Channel View Publications

To what extent is linguistic continuity a prerequisite for ethno-cultural survival? Focusing on the Gaelic community in Scotland and the Sorbs of Lusatia, this study illuminates core assumptions and rationales in relation to minority language revitalisation ideologies in Scotland and Germany and shows how they have been affected by assimilation processes arising from modernisation and globalisation. A thorough review of relevant theoretical debates is followed by a presentation of historical contexts and a detailed analysis of contemporary discourses about bilingualism, cultural difference and ethno-cultural belonging within the Gaelic and Sorbian communities. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, a questionnaire survey and a wide range of comments by Gaelic and Sorbian speakers in the media, the author identifies current ideological faultlines in Gaelic and Sorbian activist circles and argues that minority language planners must critically engage with competing theoretical paradigms if revitalisation efforts are to be successful.

This edited book expands the current scholarship on teaching world languages for social justice and equity in K-12 and postsecondary contexts in the US. Over the past decade, demand has been growing for a more critical approach to teaching languages and cultures: in response, this volume brings together a group of scholars whose work bridges the fields of world language education and critical approaches to education. Within the current US context, the chapters address the following key questions: (1) How are pre-service or in-service world language teachers/professors embedding issues, understandings, or content related to social justice, human rights, access, critical pedagogy and equity into their teaching and curriculum? (2) How are teacher educators preparing language teachers to teach for social justice, human rights, access and equity?

This book is provides a comprehensive review of the legal status of minority languages in the U.S. It also provides the historical and political context for the legal manoeuvring that culminated in landmark civil rights victories. All of the major cases in the U.S. concerning language rights are discussed in detail and in an easily accessible manner to the non-legal audience. The topics range from the English-only movement to consumer law, employment discrimination to international law.

Why do the French defend their language so passionately? Can a world language like French really be in crisis? By tracing the long history of language defence in France and by examining the multiplicity of official and non-official defensive activities and attitudes, the book aims to answer these and other related questions. It looks at changing government policy, particularly the recent paradoxical shift from monolingualism to plurilingualism, and at what has motivated it. It analyses the work of the powerful government agencies and of the small but very vocal private defensive groups. The importance of the Internet is highlighted both by its extensive use in the research for the book and by an examination of its use by the language defenders. A European context is provided by comparisons with Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Finally, a look at various contemporary problems leads to a thought-provoking prognosis for this most strongly-defended of European languages.

This book questions assumptions about the nature of language and how language is conceptualized. Looking at diverse contexts from sign languages in Indonesia to literacy practices in Brazil, from hip-hop in the US to education in Bosnia and Herzegovina, this book forcefully argues that a critique of common linguistic and metalinguistic suppositions is not only a conceptual but also a sociopolitical necessity. Just as many notions of language are highly suspect, so too are many related concepts premised on a notion of discrete languages, such as language rights, mother tongues, multilingualism, or code-switching. Definitions of language in language policies, education and assessment have material and often harmful consequences for people. Unless we actively engage with the history of invention of languages in order to radically change and reconstitute the ways in which languages are taught and conceptualized, language studies will not be able to improve the social welfare of language users.

This book presents the narratives and voices of young, mostly male practitioners of hip hop culture in Delhi, India. The author suggests that practitioners understand hip hop as both a thing that can be appropriated and authenticated, made real, in the local and global context and as a way that enables them to transform their lives and futures in the rapidly globalising urban environments of Delhi. The dancers, artists, musicians and cultural theorists that feature in this book construct a multitude of voices in their narratives to formulate their ‘own’ transcultural voices within global hip hop. Through a combination of linguistic ethnography, sociolinguistics and discourse studies, the book addresses issues including gender and sexuality, identity construction and global culture.

In and out of English: For Better, For Worse? is concerned with the impact of English as the lingua franca of today’s world, in particular its relationship with the languages of Europe.  Within this framework a  number of themes are explored, including linguistic imperialism, change as the result of language contact, the concept of the English native speaker, and the increasing need in an enlarged Europe for translation into as well as out of English.

The United States is and has always been an immigrant country. However, it has always demonstrated a marked ambivalence towards newcomers. In some circumstances, they are seen as welcomed contributors to a multifaceted society; in others they are viewed as interlopers usurping depleting resources which should be going to the country’s citizens. A major part of this ongoing debate centers on the languages which immigrants bring with them. For some, these new languages add to the country’s diversity; for others the new languages are seen as an inherent threat to English and the American way of life.

Languages in America: A Pluralist View is a vigorous response to this perspective by a sociolinguist and professor, Susan J. Dicker. Drawing on knowledge from the fields of linguistics, history and sociology, Dicker presents a cogent argument for language diversity in the United States. She explores the role language plays in personal and public identity. She debunks the mythology of America as a melting pot. She tackles common misconceptions about second-language learning, reveals the nativist roots of the official-English movement, and describes how other countries nurture language pluralism. Finally, Dicker asks her readers to imagine America as an open, pluralistic society in which language diversity plays an important part.

International Schools have developed since their inception from a largely native English-speaking student body to schools such as the author’s, the Vienna International School (VIS), where there are students of 90 nationalities with 65 mother tongues. Maurice Carder proposes a “three-programme model” for addressing the language and curricula needs of these students: a content-based second language programme; a programme of cultural and linguistic training for all staff; and a mother tongue programme for minority students. The model is based on research findings and practice: at the VIS every year approximately 1/3 of the graduating students gain an IB Diploma (International Baccalaureate) because they are able to take their mother tongue (other than English or German) as Language A1. The book contains insightful chapters not only for school leaders, programme designers and teachers, but also for parents. Inserted boxes of student responses give an authentic voice to the needs of second language learners, and many useful resources and websites are given.

Language is all around us as it is displayed in texts on shop windows, commercial signs, posters, official notices, etc. Given a multitude of languages there, it does not come as a surprise that an increasing number of researchers have taken a closer look at languages on signs in the public space. The book reports on studies of the linguistic landscape in cities in countries around the globe: Israel, Japan, Thailand, the Netherlands (Friesland) and Spain (the Basque Country). Their cultural, socio-economic and political circumstances are very divergent. Multimillion cities are included such as Bangkok and Tokyo, but also smaller cities such as Ljouwert-Leeuwarden and Donostia-San Sebastian. Multilingualism turns out to be an important dimension of the linguistic landscape everywhere, as well as the reflection of the process of globalisation, visible through the use of English. The study of the linguistic landscape is applied here as a means to increase our understanding of multilingualism and future directions are outlined.

This book is about the relationship between learning English as an additional language and the ways in which immigrant students are able to represent their identities at school. In high schools, how such students are heard by others may be just as important as how they speak.

This book explores the importance of cross-linguistic similarity in foreign language learning. While linguists have primarily focussed upon differences between languages, learners strive to make use of any similarities to prior linguistic knowledge they can perceive. The role of positive transfer is emphasized as well as the essential differences between comprehension and production. In comprehension of related languages, cross-linguistic similarities are easily perceived while in comprehension of distant languages they are merely assumed. Production may be based on previous perception of similarities, but frequently similarities are here merely assumed. Initially, effective learning is based on quick establishment of cross-linguistic one-to-one relations between individual items. As learning progresses, the learner learns to modify such oversimplified relations. The book describes the ways in which transfer affects different areas of language, taking account of the differences between learning a language perceived to be similar and a language where few or no cross-linguistic similarities can be established.

The book is designed as a comprehensive introduction to bilingual education for instructors, researchers and students and a companion to "Foundations of Bilingual Educationa nd Bilingualism". It will fulfil the needs of teacher education and the preparation and professional development of bilingual teachers. Bilingual education at classroom, school and community levels are explored from a contemporary and international perspective.

The readings are divided into four sections:

Section 1: Varieties of Bilingual Education

Section 2: History, Policy and Politics of Bilingual Education

Section 3: Languages and Literacies in Bilingual Education

Section 4: Issues in Teaching, Learning and Assessment in Bilingual Education

Following each of the nineteen readings, there are questions and activities to create an interactive text for instructors and students. Such questions and activities will engage the reader in reflection, deepening understandings and critical appreciation of bilingual education policies, politics and practices.

This book offers sharp new insights into the acquisition and use of French as a foreign language.  The authors are specialists in their particular theoretical paradigms and focus on morphology, morpho-syntax, syntax, discourse, as well as fluency in the French interlanguage from beginners to advanced learners with different first languages.

This book offers a unique understanding of how researchers’ linguistic resources, and the languages they use in the research process, are often politically and structurally shaped and constrained, with implications for the reliability of the research. The chapters are written by both experienced and novice researchers, who examine how they negotiated the use of their own, and others’, linguistic and communicative resources when undertaking their research in politically-charged, and linguistically and culturally diverse contexts. The contributing authors are either from the Global South, or engaged in work which is contextualised within the Global South; or they face linguistic structural hegemonies in the Global North which challenge their research processes. They utilise diverse theoretical, methodological and disciplinary approaches to produce a collection of engaging and accessible accounts of researching multilingually in their contexts. These accounts will help readers to make theoretically and methodologically informed choices about the political dimensions of languages in their own research when researching multilingually.

Language Socialization in Bilingual and Multilingual Societies is a multidisciplinary, multinational collection of essays that explore language socialization from very early childhood through adulthood, not only in oftenstudied communities in Canada and the United States, but also in Australia, Bolivia, Egypt, India and Slovakia. The global perspective gained by the inclusion of studies of communities representing every inhabited continent provides readers with an indication of the richness of the field as well as a guide for future work. The book includes chapters focusing on language socialization at different stages of the lifespan – at home and in schools, communities and workplaces. Authors focus on well-known communities, such as Mexican-Americans in the United States and Francophones in Canada, as well as on communities that are less familiar to many readers, such as the Aymara in Bolivia, the Inuit in northern Québec and minority Hungarians in Slovakia. The breadth and theoretical sophistication of this volume make it a suitable text for upper-division and graduate courses in bilingualism, language education and sociolinguistics.

This book contributes to the growth of interest in task-based language learning and teaching that has been seen in recent years. It brings together research that focuses on various aspects and effects of pedagogic task design and presents work that uses tasks to examine oral interaction, written production, vocabulary and reading, lexical innovation and pragmatics in different formal language learning contexts and in different languages (English as a second/foreign language, French/German/Italian/Spanish as foreign languages). It also provides guidelines for task classification, sequencing and design.

The book is addressed to both professionals and students interested in second language acquisition research. It will also be of use to professionals involved in language pedagogy and curriculum design.

This book is both research report and performance piece. Here is a team of researchers as they study communication on the volleyball court. And here are the voices and actions of the volleyball coach and his players as they practise and play. Research in process and research findings are represented in a play script which brings vividly to life both ethnographic research methods and communication in the world of sport. This highly original book adds innovation and imagination to the representation of language in social life.

This book brings together visions and realities of multilingual schools throughout the world in order to examine the pedagogical, socioeducational, and sociopolitical issues that impact on their development and success. The chapters describe and analyze pedagogical, instructional, and policy efforts to develop multilingualism through school with different targeted populations -- immigrant students, indigenous peoples, traditional minorities, majorities, and multiethnic/multilingual groups. Each contribution, many written by well-known scholars in the field of bilingual and multilingual education, affirms the desirability of multilingualism as a societal resource and as a right of individuals, while acknowledging the social, economic and political differences that make the acquisition of multilingualism easy for some, and difficult for others. And yet, the book focuses on the school as a place of promise and resistance, having the potential to preserve, recover, and expand the world's linguistic diversity. The introduction, written by the co-editors, identifies the conceptual threads that are developed throughout the chapters. But the chapters themselves remind us of the importance of local conditions, despite the global pressures of the 21st century, in imagining and creating multilingual educational spaces.

This book examines the influence of cultural values and communication styles on intercultural communication and demonstrates how training can develop intercultural communication competencies. A large number of interactions between well-educated immigrants from all continents and from more than a hundred countries, together with some including native speakers, are examined and participants’ answers to questionnaires compared with their actual communicative behaviour. The author raises questions of interest to many groups: linguists, educators, business people and sociologists. Which values are most salient and enduring, and which cause clashes between cultural groups? To what extent do people retain the communication style identified with their first language and how do these different styles impact on others?

This volume presents the results of the largest ever language attitude/motivation survey in second language studies. The research team gathered data from over 13,000 Hungarian language learners on three successive occasions: in 1993, 1999 and 2004. The examined period covers a particularly prominent time in Hungary’s history, the transition from a closed, Communist society to a western-style democracy that became a member of the European Union in 2004. Thus, the book provides an ‘attitudinal/motivational flow-chart’ describing how significant sociopolitical changes affect the language disposition of a nation. The investigation focused on the appraisal of five target languages – English, German, French, Italian and Russian – and this multi-language design made it also possible to observe the changing status of the different languages in relation to each other over the examined 12-year period. Thus, the authors were in an ideal position to investigate the ongoing impact of language globalisation in a context where for various political/historical reasons certain transformation processes took place with unusual intensity and speed. The result is a unique blueprint of how and why language globalisation takes place in an actual language learning environment.

This volume deals with Translation Research (TR) and Interpreting Research (IR). In the main contribution, Daniel Gile from the Université Lumière Lyon 2 (France) explores kinship, differences and prospects for partnership between the two. He gives an overview of the history of research into translation and interpreting, explores commonalities and reviews differences between translation and interpreting, and discusses implications for research. He comments critically on the foci and paradigms in both TR and IR and on the epistemological and methodological problems they raise. He concludes by saying that Translation and Interpreting Studies are gaining both social cohesion and some weight as an academic identity.

The contributions by Jan Cambridge, Andrew Chesterman, Janet Fraser, Yves Gambier, Moira Inghilleri, Zuzana Jettmarová, Ian Mason, Mariana Orozco, Franz Pöchhacker and Miriam Shlesinger focus on translator and interpreter behaviour, research methodology, types of research, disciplinary autonomy and interdisciplinarity, theory and practice, research training, and institutional constraints. There is general agreement that in view of commonalities and differences between translation and interpreting, each step in the investigation of one can contribute valuable input towards investigation of the other.

Mindful of the fact that cultures are now more interdependent than ever, this book explores the development of critical cultural awareness through the processes of teaching and learning about foreign cultures. It draws upon theoretical foundations relating to inter- and intra-cultural communication from contemporary philosophical movements, namely Critical Theory and Postmodernism. The study adopts Critical Pedagogy, as it is described by Freire, Giroux and others, as the educational framework providing guidelines for taking a critical perspective towards both native and foreign cultures. It examines the critical dimension of some selected documents and models used worldwide for teaching/learning culture within foreign language classes. It includes a research project carried out among secondary school teachers of EFL in Portugal whose national syllabus suggests a critical approach to English-speaking cultures. This project aimed to illustrate how practising teachers approach foreign cultures critically, to provide some grounded theory for a definition of critical cultural awareness within foreign language/culture education, and to inspire a proposal for teacher education and development. Finally, this book submits a general proposal for the development of critical cultural awareness and intercultural communication competence among prospective and practising teachers of foreign languages/cultures.

This short volume provides a comprehensive and synoptic view of Joshua A. Fishman's contributions to international sociolinguistics from 1949 to the present. Readers will find in this volume the essential understandings of Fishmanian sociolinguistics in two short essays that integrate his life's work. The first essay by García and Schiffman identifies the major theoretical contributions and the development of Fishmanian sociolinguistics, often echoing Fishman's own words. The essay by Peltz then analyzes Fishman´s contributions to Yiddish scholarship, as well as the role of that scholarship in his general work. These essential understandings are then extended through Fishman's own concluding sentiments, as well as by the comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography of over 1,000 titles of Joshua A. Fishman's work, compiled by his wife, Gella Schweid Fishman. Together, the contributions in this volume pay tribute to the life work of one of the world's most prolific and original scholars in the field of sociolinguistics -- the founder of what we refer to in this volume as Fishmanian sociolinguistics.

Language, Space, and Power describes the sociolinguistic and sociocultural life of a Spanish-English dual language classroom in which attention is given to not only the language learning processes at hand but also to how race, ethnicity, and gender dynamics interact within the language acquisition process.

This book documents ongoing language shift to English among Latino professionals in California 67% of which studied Spanish formally in high school and 54% of which studied Spanish in college. Taking into account the recommendations about the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language made by these professionals, the book then describes current instructional practices used in the teaching of Spanish as an academic subject at the high school and university levels to “heritage” language students who, although educated entirely in English, acquired Spanish at home as their first language. The suggestions made by the Professionals concentrated almost exclusively on Spanish language maintenance (e.g., making cultural/historical connections; showing relevance and significance of language to students’ lives, teaching other subjects in Spanish, teaching legal, medical, business terms in Spanish). The study of goals currently guiding instruction for heritage speakers of Spanish at both the high school and the college levels, on the other hand, raise questions about the potential contribution of educational institutions to the maintenance and retention of Spanish among the current Spanish-speaking population of California.

This volume covers the language situation in Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa explaining the linguistic diversity, the historical and political contexts and the current language situation, including language-in-education planning, the role of the media, the role of religion, and the roles of non-indigenous languages. The authors are indigenous and have been participants in the language planning context.

This book contains reports of research on bilingualism in infants and children as well as perspectives from those involved in cross-linguistic research on language development, literacy development in bilingual children, and psycholinguistic research on bilingualism in adults. It offers a fresh multidisciplinary perspective and next steps for research on childhood bilingualism.

Language, Space, and Power describes the sociolinguistic and sociocultural life of a Spanish-English dual language classroom in which attention is given to not only the language learning processes at hand but also to how race, ethnicity, and gender dynamics interact within the language acquisition process.

The Internet is accelerating globalization by exposing organizations and individuals to global audiences. This in turn is driving teletranslation and teleinterpretation, new types of multilingual support, which are functional in digital communications environments. The book describes teletranslation and teleinterpretation by exploring a number of key emerging contexts for language professionals.

The book presents a new theory of the relationship between language and culture in a transnational and global perspective. The fundamental view is that languages spread across cultures, and cultures spread across languages, or in other words, that linguistic and cultural practices flow through social networks in the world along partially different paths and across national structures and communities.

Within the complex process of second language acquisition there lies a highly variable component referred to as the silent period, during which some beginning second language learners may not willingly produce the target language. Silence in Second Language Learning claims that the silent period might represent a psychical event, a non-linguistic as well as a linguistic moment in the continuous process of identity formation and re-formation. Colette Granger calls on psychoanalytic concepts of anxiety, ambivalence, conflict and loss, and on language learning narratives, to undertake a theoretical dialogue with the learner as a being engaged in the psychical work of making, and re-making, an identity. Viewed in its entirety, this study takes the form of a kind of triangulation of three elements: the linguistically described phenomenon of the silent period; the psychoanalytically oriented problem of the making of the self; and the real and remembered experiences of individuals who live in the silent space between languages.

Do bi- and multilinguals perceive themselves differently in their respective languages? Do they experience different emotions? How do they express emotions and do they have a favourite language for emotional expression? How are emotion words and concepts represented in the bi- and multilingual lexicons? This ground-breaking book opens up a new field of study, bilingualism and emotions, and provides intriguing answers to these and many related questions.

This text describes and evaluates recent language planning and policy in the British Isles. Issues including minority language rights, language resources for the state and the citizen, and problems such as the standard English battle and policy for Welsh and Gaelic are analysed against the background of detailed study of contemporary British society and politics.

This book joins two important fields, that of literacy and multimodality, with a focus on local and global literacies. Chapters include work on media, popular culture and literacy, weblogs, global and local crossings, in and out of educational settings in such locations as the US, the UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada.

Foreign Language Teachers and Intercultural Communication: An International Investigation reports on a study that focused on teachers’ beliefs regarding intercultural competence teaching in foreign language education. Its conclusions are based on data collected in a quantitative comparative study that comprises questionnaire answers received from teachers in seven countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, Mexico, Greece, Spain and Sweden. It not only creates new knowledge on the variability, and relative consistency, of today’s foreign language teachers’ views regarding intercultural competence teaching in a number of countries, but also gives us a picture that is both more concrete and more comprehensive than previously known.

This book presents a ‘Traveller’s Guide’ to Deaf Culture, starting from the premise that Deaf cultures have an important contribution to make to other academic disciplines, and human lives in general. Within and outside Deaf communities, there is a need for an account of the new concept of Deaf culture, which enables readers to assess its place alongside work on other minority cultures and multilingual discourses.

The book aims to assess the concepts of culture, on their own terms and in their many guises and to apply these to Deaf communities. The author illustrates the pitfalls which have been created for those communities by the medical concept of ‘deafness’ and contrasts this with his new concept of “Deafhood”, a process by which every Deaf child, family and adult implicitly explains their existence in the world to themselves and each other.

Examining the overseas experience of language learners in diverse contexts through a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, studies in this volume look at the acquisition of language use, socialization processes, learner motivation, identity and learning strategies. In this way, the volume offers a privileged window into learner experiences abroad while addressing current concerns central to second language acquisition.

Foreign Language Teachers and Intercultural Communication: An International Investigation reports on a study that focused on teachers’ beliefs regarding intercultural competence teaching in foreign language education. Its conclusions are based on data collected in a quantitative comparative study that comprises questionnaire answers received from teachers in seven countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Poland, Mexico, Greece, Spain and Sweden. It not only creates new knowledge on the variability, and relative consistency, of today’s foreign language teachers’ views regarding intercultural competence teaching in a number of countries, but also gives us a picture that is both more concrete and more comprehensive than previously known.

Social context, an often-neglected dimension in L2 learning/use, can play a vital role in sustaining learners’ initial motivation. As researchers have begun to shift their focus from teaching to learners and learner variables, what happens to learners when they practise their new skills in the community, has become an important area of concern. Using data on Welsh learners’ experiences outside the classroom, the author argues that, in order to learn a second or foreign language successfully, learners require regular interaction in the target language in a setting in which they feel comfortable. The impact on learners of native speakers’ switch to a language of wider communication, their speed of speech, use of dialect and identity issues are explored as are the relevance of practical issues such as time and opportunity and affective factors such as anxiety.

The development of bilingual education in South America can be traced back to the arrival of the Spanish and Portuguese colonisers in the 15th and 16^th centuries, when Catholic missionaries began their evangelisation of the indigenous peoples using local vernaculars, as well as Latin, Spanish and Portuguese. Traditionally, debate on bilingual education has been conducted in two separate arenas: majority language contexts involving international languages, such as English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and minority community contexts aimed at maintaining native Amerindian languages as well as the different Sign Languages of the South American Deaf communities.

This book presents an integrated vision of bilingual education in six South American nations: three Andean countries, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, and three ‘Southern Cone’ countries, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It includes work carried out in minority as well as majority language contexts, referring to developments in the fields of indigenous, Deaf, and international bilingual and multilingual provision.

This volume, as a sequel to Fossilization in Adult Second Language Acquisition by Han (2004), brings together a collection of most recent theoretical and empirical studies on fossilization, a classic problem of second language acquisition. It covers a wide range of perspectives and issues. The analyses discussed herein address key concerns of many second language researchers and teachers with regard to just how far anyone can go in learning a new language.

In choosing to render dialect and vernacular speech into Scots, Bill Findlay, to whose memory this volume is dedicated, made a pioneering contribution in safeguarding the authenticity of voices in translation. The scene of the book is set by an overview of approaches to rendering foreign voices in English translation including those of the people to whom Findlay introduced us in his Scots dialect versions of European plays. Martin Bowman, his frequent co-translator follows with a discussion of their co-translation of playwright Jeanne-Mance Delisle. Different ways of bridging the cultural divide in the translation between English and a number of plays written in a number of European languages are then illustrated including the custom of creating English versions, an approach rejected by contributions that argue in favour of minimal intervention on the part of the translator. But transferring the social and cultural milieu that the speakers of other languages inhabit may also cause problems in translation, as discussed by some translators of fiction. In addition attention is drawn to the translators’ own attitude and the influence of the time in which they live. In conclusion, stronger forces in the form of political events are highlighted that may also, adversely or positively, have a bearing on the translation process.

During the last thirty years, the field of translation has exploded with multiple new theories. Contemporary Translation Theories examines five of new approaches – the translation workshop, the science of translation, translation studies, polysystem theory, and deconstruction – all of which began in the mid -1960s and continue to be influential today.

This volume argues that adults can learn English as a second language if their typical errors are corrected systematically and in line with their preferred style of learning. The remedy designed for this purpose relies on artificial intelligence. The book describes original research which demonstrates the success of this approach.

Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach is a comprehensive alternative to the full-class workshop approach to poetry writing instruction. In the five canon approach, peer critique of student poems takes place in online environments, freeing up class time for writing exercises and lessons based on the five canons of classical rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery.

Language which develops ‘against all the odds’ is very precious. Words were not enough for Tom; it was signs that made sense of a world silenced by meningitis. Confidence came via joyful and positive steps to communication from babyhood; a brush with epilepsy, a cochlear implant in his teens and life as an independent young adult followed.

The book focuses on one aspect of foreign language acquisition that has not received much attention, that of the effect of bilingualism in the oral production of the English language learners. Two research areas have tackled this issue separately. On the one hand, third language acquisition researchers have analysed bilingualism effects in the acquisition of a third language. On the other hand, studies in interlanguage pragmatics have taken into account variables affecting the use of request acts by second language learners of English. The two research areas are connected in this volume, as it deals with bilingualism effects in the pragmatic production and awareness of third language learners of English.

The first part of the book includes a theoretical description of research conducted in the areas of third language acquisition and interlanguage pragmatics, and the second part presents a detailed description of the empirical study carried out in a multilingual speech community.

The book contains studies on second language lexical processes based on empirical findings by authors mostly from Central Europe. The reader may have access to how lexical items are stored in the memory and also to how second language lexicons work in speech processing. Questions of the two lexicons’ integration or separation, the fashion of bilingual word storage, vocabulary acquisition and assessment, word retrieval from the memory and lexical access are the focus of the studies. The authors of the studies refer to analyses of different psycholinguistic experiments (e.g. a word association test, speech perception tests, a Cloze-test). Assessment of written work of second language learners both at secondary school and university levels is also provided. Second language lexical acquisition processes are described and the influences of different types of languages on each other are shown. The second languages involved are mainly internationally less widely investigated and published languages of Finno-Ugric (i.e. Hungarian) and Indo-European (e.g. Croatian, Polish, Russian, etc.) origin next to the more frequently studied English and German. The studies included in our volume focus on lexical acquisition and processing and also make reference to pedagogical questions. They include investigations of lexical perception, production, acquisitional processes and vocabulary assessment. The novelty of the book is that the studies make reference to Hungarian and a number of Slavic languages. They provide the reader with new perspectives on second language lexical acquisition processes when the source language and the target language are distinct from a typological point of view, the lexicon in processing terms. The book is intended for the use of undergraduate and graduate students of second language studies, psycholinguistics and/or bilingualism researchers, teachers and academics whose interests include a second language acquisition component.

Second Language Writing Systems looks at how people learn and use a second language writing system, arguing that they are affected by characteristics of the first and second writing systems, to a certain extent independently of the languages involved. This book presents for the first time the effects of writing systems on language reading and writing and on language awareness, and provides a new platform for discussing bilingualism, biliteracy and writing systems.

The approach is interdisciplinary, with contributions not only from applied linguists and psychologists but also corpus linguists, educators and phoneticians. A variety of topics are covered, from handwriting to spelling, word recognition to the mental lexicon, and language textbooks to metalinguistic awareness. Though most of the studies concern adult L2 learners and users, other populations covered include minority children, immersion students and bilingual children. While the emphasis is on English as the L2 writing system, many other writing systems are analysed as L1 or L2: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Gujarati, Indonesian, Irish, Italian and Japanese. Approaches that are represented include contrastive analysis, transfer, poststructuralism, connectionism and corpus analysis. The readership is SLA and bilingualism researchers, students and teachers around the world; language teachers will also find much food for thought.

This volume covers the language situation in Hungary, Finland, and Sweden explaining the linguistic diversity, the historical and political contexts  and the current language situation, including language-in-education  planning, the role of the media, the role of religion, and the roles of  minority and  migrant languages. The authors have been participants in the language planning context in these polities.

How can we envisage a new language and culture pedagogy that breaks with the tradition of viewing language as part of a closed national universe of culture, history, people and mentality, and begins to see itself as a field operating in a complex and dynamic world characterised by transnational flows of people, commodities and ideas? Initially, to understand the field and its current challenges, we must understand its history, and the first part of this book contains a critical analysis of the history of the international field of culture teaching – the first historical treatment of this field ever written. The next part of the book focuses on how we can build a framework for a new transnational language and culture pedagogy that aims at the education of world citizens whose intercultural competence includes critical multilingual and multicultural awareness in a global perspective.

The book focuses on one aspect of foreign language acquisition that has not received much attention, that of the effect of bilingualism in the oral production of the English language learners. Two research areas have tackled this issue separately. On the one hand, third language acquisition researchers have analysed bilingualism effects in the acquisition of a third language. On the other hand, studies in interlanguage pragmatics have taken into account variables affecting the use of request acts by second language learners of English. The two research areas are connected in this volume, as it deals with bilingualism effects in the pragmatic production and awareness of third language learners of English.

The first part of the book includes a theoretical description of research conducted in the areas of third language acquisition and interlanguage pragmatics, and the second part presents a detailed description of the empirical study carried out in a multilingual speech community.

The question of why the issue of language features increasingly at the centre of debates about education for social and economic development at the beginning of the 21st Century is compelling. Within a rapidly changing world, language, literacy and communication are seen as constituting key elements in the process of lifelong learning. Contemporary technological development and cultural shifts intersect in complex ways with the legacy of colonialism and underdevelopment within developing countries with a colonial history. This book addresses some of these issues related to language and development. Part I explores the relationship between colonial and postcolonial social policies on the unresolved language problems that prevail in many developing countries. Part II comprises case studies of Mali, Pakistan and South Africa. Part III draws on key motifs identified in the previous two sections, and discusses linguistic diversity as an important variable of cultural capital within the interactive global cultural economy. The book’s focus on language, education and development makes it essential reading in Development Studies, International and Comparative Education, Sociology and Educational Policy Studies. Its focus on language issues within the global cultural economy would make it an important text in Applied Linguistic Studies.

Second Language Writing Systems looks at how people learn and use a second language writing system, arguing that they are affected by characteristics of the first and second writing systems, to a certain extent independently of the languages involved. This book presents for the first time the effects of writing systems on language reading and writing and on language awareness, and provides a new platform for discussing bilingualism, biliteracy and writing systems.

The approach is interdisciplinary, with contributions not only from applied linguists and psychologists but also corpus linguists, educators and phoneticians. A variety of topics are covered, from handwriting to spelling, word recognition to the mental lexicon, and language textbooks to metalinguistic awareness. Though most of the studies concern adult L2 learners and users, other populations covered include minority children, immersion students and bilingual children. While the emphasis is on English as the L2 writing system, many other writing systems are analysed as L1 or L2: Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Gujarati, Indonesian, Irish, Italian and Japanese. Approaches that are represented include contrastive analysis, transfer, poststructuralism, connectionism and corpus analysis. The readership is SLA and bilingualism researchers, students and teachers around the world; language teachers will also find much food for thought.

This book describes the educational experiences and linguistic outcomes of students in Chicago, Illinois, who are attending one of the oldest Spanish-English dual immersion schools in the United States. The author follows a group of students during fifth grade and again during eighth grade, documenting their Spanish use and proficiency as well as how Spanish and English intersect with the ongoing production of their identities.

This book offers a critical exploration of the role of English in postcolonial communities such as India. Specifically, it focuses on some local ways in which the language falls along the lines of a class-based divide (with ancillary ones of gender and caste as well). The book argues that issues of inequality, subordination and unequal value seem to revolve directly around the general positioning of English in relation to vernacular languages.  The author was raised and schooled in the Indian educational system.

This book focuses on the increase of urban multilingualism in Europe as a consequence of processes of migration and minorisation. It offers multidisciplinary, crossnational and crosslinguistic perspectives on immigrant minority languages at home and in school in six multicultural cities across Europe. In each of these cities, Germanic or Romance languages have a dominant status in public life. This Multilingual Cities Project is based on large-scale empirical findings and has been carried out under the auspices of the European Cultural Foundation, in Amsterdam.

Part I offers multidisciplinary background information on phenomenological, demographic, language rights and educational aspects of the status of immigrant minority communities and their languages in a variety of international contexts.

Part II offers methodological considerations on the Multilingual Cities Project. In addition, it presents both national and local perspectives on multilingualism in each of the six cities under consideration. Each chapter provides information on the distribution and vitality of immigrant minority languages spoken at home and on the status of these languages in primary and secondary schools.

Part III offers crossnational and crosslinguistic perspectives on the twenty most prominent languages that emerge from the study. The focus is again on the two major private and public domains in which language transmission may or may not occur: the home and the school, respectively. The book offers a challenging outlook on the educational management of language diversity in the increasingly multicultural and multilingual context of European nation-states.

This book explores the importance of cross-linguistic similarity in foreign language learning. While linguists have primarily focussed upon differences between languages, learners strive to make use of any similarities to prior linguistic knowledge they can perceive. The role of positive transfer is emphasized as well as the essential differences between comprehension and production. In comprehension of related languages, cross-linguistic similarities are easily perceived while in comprehension of distant languages they are merely assumed. Production may be based on previous perception of similarities, but frequently similarities are here merely assumed. Initially, effective learning is based on quick establishment of cross-linguistic one-to-one relations between individual items. As learning progresses, the learner learns to modify such oversimplified relations. The book describes the ways in which transfer affects different areas of language, taking account of the differences between learning a language perceived to be similar and a language where few or no cross-linguistic similarities can be established.

This book argues that the usage of language in Jewish societies can be understood as following from certain specific principles, particularly regarding the relationship between language and identity. Phenomena discussed include the revival of Hebrew, Hebrew in the Diaspora, the survival and ‘sanctification’ of Yiddish, the idea of ‘Jewish languages’, and the role of sociolinguistic phenomena in the Holocaust and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Language and Literacy Teaching for Indigenous Education: A Bilingual Approach presents a proposal for the inclusion of indigenous languages in the classroom. Based on extensive research and field work by the authors in communities in the United States and Mexico, the book explores ways in which the cultural and linguistic resources of indigenous communities can enrich the language and literacy program.

This book contributes to the growth of interest in task-based language learning and teaching that has been seen in recent years. It brings together research that focuses on various aspects and effects of pedagogic task design and presents work that uses tasks to examine oral interaction, written production, vocabulary and reading, lexical innovation and pragmatics in different formal language learning contexts and in different languages (English as a second/foreign language, French/German/Italian/Spanish as foreign languages). It also provides guidelines for task classification, sequencing and design.

The book is addressed to both professionals and students interested in second language acquisition research. It will also be of use to professionals involved in language pedagogy and curriculum design.

This book explores sociocultural theories as they relate to language and literacy teaching and learning, and to professional preparation and development for language teachers.  Language teachers and language teacher educators weave research, theory and practice together as they articulate and explore theoretical perspectives through detailed descriptions and analyses of practices.

It has been widely recognised that an in-depth textual analysis of a source text is relevant for translation. This book discusses the role of Discourse Analysis for translation and translator training. One particular model of discourse analysis is presented in detail, and its application in the context of translator training is critically examined.

The study of politeness has undergone an explosion of interest since the late 1980s, involving an examination of language and languages in many societies. The present volume aims to contribute to current knowledge and understanding of the subject by giving a broad picture of politeness across twenty-two European countries, addressing the essential debates at the heart of politeness studies. Each chapter attempts to provide an empirical snapshot, based on sound theoretical principles, of the issues and practices in its own society. 

Some of the contributors engage directly with critical thinking on politeness theory, using data from their languages and cultures to advance theoretical frameworks, while others highlight the forms politeness takes in particular cultural contexts, analysing how individuals interact with each other in ways intended to achieve their communicative goals.

The volume treats questions such as whether a given society favours positive politeness or negative politeness, the use of formal or informal pronouns of address, small-talk, conventional politeness formulas and how politeness practices change over time.

This book presents a vision of education for citizenship, which takes as its starting point an account of what it means to be intercultural. Theory and concepts of interculturality are applied to citizenship education in order to extend its meaning and significance within and beyond the nation state. The book advances a concept of intercultural citizenship which is sensitive to complexities of identity and diversity and, through international case studies, analyses the degree to which intercultural citizenship is present or emergent in contemporary education systems It provides a statement of ‘axioms and characteristics’ of education for intercultural citizenship to act both as a framework for planning education for intercultural citizenship and as criteria for evaluating the degree of intercultural citizenship education already present in existing education systems. The book will be of interest to those currently working in intercultural education as well as those who work in education for citizenship.

Portraits of the L2 User treats second language users in their own right rather than as failed native speakers. It describes a range of psychological and linguistic approaches to diverse topics about L2 users. It thus provides an innovative overview of current second language acquisition theories, results and methods, seen from a common perspective.

The internationalisation of higher education has led to study abroad being a large scale phenomenon. Students spend short periods on study tours or a year or more taking courses in foreign universities. Studying aboard cannot be dissociated however from learning to live in another country and culture. The need to adapt to a new education system is obvious but the inevitable difficulties of living in another culture for the purpose of study are also an important facet of the whole experience. Chapters in this book report research into this whole phenomenon. Authors have researched students travelling across the world, from East to West and West to East, and also the effects of studying in countries which seem to be more like students’ own. Each chapter explains the case in question, the findings from the research and what the implications might be. The second part of each chapter is then a critical reflection on the research methods used. The book thus provides a guide to the complexity of this kind of research and how that complexity can be handled with appropriate techniques and methods.

Teaching and Learning Languages and Intercultural Communication is not a neutral enterprise. Critical Pedagogy, as a movement and an intellectual field, engages with the political and ideological questions raised in educational practices. In this book the respective fields of languages, intercultural communication and critical pedagogy are brought into dialogue, dissent and reflection.

This work critically addresses the age debate in second language acquisition studies, presenting an in-depth study of factors that predict foreign accent. Quantitative and qualitative analyses confirm that cognitive, social, and psychological factors contribute to attainment, and that biological influences must therefore be considered alongside these essential aspects of learner experience.

This book sets a high standard for rigor and scientific approach to the study of bilingualism and provides new insights regarding the critical issues of theory and practice, including the interdependence of linguistic knowledge in bilinguals, the role of socioeconomic status, the effect of different language usage patterns in the home, and the role of schooling by single-language immersion as opposed to systematic training in both home and target languages. The rich landscape of outcomes reported in the volume will provide a frame for interpretation and understanding of effects of bilingualism for years to come.

Since the late 1970s, scholarly interest in the translation of children’s books has increased at a rapid pace. Research across a number of disciplines has contributed to a developing knowledge and understanding of the cross-cultural transformation and reception of children’s literature. The purpose of this Reader is to reflect the diversity and originality of approaches to the subject by gathering together, for the first time, a range of journal articles and chapters on translation for children published during the last thirty years. From an investigation of linguistic features specific to translation for children, to accounts of the travels of international classics such as the Grimm Brothers’ Household Tales or Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, to a model of narrative communication with the child reader in translated texts and, not least, the long-neglected comments of professional translators, these essays offer new insights into the challenges and difference of translating for the young.

This text contains case studies relating the experience of bilingual children in various settings in New Zealand primary schools. The contexts include a Maori immersion school, a Samoan bilingual unit, and mainstream classrooms which cater for immigrant and deaf children. Suggestions for educational policy, teacher development and research are made.

This book documents ongoing language shift to English among Latino professionals in California 67% of which studied Spanish formally in high school and 54% of which studied Spanish in college. Taking into account the recommendations about the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language made by these professionals, the book then describes current instructional practices used in the teaching of Spanish as an academic subject at the high school and university levels to “heritage” language students who, although educated entirely in English, acquired Spanish at home as their first language. The suggestions made by the Professionals concentrated almost exclusively on Spanish language maintenance (e.g., making cultural/historical connections; showing relevance and significance of language to students’ lives, teaching other subjects in Spanish, teaching legal, medical, business terms in Spanish). The study of goals currently guiding instruction for heritage speakers of Spanish at both the high school and the college levels, on the other hand, raise questions about the potential contribution of educational institutions to the maintenance and retention of Spanish among the current Spanish-speaking population of California.

This book examines the various ways in which age affects the process and the product of foreign language learning in a school setting. It presents studies that cover a wide range of topics, from phonetics to learning strategies. It will be of interest to students and researchers working in SLA research, language planning and language teaching.

Biliteracy - the use of two or more languages in and around writing- is an inescapable feature of lives and schools worldwide, yet one which most educational policy and practice continue blithely to ignore. The continua of biliteracy featured in the present volume offers a comprehensive yet flexible model to guide educators, researchers, and policy-makers in designing, carrying out, and evaluating educational programs for the development of bilingual and multilingual learners, each program adapted to its own specific context, media, and contents.

Translating Milan Kundera uses new archival research to view the wider cultural scope of the translation issue involving the controversies surrounding Kundera’s translated novels. It focuses on the language of the novels, Kundera’s ‘lost’ works, writing as translation, interpretation, exile, censorship and the social responses to translated fiction in the Anglophone world.

The volume highlights the role of language ideologies in the process of negotiation of identities and shows that in different historical and social contexts different identities may be negotiable or non-negotiable. The chapters address various ways in which individuals may be positioned or position themselves in a variety of contexts. In asking questions about social justice, about who has access to symbolic and material resources, about who is ‘in' and who is ‘out', the authors take account not only of localised linguistic behaviours, attitudes and beliefs; they also locate them in wider social contexts which include class, race, ethnicity, generation, gender and sexuality.  The volume makes a significant contribution to the development of theory in understanding identity negotiation and social justice in multilingual contexts.

This book provides an overview of current research on the age factor in foreign language learning, addressing issues, which are critical for language planning. It presents new research on foreign language learning within bilingual communities in formal instruction settings focussing on syntax, phonology, writing, oral skills and learning strategies.

During the last thirty years, the field of translation has exploded with multiple new theories. Contemporary Translation Theories examines five of new approaches – the translation workshop, the science of translation, translation studies, polysystem theory, and deconstruction – all of which began in the mid -1960s and continue to be influential today.

This book joins two important fields, that of literacy and multimodality, with a focus on local and global literacies. Chapters include work on media, popular culture and literacy, weblogs, global and local crossings, in and out of educational settings in such locations as the US, the UK, South Africa, Australia and Canada.

The now familiar forces of globalisation and internationalisation are influencing the role and significance of language teaching and learning in contemporary classrooms. This affects the ways in which English is taught and learnt in particular but is also an inevitable factor in all language teaching and learning. The authors of the chapters in this book all share a concern to explore the ways in which the contexts in which language teaching takes place impact on the aims and the methods of language teaching. Some do so by discussing the implications for what research we do and how we do it; Kramsch, for example, explains in detail how her own research evolves from issues which arise in the classroom. In other chapters the changing nature of the teaching of English is presented from empirical research; Decke-Cornill, for example, identifies different philosophies of language teaching among different kinds of English teacher in Germany. Other authors present studies of the ways in which what learners bring to the learning process from their own contexts and languages has to be taken into consideration if we are to understand language learning; Holme shows this from close analysis of the acquisition of metaphorical language, and Wendt argues for the importance of a social constructivist theory of language learning. Our common purpose is to take a fresh look at teaching and research through the perspective of the inevitable connections between contexts, cultures and classrooms. 

The book describes how a trilingual child in the Basque Country, where Spanish and Basque are the languages of the community, is able to successfully acquire English at home through interaction with her mother.  It focuses on her acquisition of the form and function of English questions.

Linguists, applied linguists and language teachers all appeal to the native speaker as an important reference point. But what exactly (who exactly?) is the native speaker? This book examines the native speaker from different points of view, arguing that the native speaker is both myth and reality.

Power and Identity In the Creative Writing Classroom remaps theories and practices for teaching creative writing at university and college level. This collection critiques well-established approaches for teaching creative writing in all genres and builds a comprehensive and adaptable pedagogy based on issues of authority, power, and identity. A long-needed reflection, this book shapes creative writing pedagogy for the 21st century.

This book examines the acquisition of requests in English by a seven- year-old Japanese girl during her 17-month residence in Australia. The study focuses on the linguistic repertoire available to the child as she attempts to make requests and vary these to suit different goals and addressees. This book helps unravel features of pragmatic development in the child's interlanguage, a subject about which we yet know very little.

Defenders of threatened languages all over the world, from advocates of biodiversity to dedicated defenders of their own cultural authenticity, are often humbled by the immensity of the task that they are faced with when the weak and the few seek to find a safe-harbour against the ravages of the strong and the many. This book provides both practical case studies and theoretical directions from all five continents and advances thereby the collective pursuit of "reversing language shift" for the greater benefit of cultural democracy everywhere.

This book provides an overview of current research on the age factor in foreign language learning, addressing issues, which are critical for language planning. It presents new research on foreign language learning within bilingual communities in formal instruction settings focussing on syntax, phonology, writing, oral skills and learning strategies.

The book describes three siblings' apportioning of linguistic and cultural space among three languages: Portuguese, Swedish and English. Parallel strategies accounting for monolingual and multilingual language management shape a truly illuminating picture of child linguistic competence. Written by a multilingual parent, educator and linguist, this book is for parents, educators and linguists in our predominantly, increasingly multilingual world.

This text presents translators from different linguistic backgrounds discussing multilingual translation in the European Union. All articles stress the political dimension of multilingualism, and the professional role of the translator as communicator, on which much of the credibility of a union "speaking with one voice in many languages" will ultimately depend.

This book looks at changes in the first language of people who know a second language, thus seeing L2 users as people in their own right differing from the monolingual in both first and second languages. It presents theories and research that investigate the first language of second language users from a variety of perspectives including vocabulary, pragmatics, cognition, and syntax and using a variety of linguistic and psychological models.