scholarly journals THE FITNESS OF LANGUAGE, THE FORMATION OF A SPEECH COMMUNITY: A FLIP THROUGH PERIODICAL MAGAZINES FOR WOMEN

2021 ◽  
pp. 66-68
Author(s):  
Prajitha P
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Women Readers ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Speech Communities

A language evolves when it acquires the agency to handle any domain of knowledge.This is referred to as the fitness of language. Ordinary day-to-day language is inadequate to communicate topics related to finance, sports, technology and so on. The involvement of various speech communities proves to be critical here. This in turn plays a role in the development of a speech community. By analysing womens periodical magazines based on the topics mentioned above, this paper attempts to examine the extent of languages fitness in these topics and the manner in which the market makes use of the speech community that gets created as part of it. A group that shares a particular mindset and makes use of linguistic diversity may be called as speech community.This thesis elucidates how periodicals like Vanitha and Grihalakshmi influence the community of women readers through a linguistic diversity that is simple, attractive, open and

scholarly journals Subversion of Language Structure in Heterogeneous Speech Communities: the Work of Discourse and the Part of Contact

2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 249-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katja Ploog
Keyword(s):  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Phonological Form ◽  
Bilingual Speaker ◽  
Actual Speech

AbstractChange is an ongoing process constitutive of human language to which will be refered by the term of dynamics. It will be worked out how mere interaction conditions the language dynamics and how the disposable structural resources will be coordinated in microsystems. Since from this point of view grammar exists as a process, it will be of interest to work out by what type of mechanisms a bilingual speaker elaborates his/her discourse. It will be discussed what can be called a (more) 'useful' construction and through what type of mechanisms the constructions get coordinated. We will argue that all discursive mechanisms are bound to satisfy the pragmatic demands of an actual speech production and that the most useful items are those which best satisfy these pragmatic demands.One of the most characteristic phenomena of the linguistic dynamics in Ivory Coast is the microsystem of LA: In a highly heterogeneous context of social interaction, LA is used in (the locally dominant) discursive traditions of French and Mande languages, undergoing a grammaticalization process separately in each of them and used - consequently - in various constructions. The wide range of its referential values, the very importance of the negotiation of discourse referents between speaker and hearer and its simple phonological form seem to predestine LA to get reappropriated and to become a 'favorite' form in the emergent speech community.

Playing platformized language games: Social media logic and the mutation of participatory cultures in Chinese online fandom

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110594
Author(s):  
Yiyi Yin ◽  
Zhuoxiao Xie
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Fan Communities ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Media Platforms ◽  
Media Platform ◽  
Media Logic

This study discusses the shifting dynamics of fan participatory cultures on social media platforms by introducing the concept of “platformized language games.” We conceive of a fan community as a “speech community” and propose that the language and discourses of fan participatory cultures are technological practices that only make sense in use and interactions as “games” on social media platform. Based on an ethnography of communication on fan communities on Weibo, we analyze the technological-communicative acts of fan speech communities, including the platformized setting, participants, topics, norms, and key purposes. We argue that the social media logic (programmability, connectivity, popularity, and datafication) articulates with fans’ language games, thus shifting the “form of life” of celebrity fans on social media. Empirically, fan participatory cultures continue to mutate in China, as fan communities create idiosyncratic platformized language games based on the selective appropriation of the social media logics of connectivity and data-driven metrics.

Modelling beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours regarding the spread of English

English Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seongyong Lee ◽  
Hohsung Choe
Keyword(s):  
Language Attitudes ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Behavioural Intentions ◽  
Affective Component ◽  
Local Variety ◽  
Cognitive Component ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Speech Communities

Attitudes toward the global spread of English have been one of the major issues in research on the development of world Englishes. Because language attitudes construct an invisible language policy that influences the use of English in a local speech community (Curdt–Christiansen, 2009), many studies addressing the spread of English into non-English contexts have focused on the attitudes of diverse English users toward their local variety and other varieties of English (Ahn, 2014; He & Li, 2009; Wang & Gao, 2015). However, among the core components of language attitudes, that is, the cognitive component (i.e., belief system), affective component (i.e., attitudinal system), and behavioural component (i.e., behavioural intention), little research attention has been paid to the behavioural component other than by Ahn (2014), even though non-native speakers’ actual use of their local English is the process by which English spreads into non-English-speaking communities. Thus it is necessary to explore the factors influencing the speakers’ behaviours while using the local variety of English. In addition, previous research has not identified the mechanism by which the speakers’ beliefs and attitudes have influence their actual behavioural intentions in relation to their attitudes toward their own English. For example, Ahn (2014) reported that whereas Korean English teachers expressed positive attitudes toward Korean English, they were hesitant in their behavioural intentions to use it as a teaching model. However, this study did not deeply address associations among beliefs, attitudes, and actual behaviours in relation to the use of Korean English. In response to this gap, the present study provides an integrated framework for investigating the spread of English into local speech communities by modelling diverse factors of individual speakers’ decision-making processes in adopting the local variety of English.

scholarly journals Accepting a “New” Standard Variety: Comparing Explicit Attitudes in Luxembourg and Belgium

Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Judit Vari ◽  
Marco Tamburelli
Keyword(s):  
Language Maintenance ◽  
Endangered Languages ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Standard Variety ◽  
Explicit Attitudes ◽  
Speech Communities

Language maintenance efforts aim to bolster attitudes towards endangered languages by providing them with a standard variety as a means to raise their status and prestige. However, the introduced variety can vary in its degrees of standardisation. This paper investigates whether varying degrees of standardisation surface in explicit attitudes towards standard varieties in endangered vernacular speech communities. Following sociolinguistic models of standardisation, we suggest that explicit attitudes towards the standard variety indicate its acceptance in vernacular speech communities, reflecting its overall degree of standardisation. We use the standardised Attitudes towards Language (AtoL) questionnaire to investigate explicit attitudes towards the respective standard varieties in two related vernacular speech communities—the Belgische Eifel in Belgium and the Éislek in Luxembourg. The vernacular of these speech communities, Moselle Franconian, is considered generally vulnerable (UNESCO), and the two speech communities have opted to introduce different standard varieties: Standard Luxembourgish in Luxembourg shows lower degrees of standardisation and is only partially implemented. In contrast, Standard German in the Belgian speech community is highly standardised and completely implemented. Results show that degrees of standardisation surface in speakers’ explicit attitudes. Our findings have important implications for the role of standardisation in language maintenance efforts.

scholarly journals PANDEMIC, LAW, AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGES IN PAKISTAN

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Muhammad Hassan Abbasi ◽  
Maya David
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Mother Tongue ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
National Language ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
The Law ◽  
Local Languages

Pakistan is a multilingual state with 74 languages (Siddiqui, 2019), with Urdu being its national language while English is its official language (Article 251 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan). However, the linguistic diversity, as per the law, has not been given proper status in Pakistan (Rahman, 2002). In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the role of medical health professionals, local police officers, media persons and educationists to create an awareness about the precautionary measures to fight Covid-19 among the indigenous communities in different regions of Pakistan is important. However, there is no practice prescribed in the law, to disseminate awareness in the local languages. Moreover, as most of the lexical items regarding the pandemic have been borrowed, the shift to local languages is more than challenging. In urban areas, indigenous communities are aware of the precautions to be taken during this pandemic as they use the mainstream languages (Ali, 2017 & Abbasi, 2019.) However, in the rural and northern areas of Pakistan this is not so prevalent. Some language activists and concerned members of the community in different parts of the state took this opportunity to educate the masses and started an awareness campaign about coronavirus pandemic in local languages (posters in local languages and short video messages on social media and YouTube). Yet, linguists and community members have not been able to work with many indigenous languages, which Rahman (2004) lists in his study, and these speech communities urgently need the required information in their respective heritage languages. Such small steps by community members and NGOs in providing necessary information in local languages suggest that proper education in the mother tongue can protect communities in times like this. The government has to protect endangered and indigenous languages by an effective law-making process that actively encourages the use of local languages and helps provide information in their respective languages in such situations as this pandemic.

scholarly journals Microplanning and Language Policy in Morocco

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (18) ◽  
pp. 103-113
Author(s):  
Aziz MOUMMOU
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Language Policy And Planning ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Local Practices ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Policy And Planning ◽  
Globalized World ◽  
Newly Independent States

Language policy and planning (LPP) has undergone an epistemological turn. Early LPP works approached linguistic diversity as a problem; especially for the newly independent states, but in today’s globalized world, multilingualism is the norm. A major issue that characterizes contemporary LPP in Morocco and needs further investigation is the interaction between macro-policies and local practices. Most top down language policies face resistance from speech communities. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the role of micro-planning and local agents in implementing a workable language policy. The aim is to reduce the gap between LPP research and local practices by using an ethnographic approach. Ruiz orientational model and Spolsky’s management theory provide a rich theoretical framework. Micro-planning can translate central policies into local practices.

scholarly journals Variability and its limits in bilingual language production

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 855-856
Author(s):  
JUBIN ABUTALEBI ◽  
HARALD CLAHSEN
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Language Production ◽  
Language Use ◽  
The Other ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Ideal

Experimental and other empirical research on language is faced with the fact that language performance exhibits a high degree of variability at all linguistic levels. Variability is found across languages, across speech communities within one language, across individuals within one speech community and even within the same individual. Bilingual language use adds a further source of variability to this already complicated picture. On the other hand, there are aspects of language and language use that are constrained, stable, or robust and that are less (or not at all) subject to variability, for example, possible options that are not chosen in any language or kinds of error that are never produced. Several familiar ways of dealing with the variability of language use and its limits have turned out to be unsatisfactory. One approach has been to simply abstract away from variability with constructs such as the ‘ideal speaker–hearer’ (who – to our knowledge – nobody has met so far). Another strategy is to average across individuals, which sometimes results in arbitrary mean scores or mean activation patterns that are hard to replicate for individuals, even for those who took part in a given study. A third solution when confronted with variability in language use is to take it at face value, positing that every language, every speech community, and even every individual is different, an approach that essentially gives up on discovering any kind of generalizations. While none of these strategies appears to us to be particularly fruitful, the problem of how to deal with variability in language performance and its limits remains.

Language Endangerment and the Need for Technology for Language Empowerment: Case Study of the Brahui language in Balochistan

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-50
Author(s):  
Kinza Alizai
Keyword(s):  
Language Policy ◽  
Digital Divide ◽  
Digital Technology ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Language Policies ◽  
Language Endangerment ◽  
Speech Communities ◽  
Language Survival

Diaspora and indigenous speech communities are under the threat of extinction in Balochistan. Local inhabitants with a lower economic and commercial value symbolize cultural and ethnic genocide in western Pakistan. In my study, I investigate the scope of technology for the documentation and maintenance of the Brahui language in the province of Balochistan. Also, I discuss how language policy and the digital divide are creating unfamiliar pedagogical, socio-cultural and linguistic practices, along with putting minority speech communities in danger of losing their identity and bringing about linguistic extinction. Drawing on the work of critical theorists, perceptions of indigenous Brahui community are recorded to understand the influence of digital technology for language survival. The study identifies that digital divide and flawed educational policies in Balochistan are potent instruments of Brahui endangerment. I call for inclusive and unbiased language policies and uniform access to technology for linguistic empowerment of the Brahui speech community in Balochistan.

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