The integration of language and society

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-57
Author(s):  
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald ◽  
R. M. W. Dixon ◽  
Nerida Jarkey
Keyword(s):  
Information Source ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Language Engineering ◽  
Speech Styles ◽  
Information Interaction ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Specific Trait

Language and society are closely integrated and mutually supportive (rather than one being dependant on the other). An unusual (non-universal) facet of a language can relate to a specific trait of social organisation, or life-style, etc., evidenced among the society of language users. On the basis of detailed individual studies, we put forward inductive generalisations concerning recurrent correlations underlying the congruence, or mutual integration, of language and society, and outline dependencies between the established correlations. We identify the following linguistic parameters demonstrably sensitive to societal traits: reference classification: the composition and use of genders and classifiers, types of possession, directing and addressing, information source, transmission of information, interaction patterns, and special speech styles. The focal clusters of the following non-linguistic traits can be shown to be integrated with these linguistic features: A. Relations within a community, social hierarchies, and kinship categorisation; B. Social constraints (taboo and avoidance); C. Principles of interaction and attitudes to information and its sources; D. Beliefs, religion, spirits, and dreams; E. Means of subsistence and physical environment; and F. Language awareness, language engineering, and sensitivity to societal changes. Grammatical categories which show a degree of integration with the society constitute integration points. These may change if social conditions change. A combination of synchronic and diachronic approaches to the integration of language and society brings us a step further towards answering the crucial question: why language are the way they are.

scholarly journals Even historical legends recorded in Russian: practice of transcription and commenting

2020 ◽  
pp. 62-70
Author(s):  
Yu. V. Limorenko
Keyword(s):  
Native Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Internal Logic ◽  
Speech Styles ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Made In

This article is about the practical aspects of publishing folklore samples recorded in Russian by performers for whom Russian is not their native language. The research was based on two texts of Even historical legends collected in the Momsky ulus of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) from a performer who spoke to varying degrees Even, Yakut and Russian. The author has recorded the legend on audio, and then made the complete transcription of a record. Some linguistic features of texts were studied, such as using pause filler words, deviations in stress, violation of the grammatical norm, varying pronunciation of some words, mixing of speech styles and the use of words in sublime style, with the regular absence of prepositions. The author of the transcription adheres to recommendations of V. Ya. Propp on editing folklore texts: the originality of the phonetics of the text is not transmitted (this would make it difficult to read), but all the grammatical and syntactic features of the performer’s speech remain unchanged. During transcription, texts were divided into paragraphs (blocks), numbered for ease of reading and searching for comments. The punctuation marks also were placed, as well as some illegible-sounding words and some incomprehensible fragments of texts were marked. To preserve the internal logic of texts, the additions of words have been made in square brackets in some places, with additional marks. At the end of the article, the texts of both legends are published with comments made by the author of the transcription.

ESL Teachers' Questions and Corpus Evidence

2005 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 335-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy B.M. Tsui
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Linguistics ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Unique Contribution ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Esl Teachers ◽  
Single Text ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
English Language Teachers

In the last ten years, more and more attention has been paid to the importance of raising the language awareness of language teachers. This is an area in which corpus linguistics has a unique contribution to make. With the help of a concordancer, linguistic features that may be overlooked can be made salient and intertextual information that is implicit in a single text can be made explicit. This paper reports on a study of how corpus evidence was used to address questions sent by English language teachers in Hong Kong to a dedicated website. More than one thousand grammar questions sent to the website over a period of eight years were examined. Three types of most frequently asked questions were identified. The paper discusses how corpus evidence was used to help teachers to notice features and patterns which have escaped their attention and to question long-standing assumptions and misconceptions. It shows how subsequent interrogation of corpus data stimulated by teachers' question often led to new insights into linguistic patterns and language use.

Sprache und Geschlecht im universitären Diskurs

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Schleef
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Initial Response ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Speech Styles ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Communicative Role

AbstractBased on a qualitative, discourse-analytic and a quantitative, sociolinguistic analysis, this article investigates four sets of linguistic features and their occurrence in recordings of 36 lectures and interactional classes collected at a university in Germany. It examines how structural markers, questions, question tags, and turn-initial response tokens contribute to variations of style in response to academic division, speech mode, communicative role in academic discourse and gender. Of these four factors, the latter appears to be the least influential in the use of the structures investigated, due to, as is argued, global discourse restrictions in academic speech. Qualitative analysis shows that global restrictions can be overridden locally as certain discourse contexts are amenable to the appearance of features that contribute to more interactional and cooperative speech styles, frequently linked to females. The article concludes that a foundational understanding of relevant discourse genres and their constraints and a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods can make an important contribution to a better understanding of the dynamics of language and gender.

scholarly journals Interaction Patterns among International Class Students and Regular Class Students in Yayasan Pendidikan Shafiyyatul Amaliyyah Medan, Indonesia

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Addaratul Hasanah ◽  
Rizabuana Ismail ◽  
Nurman Achmad ◽  
Sismudjito . ◽  
Ria Manurung
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Research Use ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Know How ◽  
Class System ◽  
Regular Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
Descriptive Approach

Education system which using international class system and regular class system inflict many types of problems and issues that arise. The problems that arise create the interaction patterns that frequently form a deficient interaction patterns. This research aims to know how the interaction patterns which occur in international class and regular class in High School of Yayasan Pendidikan Shafiyyatul Amaliyyah and how to overcome the occurrence the social jealousy among them. This research use qualitative research with descriptive approach. The subjects of the research are International class students, and regular class students, teacher, foundation manager as the main information source. The findings show that there are differences in interactions that occur between regular and international class students. The school form interaction with incorporate the students through activities and programs at school and generate the students in International  Class and Regular Class be more effectual to interaction thus the social jealousy among them would be disappear, therefore the interaction which occur be more intense and effective.

The ways of speaking and the means of knowing

2021 ◽  
pp. 175-214
Author(s):  
Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald
Keyword(s):  
River Basin ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Technological Changes ◽  
Number Words ◽  
The People ◽  
Possessive Constructions ◽  
The Status ◽  
Riverine Environment ◽  
Status Of Women

Tariana is an Arawak language spoken by about a hundred people in the Vaupés River Basin linguistic area in Brazil. A number of grammatical features reflect specific traits of the ways the people live. Manipulating genders correlates with the status of women: a respected and knowledgeable woman can be referred to with nonfeminine gender, as if 'promoted' to manhood. Classifiers occur in multiple environments, including number words, demonstratives, adjectives, and possessive constructions. Classifiers with specific semantics reflect riverine environment, taxonomic categorization of plants, and means of subsistence. Five evidentials obligatorily mark information source. Their use correlates with the requirement to be precise in stating how one knows things, and in the types of access to information. Nonvisual evidentials are used in talking about the feelings, physical states and uncontrolled actions of oneself and one’s core family members. Speakers are aware of the meanings and the uses of evidential, and are prepared to discuss and explain them. Evidentials are sensitive to technological changes, as they adjust to new ways of acquiring information. Evidentials and classifiers are shared across the multilingual area of the Vaupés River Basin. Contact between speakers of adjacent languages appear to have shaped the speakers’ interaction patterns and the associated language features. In contrast, gender manipulation is being lost by younger speakers, as the status of women undergoes transformations.

scholarly journals Towards a neurobiologically plausible model of language-related, negative event-related potentials

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky ◽  
Matthias Schlesewsky
Keyword(s):  
Model Updating ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Predictive Coding ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Event Related Potential ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Plausible Model ◽  
Related Potentials

Language-related event-related potential (ERP) components such as the N400 have traditionally been associated with linguistic or cognitive functional interpretations. By contrast, it has been considerably more difficult to relate these components to neurobiologically grounded accounts of language. Here, we propose a theoretical framework based on a predictive coding architecture, within which negative language-related ERP components such as the N400 can be accounted for in a neurobiologically plausible manner. Specifically, we posit that the amplitude of negative language-related ERP components reflects precision-weighted prediction error signals, i.e. prediction errors weighted by the relevance of the information source leading to the error. From this perspective, precision has a direct link to cue validity in a particular language and, thereby, to relevance of individual linguistic features for internal model updating. We view components such as the N400 and LAN as members of a family with similar functional characteristics and suggest that latency and topography differences between these components reflect the locus of prediction errors and model updating within a hierarchically organised cortical predictive coding architecture. This account has the potential to unify findings from the full range of the N400 literature, including word-level, sentence- and discourse-level results as well as cross-linguistic differences.

Societal changes in the Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine periods. Results from the Sagalassos Territorial Archaeological Survey 2008 (southwest Turkey)

2013 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 75-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Kaptijn ◽  
Jeroen Poblome ◽  
Hannelore Vanhaverbeke ◽  
Johan Bakker ◽  
Marc Waelkens
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Climatic Conditions ◽  
Archaeological Survey ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Crop Cultivation ◽  
Regional Interaction ◽  
Societal Changes ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
Similar Decrease ◽  
Early Byzantine

AbstractThis contribution discusses the Hellenistic, Roman and early Byzantine pottery collected during archaeological survey in the Bereket valley (territory of ancient Sagalassos, southwest Turkey). This collection contains both pottery imported from as yet unknown production centres and wares produced in the Potters’ Quarter of Sagalassos. Changes in the proportions of pottery produced at Sagalassos and those produced at other locations become visible in the fourthcentury AD material and reflect the evolving relationship between the peripheral valley of Bereket and the regional centre of Sagalassos. Yet, the undiminished quantity of pottery collected suggests that human activity continued without significant changes in habitation density. However, pollen cores from the same valley show that at more or less the same time crop cultivation diminished and was largely replaced by pastoralism. This shift occured at a time when climatic conditions had become more favourable for crop cultivation. A somewhat similar decrease in crop cultivation is also observed in Gravgaz marsh. In both valleys, this shift occured about 300 years earlier than in the rest of the territory of Sagalassos. Although the reasons for these changes cannot be determined on the basis of the study of survey pottery alone, the results presented show the importance of intensive survey and the study of peripheral areas for understanding inter-regional interaction patterns.

scholarly journals Developing procedural language awareness of the constructionist nature of knowledge and language among prospective L2 language teachers

Neofilolog ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (43/1) ◽  
pp. 67-80
Author(s):  
Hadrian Lankiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Training ◽  
Approaches To Learning ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Teacher Feedback ◽  
Language Awareness ◽  
Teacher Language ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Educational Discourse ◽  
Working Hypothesis

While teacher feedback has got a long established tradition in pedagogic or educational discourse as a form of reflection, it has to be noticed by students to result in raised awareness. Apprehension of teacher feedback depends on its various characteristics such as salience, length, complexity or linguistic features (Swain, 2006a). Thereby its value may be too much engrained in the positivist paradigm of knowledge and language. Sociocultural approaches to learning, resting firmly on constructivist theories of knowledge and interactive theories of language, underscore the centrality of the learner. The agency of the learner places reflection in the form of talks (Moate, 2011) or languaging (Swan, 2006a). The aim of this paper is to present a microgenetic analysis of languaging on the concept of “noticing” (Schmidt, 1990) in teacher training during a methodology class. The working hypothesis is the claim that reflection, in the form of substantiated thinking, presents a potential for developing procedural dimension of teacher language awareness.

scholarly journals Fear of Cancer Recurrence and Inhibited Disclosure: Testing the Social-Cognitive Processing Model in Couples Coping With Breast Cancer

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily C Soriano ◽  
Amy K Otto ◽  
Stefanie T LoSavio ◽  
Christine Perndorfer ◽  
Scott D Siegel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Relationship Quality ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Social Cognitive ◽  
Cancer Recurrence ◽  
Fear Of Cancer Recurrence ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Cognitive Processing ◽  
Protective Buffering

Abstract Background Withholding cancer-related concerns from one’s partner (protective buffering) and feeling that one’s partner is inaccessible or unresponsive to such disclosure (social constraints) are two interpersonal interaction patterns that separately have been linked to poorer adjustment to cancer. Purpose Guided by the Social-Cognitive Processing Model, we examined the joint effects of social constraints and protective buffering on fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) in survivors and spouses. Social constraints and protective buffering were hypothesized to emerge as independent predictors of higher FCR. Methods Early-stage breast cancer survivors and spouses (N = 79 couples; 158 paired individuals) completed up to five repeated measures of FCR, social constraints, protective buffering, and relationship quality during the year postdiagnosis. A second-order growth curve model was estimated and extended to test the time-varying, within-person effects of social constraints and protective buffering on a latent FCR variable, controlling for relationship quality. Results As hypothesized, greater social constraints and protective buffering significantly (p < .05) predicted higher concurrent FCR at the within-person level, controlling for global relationship quality and change in FCR over time. The fixed effects were found to be similar for both survivors and spouses. Conclusions Findings suggest that interaction patterns resulting in inhibited disclosure are associated with greater FCR for both survivors and spouses, consistent with the Social-Cognitive Processing Model. This work adds to the growing body of research highlighting the social context of FCR.

scholarly journals A Corpus-Based Analysis of Simultaneous Speech in English Conversation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Anping He
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Social Constraints ◽  
Teaching English ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Chinese And English ◽  
Specific Degree

<p>This is a study of the distribution of 2011 instances of simultaneous speech in a 91,802-word subcorpus from the London-Lund corpus of Spoken English. Five categories of simultaneous speech (successful and unsuccessful turn-bidding, successful and unsuccessful turn-competing, and backchannelling) were analysed in terms of: (a) characteristics of the prosodic, lexical and grammatical context in which simultaneous speech occurs; (b) linguistic devices and strategies in aspects of prosody, discourse and pragmatics which are frequently used to introduce simultaneous speech; (c) variables such as speech domain, degree of familiarity between interlocutors, speakers' status and gender which may influence the frequency of simultaneous speech and affect the occurrence of the linguistic features and devices associated with simultaneous speech. In a complementary case study, 288 instances of simultaneous speech in Chinese (Cantonese) were also analysed in a 10385-word sample of Chinese conversation, and compared with simultaneous speech in English. The findings of the study show: (a) Simultaneous speech is rule-governed and context-constrained. It is most likely to occur at a unit boundary which is prosodically, lexically and syntactically marked. It is often introduced and carried out by a number of prosodic devices, discourse items and repetition strategies. This is particularly the case in turn-bidding and turn-competition. (b) Frequency of simultaneous speech seems to be strongly associated with degree of formality of speech domain and degree of familiarity between interlocutors, but loosely related to speakers' status and gender. However, particular linguistic devices and strategies seem more preferred by interlocutors in a specific speech domain, or with a specific degree of familiarity, or having specific status or gender. (c) Chinese and English simultaneous speech share many similarities in terms of pragmatic functions, and linguistic devices and strategies employed, though equivalents between the two languages are not always found. However social constraints on turn-bidding seem different in the two languages especially in terms of age, status and gender. The descriptive findings of the study help explain why Chinese learners of English find it difficult to take a turn in English conversation, and especially to bid for a turn. Thus the study enhances our awareness of the linguistic features of English conversation and the factors which can affect Chinese students' pragmatic and discourse competence. Moreover, the computer corpus approach adopted in the research provides a way of obtaining rich input for teaching English discourse devices in terms of prosody, lexicon and syntax and suggests further applications of corpus-based research in the study of language teaching and learning.</p>

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