This study investigated the contribution of child characteristics and parenting environment to the relationship between family SES/demographic characteristics and maternal language to infants. 1157 children were drawn from a representative sample of 1292 infants born to mothers in rural Appalachian counties and rural counties in southern minority…

Based on an approximate eight month critical ethnographic action research project at a U.S. Midwestern high school in 2004-2005, this article presents data related to the linguistic ideology and associated cultural assimilationist attitudes and practices at Junction High School. During an intercultural peace curricula development project, members…

Classroom talk is an example of institutional discourse, based on asymmetrical distribution of communicative rights and obligations between teachers and students. Teachers hold power and solidarity relationships with their students. It has been assumed that, in general, women are more concerned with solidarity while men are more interested in…

This book presents a description of the major curriculum philosophies that have influenced educators and schooling over the last century. The author analyzes four educational visions (Scholar Academic, Social Efficiency, Learner Centered, and Social Reconstruction) to enable readers to reflect on their own educational beliefs and allow them to…

As a contribution to the development of the teaching of English writing in Thailand and studies of second language (L2) writing, reported in this dissertation is a research project on Thai undergraduate students' writing frequency and their attitude toward writing in English as a foreign language (EFL). The chapters of the paper include a…

The focus of this paper is on speakers' rationalisations of their everyday linguistic choices as members of a multilingual academic department in the US. Given the monolingual macro-context, the myriad of native languages spoken by participants, and the professional stake in language competence, the question of how speakers arrive at language…

Barriers that impede effective communication between scientists and journalists include communication styles and skills, professional jargon, mistrust, time constraints, and orientation to knowledge types and "facts." Here we describe an experiment in building bridges between journalists and scientists in Southeast Asia and Japan in a…

In the 21st century concerns about workplace language and literacy skills, particularly in the service and manufacturing sectors, continue to drive education and testing policy in many OECD countries. Employers tend to adopt deficit assumptions about service workers' skills, conflating social identities and language and literacy, which can blind…

This article focuses on the identity accounts of a group of Chinese children who attend a heritage language school. Bakhtin's concepts of ideological becoming, and authoritative and internally persuasive discourse, frame our exploration. Taking a dialogic view of language and learning raises questions about schools as socializing spaces and…

There are many postulates of a relation between quality of attachment with theory of mind and language functions (e.g., de Rosnay & Hughes, 2006). The current study examined in longitudinal design how different patterns of attachment are associated with usage of internal state language at ages 17, 23, 30 and 36 months. Transcripts of mother-child…

This study investigates the orientation of language-use practices during in-class peer work of second-year college learners of German in three different sections (classes) of a multi-section course, taught by three different teachers at a public American Midwestern research university. Qualitative analyses of recordings made over the course of an…

In line with recent critiques of communicative language teaching (Byrnes and Maxim 2004; Byrnes 2006), this paper considers how instances of spontaneous, creative language play can afford access to a range of linguistic practices that are often devalued or ignored in classrooms. To this end, it examines how university students in an advanced…

This article addresses the relationship between the call for authenticity, its relocalization in other contexts, and the use of English. Hip-hop forces us to confront some of the conflictual discourses of authenticity and locality, from those that insist that African American hip-hop is the only real variety and that all other forms are…

Since language is socially mediated and context dependent, it would be expected that learners' use of language learning strategies may vary with the environment. Using the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) (Oxford, 1990), this study examines the language learning behaviors and thought processes of two geographically and…

This article examines how kindergarten-children are differentiated and segregated through vocal practices and processes. The analysis is based on empirical data, which originate from a long ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark. The author presents two different language tones: "a teaching tone and an exchange tone" and shows a pattern in…