Functional and Facilitating: A Look into the Promotion and Standardization of Dutch as the Official Language in the Netherlands

Dutch society is open and international-oriented. A long standing tradition of world trade has contributed to the English proficiency of Dutch citizens. This, however, brings challenges to the status of Dutch as the national official language in the Netherlands. This paper takes the framework of national language capacity building proposed by Wen Qiufang and inspects the Dutch language policy in official language promotion and standardization. Results of the research show that coming from other languages that undermines the position of Dutch as national official language is gradually increasing. The Dutch solution is to put facilitating measures in place and to develop functional tools to support language users and learners. This solution can be valuable for the building of European multilingual landscape with its facilitating feature.

Mehrsprachigkeit in der Bildung in Deutschland – eine Diskursanalyse

Multilingualism in Education in Germany – a Discourse Analysis. In the Republic of Germany, language acquisition for children with a mother tongue other than German has been a widely discussed topic in education science as well as in public and political discourse over the last decades. Annual studies on preschool and primary education point to the ongoing disadvantage – or even discrimination – suffered by multilingual children in the German education system. Given Germany’s history as a country of immigration, and in light of recent public discussions on the increased immigration of refugees, the question of the problematic’s socio-political background arises. This leads to the issue of linguistic concepts among society and their influence on domestic language policies. This article presents analysis of discourse around languagepolitical concepts and practices among stakeholders in language promotion in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia. Five semi-structured interviews with state employees were analysed following a discourse analytical approach. The analysis, deploying frameworks from the field of Critical Discourse Analysis, focused on the discursive practice of legitimation in the evaluation of multilingualism. Multilingualism as a phenomenon in society appeared to be evaluated according to differing standards (for example correctness or properness) depending on the language. As for evaluation, the analysis indicated an additional dimension in discourse which assigns different groups of speakers a belonging to particular languages. All in all, the collected data pointed to a diverse and ever-changing discourse in the field of language promotion in North-Rhine Westphalia. The presented analysis aims to stimulate a debate and suggests some directions for future research.

Capacity Enhancement of Family Development Centre Staff in Early Childhood Language Learning

This study aimed to identify effective plans using the Future Search Conference (FSC) approach to enhance the Thai Family Development Centre (FDC) staff in early childhood language promotion through good parenting.  Data from, 55 stakeholders FDC staff, district and local health centres, Child Care Centres (CCCs), and local authorities from 10 villages of rural subdistricts in a central Thai province, Thailand, checked for correctness and analyzed using thematic analysis, alongside field notes from observations, worksheets, videotape records, and photo voice. Results revealed that applying FSC techniques created a common future and successfully helped participants to understand past situations clearly and factors related to the problem. Three key strategies emerged to enhance FDC staff capacity including 1) organising ongoing training workshops to enhance staff knowledge and skills needed to achieve effective work performance, 2) building teamwork and 3) developing staff morale for working.

Promoting Spanish Language in the Philippines: Politics, Representations, and Discourses

Over 150 languages are spoken in the Philippines. Considering that only English and Filipino are the official national languages, this is a contentious arena in the Philippines. In this context, the Spanish government has been promoting the Spanish language, adding another layer of political meaning, bringing to the present some of the old colonial discourses. This article explores Spain’s promotion of the Spanish language in the Philippines. Following a semiotic approach, it analyses Spanish official discourses on language and the way that they are represented in several Spanish official exhibitions about the Philippines. This work argues that the Spanish language is portrayed in terms of symbolic power. Furthermore, focusing on Pierre Bourdieu´s concepts, the politics of the Spanish language promotion are analysed in the midst of those language policies at play in the Philippines.

Language and Statecraft: an Old Tool for New Goals?

This paper investigates how language as a tool of statecraft has changed over time and whether it remains relevant and legitimate in the current globalised context. Viewing the issue from an interdisciplinary perspective, it considers the role language policies have played at different stages in history, from enabling European nation-states to forcibly to carve out a new identity around a unified language, to fulfilling the imperialist mission of ‘educating’ colonised populations in an attempt to generate lasting economic and cultural benefits for colonial powers. Language policies survived the decolonization process and took new soft power forms in an attempt to address current day challenges. The authors argue, based on the analysis of expert interviews and data sources (both primary and secondary), that while the discourse and means of implementing language policies have changed under new conditions – particularly the rejection of force in language promotion, the domination of English, the protection of minority dialects, and the technological changes linked to globalization – the belief in the power of language to shape allegiances remains, on the political level, unchanged.

Strategi Persuasif Dalam Sales Promotion Dengan Media Outdoor Ad: Studi Kasus Bahasa Persuasif Pedagang Kaki Lima di Denpasar Selatan

Creative and quality promotional strategies require interaction and communication in attractive language, so that the marketed product can be easily understood and accepted by community. Language has an important role in supporting marketing, especially in conveying information related to business products carried out through various media, such as outdoor advertising media which is widely used by small business actors. This study aims to describe the use of persuasive expressions in outdoor ads media such as hanging/roll banners by street traders (PKL) and describe the meaning of messages contained. This study used a field research of qualitative descriptive method by analysis the form of persuasive words/sentences on outdoor advertising media of street traders in the southern area of Denpasar as the research data. The technique of providing data was carried out by surveying the location of street traders in side of the road and storefronts, interviews and distribution of questionnaires. Furthermore, data collection in this study used the listening method with note-taking and documentation techniques. The data analysis method was used an extra lingual equivalent approach to classify the form of using persuasive language and the impact of the message contained in the hanging banner/standing banner. The results of this study was pointed out that ≥80% persuasive language promotion strategy in banner media has become the main strategy for PKL, efficiently persuasive language messages can quickly invite public appeal so that it is very likely to increase the purchasing power of potential consumers directly.

Internationalisation of Higher Education: Building South-South Partnerships between China and Mexico

As an important emerging economy, Mexico is significant to China for promoting world multipolarisation as well as an important partner in jointly building a community of shared future for mankind. Educational exchanges and co-operation are an indispensable part of friendly transactions between China and Mexico. Both countries have made many advancements in the fields of personnel turnover, the establishment of overseas co-operation centres, language promotion, and vocational and technical training. Both China and Mexico regard the other as an important education partner. In future co-operation, the two countries should continue to promote vocational education, improve the degree system, and pay attention to hidden safety issues.

A Reflective Account on Human Translation and Interpreting Faced with the Automated Text and Speech Processing Tools

This reflection aims to depict the prospective position and role of translation and interpreting in the globalised world. Demographic factors point to a long-lasting multilingualism, which reflects the co-existence of linguistic identities within a variety of settings. From schools, to workplaces and communities, different languages are and will continue to be in use. In many countries, there is an increasing wave of using vernacular and migrant languages in education. However, the current global academic discourse on language situations does not sufficiently reflect this new looming reality. The focus of translation and interpreting studies has traditionally been placed on those languages that were perceived as internationally important. One would assume that economic and diplomatic interests have influenced that approach and attitude. With changes affecting the globalised world in relation to the rise of some emerging economies and new resources, it is clear that the interlingual communication will be one of the greatest challenges of the coming age. In this regard, a new paradigm in overall language promotion and education must be formulated within which human translation and interpretation continue be seen as important skills to be generally acquired.

MODERN TAJIKISTAN MEDIA DISCOURSE IN THE CONDITIONS OF LANGUAGE POLICY TRANSFORMATION

At the epicentre of this research is the issue of language policy in the framework of transformation processes in the Republic of Tajikistan, which is reflected in the country’s media discourse. Initially, the author draws attention to the fact that the Tajik media, considered the most professional and free in Central Asia, during the period of the cardinal change of historical milestones were distinguished by tendentiousness, turning into a thoughtless machine for directives implementation. The article presents the author’s independent Tajikistan media main stages classification and gives a succinct description of each of them. The author substantiates the status of language policy subjectivity. The multi-vector, rationalism and balance of language policy in the Republic of Tajikistan is particularly noted. The author carries out a comparative analysis of some former socialist camp countries experience due to socio-linguistic goals related to the state language promotion and the special legal status assignment to the Russian language. Official statistics are presented on the quantitative distribution of the republic’s population by gender, nationality and mother tongue, in accordance with which the media discourse in the context of language policy is analyzed. In conclusion, a number of main criteria for the language policy pursued by the Tajik authorities are listed, in accordance with which the Tajik language policy is highly praised by experts.

macrostructure of elicited narratives by bilingual children: an analysis of the factor age of onset

In this paper, data from a current study on bilingual language acquisition and language promotion of children is presented. 96 narratives from 32 Turkish-German and Russian-German bilingual children were examined with regard to the acquisition of narrative ability in three rounds of tests. The macrostructure of each narrative was evaluated based on the theories of Westby (2005), Stein and Glenn (1977) and Gagarina et al. (2012). In the quantitative analysis, the factor age of onset (AoO) was considered and therefore, two hypotheses were introduced: 1) There is an influence of AoO on the narrative ability of L2 German bilingual children. And 2) The narrative ability will converge over time and after three years there will be no difference between the groups. Neither of those hypotheses could be confirmed by the examined narrative data. Hence, other influences on narrative ability were discussed in the last chapter and prospects for further research were given. In sum, the article shows that more narrative data of these children should be collected to make a comprehensive conclusion about the influence of AoO on narrative ability.