English and the other Tongues in Official Communicative Interaction in Nigeria

1994 ◽  
Vol 103-104 ◽  
pp. 57-75
Author(s):  
Tope Omoniyi
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
National Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Communicative Interaction ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
Government Education ◽  
National Life ◽  
Role Sharing

Abstract This paper examines issues of language choice and language use patterns, attitudes to English and to indigenous languages in official communicative interaction in Nigeria as they exist in the offices today. The report is projected against the background of the claim that English is 'the language of government, education, commerce, etc.' in Nigeria; a claim that does not present the current roster of functions performed or shared by English and the other languages. It does not correctly portray workers' preferences of language medium in participating in the numerous communicative interactions they get into in the course of their day's work. This report acclaims the importance of English particularly in a multiplex society such as Nigeria's, but also goes on to role-sharing and competition for certain communicative functions is actually going on between English and the indigenous languages in the offices today. The report therefore represents a state of the art commentary on language use practice and preferences in the offices. It is a signal to the writers of the Nigerian Constitution and drafters of the National Language Policy per se that a reworking is due. And for other English as a Second Language (ESL) nations, the report is a hint that assessment of the actual roles of English in national life is a continuous process rather than a once-and-for-all issue.

Who speaks what to whom? Multilingualism and language choice in Misión La Paz

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 617-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyle Campbell ◽  
Verónica Grondona
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
The Other ◽  
La Paz

AbstractThe multilingualism and patterns of language use in Misión La Paz, Salta Province, Argentina are described and analyzed. Three indigenous languages, Chorote, Nivaclé, and Wichí, are spoken here, but interlocutors in conversations usually do not speak the same language to one another. There is extensive linguistic exogamy, and husbands and wives typically speak different languages to one another. Individuals identify with one language, speak it to all others, and claim only to understand but not to speak the other languages spoken to them. Children in the same family very often identify with and thus speak different languages from one another. This situation is examined and explanations are offered, with comparisons to similar situations elsewhere. The pattern of language choice and multilingual use in this case is arguably unique, with implications for several general claims about language contact and multilingualism.

La littérature africaine moderne en traduction

Babel ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-161
Author(s):  
Joseph Ukoyen
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
National Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Compromise Solutions ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Media ◽  
Language Question

Résumé La question linguistique constitue à l'heure actuelle un des problèmes fondamentaux auxquels font face les Etats-Nations d'Afrique. Faut-il conserver intégralement les langues d'origine coloniale, dites langues officielles, non seulement comme moyens d'enseignement mais aussi comme véhicules de communication dans tous les autres domaines de la vie, y compris le gouvernement, ou faut-il remplacer les langues exogènes par une ou plusieurs langues indigènes dans chaque territoire national? A l'exception de la Tanzanie, du Kenya et de l'Ethiopie, qui ont su résoudre avec succès le problème épineux de choix d'une langue nationale unique, tous les autres pays d'Afrique adoptent des solutions de compromis qui laissent une grande place à la traduction. Abstract The language question constitutes one of the fundamental problems confronting the modern Nation-States of Africa today. Should the languages of the erstwhile colonial masters be retained wholesale as the media of educational instruction and for all other purposes, including government business, or should they be replaced with one or more indigenous languages in each national territory? With the exception of Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia, which have successfully resolved the thorny problem of selecting only one, single national language, all the other African countries adopt compromise solutions in which translation activity looms large.

English in South Africa

2001 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Bernsten
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Language Policy ◽  
South African ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
The Other ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Black South African ◽  
Official Languages ◽  
South African Constitution

In a departure from language policy in most other African countries, the 1996 South African Constitution added nine indigenous languages to join English and Afrikaans as official languages. This policy was meant to provide equal status to the indigenous languages and promote their use in power domains such as education, government, media and business. However, recent studies show that English has been expanding its domains at the expense of the other ten languages. At the same time, the expanded use of English has had an impact on the varieties of English used in South Africa. As the number of speakers and the domains of language use increase, the importance of Black South African English is also expanding. The purpose of this paper is to analyze current studies on South African Englishes, examining the way in which expanded use and domains for BSAE speakers will have a significant impact on the variety of English which will ultimately take center stage in South Africa.

Lenguas indígenas en el mercado lingüístico: retos y perspectivas para la vitalidad del maya yucateco

2017 ◽  
Vol 133 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Montemayor Gracia
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
The Other ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Yucatec Maya ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
The One

AbstractIn the Yucatec peninsula, Spanish and Yucatec Maya coexist in a diglossic context where Spanish is considered the high prestige variety, while Yucatec Maya is mainly spoken in informal, private settings. Even though there have been major changes in language policy over the last 25 years in order to protect Mexican indigenous languages, the number of Maya speakers is still declining. This article examines the effects of different economic factors on the vitality of Yucatec Maya, whose monetary, functional and idealistic values are being negotiated on the «linguistic market». From the region’s industrial and infrastructural transformation in the 1960 s on, Yucatec Maya has been increasingly exposed to general tendencies of globalization (e.g. migration). Under the present circumstances, tourism can be seen as a double-edged sword for Yucatán: On the one hand, it is the peninsula’s main source of income, but on the other, it brings with it negative consequences for language use, the Maya speaker’s language (self) awareness and related processes of identity construction.

LANGUAGE USE BETWEEN MALE AND FEMALE HOST IN HITAM PUTIH TALK SHOW

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurmaliana Sari ◽  
Sumarsih Sumarsih ◽  
Busmin Gurning
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Talk Show ◽  
Dominant Language ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Domestic Activities ◽  
Female Host ◽  
Negative Connotation ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

This study discusses about language use occurred by male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. The method of this research is descriptive qualitative. The subjects of this study are male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. The data are the utterances produced by male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. This research focuses on the show broadcasted on October 2016 by taking 4 videos randomly. The objective of this study is to describe kinds of the language use uttered by male and female host in Hitam Putih talk show. The findings showed that the kinds of language use consist of 6 parts. The dominant language use uttered by male host is expletive, because male’s utterances are frequently stated in a negative connotation. On the other hand, female host utterances are found in specialized vocabulary as the most dominant because female host has more interest in talking family affairs, such as the education of children, clothes, cooking, and fashion, etc. Women also tended to talk about one thing related to the home and domestic activities. However, the representation of language use uttered by male and female are deficit, dominance and different. Keywords: Language Use, Gender, Talk Show

Deutsch als schwächere Sprache bei deutsch-polnisch bilingualen Kindern: Studie zur Negation- und Verbstellung

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 269-297
Author(s):  
Aldona Sopata ◽  
Kamil Długosz
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Striking Difference ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Development Characteristic ◽  
Processing Mechanisms ◽  
Constrained Input

AbstractThis article examines the acquisition of German as the weaker language in the cases of German-Polish bilingual children. Focusing on negation and verb position, phenomena that have frequently been taken as diagnostic when distinguishing between the course of language development characteristic for first (L1) and second language acquisition (L2), we analyse experimental and productive data from six simultaneously bilingual children. Due to the constrained input, German is their weaker language. The results in Forced Choice and Grammaticality Judgements tasks are compared with the results of monolingual children. We show that in the area of negation the acquisition of German as the weaker language resembles L1, and in the area of inversion and verb final position the development of the weaker language is delayed. The striking difference between bilinguals’ results in the experimental vs. productive tasks points to specific processing mechanisms in bilingual language use. In narrative contexts of the production tasks the language of the performance is activated, while the other is inhibited, which leads to a target-like performance. Structural properties of the stronger language tend to be activated, however, in the experimental tasks involving the weaker language, resulting in non-target-like responses.

scholarly journals Reviving the genitive. Prescription and practice in the Netherlands (1770–1840)

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Krogull ◽  
Gijsbert Rutten
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
National Language ◽  
Prepositional Phrases ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
The One ◽  
Genitive Case

AbstractHistorical metalinguistic discourse is known to often prescribe linguistic variants that are not very frequent in actual language use, and to proscribe frequent variants. Infrequent variants that are promoted through prescription can be innovations, but they can also be conservative forms that have already largely vanished from the spoken language and are now also disappearing in writing. An extreme case in point is the genitive case in Dutch. This has been in decline in usage from at least the thirteenth century onwards, gradually giving way to analytical alternatives such as prepositional phrases. In the grammatical tradition, however, a preference for the genitive case was maintained for centuries. When ‘standard’ Dutch is officially codified in 1805 in the context of a national language policy, the genitive case is again strongly preferred, still aiming to ‘revive’ the synthetic forms. The striking discrepancy between metalinguistic discourse on the one hand, and developments in language use on the other, make the genitive case in Dutch an interesting case for historical sociolinguistics. In this paper, we tackle various issues raised by the research literature, such as the importance of genre differences as well as variation within particular genres, through a detailed corpus-based analysis of the influence of prescription on language practices in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Dutch.

The Contact Diffusion of Linguistic Practices

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jürgen Bohnemeyer ◽  
Katharine T. Donelson ◽  
Randi E. Moore ◽  
Elena Benedicto ◽  
Alyson Eggleston ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Reference Frames ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Spatial Reference ◽  
Diffusion Analysis ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Spatial Reference Frame ◽  
Using Data

We examine the extent to which practices of language use may be diffused through language contact and areally shared, using data on spatial reference frame use by speakers of eight indigenous languages from in and around the Mesoamerican linguistic area and three varieties of Spanish. Regression models show that the frequency of L2-Spanish use by speakers of the indigenous languages predicts the use of relative reference frames in the L1 even when literacy and education levels are accounted for. A significant difference in frame use between the Mesoamerican and non-Mesoamerican indigenous languages further supports the contact diffusion analysis.

Nacionālā valoda zinātnē: Latvijas piemērs

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-52
Author(s):  
Agnese Dubova ◽  
Diāna Laiveniece ◽  
Egita Proveja ◽  
Baiba Egle
Keyword(s):  
Online Community ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
National Language ◽  
Main Trend ◽  
Scientific Language ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Scientific Excellence ◽  
Language Of Science

The aim of the paper is to show and describe the current situation in the Latvian scientific language based on a case study of the problem about the place of a national language and its existence in science in modern globalised time, when the dominance of English as the lingua franca of science grows. More specifically, the paper analyses the November 2019 conceptual plans of the Latvian Ministry of Education and Science about a new concept of doctoral study programmes that would lean towards using English as the doctoral dissertation language in hopes for scientific excellence, and the public reaction and opinion on this concept. The descriptive method is used within the paper, including the contemporary literature review focused on the language of science globally, issues of multilingualism and glocalization, and the problems caused by these issues. Via empirical discourse content analysis, the authors looked at various documents, including Latvian law that governs the rights and rules of the Latvian language use in various contexts. They examined a wide array of mainly online content and diverse online community discourse related to the question of what language should be used (Latvian or English) within the doctoral dissertation process. For a comparison of the situation, the paper also provides a brief insight into the regulation of the language used in the development of dissertations in Lithuania. During the study, 21 different sources, that is, articles posted on various Latvian news media sites and 304 online user comments, predominantly anonymous, under these articles relating to the issue of language choice in doctoral dissertations were analysed. All the mentioned sources, to a greater or lesser extent, discussed the issue of what place Latvian has as a language of science and whether English should be the dominant language in doctoral studies, what implications the choice and usage of a language could have, and what far-reaching impact this might have on science, education, and society. The material revealed a breadth of opinions, depending on what group a person is more likely to represent, ranging from the Ministry stance to organisations and the general public. Some had a very pro-English stance, and some showed significant concern for the Latvian language. The main trend in online community user opinions could be condensed as such: there is a variety of language choices for a doctoral dissertation – a dissertation written in Latvian; a dissertation written in English; or leaving the language choice up to the doctoral student. This would ensure that the language choice fits the doctoral students’ goals and field of research. Making English mandatory would not likely lead to guarantee scientific excellence as what matters is the research content itself, not the language used. The national language in science is a current and important issue in Latvia, as there is a need for state language use in a scientific register, and this usage should be developed further. The Ministry document discussed is still a draft report, and it is not yet known what final decisions on the PhD process and dissertation language will be taken by policymakers in the future. This paper shows that language choice and use in science is not just a matter for scholars and PhD candidates, but an issue that can and does gain interest from various groups of society and gets discussed online in multiple ways, allowing people to express their opinion on policy and societal issues. Latvian is a scientific language, and it has a place within the international scientific discourse, and it should not be made to step aside for the dominant lingua franca.

scholarly journals URGENSI MADRASAH DI ERA KONTEMPORER

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anwar Rasjid
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade ◽  
School Performance ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Educational Institution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Islamic School ◽  
National Life ◽  
Religious Crisis ◽  
Bahasa Indonesia

<p>BAHASA INDONESIA:</p><p>Tulisan ini bermaksud megulas eksitensi madrasah di era kontemporer. Sebagai lembaga pendidikan yang sudah lama berkembang di Indonesia, madrasah selain telah berhasil membina dan mengembangkan kehidupan moral dan beragama di Indonesia, juga ikut serta berperan dalam menanamkan rasa kebangsaan ke dalam jiwa rakyat Indonesia, di samping itu Madrasah juga berperan  dalam mencerdaskan kehidupan bangsa. Meski demikian performa madrasah saat ini masih dirasakan berkualitas kurang dan sangat perlu untuk ditumbuh-kembangkan pada masa yang akan datang. Masyarakat di era sekarang (kontemporer) semakin menjadikan madrasah sebagai lembaga pendidikan yang unik. Di saat ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi berkembang pesat, di saat filsafat hidup manusia modern mengalami krisis moral dan keagamaan, dan di saat perdagangan bebas dunia makin mendekati pintu gerbangnya, keberadaan madrasah tampak makin dibutuhkan orang. Hal ini menunjukkan urgensi dan signifikansi eksistensi madrasah di era kontemporer.</p><p> </p><p>ENGLISH:</p><p>This article aims to explain the existence of Islamic school in contemporary era. As educational institution that has been developing for long in Indonesia. Islamic school not only success in building and developing the moral and religion in Indonesia but also participates in engaging the nationality to the soul of Indonesia society. Furthermore, Islamic School has role in educating the national life. In the other hand, the nowadays Islamic school performance is less satisfied and need to improve in the future. Today society (contemporary) made the Islamic school more unique. When the science and technology develop rapidly, the philosophy of modern life is seemingly lack of moral and religious crisis, and  world free trade comes closer, the existence of Islamic school is urgently needed. It shows that the urgency and significant of the Islamic school existence.</p>

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