English as an intra-national language in Switzerland

English Today ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 61-62
Author(s):  
Jean-François Brunelière
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
National Language ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Globalized World

In recent years, many researchers have been studying the spread of English in our globalized world, while others have focused on multilingualism. For Stępkowska the question of multilingualism in Europe is intimately linked with English, and Switzerland represents the perfect place for understanding how these relationships evolve. Her book treats sociolinguistic questions at a macro-level and provides the reader with three main elements: a broad consideration of English (Chapter 1), a discussion about language contact (Chapter 2), and new data on the Swiss language use obtained in the canton of Zurich in 2011, which leads to the development of a ‘Swiss paradigm’ conceptualizing the role of English in Switzerland (Chapter 3).

The Disclosive Function of Linguistic Signs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
Specific Level ◽  
Everyday Language ◽  
Formal Indication ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude

This chapter adds a more specific level to the Heideggerian framework by considering the complex disclosive function linguistic signs have for Heidegger. This task is approached by considering his ambivalent attitude toward everyday language use (‘idle talk’), which is presented as both practically necessary and somehow deficient. To understand this ambivalence, it reviews Heidegger’s earlier conception of philosophical concepts’ function as ‘formal indication’, before showing how his earlier views reappear in Being and Time and how, together with the foundational role of purposive understanding discussed in chapter 1, they account for Heidegger’s ambivalence toward everyday language use. Given the disparate factors at work in Heidegger’s conception of linguistic signs, it then proposes a distinction between presentational sense and pragmatic sense, before explaining how the limitations of Heidegger’s discussion define the task for the following chapters.

Current Language Maintenance Research in Jordan

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Abdelkader M. Alshboul
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Sociodemographic Factors ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
Language Maintenance And Shift ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Level Analysis ◽  
The Way

<p>This paper investigates the methodology utilized in Jordanian language maintenance and shift research on six minorities including Chechens, Armenians, Gypsies, Druze, Circassian, and Kurds. It argues that the methodology has been based on the macro-level analysis that examined the role of a number of sociodemographic factors in the LMLS process. However, this analysis does not offer a complex picture of immigrants’ language use and attitudes. It is suggested in this paper that the micro level analysis should also be employed to illuminate the way language is negotiated and used. </p>

Quantity of target language contact in study abroad and knowledge of multiword expressions

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klara Arvidsson
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Repeated Exposure ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Linguistic Development ◽  
Multiword Expressions ◽  
Contact Information ◽  
Cloze Test

Abstract This study takes a Usage-Based approach to the learning of French multiword expressions (MWEs) in Study Abroad (SA). MWEs are conventionalized form-meaning mappings, for example du coup (‘and so’) and en fait (‘actually’), and are assumed to be learned through repeated exposure. Based on this assumption, the study adopted a pretest/posttest design to explore how quantity of out-of-class target-language (TL) contact predicted the development of MWE knowledge among 41 Swedish students during a semester in France. MWE knowledge was assessed by a modified cloze test based on transcriptions of informal language use (www.clapi.fr) and TL contact information was obtained through the Language Engagement Questionnaire (McManus, Mitchell, & Tracy-Ventura, 2014). Contrary to expectations, the findings showed that quantity of out-of-class TL contact did not predict gains in MWE knowledge and add further counterevidence for the role of sheer quantity of TL contact for linguistic development in SA.

ASL or contact signing: Issues of judgment

1991 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceil Lucas ◽  
Clayton Valli
Keyword(s):  
American Sign Language ◽  
Sign Language ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Deaf Community ◽  
American Sign ◽  
Demographic Information ◽  
Contact Language ◽  
Native Signers

ABSTRACTThis article reports on one aspect of an ongoing study of language contact in the American deaf community. A kind of signing that results from the contact between American Sign Language (ASL) and English exhibits features of both languages. The ultimate goal of the study is a linguistic description of contact signing and a reexamination of claims that it is a pidgin. Ten dyads and two triads of native ASL signers (6 white dyads, 4 black dyads, 2 black triads) were videotaped with a deaf interviewer, a hearing interviewer, and alone with each other. The different interview situations induced switching between ASL and contact signing. This article (1) reviews the pattern of language use during the interviews with the white dyads and describes the judgments of selected videotaped segments by 10 native signers; (2) examines the role of demographic information in judgments. For each segment, half of the judges were given one set of demographic information, and the other half were given another set. Indications are that this information does affect judgment, even though the linguistic forms viewed were identical. (American Sign Language, language contact, language judgments, deaf community)

‘So much Gaelic to me’: Beckett and the Irish Language

2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Graham
Keyword(s):  
National Language ◽  
Official Language ◽  
Irish Language ◽  
History Of

This essay explores the ways in which Ireland's sacralised national language figures in Beckett's work. Oblique references to Irish in the Beckett oeuvre are read against a history of Anglo-Irish investment in the language as a mode of ‘impatriation’, a means by which to circumscribe anxieties surrounding an identity fraught with socio-political anomalies. In addition, the suspicion of ‘official language’ in Beckett's work is considered in light of his awareness of the ‘language issue’ in his native country, particularly in relation to the powerful role of the Irish language in the reterritorialisation of the civic sphere in post-independence Ireland.

Perfection Makes Practice

2006 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-100
Author(s):  
Muhamad Ali
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Muslim Community ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Psychological Dimension ◽  
South Sulawesi ◽  
Complex Dimensions ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of

Studies of Islam in Southeast Asia have sought to better understand its multifacetedand complex dimensions, although one may make a generalizedcategorization of Muslim beliefs and practices based on a fundamental differencein ideologies and strategies, such as cultural and political Islam.Anna M. Gade’s Perfection Makes Practice stresses the cultural aspect ofIndonesian Muslim practices by analyzing the practices of reciting andmemorizing the Qur’an, as well as the annual competition.Muslim engagement with the Qur’an has tended to emphasize the cognitiveover the psychological dimension. Perfection Makes Practice analyzesthe role of emotion in these undertakings through a combination ofapproaches, particularly the history of religions, ethnography, psychology,and anthropology. By investigating Qur’anic practitioners in Makassar,South Sulawesi, during the 1990s, Gade argues that the perfection of theQur’an as a perceived, learned, and performed text has made and remade thepractitioners, as well as other members of the Muslim community, to renewor increase their engagement with the holy text. In this process, she suggests,moods and motivation are crucial to preserving the recited Qur’an and revitalizingthe Muslim community.In chapter 1, Gade begins with a theoretical consideration for her casestudy. Drawing from concepts that emphasize the importance of feeling andemotion in ritual and religious experience, she develops a conceptualizationof this engagement. In chapter 2, Gade explains memorization within thecontext of the self and social relations. She argues that Qur’anic memorizershave a special relationship with its style and structure, as well as with thesocial milieu. Although Qur’anic memorization is a normal practice for mostMuslims, its practitioners have learned how to memorize and recite beautifullysome or all of the Qur’an’s verses, a process that requires emotion ...

Necesidad en la docencia universitaria: refundar la Función Formativa Axiológica / Need in University Teaching, Formative Function Axiological

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Albertina Serrano Heredia
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Public Life ◽  
University Teaching ◽  
Attitudes And Knowledge ◽  
Role Of Teachers ◽  
Trained Teachers ◽  
Education Of Students ◽  
Globalized World

ABSTRACTIt is considered paramount concern depriving, in this globalized world to rethink the axiological models that determine the attitudes of those involved in education, with the aim to reposition the role of teachers in personal, professional and public life learner. In the formative process of teaching and learning, the teacher transmits to his students: values, attitudes and knowledge. If we assume that teaching is to encourage students to reflect to make judgments critically and develop skills in the pursuit of knowledge and reinforce attitudes are looking for the education of students as a result of acting trained teachers and committed ethics and / or securities training, which means establishing scales, deciding on priorities, learn to value their own decisions and not others to choose.RESUMENSe considera de suma importancia la preocupación que priva, en este mundo globalizado de replantear los es-quemas axiológicos que determinan las actitudes de los actores involucrados en la educación, teniendo como propósito el reposicionamiento de la función del docente en la vida personal, profesional y pública del educando. En el proceso formativo de Enseñanza-Aprendizaje, el docente transmite a sus estudiantes: valores, actitudes y conocimientos. Si partimos de que enseñar es estimular a los alumnos a reflexionar para establecer juicios en forma crítica, así como desarrollar habilidades en la búsqueda del conocimiento y reforzar actitudes, se está buscando la educación integral de los estudiantes, como consecuencia del actuar docente capacitado y comprometido con la formación ética y/o en valores, que significa establecer escalas, decidirse por prioridades, aprender a valorar las propias decisiones y no que otros las elijan. Contacto principal: [email protected]

Language Use and Sustainable Development: Opportunities and Challenges for Policy-Makers and Educators in Northeast Vietnamese Areas

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-130
Author(s):  
Ha Ngan Ngo ◽  
Maya Khemlani David
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
The Status ◽  
Wedding Songs

Vietnam represents a country with 54 ethnic groups; however, the majority (88%) of the population are of Vietnamese heritage. Some of the other ethnic groups such as Tay, Thai, Muong, Hoa, Khmer, and Nung have a population of around 1 million each, while the Brau, Roman, and Odu consist only of a hundred people each. Living in northern Vietnam, close to the Chinese border (see Figure 1), the Tay people speak a language of the    Central    Tai language group called Though, T'o, Tai Tho, Ngan, Phen, Thu Lao, or Pa Di. Tay remains one of 10 ethnic languages used by 1 million speakers (Buoi, 2003). The Tày ethnic group has a rich culture of wedding songs, poems, dance, and music and celebrate various festivals. Wet rice cultivation, canal digging and grain threshing on wooden racks are part of the Tày traditions. Their villages situated near the foothills often bear the names of nearby mountains, rivers, or fields. This study discusses the status and role of the Tày language in Northeast Vietnam. It discusses factors, which have affected the habitual use of the Tay language, the connection between language shift and development and provides a model for the sustainability and promotion of minority languages. It remains fundamentally imperative to strengthen and to foster positive attitudes of the community towards the Tày language. Tày’s young people must be enlightened to the reality their Tày non-usage could render their mother tongue defunct, which means their history stands to be lost.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis L. F Lee ◽  
Joseph M Chan
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Media System ◽  
System P ◽  
Connective Action ◽  
Integrated Media ◽  
Media And Communication ◽  
The Ideal

Chapter 1 introduces the background of the Umbrella Movement, a protest movement that took hold in Hong Kong in 2014, and outlines the theoretical principles underlying the analysis of the role of media and communication in the occupation campaign. It explicates how the Umbrella Movement is similar to but also different from the ideal-typical networked social movement and crowd-enabled connective action. It explains why the Umbrella Movement should be seen as a case in which the logic of connective action intervenes into a planned collective action. It also introduces the notion of conditioned contingencies and the conceptualization of an integrated media system.

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