Willingness to communicate in relation to language use among Pakistani undergraduates: A sociocultural perspective

This study aimed to investigate English as a second language (ESL) undergraduates’ sociocultural perspective of willingness to communicate (WTC) in English inside the classroom in relation to language use outside the classroom. The participants were 440 ESL undergraduates selected through the cluster sampling method from eight universities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in Pakistan. The data were collected through questionnaires on WTC in English inside the classroom and language use outside the classroom. The findings revealed that the participants’ level of WTC in English was high for most social interactions within the classroom, such as in groups, during activities, with the same gender, and when given preparation time in groups. The findings for language use showed that a mixture of languages, such as Pashto and Urdu, was predominantly used in the family, neighbourhood and friendship, religion, education, and transaction domains. In contrast, English was primarily used in the mass media and social media domains. Moreover, the findings revealed that WTC in English inside the classroom was positively correlated with social media, mass media, transaction and education domains but negatively correlated with the family domain.

Opportunities and challenges in the analysis of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN)

The development of the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives (MAIN) has no doubt contributed to prompting a renewed interest in children’s narratives. This carefully controlled test of narrative abilities elicits a rich set of measures spanning multiple linguistic domains and their interaction, including lexis, morphosyntax, discourse-pragmatics, as well as various aspects of narrative structure, communicative competence, and language use (such as code-switching). It is particularly well suited to the study of discourse cohesion, referential adequacy and informativeness, and of course to the study of narrative structure and richness, and the acquisition of a more formal or literary register. In this commentary article, I reflect on the five empirical papers included in the special issue. I focus on methodological challenges for the analysis of narratives and identify outstanding questions.

Subject–Verb Number Agreement in Bilingual Processing: (Lack of) Age of Acquisition and Proficiency Effects

Children acquire language more easily than adults, though it is controversial whether this faculty declines as a result of a critical period or something else. To address this question, we investigate the role of age of acquisition and proficiency on morphosyntactic processing in adult monolinguals and bilinguals. Spanish monolinguals and intermediate and advanced early and late bilinguals of Spanish read sentences with adjacent subject–verb number agreements and violations and chose one of four pictures. Eye-tracking data revealed that all groups were sensitive to the violations and attended more to more salient plural and preterit verbs than less obvious singular and present verbs, regardless of AoA and proficiency level. We conclude that the processing of adjacent SV agreement depends on perceptual salience and language use, rather than AoA or proficiency. These findings support usage-based theories of language acquisition.

Is there no “I” in team? Potential bias in key informant interviews when asking individuals to represent a collective perspective

This paper sought to understand the extent to which, and how individuals use personal or collective language when asked to articulate sense of place from a collective perspective. Understanding a collective sense of place could illuminate place-based connections in natural resource industries, where it is as groups or as institutions that organizations interact with the environment rather than as individuals. While there are well known methods for collecting information about sense of place at the individual level, there is a gap in understanding the best method to collect information at a collective level. We examined the use of key-informant interviews as a method to understand collective sense of place. In Bocas del Toro, Panama, ecotourism and environmentally based organizations are becoming more prolific due to abundant natural resources, making it an interesting case study for understanding sense of place from an organizational perspective. The use of personal and collective language is examined though in-depth semi-structured interviews from 15 environmentally-oriented organizations with a total of 17 interviews. This study specifically examined whether and how key informants, when prompted to speak for their organization, spoke collectively, reflecting a collective perspective versus their own. Methods included both quantitative analysis of personal versus collective language use frequency, and qualitative examinations of how individuals used personal versus collective language. Our results indicated no difference in the frequency with which individuals use personal versus collective language. We found that how individuals situated their perspectives into an organization reflects a complex personal and collective point of view reflecting five themes of personal versus collective language use: 1) sole personal perspective, 2) sole collective perspective, 3) distinction between collective and personal perspective; 4) organization perspective with insertion of “I think”; and 5) personal and collective perspective about organization and greater community. Our research identifies a previously undiscussed potential bias of key informant interviews. These findings have implications for how researchers approach collecting information beyond the individual level.

BIAS Word inventory for work and employment diversity, (in)equality and inclusivity (Version 1.0)

The language used in job advertisements contains explicit and implicit cues, which signal employers’ preferences for candidates of certain ascribed characteristics, such as gender and ethnicity/race. To capture such biases in language use, existing word inventories have focused predominantly on gender and are based on general perceptions of the ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ orientations of specific words and socio-psychological understandings of ‘agentic’ and ‘communal’ traits. Nevertheless, these approaches are limited to gender and they do not consider the specific contexts in which the language is used. To address these limitations, we have developed the first comprehensive word inventory for work and employment diversity, (in)equality, and inclusivity that builds on a number of conceptual and methodological innovations. The BIAS Word Inventory was developed as part of our work in an international, interdisciplinary project – BIAS: Responsible AI for Labour Market Equality – in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK). Conceptually, we rely on a sociological approach that is attuned to various documented causes and correlates of inequalities related to gender, sexuality, ethnicity/race, immigration and family statuses in the labour market context. Methodologically, we rely on ‘expert’ coding of actual job advertisements in Canada and the UK, as well as iterative cycles of inter-rater verification. Our inventory is particularly suited for studying labour market inequalities, as it reflects the language used to describe job postings, and the inventory takes account of cues at various dimensions, including explicit and implicit cues associated with gender, ethnicity, citizenship and immigration statuses, role specifications, equality, equity and inclusivity policies and pledges, work-family policies, and workplace context.

Beyond the Words in Print: Identity Construction in Messages of Condolence

Death is part of human existence. When a person hears the news of someone’s death, it is very common for that person to express their feelings about it. This feeling is in the form of condolences which express the speaker’s sorrow, and condolences fall into the category of speech act. Semantically, condolences have a social meaning which refers to language use. Identities are created in relationships with others, and condolences are major platforms for the construction of identities, in that, existing relationships are, clearly, manifested in the messages that sympathizers expressed. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzed twenty condolence messages which were purposely sampled from condolence messages posted in the portals of International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), when one of its members passed away. The analysis of the data revealed two main identity types enacted for the deceased: role identity and Social Identity. The major Role identity enacted, metaphorically, was Father while the least role was Achiever. Second, identity as an International Figure was dominant with the Social roles, but Good Personality was used less frequently. The present study adds to studies in identity construction, in general, and studies in condolence messages, in specific.