Against the backdrop of the Belt and Road Initiative, the study reports on the ideological construction of multilingualism in higher education in mainland China. Through a new methodological approach combining intertextual discourse analysis and thematic analysis, this paper concentrates on the interplay of ideologies towards multilingualism…

Drawing on Critical Discourse Analysis and, more specifically, on the relationship between the macro-level of dominant discourses and the micro-level of individual positionings, we examine the way linguistic identities are constructed by immigrant students of Albanian origin in Greece. We elaborate on two "competitive" discourses: the…

As the integration of Internet-based social networking tools becomes increasingly popular in foreign language classrooms, the use of modern communication technologies is particularly critical in the context of less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), where student exposure to the target language and its speakers is usually minimal. This paper…

This article explores multimodal literacy practices in a transforming multilingual context of an indigenous and endangered Sámi language classroom. Looking at literacy practices as embedded in a complex and shifting terrain of language ideologies, language norms, and individual experiences and attitudes, we examined how multilingual Sámi children…

Examines two phenomena of language alternation in biographic narrations in Yiddish and Low German, based on spoken language data recorded between 1988-1995. The first is a narrative strategy referred to as token codeswitching; the second has to do with directing procedures, carried out by the speaker and aimed at guiding and supporting the…

This study on code-mixing focuses on the influence of Spanish in Nahuatl discourse as revealed in narratives produced by adults and children. Results indicate differences in frequency of content word embedded language (Spanish), lexical items across grade level (for children), grade level attained (for adults), and correlations (for children)…

Examined the role of textual constraints, rather than previous knowledge, in resolving lexical ambiguities in second-language learning. Twenty ambiguous words with differing Portuguese translations were selected, disambiguated based on collocation, and tested with a concordancer, using a 20,000,000-word English language corpus of expository text.…

Analyzes interlanguage written discourse produced by advanced Tamil-speaking learners of English as a second language. Eight communication strategies are discussed, including: 1) extended use of lexical items; 2) lexical paraphrase; 3) word coinage; 4) native language (L1) equivalence; 5) literal translation of L1 idiom; 6) L1 mode of emphasis; 7)…

This book is a comparative study of the syntax of Arabic dialects based on natural language data recorded in Morocco, Egypt, Syria, and Kuwait. These four dialect regions are distinct and geographically diverse and representative of four distinct dialect groups. The analytical approach of the book is both functional and descriptive, combining…

Discusses a study of concord phenomena in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Findings indicate the presence of disfluencies, including apparent corrections, in about 15% of the relevant tokens in the corpus of recorded speech data. It is concluded that speech is not overly laden with errors, and there is nothing in the data to mislead the language…

Functional analysis of longitudinal, conversational interlanguage data from two Vietnamese learners of English focused on the emergence of complex syntax in interlanguage development. The interdependence of different linguistic levels in interlanguage development was demonstrated. (Author/CB)

Explores similarities and differences in native- and second- language referential communication through review of an experiment in which native Dutch speakers described unconventional abstract shapes first in Dutch and then in English. Subjects exhibited a preference, in both languages, for describing shapes in a holistic rather than segmental…

Investigates the processes involved in the learning of Arabic subject-verb agreement by Australians. It is hypothesized that the amount and direction of information encoding motivated by certain semantic categories as well as the availability of discourse cues would influence the learners' performance in subject-verb agreement tasks. (27…

Argues that translation can be an effective learning tool for English speakers learning Chinese if semantic and discourse analysis are incorporated. Examples are given to illustrate various problems in such translation, including the division between state and action verbs, and the nonuse of -LE with verbs in past meaning. (15 references) (JL)

The acquisition of narrative competence in French by an Arabic-speaking migrant worker in interactions with target language speakers was explored, with hypotheses formed about the polyfunctional uses of certain forms to mark the chronology of events in the narrative or to introduce quoted speech. (Author/CB)