This study aims to identify factors contributing to linguistic insecurity and provides suggestions to support teachers in fostering linguistic security in their classrooms. The findings are based on data from interviews with 21 high school teachers from across the province of British Columbia (Canada) and a focus group with eight members of the…

Although a growing body of research has sought to understand the relationship between word order and information structure, previous information structure (IS) analyses of verb-subject order have produced conflicting results for Medieval French, which have subsequently led to conflicting claims about the importance of IS to its word order as well…

Resulting from France's centuries-long colonial project across several continents, French is estimated to be the fifth most widely spoken language globally. Yet, despite its presence across continents and despite the linguistic diversity within France itself, notions of 'good' and 'correct' French continue to be associated with the image of the…

An important first step to globalizing and decentralizing foreign language education is to clarify current language teachers' perceptions of language varieties and how these perceptions influence their pedagogy. The present study looked at English and French language classrooms in K-12 and university settings in the United States to compare…

The following study focuses on learners of French in an English-dominant context and contributes to a better understanding of language hierarchization by investigating attitudes toward different varieties of French. It aims to identify a possible correlation between the evaluation of different varieties of French and the participants'…

Our country, which is today the Dominican Republic, is a Spanish speaking country due to the historical and well known fact that the then Hispaniola Island or Santo Domingo was split into two different colonies by effect of the Aranjuez Treaty (1777), held between the two Colonial Metropolis of Spain and France thus establishing the French…

The ability to speak in a second language (L2) requires a certain level of linguistic proficiency, but the ability to "live" in a second language requires a certain level of "sociolinguistic" proficiency. L2 sociolinguistic variables present acquisitional challenges for language learners, since informal discourse features are…

Feature-based approaches to acquisition principally focus on second language (L2) learners' ability to perceive non-native consonants when the features required are either contrastively present or entirely absent from the first language (L1) grammar. As features may function contrastively or allophonically in the consonant and/or vowel systems of…

In my research I examine the linguistic practices of Moroccans in Spain, many of whom speak Moroccan Arabic as well as Modern Standard Arabic, Tamazight, French, English and Spanish at varying levels of proficiency. As part of my research, I conducted a 10-month linguistic ethnography. I was able to rely on my native English and near-native…

According to expectation violation theory, job applicants can be upgraded or downgraded during an interview when their accent does not match employers' speech expectations. Focusing on the employment of second language French job candidates in Québec, this study explored this issue dynamically in terms of how expectations may impact the trajectory…

This study examined the production of L3 French words by Spanish--English bilinguals who had no prior knowledge of the L3. Using a shadowing task, 39 Spanish L1/English L2 and 18 Spanish monolingual speakers produced 26 tokens of word-initial voiceless plosive consonants in French, Spanish and English (15 Spanish and French tokens for the…

During spoken word processing, native (L1) listeners use allophonic variation to predictively rule out word competitors and speed up word recognition. There is some evidence that second language (L2) learners develop an awareness of allophonic distributions in their L2, but whether they use their knowledge to facilitate word recognition online,…

Quebec has a tradition of language columns, articles discussing questions related to the French language produced by a single author and published regularly in the periodical press. This study examines the content and discourse of a sample of these language columns produced by six authors in Quebec during the twentieth century to explore possible…

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

Today's changing sociolinguistic reality of English calls for a shift in paradigm in the field of English language teaching. Therefore, this study aims to examine Moroccan EFL learners' (MEFLLs) attitudes towards World Englishes (WE) and native and non-native English-speaking teachers (NESTs & non-NESTs). Firstly, building on the assumption…