Language Alternation Strategies In Multilingual Settings

This book is one of the first systematic studies to describe the linguistic repertoire and the communicative strategies adopted by Ghanaian immigrants in Italy. The linguistic repertoire of the Ghanaian community in Bergamo (Northern Italy) is described with a special focus on the different codes composing it. The author analyzes the role that each code plays in expressing the community members' ethnic and linguistic identity, and the speakers' attitudes towards each code. She draws on the results of qualitative analysis - adopting both a macro-sociolinguistic and a micro-sociolinguistic perspective - of a database of face-to-face interactions and of formal interviews involving a selected group of Ghanaian immigrants.

This volume brings together researchers in conversation analysis who examine the practice of alternating between English and German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Vietnamese in the classroom. The collection shows that language alternation is integral to being and learning to become a bilingual, and that being and learning to become a bilingual are accomplished through a remarkably common set of interactional objects and actions, whose sequential organisations are quite similar across languages and educational sectors. This volume therefore shows that having recourse to more than one shared language provides an important resource for getting the work of language learning and teaching done through an orderliness that can be described and evaluated. The findings and the suggested pedagogical applications described in the volume will be of significant interest to researchers and teachers in a range of fields including second and foreign language teaching and learning, conversation analysis, teacher education and bilingualism.

Traditionally, teachers of majority languages receive less training to teach a language as a second language or to develop the plurilingual repertoire of their learners than, for example, foreign language teachers. Yet, in today's societies, learners bring many different languages to school. This means that the teaching of the majority language has to extend beyond teaching it as a first language and adopt elements of second language teaching. This publication aims to encourage teachers to become agents of reform for the promotion of plurilingualism in majority language teaching. The range of proposed actions includes small-scale activities, such as planning a lesson relating to a specific aspect of grammar which incorporates all languages spoken in the classroom. More comprehensive strategic approaches proposed in the materials involve head teachers or parents.

This Handbook answers a long-standing need for an up-to-date, comprehensive, international, in-depth critical survey of the history, trajectory, data, results and key figures involved in sociolinguistics. The result is a work of unprecedented coverage and insight. It is all here, from the foundational contributions to the field to the impact of new media, new technologies of communication, globalization, trans-border fluidities and agendas of research.

This book explores a comprehensive set of tensions which emerged from the dislocated and deterritorialised position of Russian in the contemporary world from a sociolinguistic perspective.

This book explores the cognitive and communicative processes involved in the use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) within cross-cultural specialized contexts where non-native speakers of English - i.e. Western experts and non-Western migrants - interact. The book argues that the main communicative difficulties in such contexts are due precisely to the use of ELF, since it develops from the non-native speakers' transfer of their native language structures and socio-cultural schemata into the English they speak. Transfer, in fact, allows non-native speakers to appropriate, or authenticate, those English semantic, syntactic, pragmatic and specialized-discourse structures that are linguistically and conceptually unavailable to them. It follows that there are as many ELF varieties as there are communities of non-native speakers authenticating English. The research questions justifying the ethnographic case studies detailed in this book are: What kind of cognitive frames and communicative strategies do Western experts activate in order to convey their culturally-marked knowledge of specialized discourse - by using their ELF varieties - to non-Westerners with different linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds? What kind of power asymmetries can be identified when non-Westerners try to communicate their own knowledge by using their respective ELF varieties? Is it possible to ultimately develop a mode of ELF specialized communication that can be shared by both Western experts and non-Western migrants?

The most comprehensive overview available, this Handbook is an essential guide to sociolinguistics today. Reflecting the breadth of research in the field, it surveys a range of topics and approaches in the study of language variation and use in society. As well as linguistic perspectives, the handbook includes insights from anthropology, social psychology, the study of discourse and power, conversation analysis, theories of style and styling, language contact and applied sociolinguistics. Language practices seem to have reached new levels since the communications revolution of the late twentieth century. At the same time face-to-face communication is still the main force of language identity, even if social and peer networks of the traditional face-to-face nature are facing stiff competition of the Facebook-to-Facebook sort. The most authoritative guide to the state of the field, this handbook shows that sociolinguistics provides us with the best tools for understanding our unfolding evolution as social beings.

This book addresses the meanings and implications of multilingualism and its uses in a context of rapid changes, in Europe and around the world. All types of organisations, including the political institutions of the European Union, universities and private-sector companies must rise to the many challenges posed by operating in a multilingual environment. This requires them, in particular, to make the best use of speakers’ very diverse linguistic repertoires. The contributions in this volume, which stem from the DYLAN research project financed by the European Commission as part of its Sixth Framework Programme, examine at close range how these repertoires develop, how they change and how actors adapt skilfully the use of their repertoires to different objectives and conditions. These different strategies are also examined in terms of their capacity to ensure efficient and fair communication in a multilingual Europe. Careful observation of actors’ multilingual practices reveals finely tuned communicational strategies drawing on a wide range of different languages, including national languages, minority languages and lingue franche. Understanding these practices, their meaning and their implications, helps to show in what way and under what conditions they are not merely a response to a problem, but an asset for political institutions, universities and business.