Patterns of Language Use among Nigerian Undergraduate Learners of French in Togo

1990 ◽  
Vol 89-90 ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
Tunde Ajiboye
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
Length Of Stay ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Age And Sex

Abstract Studies in language use have become all the more relevant to Africa since they shifted from unilingual to multilingual situations. Multilingualism which until the 60's was not considered worthy of too serious a study by linguists has since attracted a lot of attention especially in the narrower field of sociolinguistics where attempts are being made to meet some of the challenges posed by the multiplicity of languages in otherwise homogeneous communities. African countries harbour a lot of examples : Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda, among others. There are two main ways in which the present study is different from earlier studies in multilingualism, even though, as we shall see later, the results are basically the same. In the first place, we are dealing here with a temporary situation of multilingualism in the strict sense that subjects are neither i-migrants nor natives but birds of passage whose length of stay is pre-determined (by their mission). The languages included in the interaction should therefore be seen as such. Secondly, while the study of language choice by analysts like A. Tabouret-Keller (1968), Gumperz and Eduardo (1971) and Stark (1989) seems to emphasize the connection between language use and "a variety of social factors such as ethnic identity, age, and sex..., degree of solidarity or confidentiality," (Gumperz et al. 1971:122) the nature of our samples (students) tends to demonstrate that in analysing the pattern of language choice, the effect of an external, super-imposed trigger such as the need to pass an examination may not be over-looked.

Language change across a lifetime: A historical micro-perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (s2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Bergs
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Historical Data ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
The Social ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Micro Analysis

Abstract This paper focuses on the micro-analysis of historical data, which allows us to investigate language use across the lifetime of individual speakers. Certain concepts, such as social network analysis or communities of practice, put individual speakers and their social embeddedness and dynamicity at the center of attention. This means that intra-speaker variation can be described and analyzed in quite some detail in certain historical data sets. The paper presents some exemplary empirical analyses of the diachronic linguistic behavior of individual speakers/writers in fifteenth to seventeenth century England. It discusses the social factors that influence this behavior, with an emphasis on the methodological and theoretical challenges and opportunities when investigating intra-speaker variation and change.

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.

A case-study in historical sociolinguistics beyond Europe: Reconstructing patterns of multilingualism in a linguistic community in Siberia

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-251
Author(s):  
Olesya Khanina ◽  
Miriam Meyerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Northern Siberia ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics

AbstractA collection of traditional and ‘old life’ stories recorded in the late 1940s is used to reconstruct the sociolinguistic situation of the Enets community in Northern Siberia from the 1850s until the 1930s. The Enets had regular contacts with a number of neighbouring indigenous peoples (Nganasans, Tundra Nenets, Selkups, Evenkis, Dolgans) and later with Russian newcomers. The oral histories often comment on language use, and as a result we can reconstruct not only the languages that the Enets people used in this period, but also the contexts in which they used them. The Enets community’s multilingualism was typically characterized by command of key neighbouring languages, with the occasional command of other more (geographically and socially) remote ones. With close neighbours, language choice seems to have had limited social load, while in cases of trade or agonistic contact, the choice of language in interethnic communication seems to have followed a principle of asymmetric convergence towards the language of the party with the greatest contextual social power. The analysis is founded on a database of dozens of communicative events mentioned in the oral stories (over 50 are analyzed). Ongoing fieldwork on the modern sociolinguistic situation suggests that until quite recently there was considerable stability in the sociolinguistic norms governing multilingual interaction among the Enets.

Exploring register with The Prime Machine

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Jeaco
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Social Factors ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Source Information ◽  
Professional Work ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
Postgraduate Studies ◽  
Register Analysis ◽  
Do It Yourself

Abstract Corpus approaches underpin a range of postgraduate studies and professional work in language, linguistics, translation and beyond. Awareness of the influences of contextual features on language choice is important for many activities: exploring new text varieties; finding relationships between social factors and language patterning; considering choices for post-editing machine translation; and understanding the very nature of language. Work on register relies on corpus methods, but more support and direction could be offered to help undergraduates gain earlier insights into the power of such corpus analysis. This paper introduces some ways register differences can be revealed through The Prime Machine corpus tool (Jeaco 2017a) and describes the design of a practically-oriented undergraduate module which uses this concordancer. Software features include the organization of texts and presentation of source information for readymade corpora, and methods which can be used to reveal useful starting points for register analysis of do-it-yourself corpora.

Language choice and conversational repair in bilingual interaction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Gafaranga
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Additional Resource ◽  
Concurrent Use ◽  
Language Alternation ◽  
Conversational Repair ◽  
Research Questions

Research in code-switching, undertaken against the backdrop of very negative attitudes towards the concurrent use of two or more languages within the same conversation, has traditionally been geared towards rehabilitating this form of language use. Now that code-switching has been rehabilitated, the research tradition faces an entirely new challenge, namely that of its continued relevance. This book argues that, in order to overcome this challenge, research should aim to describe specific interactional practices involving the use of two or more languages and outlines a methodology for doing so. This chapter illustrates this methodology by means of a specific case study. The chapter describes the interactional practice of conversational repair in bilingual interaction. Two research questions are raised: (a) where in the repair sequence can language alternation occur and (b) what does language alternation do when it occurs in repair sequences. It is shown that language alternation interacts with repair organisation in two ways. Either language alternation is the focus of conversational repair or it is an additional resource for the organisation of conversational repair.

Canadian heritage German across three generations: A diary-based study of language shift in action

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Doris Stolberg
Keyword(s):  
Heritage Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Shift ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Current Paper ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Heritage Speakers ◽  
Language System ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractIt is well known that migration has an effect on language use and language choice. If the language of origin is maintained after migration, it tends to change in the new contact setting. Often, migrants shift to the new majority language within few generations. The current paper examines a diary corpus containing data from three generations of one German-Canadian family, ranging from 1867 to 1909, and covering the second to fourth generation after immigration. The paper analyzes changes that can be observed between the generations, with respect to the language system as well as to the individuals’ decision on language choice. The data not only offer insight into the dynamics of acquiring a written register of a heritage language, and the eventual shift to the majority language. They also allow us to identify different linguistic profiles of heritage speakers within one community. It is discussed how these profiles can be linked to the individuals’ family backgrounds and how the combination of these backgrounds may have contributed to giving up the heritage language in favor of the majority language.

Regional languages on Twitter

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 174-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lysbeth Jongbloed-Faber ◽  
Jolie van Loo ◽  
Leonie Cornips
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Technical Equipment ◽  
Use Patterns ◽  
Internet Connection ◽  
Quantitative Studies ◽  
Regional Language ◽  
Regional Languages ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This paper addressed the question how the use of Dutch and the regional languages Frisian or Limburgish differ on Twitter and which patterns in language choice can be identified. Previous quantitative studies (Jongbloed-Faber, Van de Velde, Van der Meer & Klinkenberg, 2016; Nguyen, Trieschnigg & Cornips, 2015; Trieschnigg, 2015) have already shown that people in the Dutch provinces of Friesland and Limburg tweet in Frisian or Limburgish respectively, but most often in Dutch interspersed with some English. In this qualitative study, we compared the tweets from twenty twitterers in Friesland and Limburg who use both Dutch and Frisian or Limburgish regularly in order to get insight into their language use patterns. The following patterns in language use were identified: when a twitterer aims to maximise his/her audience, Dutch is regularly employed. However, as soon as an interpersonal, addressed tweet is formulated, Frisian or Limburgish is often used. General tweets in Dutch may therefore very well get a Frisian or Limburgish continuation. Another mechanism frequently found in responding tweets is following the language used in the original tweet, notwithstanding such a tweet was in Dutch or in a regional language. Finally, the data show that, although Twitter is a global medium which can be accessed at any time and any place provided that one has access to the needed technical equipment and Internet connection, twitterers sometimes construct localness i.e. what is perceived as local culture through using Frisian or Limburgish exclusively.

scholarly journals REQUESTIVE UTTERANCES IN SPOKEN JAVANESE OF TEGAL

HUMANIKA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Mualimin Mualimin ◽  
Marsono Marsono ◽  
Suhandano Suhandano
Keyword(s):  
Social Factors ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Capital City ◽  
The World ◽  
Radio Programs ◽  
Imperative Mood ◽  
Local Languages ◽  
Research Show

Studying  language use as a part of the culture has been carried out for many years in many parts of the world, including in Indonesia. Indonesia which has various cultures has hundreds of local languages in which one of them is Javanese spoken in Tegal. This study is aimed at exploring how the Javanese dialect spoken in Tegal is used in drama radio programs on Pertiwi Radio of Slawi, the capital city of Tegal Regency.The data of the research are in the forms of uttrerances spoken by the characters of the drama containing requestive speech acts using a sociopragmatic approach. The findings of the research show that requestive utterances found in the drama are expressed both directly and indirectly. The direct requestive speech acts are mostly conveyed in utterances with imperative mood,  while indirect requestive ones are in the forms of declarative and interrogative utterances. The choice of utterances is influenced by context of social factors where the language is used and is related to request strategy.

Pragmatic differentiation in early trilingual development

2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMONA MONTANARI
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Analysis ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Lexical Resources

ABSTRACTThis study examines pragmatic differentiation in early trilingual development through a longitudinal analysis of language choice in a developing Tagalog–Spanish–English trilingual child. The child's patterns of language choice with different language users are analyzed at age 1 ; 10 and 2 ; 4 to examine: (1) whether evidence for pragmatic differentiation can be found even before age two and in simultaneous interactions with distinct language users; (2) whether lexical gaps determine the child's choice of one language over another; and (3) whether her patterns of language choice are affected by the interlocutors language use and their responses to mixing. The results indicate that the child was capable of selecting the appropriate language according to the interlocutors' language from the earliest sessions. However, switches to inappropriate languages were common due to vocabulary gaps, the interlocutors' acceptance of mixing and the possibilities determined by the existence of multiple lexical resources and multiple language users.

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