Suchergebnisse

As is still the case in many parts of Iran, the distribution of languages and dialects in Ilam Province, western Iran, is unevenly documented. There have been several studies on specific language varieties spoken throughout the province but, in large part because of conflicting perspectives on the relationship between language and ethnicity, the situation for the region as a whole has until now remained unclear. The present study first of all brings together existing sociolinguistic and demographic data on language distribution and highlight areas of uncertainty. The main part of the study provides an overview of local perceptions of language distribution and language use based on field research and interviews conducted in each of the province's ten regions (shahrestān) and their twenty-five districts (bakhsh). Here, respondents' assessments of the geographic extent of the province's four main languages—Kurdish, Luri, Laki and Arabic—as well as more minor languages spoken by immigrants from elsewhere in Iran are summarized. For Kurdish in particular, which is the major of the four languages, the article shows the perceived geographic distribution of each major dialect and its affiliation within one of two major Kurdish dialect groups: Ilāmi (or "Feyli") and Kalhōri. This analysis is followed by a brief discussion of multilingualism. The results of the study are brought together in a map of the province's languages.

Abstract
Globalization in the early 21st century can be considered as the age of inequality that splits the world into the rich North and the poor South. From the perspective of language politics, only very few discussed the division across the globe, especially, between Eurasia and the "Rest of the world." In Eurasia, indigenous languages and scripts are used in official capacity, while the same function is fulfilled almost exclusively by non-indigenous (post/colonial) European languages in the Rest of the world. In the countries where they are spoken, non-Eurasian languages have limited presence in the mass media, education, or in cyberspace. This linguistic imperialism par excellence is a long-lasting and pernicious legacy of European (western) colonialism. The aforementioned divide is strongly associated to the use of ethnolinguistic nationalism in state building across many areas of Eurasia, while this ideology is not employed for this purpose outside the region.

The way citizens imagine their polities is a central part of the history of any nation. Their hopes and fears not only guide their own political behaviour, but also shape the responses of politicians. "Languages of Politics" provides a comprehensible and accessible portrait of public life and political language across the whole of nineteenth-century Britain. It asks: What was the political language actually used by contemporaries? How far were such languages stable and coherent across the period? In what ways did they offer both guides for political action and templates for political judgment? Did they demonstrate consensus or reveal contention? What kinds of shifts and transformations can be identified? This volume brings together leading historians to consider central topics such as governance, statesmanship, patriotism, political economy, religion, democracy, women's suffrage, Ireland and India. The map of the century it offers will be invaluable to all students of political culture

AbstractThis study examines the role of chronotopes in a municipal campaign to make English the official language. Drawing on theories of scale, localism, and chronotopes in discourse, this article traces how 30 town residents situated the English language in local and US history through talk and gesture. By evoking two contrasting chronotopes as they created and interpreted the language policy, people positioned monolingualism as a local tradition and multilingualism as a new, outside threat. Yet these chronotopes of local time and distant time were also recursive and fluid in two key ways. First, the US could be aligned with or against the local, which allowed English-only advocates to simultaneously criticize the nation and appeal to an idealized US past. Second, some critics of the policy reconfigured the chronotopes in order to posit multilingualism as the more authentic local tradition. These moves allowed the people involved to support, redefine and resist the English-only movement.

Article ; This article reports on the progress (or lack thereof) regarding the use of Sesotho as an official medium of communication in selected government departments in the Free State Provincial Government (FSPG). In South Africa, provincial governments are required to implement language policies that promote multilingualism. The aim is to develop previously marginalised languages such as Sesotho, isiXhosa and isiZulu, among others, so that they have equal status to English and Afrikaans. A mixed-method design was used to guide the research process and purposive sampling to ensure that participants made a valuable contribution to this study. We are concerned that despite efforts being made to reduce the gap between official languages such as English and Afrikaans and the previously marginalised languages, there is no real progress in this regard. The results of this study reveal that Sesotho, as a previously marginalised language, is still underutilised in government departments. Evidence suggests that the results of this study be used as a guide for the formulation and implementation of language policies and procedures to address this problem.

The submitted paper outlines the impact of political decisions on language testing, predominantly on test scores of the tested population, test design and item-writing. Results from research referring to the comparison of test-takers´ performances in the years 2011-2013 reveal a necessity to be sensitive and aware of ethics and fairness in language testing. The research is focused on the professional decision of test developers, item writers and administrators to avoid negative impact and maximize positive washback. The paper focuses on the construct which underlies the B2 English test to provide information about abilities that the test is designed to measure. Testing grammar and vocabulary was supported by using multiple linear regression analysis. The new conditions for test takers in 2012 are analyzed and evaluated in three areas the number of the students applying for tests in English B2, the total scores of students and their grouped distributions and the scores achieved in productive skills and language in use. We conclude by examining the ethical implications of the new conditions for test takers and by demonstrating the effect the ethical dimension had on item writers in their design of subsequent tests. Fairness plays an important yet hard to implement role in test design, and it is often up to the administrators and test designers to cope with external obstacles in promoting this.

Sign langauges (SLs) are the first langauge of the Deaf communities worldwide and, just like other minority languages are poorly resourced and in many cases lack political and social recognition. As a result of this, users of minority languages are often required to have multi-lingual competencies in non-L1 languages. In the case of SLs, this causes considerable hindrance to Deaf people as the average literacy competencies of a Deaf adult are equated with those of a 10-year old. To alleviate this, we propose the development of an automatic machine translation system to translate from spoken language text to SLs through the medium of a signing mannequin.

In the era of rapid technological expansion, the integration of various technologies into the process of second and foreign language (L2) learning and teaching has become pervasive, making computer-assisted language learning (CALL) a well-established field (Golonka et al., 2014). There is now a consensus that individual differences (IDs) significantly influence the process and product of L2 learning (Pawlak, 2020). With a plethora of technology-based options and functionalities, CALL provides learners with a high degree of autonomy (Pawlak et al., 2016), making it an environment that is ripe for capitalizing on learners' individuality (p. 17). However, despite their critical role, IDs have not garnered the attention they genuinely merit in this context (Pawlak, 2022). To address this issue, Mirosław Pawlak and Mariusz Kruk put together the volume Individual Differences in Computer-Assisted Language Learning Research, providing timely and insightful guidelines for the exploration of IDs in CALL and the broader realm of second language acquisition (SLA) research.

Foreign language skills are invaluable tools for exporting firms,
and this area is focused on with reference to a case study of a West
Midlands‐based UK subsidiary of a German‐speaking international
metallurgical group.

"This book studies the origins of language. It presents language as the product of a unique non-linguistic cognitive feature (i.e., metacognition) that emerged late in human evolution. Within this framework, the author lays special emphasis on the tight links that exist between language and consciousness, with the conviction that the creation of language was ultimately made possible by the onset of a new type of awareness that enabled the invention of words. The volume studies the parallels between human cultural behaviour and human language, discusses the motivational underpinnings that favoured the emergence of language, and offers a possible evolutionary timeline for the advent of language. It also addresses the questions of whether artificial intelligence will ever develop the kind of thinking and language observable in humans. A unique look into the beginnings of human language, this book will be indispensable for students and researchers of language and linguistics, language evolution, cultural studies, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive science"--

The digital age has exercised considerable influence not only on language use but also on research and teaching in this field. The present volume showcases some aspects of language-related investigation that reflect the interests, experiences, and challenges of theorists, practitioners, and language instructors today. Drawing on the linguistic corpus, parallel texts in different languages and a variety of approaches and methodologies, the book features three main lines of inquiry: L1 syntactic structure, L1-L2 contact and transfer, and L2 pedagogy. The use of case-studies and authentic data makes Language and Communication in the Digital Age a valuable source of insights into some linguistic peculiarities of Romanian and English, and highlights new research avenues for specialists in language and communication

"This volume provides a broad view of the field of sociolinguistic variation in acquisition. Favored by the current scientific context where interdisciplinarity is particularly encouraged, the chapters bring to light the complementarity between the social and cognitive sciences approaches to language acquisition. The book integrates sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic issues by bringing together scholars who have been developing conceptions of language acquisition throughout the lifespan that take into account the language-internal or cross-linguistic variation in first and second language, as well as in first and second dialect acquisition contexts. The volume gathers theoretical and empirical research and provides an excellent basis for scholars and students wanting to delve into the social and cognitive dimensions of both production and perception of sociolinguistic variation. The book enables the reader to understand, on the one hand, how variation is acquired in childhood or at a later stage and, on the other hand, how perception and production feed into one another building awareness of the social meaning underpinning language variation"--

The article studies the problem of the Russian language in the countries of the former Soviet Union and the main problems and ways to overcome them. The prevalence of the Russian language in the former Soviet Union varies considerably from country to country, but the dynamics of the use of Russian in the mostly stable. The status of the Russian language in every country in the post-Soviet space has its own specifics, but it continues to perform a number of important functions, and above all, a function of the interstate language, the language of science and culture. But due to the political situation in the world and the aggression against the Russian Federation, the status of the country in general and language in particular is changing and, unfortunately, not for the better. Post-Soviet countries continue to maintain contacts with Russia, many high school graduates go to Russia for the higher education, but at the same time, the level of Russian language skills among young people is much less than before the collapse of the Soviet Union.