-
The interplay between linguistic and non-verbal communication in an interpreter-mediated main hearing of a victim’s testimony Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2024-03-13 Simo Määttä, Tuija Kinnunen
This article examines verbal and non-verbal communication between the interpreter and the injured party in a video-recorded main hearing of a criminal matter at a court of first instance in Finland. The language of the court was Finnish and the interpreter and injured party communicated in French, the interpreter’s B language and the injured party’s second language. Due to differences in the two participants’
-
“You are Apple, why are you speaking to me in Turkish?”: the role of English in voice assistant interactions Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Didem Leblebici
This paper investigates the role of English in voice assistant (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant) use from the perspective of language ideology. Major commercial companies in the voice assistant market use English as a training language for their speech technologies and offer the most optimised support for standardised varieties of English. This affects the experiences with voice assistants of speakers
-
Facilitating or compromising inclusion? Language policies at Swedish higher education institutions as workplaces Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2024-02-24 Hyeseung Jeong, Stephanie Lindemann
Research has suggested that Swedish higher education institutions’ (HEIs’) language policies may exclude some academic staff from work-related activities due to (dual) monolingual ideologies requiring one language at a time. This study, based on the analysis of twenty-one language policy texts, investigates HEIs’ policies using a lens of inclusion at workplaces with linguistic diversity, drawing on
-
Language ideologies and the use of French in an English-dominant context of Canada: new insights into linguistic insecurity Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2024-01-05 Marie-Eve Bouchard
Teachers play an essential role in fostering linguistic security in their classrooms. The aim of this study is to identify the language ideologies articulated by teachers in the Francophone schools of the English-dominant context of British Columbia (Canada) in order to explore how the different practices they implement to foster the use of French in their multilingual classrooms and foster linguistic
-
“Every word is a world”: loanword ideologies and linguistic purism in post-Soviet Armenia Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-12-29 Emma Portugal, Sean Nonnenmacher
Through the analysis of materials such as online articles, blogs, and radio broadcasts, this paper investigates linguistic purism toward Russian and English loanwords in the understudied context of post-Soviet Armenia. Our analysis finds that public commentators categorize potential loanwords as “borrowings” (փոխառություն [pʰokhaṛutʰyun]) if acceptable and “foreignisms” (օտարաբանություն [ōtarabanutʰyun])
-
Navigating whiteness from the margins: Finnish, Somali, and Arabic speakers’ experiences of racialization, (in)visibility, and (im)mobility in Gothenburg, Sweden Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-12-02 Maria Löfdahl, Johan Järlehed, Daniel Wojahn, Tommaso M. Milani, Tove Rosendal, Helle Lykke Nielsen
This paper examines the relationship between language, (in)visibility, and (im)mobility in racialized spaces, focusing on Finnish, Somali, and Arabic speakers in Sweden. Using a theoretical framework based on hegemonic whiteness and intersectionality, the study explores how multilingual practices and subjectivities intersect with race, religion, gender, and class to shape social visibility and mobility
-
In pursuit of epistemic authority in public intellectual engagement: the case of language and gender Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Iker Erdocia, Josep Soler
Public intellectual life is an area of inquiry that has not received a great deal of attention within the field of sociolinguistics. This article investigates the performative dimension of public intellectual engagement in the area of language and gender and, more specifically, how epistemic authority about gender-neutral language is constructed in public intellectual contributions in Catalonia, Spain
-
Monolingual disobedience, multilingual guilt?: an autoethnographic exploration of heritage language maintenance during COVID-19 lockdowns Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Qianqian Zhang-Wu
In this study I indicate that lengthened family interaction time during pandemic lockdowns can afford children significantly more exposure and opportunities to enhance their heritage language, but that this does not diminish the constant dilemma between striving to balance English acquisition and heritage language maintenance. Using autoethnography, and as a first-generation immigrant mother of a preschool-age
-
Family language policies during a global pandemic: challenges and opportunities for language maintenance in Arabic-English multilingual families in the USA Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-10-12 Einas Bashir Albadawi, Bedrettin Yazan
In this study, we analyze interview data from 17 mothers of Arabic-English multilingual families to examine their experiences of maintaining their children’s Arabic language development during the COVID-19 pandemic. We were interested in exploring the challenges they faced during the pandemic and their responses to those challenges with the resources available. Following a constant comparative method
-
“Who are you standing with?”: cultural (self-re)translation of a Russian-speaking conference immigrant-interpreter in Israel during the war in Ukraine Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-10-05 Tanya Voinova
The war in Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, has led to a significant civilian involvement in Israel, particularly among immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who began to provide humanitarian assistance, including interpreting. Highlighting the interrelation between translation and migration, I argue that the war strongly affects multiple hybrid identities of immigrant-interpreters who
-
Multilingual police interaction: a conversation analysis of crime control in border checks Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-10-04 Michael Mora-Rodriguez
In today’s global world, many people can move across borders as travelling has become much easier in many ways. However, the securitization of borders has not been relaxed, implying that multilingual police-civilian interactions are becoming more ‘commonplace’. Within the framework of conversation analysis, this article presents a novel study on multilingual police border checks. These are police encounters
-
(Un)doing regimentation in reflexive practices: on-site processes of sociolinguistic differentiation – a commentary Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Miguel Pérez-Milans
This article discusses Volume 42(6) where the editors (Gilles Merminod and Raymund Vitorio) push for a metapragmatic approach to reflexive practices of sociolinguistic differentiation. With reference to my own trajectory, I review this lens as suitable to accounting for how people affectively take part in the making of difference and similarities between signs, social situations and positions in daily
-
Shame on me: the individual whitewash of a social stigma underpinned by language ideologies Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Clara Molina
Language ideologies are a powerful way of perpetuating inequalities, as peripheralized speakers who have internalized the lack of legitimacy attributed to them often end up reproducing censure rather than resisting it. Foregrounding the affective dimension, this paper explores the role of shame as a fulcrum articulating the individual with the collective in the perpetuation of linguistic stigma. To
-
Stability and change in young children’s linguistic experience during the COVID-19 pandemic: insight from a citizen-science sample in the United States Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-06-17 Federica Bulgarelli, Christine E. Potter
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, extensive lockdowns interrupted daily routines, including childcare. We asked whether these interruptions, and the inevitable changes in the people with whom children spent their waking hours, caused changes in the languages that children heard. We retrospectively queried parents of young children (0–4 years) in the US about childcare arrangements and exposure to English
-
Language in multilingual families during the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway: a survey of challenges and opportunities Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Elisabet García González, Liquan Liu, Elizabeth Lanza
The first lockdown of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in school closures and homeschooling for families across the world. This provided a unique scenario to investigate multilingual family language interaction, and specifically, challenges and opportunities for home language (HL) use. This study is rooted in Family Language Policy (FLP) research, building on previous models of language policy as language
-
“Purement Amazigh”: investigating embodied ideologies and linguistic practices in Morocco Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Dris Soulaimani
This research discusses language ideologies in Amazigh/Berber in Morocco. It analyzes Amazigh activists’ views on the process of Amazigh standardization, including dialect unification, script selection and reclaiming of Amazigh identity. Drawing on findings in the study of language ideologies and discourse analysis, this paper examines interviews with activists and demonstrates a connectedness between
-
New citizenship and the negotiation of the global/local interface: reflexivity, emotions, and metapragmatics Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-05-22 Raymund Vitorio
New citizens are typically characterized as people who occupy an estuarial position between the global and the local: to simultaneously become authentic to their global provenience and rooted in their new local societies, they are expected to cautiously partake in processes of differentiation as they construct their identities. This article investigates how new citizens negotiate this seemingly untenable
-
Preparing for the deployment of ready-made stories in social interaction: reflexivity and narrative practices in professional communication Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Gilles Merminod
Since the nineties, the idea that narratives are essential for an efficient communication has massively spread in management, marketing and politics, supported by the profuse publication of storytelling guides and criticized by a number of social commentators. Nevertheless, little is known about how reflexive activities specific to professional communication partake in the visibility and solidification
-
The representation of multilingualism in dubbing and subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing (SDH) Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-04-12 Behnam Rezvani Sichani, Mahmoud Afrouz, Ahmad Moinzadeh
Multilingualism serves an important function in the characterization of an audiovisual product; thus, its representation in translations demands scientific attention. The task of rendering multilingualism in translation becomes more complicated when no or limited access to the original audio content is possible. This being so, this study investigates the representation of multilingualism in English
-
Authorities at play in Indigenous language reclamation: tensions and possibilities in the Yucatan Peninsula Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-01-24 Aldo Anzures, Frances Kvietok
Language revitalization efforts have been critiqued for creating and reproducing linguistic, epistemological, and pedagogical hierarchies that might run counter to a community’s needs and interests. Drawing on a seven-year ethnographic and collaborative research with the Maya cultural promoters of the Caste War Museum in Tihosuco, Mexico, we describe the dynamics of our Maya language reclamation partnership
-
Seeking understanding: categories of linguistic (non)belonging in interviews Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-01-11 Kaarina Hippi, Liisa-Maria Lehto
This paper discusses how persons of multicultural backgrounds describe in interviews their everyday experiences when using Finnish. The focus is on categories of linguistic (non)belonging described in interview interactions. The data consist of 23 single and pair interviews of 33 informants in total and come from two interview datasets. Data are analyzed discursively, taking into account positions
-
“I’ll be there for you”: affective production of a “hyper-real” cultural-consumption space Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2023-01-04 Yang Song
The refashioning of popular cultural resources has become a salient strategy for the construction of “hyper-real” spaces of cultural consumption worldwide. Taking Lefebvre’s triadic model of space as the anchorage, this study proposes an analytical framework to examine the affective production of space. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in the Central Perk café in Shanghai as replicated from the
-
Family language policy and dialect-Italian dynamics: across the waves of Italo-Australian migrant families Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-04-21 Antonia Rubino
Abstract In this article I adopt a family language policy approach and a diachronic perspective to explore how the dialect-Italian dynamics unfolds differently within different cohorts of Italian migrants due to the hierarchical position of the two heritage languages. I highlight three main issues that emerge across time in the language policies in the home; the relevance of linguistic stratification
-
Language and political consciousness: explorations from the Philippines at the fin de siècle Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-04-12 Dana Osborne
Abstract At the turn of the twentieth century, the Philippine archipelago transitioned from nearly 400 years of colonial occupation under the Spanish to imperial occupation under the Americans. This analysis interrogates the dynamics through which the heterogeneous languages of the Philippine archipelago were maintained alongside state-sanctioned languages that over time came to create and sustain
-
Introduction to the special issue on translanguaging in the age of mobility Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-02-17 Boglárka Straszer,BethAnne Paulsrud,Jenny Rosén
-
Commentary: the complex nexus between (im)mobility and translanguaging Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-02-14 Gerardo Mazzaferro
Abstract Translanguaging has now become central to a sociolinguistics that foregrounds globalization and mobility as key concepts for grasping human beings’ capacity to engage with and draw on both multiple linguistic – including named languages – and semiotic resources dynamically and in combination for the purpose of meaning-making (García, Ofelia & Wei Li. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism
-
Transnational identities, being and belonging: the diverse home literacies of multilingual immigrant families Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-02-07 Kerry Taylor-Leech
Abstract This paper uses a transnational lens to discuss findings from a longitudinal study of the home literacy practices of linguistically diverse immigrant families. The paper draws on the experiences of three families to show how literacy events and practices index and mediate immigrants’ identities as they settle into the host community. Observations, interviews, and family members’ own documentation
-
Adjusting to linguistic diversity in a primary school through relational agency and expertise: a mother-tongue teacher team’s perspective Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-02-04 Christina Hedman,Ulrika Magnusson
Abstract This paper explores the role of collaborative teacher agency in facilitating translingual adjustments in a linguistically diverse primary school in Sweden. We focus on three multicompetent language teachers, who taught minoritized languages in the marginalized Mother Tongue (MT) subject, Modern Languages, and offered Multilingual Study Mentoring. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork, including
-
Adrift between republican values and plurilingual policies: (pre)primary school teachers’ reported practiced language policies in Strasbourg Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-01-31 Haley Flom,Andrea S. Young
Abstract In France, education policies concerning children’s home languages have recently changed, with the country’s highly centralized and monolingual national education system now promoting inclusive language policies, specifically at the pre-primary level (M.E.N. (Ministère de l’Education Nationale). 2016. Statégie langues vivantes. 22 janvier 2016. Paris). However, such prescribed practices run
-
Sharing communicative responsibility: training US students in cooperative strategies for communicating across linguistic difference Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-01-28 Nicholas Close Subtirelu,Stephanie Lindemann,Kris Acheson,Maxi-Ann Campbell
Abstract The internationalization of Anglophone universities could allow English-dominant students to benefit from experience with English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds, but US students have often complained of difficulty communicating with such instructors, especially International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). Research has largely focused on helping ITAs assimilate linguistically and
-
Negotiation of resources in everyday activities of a multilingual Berlin street market: a linguistic ethnography approach Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2022-01-26 İrem Duman Çakır
Abstract The Maybachufer Market is an urban street market in Berlin-Neukölln that constitutes a highly diverse urban context by bringing together people of different social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds. Through linguistic ethnography, this paper explores the negotiation of various resources in everyday communicative practices and activities of this urban space. The market setting with its
-
Language shift and language (re)vitalisation: the roles played by women and men in Northern Fenno-Scandia Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-12-31 Tove Bull,Leena Huss,Anna-Riitta Lindgren
Abstract The research question of the present paper is the following: to what degree (if any) is gender relevant as an explanatory factor in, firstly, the process of assimilation and later, the process of (re)vitalisation of indigenous and minority languages in northern Fenno-Scandia (the North Calotte)? The assimilation of the ethnic groups in question was a process initiated and lead by the authorities
-
Translanguaging as a resource for meaning-making at multilingual construction sites Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-12-16 Linda Kahlin,Leelo Keevallik,Hedda Söderlundh,Matylda Weidner
Abstract In this article we investigate spoken professional interaction at construction sites in Sweden, where workers from Poland, Ukraine and Estonia are temporarily employed as carpenters, ground workers and kitchen installers. We study how the workers use resources associated with different languages and how these resources are mobilized along with embodied resources for meaning-making. The analysis
-
Language norms in L2 education for adult migrants – translanguaging pedagogy in the age of mobility Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Annika Norlund Shaswar
Abstract International mobility has caused a need for language education where adults can learn the language(s) used in their new country. In Sweden, the language programme SFI (Swedish for immigrants) provides basic second language education for adult immigrants. For those learners who are not yet functionally literate, basic literacy education is included. This article aims to explore the concept
-
Multilingual education in an Italian public preschool: teachers and families among mobility processes and inclusive practices Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Valentina Carbonara
Abstract This paper focuses on the integration of translanguaging practices in a public preschool situated in a small village in North-West of Italy. Mobility processes and local Italian families’ school choices have led to the raise of the number of students with an immigrant background enrolled at the studied preschool up to 85%. After a brief overview regarding mobility and translanguaging in education
-
Framing variation and intersectional identities within Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese minority Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Jessica Birnie-Smith
Abstract Variationist researchers are increasingly adopting intersectionality approaches to analyse identity-linked practice. However, the field of sociolinguistic variation is yet to embrace the full ramifications of intersectionality as an analytical framework. The current paper offers a new method for integrating intersectional approaches into variationist studies by operationalising Blommaert,
-
Translanguaging pathways to higher education: a transition program for highly educated refugees Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-25 Joana Duarte,Mirjam Günther-van der Meij
Abstract The paper focuses on translanguaging practices of highly skilled refugees in a transition program in Dutch higher education. The pathways for refugees to enter higher education are full of obstacles. Acquiring the new language at a university level is one of the biggest challenges. Many institutions offer ‘transition programs’ to prepare refugees for their studies. These are mostly focused
-
Chronotopic translanguaging and the mobile languaging subject: insights from an Algerian academic sojourner in the UK Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-25 Hadjer Taibi,Khawla Badwan
Abstract This study discusses the impact of spatial, temporal and virtual mobility on how mobile individuals talk about language in their world, and how they use language offline and online to communicate over time and across space. We introduce the notion of chronotopic translanguaging to highlight the significance of merging time and place in sociolinguistics. Doing so, we present a rather stretched
-
Ideological and implementational spaces for translanguaging in the language introduction programme in Swedish Upper Secondary School Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-25 Åsa Wedin
Abstract This article investigates to what extent spaces created in the language introduction programme (LIP) in Upper Secondary School in Sweden close or open up for students’ varied linguistic resources, to create an understanding of the implementational spaces of the educational environments that the school represents, and of the ideological underpinnings that these imply. In the analysis, schoolscaping
-
A review of Jie Zhang’s Language policy and planning for the modern olympic games Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-11-25 Michael Chesnut
-
Lifting the voices of Spanish-speaking Kansans: a community-engaged approach to health equity Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-10-11 Rachel Showstack,Silvia Duque,Nikki Keene Woods,Ana López,Amy Chesser
Abstract An important component of social justice research is centering the voices of those individuals whose lives the research is intended to improve, not as subjects from whom researchers collect data but as active participants in a process of understanding and addressing issues of concern to the community. This ideal of community engagement slows the pace of dissemination of traditional social
-
Language choice in churches in indigenous Gã towns: a multilingual balancing act Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-10-06 Akua Asantewaa Campbell,Jemima Asabea Anderson
Abstract This paper examines the determinant factors motivating language choice in churches in coastal Accra, an area characterized by a high degree of urbanization and multilingualism. As this region is also ethnically Gã, we survey the attitudes of Gã congregants to the use of other languages in their churches, bearing in mind the pressure faced by Gã from the more dominant vehicular languages, Akan
-
Foreign language learning in multilingual Germany Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-09-29 Ingrid Gogolin,Christoph Gabriel,Hanne Brandt,Nora Dünkel
-
VOT production, writing skills, and general proficiency in multilingual learners of French: approaching the intertwinement of different linguistic levels Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Christoph Gabriel,Thorsten Klinger,Irina Usanova
Abstract We investigate the interrelations between pronunciation and writing skills in French as a foreign language produced by two groups of bilingual learners (German-Russian; German-Turkish) and a monolingually raised German control group (each n = 10). As an indicator of the learners’ pronunciation skills, we refer to a perceptually relevant acoustic feature of stop production, “Voice Onset Time”
-
The price of immersion: language learners as a cheap workforce in Malta’s voluntourism industry Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-07-26 Larissa Semiramis Schedel
Abstract This contribution treats “language immersion” as a linguistic ideology and explores narratives, practices, and subjectivities pertinent to that notion in the context of language-motivated voluntourism. Voluntourism programs offer short-term sojourns abroad, which combine voluntary work with holidays while promising “immersion” as an efficient alternative to classroom language learning. In
-
“It is natural, really deaf signing” – script development for fictional programmes involving sign languages Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Annelies Kusters,Jordan Fenlon
Abstract Historically, fictional productions which use sign language have often begun with scripts that use the written version of a spoken language. This can be a challenge for deaf actors as they must translate the written word to a performed sign language text. Here, we explore script development in Small World, a television comedy which attempted to avoid this challenge by using improvisation to
-
Multilingual lexical transfer challenges monolingual educational norms: not quite! Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Eliane Lorenz,Yevheniia Hasai,Peter Siemund
Abstract Foreign language learners frequently use words from their previously acquired language(s) in the target language, especially if these languages are related (Ringbom, Håkan. 2001. Lexical transfer in L3 production. In Jasone Cenoz, Britta Hufeisen & Ulrike Jessner (eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in third language acquisition: Psycholinguistic perspectives, 59–68. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters)
-
English in a multilingual ecology: “structures of feeling” in South and Central Asia Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-07-01 Shaila Sultana,Brook Bolander
Abstract The paper foregrounds analysis of the significance of English in individual and collective life in relation to a myriad of feelings that religious and ethnic minorities experience in South and Central Asia within their multilingual ecology. The data reveal an entangling of varied yet coexisting emotions on the part of these minorities in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Tajikistan in relation to
-
Prof. Juan C. Sager (1929–2021): founding editor of Multilingua Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-06-21 Bertie Kaal
-
Heritage languages and the ʻmultilingual boostʼ: intercomprehension skills of Russian and Polish heritage speakers in Germany Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-06-17 Bernhard Brehmer,Dominika Steinbach,Vladimir Arifulin
Abstract The article focuses on whether and to which extent heritage bilinguals make use of their heritage language while developing receptive skills in unknown languages which are either related to the majority language or the heritage language. Thirty four adolescent heritage speakers of Russian and Polish and a control group of thirty three German monolinguals were first exposed to a text in Swedish
-
Do minority-language and majority-language students benefit from pedagogical translanguaging in early foreign language development? Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-06-08 Holger Hopp,Teresa Kieseier,Jenny Jakisch,Sarah Sturm,Dieter Thoma
Abstract This paper reports findings of a project on pedagogical translanguaging (PTL) among 128 fourth-grade students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in German primary schools. Over a period of six months, 20% of lesson time in EFL classes was devoted to multilingualism involving students’ minority languages. In a control group pre-post-test design, we evaluated the effects of PTL on
-
Knowledge negotiation and interactional power: epistemic stances in Arabic–Swedish antenatal care consultations Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-06-04 Stina Ericsson,Dima Bitar,Tommaso Milani
Abstract This article concerns knowledge negotiations as an aspect of interactional power in three-way interaction between Arabic-speaking women, Swedish-speaking midwives and interpreters in Swedish antenatal care. The notion of epistemic stance is used to investigate how all three participants negotiate knowledge, and how this affects the ongoing consultation. The data consist of audio recordings
-
The materiality of the letter in Seto oral culture Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-05-31 Madis Arukask
Abstract This article focuses on the concept of letter in oral folklore. The main research material is examples from the older folk songs of Seto, where a letter, a book and other items referring to literacy are mentioned. Texts under consideration are poetical and the meaning conveyed in them is not always very clear. The term letter may be related to a message, paper, book, leaf or other material
-
Crossing the bridge to literacy in foreign languages: C-test as a measure of language development Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-05-31 Ingrid Gogolin,Birger Schnoor,Irina Usanova
Abstract Throughout an educational career, literacy skills become more elaborated. However, little is known about the development of reading and writing skills in foreign languages in adolescents. In this contribution, we focused on the development of language skills in the foreign languages English and French in Germany as measured by a C-Test. Hereby, we aimed to explore the potential of C-tests
-
The materiality of the representation of the owl in the Mari ways of speaking Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-05-27 Kristina Yuzieva
Abstract This article shows how language materiality is conceptualized through an ethnolinguistic analysis of the representation of the owl as an indication of human-bird relationships. This approach enables addressing the multiple relations between birds and speakers and their perception of the environment as these are reflected in language, folklore and rituals. This research is related to such discourses
-
Language ideologies of emerging institutional frameworks of Mapudungun revitalization in contemporary Chile: nation, Facebook, and the moon of Pandora Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-05-27 Gabriel Alvarado Pavez
Abstract This article is a succinct approach to Mapudungun language ideologies and their development within the political and economic context of 21st century Chile. Social media have empowered Mapudungun language activists and intellectuals and helped them create digital communities, some with hundreds of thousands of followers, from which they establish and promote language policies, defined by themselves
-
The materiality of languages in engagements with the environment Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-05-24 Laura Siragusa,Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen
Abstract Communication, an apparently intangible practice, does in fact affect the way people engage with their social worlds in very material ways. Inspired by both ethnographic and archival-driven research, this special issue aims to fill the gap in studies of language materiality by addressing entanglements with other-than-human agencies. The contributions of this special issue on verbal and non-verbal
-
Linguistic diversity and inclusion in Abu Dhabi’s linguistic landscape during the COVID-19 period Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-04-05 Sarah Hopkyns,Melanie van den Hoven
Abstract In Abu Dhabi, multilingualism amongst its highly diverse population is typical. However, with Arabic as the official language and English as the lingua franca, the population’s other languages are subordinate on public signage. Those proficient in English or Arabic have more access to information than those who are not. While effective communication is important in ordinary times, it is especially
-
Amazonian worlds of other-than-human beings and the Apurinã through the materiality of oral stories Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-03-26 Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen,Francisco Apurinã,Sidney Facundes
Abstract This article looks at what origin stories teach about the world and what kind of material presence they have in Southwestern Amazonia. We examine the ways the Apurinã relate to certain nonhuman entities through their origin story, and our theoretical approach is language materiality, as we are interested in material means of mediating traditional stories. Analogous to the ways that speakers
-
Multilingualism, nationality and flexibility: mobile communicators’ careers in a humanitarian agency Multilingua (IF 1.667) Pub Date : 2021-03-22 Maria Rosa Garrido
Abstract This article explores the management of multilingual mobile communicators at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) according to institutional requirements and the consequences on Arabic-speaking communicators’ careers. Based on interviews complemented by institutional documents, I analyse the impact of “multiple languages”, “‘easy’ nationality” and “flexibility for non-family