This corpus-based study explores the expression of gratitude in the acknowledgement section of doctoral dissertations in both English and Arabic. The objective is to analyse how gratitude in academic discourse is structured in these languages and to explore any differences related to gender. The study examines 80 dissertations (40 in English and…

A great deal of research undertaken in child language development, neurolinguistics and various branches of functional and cognitive linguistics has shown that a main source of language development is the spoken input to which learners are exposed. Despite the fact that for most adult L2 learners, the greatest exposure to the L2 is the input they…

This study aimed to investigate gender variations in letters of recommendation. It used the metadiscourse theory with respect to the following resources: hedges, boosters, attitude markers, engagement markers, and self-mentions. The findings showed that hedges devices were the least frequent in both groups, but at the same time were used more by…

In this paper, the author examines the reflection of social violence within the structure of the Arabic language through an analysis of classical Arabic grammar texts. The study's comprehensive examination of grammatical examples, rules, and terminologies reveals how the societal relationships and power dynamics of the era were embedded within the…

This book examines the role of interlocutors and their individual differences (IDs) in second language (L2) development from four theoretical lenses: the cognitive-interactionist approach, sociocultural theory, the variationist approach, and complex dynamic systems theory. A theoretical overview to each approach is written by a preeminent scholar…

Considering the controversy about the nature of ergativity, the issue of whether a case morpheme is theta assigning or just structural case-marking, the present study tried to provide an evidence for either side or both. To this aim, the acquisition and use of ergative verbs were studied and possible explications of the errors were presented.…

In the United States, traditional lecture-based teaching methods have not effectively met the needs of diverse learners in higher education (HE). This is particularly problematic as diversity is increasing amongst learners, including those with diverse racial, ethnic, gender, academic, and emotional backgrounds. The predominance of the two-tiered…

Discourse markers (DMs) are linguistic forms characterized by their use as conversation organizers or pause fillers (Fox Tree, 2010). Although used frequently in both speech and writing, DMs are not often taught in L2 classrooms, despite incorrect usage causing potential misunderstandings (Polat, 2011). Additionally, L2 learners have been observed…

As critical approaches to Heritage Language (HL) instruction are increasingly more widespread, it is now more pertinent than ever to conduct research on Spanish linguistic variation that reveals systematicity and refutes hegemonic notions of 'incorrectness'. This variationist study examines the use and distribution of the Preterite and Imperfect…

This study examines the L2 pronunciation feedback provided by the Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) functionality in Google Translate (GT). We focus on three Quebec Francophone (QF) errors in English: th-substitution, h-deletion, and h-epenthesis. Four hundred and eighty male and female QF recordings of sentences with correctly and incorrectly…

This paper investigates foreigners' linguistic and visual representations observed in 17 recent Japanese animated shows (or "anime"), and explores ways to increase students' critical awareness of issues regarding Japanese language and culture. We find that foreign characters in "anime" tend to be linguistically represented with…

This manuscript reports on a corpus-based comparison of native and nonnative graduate students' language production in an asynchronous learning environment. Using 486 discussion board postings from a five-year period (2009-2013), we analyzed the extent to which native and nonnative university students' writing differed in 10 measures of syntactic…

Although Brazilian governmental documents have conceived language teaching from a critical perspective, the recent scenario points to a backlash towards critical perspectives on teaching, which have been socially perceived as indoctrination. Since we understand critical pedagogy in additional language classrooms as a necessary emancipatory…

Two eye-tracking experiments tested (a) whether L2 learners benefit from the consistency of input modality (auditory instead of written processing instruction [PI] training) and (b) whether they benefit from training using the same voice as the test voice. Results confirmed a robust effect of PI training on picture-selection accuracy, yet the…

This study examined the use of non-standard English features in 16-year-old students' writing in the UK. Adopting a diachronic approach to the investigation of students' written production, the study sought to identify changes in students' use of non-standard English over the course of a decade, specifically from 2004 to 2014. It involved an…