring, and—perhaps surprisingly for a nation which travels so extensively—of little practical use. New Zealand faces a very similar scenario. And despite its generic title and subtitle, it is actually in the context of New Zealand that this book explores language learner motivation in secondary education. Christchurch is New Zealand's second city and in most respects representative of the country's entire school population. McLauchlan's study traces a cohort of pupils in all Greater Christchurch's schools across the three final years of secondary schooling. The study begins in year 11. At this point, students may choose to take an examination in one or more foreign languages. This opt-in may be followed by two further years of school study, or by an opt-out at the end of year 11 or of year 12. The survey is set in its national socio-political context, and the author makes comparisons with the situation in the United Kingdom and Australia. The study focuses on six languages: French, German, and Japanese are traditional target languages now in decline; Spanish and Chinese are growing from a low base; Russian has gone, Samoan is too recent to figure, and McLauchlan also includes Latin, although the profile of learners is distinctive and some overall results are skewed as a consequence.

Globalisation of Language and Culture in Singapore

What are the effects of globalisation on patterns of language use in the domain of media in Singapore? Rather than only cultural imperialism of hegemonic English, which is no doubt the case, the use of languages in the ‘mediascape’ also shows the consumption of non-English languages and cultures. Though English may be the main language of the internet, Singaporean children access this information through the mother tongue. Singaporean children enjoy movies, songs and TV programmes in Tamil and Mandarin through which they are networked into larger civilisations. What do these patterns imply about the nature of globalisation? Cultural globalisation does not emanate from one Euro-American centre; it is a polycentric process. It can also result in the consumption of non-English languages and their concomitant cultures like that of Indian cinema, a genre rooted in Indian cultural traditions and Chinese culture that networks the Chinese diaspora in a pan-Chinese identity. The data for these claims are from The Sociolinguistic Survey of Singapore (SSS 2006), linked to in-depth follow-up studies.