We introduce the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe (CSYE), an Open Access digital language archive based on several hundred testimony interviews with Holocaust survivors from the USC Shoah Foundation. The testimonies are a uniquely rich source of information on all aspects of European Yiddish: its regional dialects, grammatical structures,…

This paper displays a Systemic Functional Linguistic and Critical Discourse Analysis of Boris Johnson's first public speech on COVID-19. COVID-19 is a very dangerous infectious disease caused by the last discovered virus of the Coronavirus strain. This virus began in Wuhan's Chinese city in December 2019. COVID-19 has spread from Wuhan to the rest…

The Canadian government implemented the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program to help immigrants integrate into Canada. However, research indicates that the LINC program fails to achieve its integrative goals. Using Fairclough's analytical concepts of genre, discourse and style, this article closely examines a unit of LINC…

This article expands on a co-authored project with Timothy Laurie on the practices and ethics of higher degree research (HDR) supervision (or advising): "What does good HDR supervision look like?" in contemporary universities. It connects that project with scholarship on the relevance of "common sense" to questions of…

This article discusses how stylization sheds light on the role of authenticity as an increasingly relevant concept in sociolinguistics. Building on research on style, crossing, and mock language use, the article demonstrates how multilingual stylization provides speakers with a wider range of resources for navigating and negotiating borders and…

Authentic materials, if appropriate to the learning situation, might turn the classroom environment into a more engaging place, where motivation might be generated through the performance of meaningful tasks. This article describes how a Text-Based Instruction approach can provide the basis for the design of an ESP syllabus based on relevant,…

For socially appropriate communication, speakers must command a variety of linguistic styles, or "registers", that vary according to social context and social relationships. This study examined preschool children's ability to use a speaker's register choice to infer the identity of their addressee. Four-year-olds could draw correct inferences…

The field of rhetoric has generated studies of definitional disputes and of the relationship between definition and power. Informed by the idea of collective definition created over time, these studies raise an important theoretical-practical question about definition and contestation that may be approached through a concept of authority.…

A discussion of the role that interpersonal interaction plays in the perception and interpretation of oral expression looks at language styles, the use of the body for communication, the speaker's perspective on the audience, and the importance of oral skills in politics, business, and job seeking. (MSE)

This study investigates raters' identification of errors in the writing of an EFL student. Drawing on data collected from a correction task and a questionnaire, we examine the beliefs and practices of three distinct groups of 16 participants in each: native English speaking EFL teachers, Japanese speaking EFL teachers and educated native English…