To account for the full range of language use in contemporary multilingual urban contexts, the notion of target language (TL) needs to be reconsidered. In studies of second language acquisition and language variation, taking TL for granted implies that people agree on what constitutes "good" language, or the standard norm. The TL of…

The self-report questionnaire has served as the primary tool for investigating language maintenance in hundreds of communities over the past 40 years. More recently, it has been employed to investigate language shift amongst first-generation communities where one of the most useful indicators of generational change is the reported pattern of…

Self-repetition is commonly found in spoken discourse, and it could be argued that it is an interactional necessity. Self-repetition in spontaneous talk is pervasive and performs a variety of functions. Some regard it as signalling redundancy, disfluency, or both, in spoken language, whereas others consider it to be facilitating the production of…

Demonstrates the willingness and ability of non-linguists to provide information about "what they know" about everyday speech activities in the form of their interpretive responses to various tape-recorded fragments of talk. Three types of information are identified from these responses, including overtly "available" information about a variety of…

Discusses the importance of language awareness in translation, particularly in the area of translator competence, focusing on the many areas of translation where awareness is a relevant concept and how it has been incorporated into the Priorities-Restrictions (PR) model of translation. (15 references) (MDM)

Explores the concept of language awareness (LA) in relation to the acquisition of two languages by young children, examining the bilingual development of two toddlers and factors that affect bilingual development and outcomes. Suggests that communicative intent, rather than traditional tests, is a key variable in determining how LA is to be…