Formulates some of the economic reasons for the continuing dominance of English in the boardrooms, government forums, parastatals and laboratories of South Africa, to consider whether this situation is likely to change, and to assess the extent to which such a state of affairs is at odds with South Africa's new language policy. (Author/VWL)

Discusses repercussions of the 1983 Law of Linguistic Normalization in Catalonia, which attempted to secure the officiality of Catalan and guarantee its use in schools, public life, administration and mass media. Suggests that reactionary language planning in post-Franconist Catalonia may have swung the hegemonic pendulum so far away from Spanish…

A well-known asymmetry exists in the bilingual masked priming literature in which lexical decision is used: namely, masked primes in the dominant language (L1) facilitate decision times on targets in the less dominant language (L2), but not vice versa. In semantic categorization, on the other hand, priming is symmetrical. In Experiments 1-3 we…

Reversing language shift has proven to be difficult for many reasons. Although much of the literature has focused on educational practices, little research has attended to the visual presentation of language used in educational texts aimed at reversing shift. In this article, we compare language materials developed for two different language…

Studies in Spanish heritage language writing have recently uncovered two opposing tendencies: "backwards biliteracy" where writing conforms to rhetorical traditions in the dominant language and "forward biliteracy" where writing breaks away from canonical rhetorical traditions and where writers carve out their own, transcultural paths of…

This paper describes multiple Estonian-Russian language contacts in Estonia. For synchronic microsociolinguistic research it is usual to concentrate on the impact of a sociolinguistically dominant language A on an immigrant/minority language B. In the Soviet setting, the dominant language was usually Russian (despite Russians being a minority).…

This document discusses an academic achievement study of selected Garvey School District students (N=179) as reflected on the CTBS (Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills) scores of first-grade students at elementary school sites and covering a period of 6 school years starting with 1980-81. Findings compare (1) achievement in reading scale scores…

Investigates the role of English in Moldova. Building on Phillipson's concept of linguistic imperialism and Kachru's three concentric circles of world Englishes, proposes a weak form of linguistic dominance based on the notion of opportunism. The model is supported by data from a recent study of language attitudes and language use in Moldova. Data…

Concepts of identity and ethnicity, and their applicability to Europe through language, religious and cultural criteria are reviewed. It is noted that thoughts of an integrated Europe must acknowledge both behavioral and ethnographic approaches to difference and particularly the contrasts between dominance and difference theories. A European…

Critical analysis of three cases of grammatical borrowing of Frisian from Dutch leads to the specific conclusion that the Frisian grammatical system does not "Dutchify," and to general conclusions concerning the ways that minority languages can and cannot be influenced by dominant languages. (Author/CB)

Applies the concept of indigenous rights to language preservation through exploration of other European language debates in the western hemisphere, and provides general background on the ways in which Native-American languages have been suppressed and devalued. The experiences of the Kuna nation of Panama in reintroducing their native language are…

Discusses David Crystal's book, "English as a Global Language." Highlights the "history" of the dominance of English in the main English-speaking countries, language and global relations, language in education, and language rights. (VWL)

Recent findings raised evidence that in early-onset left temporal lobe epilepsy, women show greater functional plasticity for verbal memory than men. In particular, women with lesion- or epilepsy-driven atypical language dominance show an advantage over men. The question asked in this study was whether there is evidence of sex- and language…

Data from one English-Italian bilingual child (1;10-3;1) are presented in this study which challenge the hypothesis that the consistent realization of overt subjects in English is caused by the emergence of finite verbal morphology in the child's grammar. The argument is made for the emergence of subjects as an independent grammatical property of…

Purpose: The effect of semantic naming treatment on crosslinguistic generalization was investigated in 3 participants with English-Spanish bilingual aphasia. Method: A single-subject experimental designed was used. Participants received semantic treatment to improve naming of English or Spanish items, while generalization was tested to untrained…