Social Language Research Articles

Korean mothers’ attitudes towards their dual heritage children’s maintenance of heritage languages in New Zealand

AbstractThis study investigates family language policy (FLP) in three dual heritage and interlingual families in New Zealand. It focuses on the language use of three Korean migrant mothers and their attitudes towards their children’s multilingualism and heritage languages (HLs). Each family’s FLP took a “one person, one language” approach, with the mothers consistently using Korean but occasionally switching to English. All three mothers in this case study showed positive attitudes towards their children maintaining their HLs, and used various strategies to encourage their children’s exposure to the HLs. However, each of the mothers conceptualized the positions of the children’s HLs somewhat differently, which influenced language socialization at home. Moreover, despite their strong commitment to bilingual or multilingual parenting, the mothers had low expectations for their children’s HL proficiency, reflecting the minority status of HLs in the wider society.

Playground Learning: African American English in Latinx Linguistic Repertoires

ABSTRACT This case study applies a raciomultilingual perspective to pre-adolescent language socialization in a majority-African American social and educational context. I examine naturalistic recordings of elementary-school Latinx children during a formative period of migration to Washington, DC, comparing these to contemporary Latinx linguistic repertoires and contextualizing them in the local social environment. Latinxs’ use of AAE historically and in the present day, and in a range of contexts, suggests that AAE features acquired through peer socialization are an enduring part of the local Latinx linguistic repertoire. Results add insight into English language learners’ bilingual repertoire formation in contact situations where minority groups are the local majority and highlight the importance of peer interaction and play in educational contexts as part of language and dialect acquisition more broadly. Findings underscore the inadequacy of linguistic ideologies that assume a one-to-one correlation between language or language variety and ethnocultural identity. The Latinx children are not crossing; rather, their use of AAE appears to be normalized in line with language sharing as part of community socialization.

Family language policies during a global pandemic: challenges and opportunities for language maintenance in Arabic-English multilingual families in the USA

Abstract In this study, we analyze interview data from 17 mothers of Arabic-English multilingual families to examine their experiences of maintaining their children’s Arabic language development during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were interested in exploring the challenges they faced during the pandemic and their responses to those challenges with the resources available. Following a constant comparative method, our data analysis demonstrated that four main factors have impacted Arabic-English multilingual Muslim families’ language policies during the pandemic, i.e. (1) inner-family dynamics, (2) school closures, (3) children’s agency, and (4) family safety and wellbeing. Responding to those factors, participants’ family language policies were guided by their commitment to Arabic as the language of Islam (i.e. performing religious practices and maintaining connection with the written Islamic heritage) and as an indispensable component of their children’s ethno-religious identities. During the lockdown, when their children could not attend Arabic tutoring, mothers developed new strategies to support their children’s language socialization (e.g., Halaka, more frequent family visit, online tutoring). When schools switched to online learning, their children had more time to spend at home, which most mothers used as an opportunity to have their children practice Arabic more and, in some cases, conduct daily Arabic literacy tutoring at home. All those mothers’ creative responses to COVID-19 challenges were complexified by children’s agency and concerns about family safety and wellbeing.

Tracking the transmission of culture: a cultural discourse analysis of narratives of circulation in the US undergraduate public speaking course

ABSTRACT Ethnography of communication studies conducted by communication scholars, including those informed by cultural discourse theory, typically approach the cultural transmission of discursive resources using a narrow conception of language socialization. In this conception, expert speakers instruct or otherwise compel novice speakers to speak in locally recognized, normative ways and thereby achieve or affirm membership in the collective. I perform the cultural discourse analysis of narratives of circulation to extend this approach. In particular, I study narratives representing the movements of the Anglo-American speech genre known as public speaking in a US undergraduate course and a series of focus groups. Speakers narrated movement along four paths: from beyond the classroom into the classroom; inside the classroom (with the class acting as primary agent of dissemination); inside the classroom (with student speakers acting as secondary agents of dissemination); and from the classroom beyond the classroom. The analysis suggests three extensions of the existing approach to cultural transmission and, thereby, of cultural discourse theory: accounting for cultural ideologies (or metacultures) of transmission; producing more comprehensive accounts of transmission’s participation structure; and accounting for the local meanings of mobile resources both in context and in motion.

The Impact of Mobile-Assisted Social Language Learning Activities on Speaking Skills and Self-Efficacy Development

In traditional English as a foreign language (EFL)-speaking classes, students have insufficient time and opportunities to practice [1]. In addition, they lack cultural and communicative contexts [2] to improve their speaking skills. Furthermore, a large number of students, especially in Asian countries, have low self-efficacy with regard to their English speaking competence and try to avoid any activities that require speaking in public [3]. In this study, we designed social language learning (SLL) activities to bridge the abovementioned gaps and developed a mobile-assisted social language learning system to support students' participation in SLL activities. We explored how our SLL activities affect language learners' speaking performance and self-efficacy and investigated their social language learning networks and perceived acceptance of the mobile-assisted SLL system. Fifty-eight graduate students were recruited for the study and randomly divided into two groups: a control group in which students completed assigned tasks using the traditional method and an experimental group in which students completed assigned tasks using the mobile SLL system. Our results showed that while the speaking skills of students in the two groups improved after the study, the learning gains of the experimental students in EFL fluency, lexis, pronunciation, and content were significantly better than those of the control students. The experimental students significantly outperformed their counterparts on the dimension of culturality, authenticity, and abundance of created verbal content. The self-efficacy of the experimental students was much better than that of the control students. The results also showed that the interaction degree of the experimental students improved, and they positively perceived applications of the mobile-assisted SLL system to EFL learning. Based on the results, several suggestions and precautions were proposed for educators and researchers in the field to consider.

Learning Language, Un/Learning Empathy in Medical School.

This article considers the ways in which empathy for patients and related solidarity with communities may be trained out of medical students during medical school. The article focuses especially on the pre-clinical years of medical school, those that begin with orientation and initiation events such as the White Coat Ceremony. The ethnographic data for the article come from field notes and recordings from my own medical training as well as hundreds of hours of observant participation and interviews with medical students over the past several years. Exploring the framework of language socialization, I argue that learning the verbal, textual and bodily language of medical practice contributes to the increasing experience of separation between physicians and patients. Further considering the ethnographic data, I argue that we also learn a form of empathy limited to performance that short circuits clinical care and the possibility for solidarity for health equity. The article concludes with implications for medical education and the medical social sciences and humanities.

The impact of language socialization in the context of family, education, and sojourn on emotional, psychological, and identity responses to language learning

The paper examines the impact of language socialization in the context of family, education, and sojourn on multilingual learners’ emotional, psychological, and identity responses to language learning and use. Since language and culture are interwoven in second language acquisition (SLA) (Kramsch, 1998), learners respond to language learning and use on the levels of language and culture, shaping learners’ linguistic, cultural, and social identities on the individual and on the collective levels alike. This classroom research is a qualitative case study involving four cohorts of learners in a multicultural classroom: 1) students having learned English only in the formal context of education, 2) learners having grown up in a multicultural and multilingual environment speaking several languages including English, 3) a learner raised bilingually by a non-native second language (L2)-speaking parent, and 4) a multilingual learner learning languages in formal contexts but also experiencing sojourn. Data were collected via a linguistic autobiography (an unstructured essay) written by the fourteen participants. The findings point out that negative experiences associated with unfavorable teaching methods, discriminative educational practices, or bullying lead to negative emotional, psychological, and identity responses to learning. Learners experience ‘language socialization shock’ when a sudden change occurs in their language socialization processes – irrespective of whether the change is positive or negative. In an effort to attain positive experiences and self-fulfillment via language learning and use, learners rid themselves of the old socialization context haunted by negative experiences by moving on to a new socialization context or by learning a different foreign language through which they can ‘start over’. The findings also point out some of the long-term psychological and social effects of raising bilingual children by non-native L2-speaking parents and the impact of multilingual and multicultural socialization contexts on learners’ linguistic and life choices that transform their lives. / Keywords: language ecology, language socialization, identity, emotions, bilingualism, multilingualism, multicultural classrooms, psychological well-being, language learning, sojourn, classroom research

Demand Analysis of English Language Service Value Based on Data Mining Ecosystem

INTRODUCTION: Language is a bridge between people, an indispensable component of information exchange and communication, and an essential part of social culture. As the most widely used language in the world, English occupies an essential position in the social language, generating value demands related to it, ranging from the needs of individuals for their development to the needs of social industries or fields for their development to the national language strategy.
 OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this paper is that due to the implementation of the "One Belt, One Road" policy, more and more cultures of the countries along the route are coming into China's vision, and at the same time, Chinese culture should also be promoted, and only through the correct use of language can we promote the Chinese civilization and other civilizations to seek common ground and put aside their differences, appreciate each other, and eliminate the clash of cultures in the process of mutual collision and fusion of different civilizations.
 METHODS: Based on the data mining ecosystem, this study examines the demand analysis of the value of English language services in today's environment, explores the explicit and implicit benefits regarding the value of English language services, and analyzes and explores the explicit and implicit economic benefits of language services and the economic, social, and cultural benefits they encompass at different levels.
 RESULTS: The research suggests that we need to focus on the value of multiform English language services, strengthen English language industry research and studies, and conduct a scientific English language economic program.
 CONCLUSION: Language services and language economy are two closely related concepts. Analyzing language services from multiple perspectives can reveal their explicit and implicit economic, social and cultural benefits.

Recipient design and collaboration in language socialization

When people participate in a special event such as a religious ritual, they may need support to perform the appropriate actions specific to the ritual. This study adopts the methodology of multimodal conversation analysis to investigate how language socialization is achieved differently depending on the recipient and the agent and how adults of different social roles collaboratively socialize a child participant. The analysis of the linguistic and embodied behaviours directed towards child and adult participants during a Japanese household Shinto ritual reveals that the priest’s style of speech becomes informal, less formulaic, more involved, and more personal when directed towards child participants compared with those towards adults. Shifts in the membership category are also observed, which suggest that the priest assumes the role of a caregiver in addition to being a religious authority. The parent also contributes to the socialization of a child participant, but not in the same way as the priest. While the priest has the rights to give verbal instructions, the parent makes physical corrections to the child before the priest. Through analyses of multiple recipients and agents, this study contributes to the understanding of the intricacies of language socialization.

Expanding opportunities for social language and social inclusion among adult learners

This article explores how research on the teaching of pragmatics, specifically as it relates to the use of explicit and implicit instruction, can serve as a guide for expanding the instruction of social language to immigrant students in Australia as well as other students. The curriculum and expectations from the Australian Migrant English Program (AMEP) are used as an example, but teachers working in similar programs can benefit as well. Several activities specific to explicit and implicit instruction are used to illustrate how to teach social language to learners from beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency.

Expanding opportunities for social language and social inclusion among adult learners

This article explores how research on the teaching of pragmatics, specifically as it relates to the use of explicit and implicit instruction, can serve as a guide for expanding the instruction of social language to immigrant students in Australia as well as other students. The curriculum and expectations from the Australian Migrant English Program (AMEP) are used as an example, but teachers working in similar programs can benefit as well. Several activities specific to explicit and implicit instruction are used to illustrate how to teach social language to learners from beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels of proficiency.

Translanguaging as methodology to study language cafés: implications for managing multilingual data

ABSTRACT This article explores the affordances of translanguaging as methodology by reflecting upon the role of the multilingual repertoires of research participants (including the researcher) in shaping an ethnographic inquiry on ‘language cafés’ (LCs), understood as public events which provide a non-formal learning space for (foreign) language socialisation. Drawing on the ‘researching multilingually’ framework proposed by Holmes et al. (2013, 2016), we reflect on the affordances and complexities of using different languages in the research process. In particular, we focus on how the researcher’s fluid multilingual approach enabled her to co-construct translanguaging spaces with LC participants as part of a methodology to study multilingual socialisation for and through the lived experience of those involved in the research. We aim to inspire researchers to make visible the multilingual, collaborative, and relational processes that shape their research, and to problematise and be reflexive about their choices of transcription of multilingual data. We argue that applying translanguaging as methodology to study multilingual environments can challenge the monolingual ideologies that still prevail in research, while enabling research participants to perform and develop their multilingual social selves.

Language Socialization in the Classroom: Collaborative Learning Model

Collaborative learning as a mode of learning has long been a hotly debated topic because of its many advantages that can facilitate learning and some disadvantages that are hard to ignore. Sociolinguistic research has shown that students’ socialization can be promoted through collaborative learning, and in order to achieve this, how teachers design and organize collaborative learning is particularly important.

Lingua Franca and Information Technology in Foreign Language Acquisition: Competitive Advantages of Multilingual Instruction

The paper describes digital strategies helping to boost the competitiveness of Russian as a foreign language. The authors argue that it is impossible to deny the universal popularity of the English language. Knowledge of English is important to learners of Russian as a foreign language since it functions as a social language facilitating their transition to multilingualism. Thus, to improve the competitiveness of Russian courses, it is beneficial to supplement them with instructions in English and modern online tools with English interfaces. The paper offers two scenarios of in-class activities for beginner and intermediate-to-advanced learners of Russian, featuring key strategies utilized for students from Kazakhstan and the People’s Republic of China. The authors argue that the described activities are also useful for students from other countries. The scenarios are included in the common framework of the “Working for a Russian Digital Company” business game and enhance the competitive advantages of Russian studies programs expanding the limits of teaching language and culture in the field of online technologies and Java programming basics.

Evaluation devices in the narratives of deaf/hard of hearing and hearing Arabic-speaking adolescents.

Pragmatic language use in general and the use of evaluation devices (EDs) are very important components in everyday communication and expressing thoughts and feelings in narrative production. However, very little is known about the use of evaluative devices in the narratives of Arabic-speaking adolescents, especially those who are deaf and hard of hearing (DHH). The present study investigated the use of EDs in personal oral narratives elicited from 124 hearing and DHH Arabic-speaking adolescents. Each participant was asked to tell a personal story about a time he or she was in a dangerous situation. Narratives were transcribed and coded for nine different types of evaluation. A three-way interaction of group (hearing/DHH) by gender (Female/Male) by evaluation type emerged such that female hearing adolescents' narratives contained significantly more frames of mind than the narratives of DHH females and hearing males and more hedges than DHH females. In addition, hearing males' narratives contained more hedges than those of DHH males and more negative comments than the narratives of both hearing females and DHH males. The present research identifies factors that facilitate narrative abilities by DHH. Discussion centres on explanations for group and gender differences in terms of exposure and language socialization. What is already known on this subject Although narratives have been researched extensively in comparisons of hearing and deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children, only a few studies have examined pragmatic language use in general and evaluation devices in particular. These studies show that the narratives of DHH children and adolescents contain fewer figurative expressions, frames of mind and hedges and that children who are DHH have difficulty comprehending and producing metaphors. Very little is known about the use of evaluative devices in the narratives of Arabic-speaking adolescents, especially those who are DHH. What this study adds The present study found that hearing participants produced significantly more evaluation devices (Eds) than their DHH peers, and female participants produced significantly more EDs than their male peers. Moreover, hearing females' narratives contained more frames of mind and more hedges than did the narratives of DHH females; also, hearing females' narratives contained more frames of mind than those of hearing males. In addition, hearing males' narratives contained more hedges than those of DHH males. Finally, hearing males' narratives had more negative comments than both the narratives of hearing females and those of DHH males. Clinical implications The one evaluation device produced in large numbers (hedges) by adolescents who are DHH was expressed in only one of two ways. One important clinical implication of this finding is that pragmatic language in general and use of EDs in particular should be part of any speech and language evaluation. Another takeaway is that intervention should attempt to provide rich exposure to social communicative language, providing many ways to convey each function, enabling adolescents to communicate in different contexts.

The Social Impact of Nonviolent Communication

Peace is a human necessity and a pillar of concentration for a prosperous existence. For the purpose of bringing peace, stability, and stability, use a variety of tools and techniques to accelerate and assure progress towards this objective, and make it a regular mechanism. The working factors are arranged sequentially, and the specific objective is reached; sadly, in our country and among our peoples, this has not yet been achieved. Since the last half century, efforts, plans, and mechanisms for peace and stability have not produced the desired outcomes. On the one hand, the problem lies in the employed mechanisms; on the other hand, it has been observed in the correct and appropriate operation of all aspects of these mechanisms; one of these aspects is the use, promotion, and spread of nonviolent language. There will be peace and stability among people if peaceful language and literature are used in all aspects of human existence, from school to college, from community to government, and from home to home. The user has contributed, and future generations will inherit a legacy of a tranquil literary and social language.

THE IMPACT OF LANGUAGE CHANGES CAUSED BY TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL MEDIA

This research discusses language change as a result of the influence of social media. In an increasingly advanced digital era, social media has become one of the primary communication tools for individuals worldwide. This study utilizes descriptive and comparative analysis methods to explore the influence of social media on language change. Firstly, the research identifies grammar, syntax, and vocabulary changes due to social media usage. Then, the study compares the language used in traditional communication with that used in social media communication. The findings of this research indicate significant language changes due to the use of social media. There is an increase in the use of abbreviations, emoticons, and distinctive terms specific to social media that affect the way humans communicate in a digital context. Additionally, casual writing styles, non-formal language use, and the adaptation of foreign words have become characteristics of social media communication. These language changes can have both positive and negative impacts. On the positive side, social media has enabled faster and more efficient communication between individuals across the globe. Using a more casual and non-formal language can also strengthen social bonds among social media users. However, on the other hand, these language changes can also pose challenges to understanding and communication between different generations or in formal contexts.

Kasus Argumen Inti Verba Bahasa Muna di Sulawesi Tenggara

The Muna language serves as both a social language and a means of communication within the Muna sociocultural area, actively used and mastered by its speakers. The objective of this study is to uncover linguistic facts, specifically those related to the core argument cases of verbs in the Muna language. The research employs a descriptive method aimed at providing an accurate description of the data, characteristics, and relationships of the phenomena under investigation. The research findings reveal various verb core argument cases in the Muna language, including: (a) Stative verb core argument cases, which encompass (i) basic stative verb core argument cases, (ii) stative experiential verb core argument cases, (iii) stative verb core argument cases involving ownership, and (iv) core argument cases of locative stative verbs. (b) Core argument cases for process verbs, which consist of (i) basic process verb core argument cases, (ii) process experience verb core argument cases, (iii) process verb core argument cases involving ownership, and (iv) core argument cases of locative process verbs. (c) Action verb core argument cases, which include (i) basic action verb core argument cases, (ii) action experience verb core argument cases, (iii) action verb core argument cases involving possession, and (iv) core argument cases of locative action verbs.

Self-organized communities of children

Abstract From a child-centered perspective, this article explores the practices of children’s self-organized play-communities in institutional everyday life in Danish early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings, based on a phenomenological non-participant-observational study with a duration of 16 months involving two kindergartens (Bernstorff, 2021). Drawing on Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology and praxeology, children’s self-organized play-communities are analyzed as a social space, being a field for relations, fights, negotiations with specific admission requirements emerging as accepted values shared by the specific field. The analysis demonstrates that self-organized play-communities are a social space with its own practices of being together expressed through the social language in play linked to and guided by an institutional choreography. Besides, the analysis demonstrates three kinds of different communities of children in self-organized play, viz. the categories: Relational play-communities, Community-oriented play-communities, and Conflictual play--communities, which categories may, however, also overlap into blended categories. The article argues that children’s self-organized play-communities risk being under pressure in the institutional choreography, which in turn affects children’s opportunities for having uninterrupted periods of time and space to self-organized play in their institutional everyday life.

Conflict and Conflicting News Discourses: An Analysis of Newspaper Coverage of Pulwama Attack

ABSTRACT Discourse analysis is used to investigate print media coverage of the Pulwama attack of 2019, a recent development in the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan that pushed the nuclear-armed Asian neighbours to the brink of war. To identify the news discourses, 686 headlines of news articles published in six popular newspapers on the attack and its aftermath during February 15–25, 2019, are analysed. Three levels of discourse analysis are employed: Lexical choices, social languages and conversations. Under lexical choices, the headlines are analysed to identify the bags of words used to represent places and actions, along with the literary-rhetorical devices employed. With the social languages tool, the assumed identities and intentions of the headline writer are deduced, while the conversations tool is used to identify and categorise the events covered, issues raised, actors and institutions involved and their arguments in the headlines. Five distinct discourses—News, Political, Critical, Conflict and Peace—are thus identified and characterised. Further, consulting critical discourse theories, the study findings are used to discuss the interplay of media, discourses and power, and theorise on the sociopolitical powerplays that regulate those journalistic discourses, discussing implications and the way forward for the journalists and journalism practice covering conflicts.