A Comparative Study of the Gap Between De-Jure and De-Facto Language Policies: The Case of Kyrgyzstan and Hungary

Summary The purpose of this study was to find the main factors that guide language policies and discover correlations between top-down and bottom-up ideologies in the context of Hungary and Kyrgyzstan. To accomplish this, the study created a database of relevant official documents, photos of linguistic landscapes and qualitative data. The study analyzed the documented top-down decisions from historical perspectives, and then compared them with the data collected from interviews and surveys, and from the collection of photos. The participants included both high-ranking political figures, professors, students and random citizens. Results showed that the official policies often do not comprehensively match with the people’s beliefs, attitudes and desires. Findings also imply that using either document analysis, or the method of linguistic landscape, or qualitative methods alone, might not sufficiently validate the results in the absence of each other, since errors may top up from various discrepancies between top-down and bottom-up arrangements, as well as from overt and covert ideologies.

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A Comparative Study of Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches to Speaker Diarization

IEEE Transactions on Audio Speech and Language Processing ◽

10.1109/tasl.2011.2159710 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

pp. 382-392 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Nicholas Evans ◽

Simon Bozonnet ◽

Dong Wang ◽

Corinne Fredouille ◽

Raphaël Troncy

Keyword(s):

Comparative Study ◽

Speaker Diarization ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up

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An Analysis of Reading Strategies Used by Ethiopian Higher Education Students: Evidence from Ambo University, Oromia, Ethiopia

IJOHMN ◽

10.24113/ijohmn.v5i5.142 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 5 (5) ◽

pp. 25-53

Author(s):

Motuma Hirpassa Minda ◽

Mikire Dase Boka ◽

S. Nakkiran

Keyword(s):

Reading Strategies ◽

Qualitative Data ◽

Structured Interview ◽

Education Students ◽

Top Down ◽

Interactive Approach ◽

Bottom Up ◽

English Major ◽

Main Ideas ◽

The University

Concerned by increased problems about the students’ reading quality, this study was carried out to investigate the reading approach of English major students of Ambo University. To achieve this objective, all 52(31 male and 21 female) English major students of the University were purposely selected for the study because the number of the students is small to manage. Both quantitative and qualitative data were obtained from the respondents through Reading Achievement Tests, Questionnaire and Structured Interview and analyzed accordingly. The study mainly focused on the students’ approach to reading (adapted top-down or bottom-up) and the students’ ability to identify the main ideas and details, explicitly stated and implied information, the purpose and the tone of authors in five different reading genres: dialogues, directions, article, essays, and poems. The overall result of the study showed that 89.7% of the University students were exclusively limited to bottom-up approaches to reading and frustrated to determine the main ideas and implied information in the texts. In other words, no student answered more than 78% in reading comprehension items correctly in the tests. Moreover, half of the students could not answer above 50% in the comprehension questions. Therefore, the prescriptions for the solution to the problem lies in bringing about improvement in the students’ interactive approach to reading and thereby, improve students’ ability to identify the main ideas and details, explicitly stated and implied information, the purpose and the tone of authors in different reading genres: dialogues, articles, essays, directions and poem.

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9. Moving Forward: Embracing Multilingual Language Policies from the Top-Down to the Bottom-Up

English Learners Left Behind ◽

10.21832/9781853599996-010 ◽

2008 ◽

pp. 181-188

Keyword(s):

Language Policies ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up

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Inconsistencies and Adjustments in Language Policy: Evidence from the Linguistic Landscape

TRANS-KATA: Journal of Language, Literature, Culture and Education ◽

10.54923/transkata.v2i1.16 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Selim Ben-Said

Keyword(s):

Language Policy ◽

State Government ◽

The State ◽

Linguistic Landscape ◽

Language Policies ◽

Top Down ◽

Official Policy ◽

Attitudinal Data ◽

Different Types ◽

Emergent Language

Taking effect immediately following Tunisia’s independence, Arabization has achieved mixed results with Arabic institutionally empowered but still competing with French. In fact, when examining the linguistic landscape, this monolingual policy is flouted both in terms of the bilingual Arabic-French Street signage but also challenged by people’s preferences. This paper examines inconsistencies between Arabic as the ‘language of the state’ (government-decreed), and the omnipresence of other ‘languages in the state’ (observed in representation and practice) in Tunisia. Street signage artefacts and attitudinal data also illustrate how language policies are responded to and experienced by Tunisians. Data consists of different types of private inscriptions and public signs, governmental decrees, as well as attitudinal surveys and interviews. The juxtaposition of urban signs with the official policy on multilingualism provides an illustrative account of the complexities of the linguistic situation in Tunisia, which blends top-down advocacies of Arabization, ambivalent attitudes to Arabic-French Bilingualism, as well as a growing interest in English as the emergent language of globalization.

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Linguistic landscape in the city of Isfahan in Iran: The representation of languages and identities in Julfa

Multilingua ◽

10.1515/multi-2017-0031 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 37 (6) ◽

pp. 701-720 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Saeed Rezaei ◽

Maedeh Tadayyon

Keyword(s):

Collective Identity ◽

English Language ◽

Symbolic Power ◽

Linguistic Landscape ◽

Top Down ◽

Bottom Up ◽

Language Ecology ◽

Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽

Theory Of Language ◽

The City

AbstractThis paper reports on the diversity of languages displayed in the linguistic landscape of Julfa district, a largely Armenian dominated area, in the city of Isfahan in Iran. The data included a corpus of 323 photographs taken from the top-down and bottom-up signage in this quarter of the city. Ethnographic fieldwork was also conducted to reach a deeper understanding of the linguistic landscape in Julfa. The results of the analyses indicated that Julfa, as home to Armenians in diaspora and also a luxurious neighborhood frequented by more modern strata of the Isfahani society, is occupied more noticeably with Persian and English language and to a lesser extent with Armenian language. The findings further revealed that this neighborhood represents not only Iranian but also Armenian and Christian identities. The results are analyzed based on Bourdieu’s theory of language as a symbolic power. Furthermore, the collective identity and language ecology of Julfa in Isfahan are discussed. At the end, some lines of research for further studies in the LL of Iran are provided.

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