Channel View Publications

In this monograph, Anatoliy V. Kharkhurin presents the results of his empirical investigation into the impact of multilingual practice on an individual's creative potential. Until now, the relationship between these two activities has received little attention in the academic community. The book makes an attempt to resuscitate this theme and provides a solid theoretical framework supported by contemporary empirical research conducted in a variety of geographic, linguistic, and sociocultural locations. This study demonstrates that several factors - such as the multilinguals' age of language acquisition, proficiency in these languages and experience with cultural settings in which these languages were acquired - have a positive impact on selective attention and language mediated concept activation mechanisms. Together, these facilitate generative and innovative capacities of creative thinking. This book will be of great interest not only to scholars in the fields of multilingualism and creativity, but also to educators and all those interested in enhancing foreign language learning and fostering creativity.

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 emergence of studies of translation based on electronic corpora has been one of the most interesting and fruitful developments in Translation Studies in recent years. But the origins of such studies can be traced back through many decades, as this volume sets out to establish. Covering a number of European languages including Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian, as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish, the book presents many new studies of translation patterns using parallel corpora focusing on particular linguistic features. The studies reveal systemic differences which are in turn, of relevance to the linguistic description of the languages concerned, as well as to translator training. Also included are broader-ranging contributions on the concept of translation universals, including a critical perspective on this popular topic. [127 words]

While literacy has always been central to language planning work, there are fewer studies which focus primarily on literacy as a language planning activity. Often planning for literacy is treated as an aspect of status, corpus or language-in-education planning, rather than addressing literate practice itself as a planning objective. This volume investigates the complex issues and social and political pressures relating to literacy in a variety of language planning contexts around the world. The studies presented in this book examine language planning for literacy in official and vernacular languages and address issues relating to literacy in first and additional languages in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific. As a collection, these studies show that language planning for literacy is not simply a matter of planning a written version of a language, but involves more complex questions relating to the nature and practice of literacy and the power relations which exist within societies.

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 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.

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 makes Relevance Theory (RT) relevant for L2 teachers and L2 teacher educators, in particular those working in foreign language teaching contexts. L2 classroom discourse data collected in seven research projects in the years 1984 – 2004 are reinterpreted in this book in the light of Relevance Theory - a theory of interpretation of the incoming messages. In this perspective the teachers’ input for instructed L2 learners facilitates shifts in the learners’ attention from meaning to form and vice versa. Such shifts of attention, according to Relevance Theory, change the level of expected optimal relevance of classroom communication, either focusing the students on form-oriented communication (accuracy), on meaning-oriented communication (fluency) or on meaning and form-oriented communication (fluency combined with accuracy). The latter is considered optimal for L2 learning/acquisition. Apart from the main focus on the relevance-theoretic interpretation of the teachers’ input, the book presents an overview of other theoretical approaches to the question of input for instructed L2 learners: the SLA approach, the communicative L2 teaching perspective, and the L2 classroom discourse approach.

To say that multilingualism is the norm and monolingualism the exception has become a truism. In fact, the European Union is clearly committed to a multilingual Europe in which all its educational systems are advised to include two Community languages. It is in this context where this volume analyses the language use and attitudes of would-be teachers, as they will play a paramount role when it comes to keeping multilingualism as one of the key features of the European identity. There are four main reasons why this volume can make a contribution to this field of research. Firstly, it is a transnational study involving nine different bilingual states/areas which allows the reader to compare contexts that, despite sharing some similarities, do have their own pecularities. Secondly, it considers not only the minority and majority languages, but also the different foreign languages. Thirdly, it relies on the same instrument and methodology. And last but not least, the participants will have an enormous influence on their different educational systems and on their students’ linguistic perceptions.

This volume covers the language situation in Fiji, The Philippines and Vanuatu 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/or have been participants in the language planning context. Fiji and Vanuatu are not well represented in the international language policy/planning literature, while the section on the Philippines draws together the published literature in this area. The purpose of the volumes in this series is to present up-to-date information on polities that are not well-known to researchers in the field. A longer range purpose is to collect comparable information on as many polities as possible in order to facilitate the development of a richer theory to guide language policy and planning in other polities that undertake the development of a national policy on languages. This volume is part of an areal series which is committed to providing descriptions of language planning and policy in countries around the world.

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.

The emergence of studies of translation based on electronic corpora has been one of the most interesting and fruitful developments in Translation Studies in recent years. But the origins of such studies can be traced back through many decades, as this volume sets out to establish. Covering a number of European languages including Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Slovenian, as well as French, Spanish, Portuguese and Swedish, the book presents many new studies of translation patterns using parallel corpora focusing on particular linguistic features. The studies reveal systemic differences which are in turn, of relevance to the linguistic description of the languages concerned, as well as to translator training. Also included are broader-ranging contributions on the concept of translation universals, including a critical perspective on this popular topic. [127 words]

This highly accessible book examines linguistic diversity in Galicia, one of the devolved regions of Spain. Its principal hypotheses are: that the Galician language is an intrinsic characteristic of Galician ethnic identity: that policy and planning impact on the behavioural practices of language users, reflected in loyalty and prestige factors: that whilst a reversal in traditional perceptions and attitudes is resulting in a reaffirmation of Galician as the autochthonous language, its sociolinguistic relationship with Castilian has not been resolved: that Galicians have to negotiate multiple identities, subject to constant change and adjustment. Through its innovative and in-depth analysis of Galician linguistic, sociolinguistic, ethnic and cultural revival and revitalisation processes, it also serves to emphasise the wider relevance of such studies to the case of minoritised languages in general.

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.

Spanish speakers, whether in monolingual or bilingual situations, or in majority or minority contexts, represent a considerable population worldwide. Spanish speakers in the U.S. constitute an illustrative context of the challenges faced by speech-language practitioners to provide realistic services to an increasing and diverse Spanish-speaking caseload. There is still considerable paucity in the amount of literature on Hispanic individuals with clinical relevance in speech-language pathology. Particularly lacking are works that link both empirical and theoretical bases to evidence-based procedures for child and adult Spanish users with communication disorders. Further, because communication skills depend on multiple phenomena beyond strictly linguistic factors, speech-language students and practitioners require multidisciplinary bases to realistically understand Spanish clients’ communication performance. This volume attempts to address those gaps. This publication takes a multidisciplinary approach that integrates both theoretical and empirical grounds from Speech-Language Pathology, Neurolinguistics, Neuropsychology, Education, and Clinical Psychology to develop evidence-based clinical procedures for monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish-English children and adults with communication disorders.

Since the founding of television stations in Welsh, Catalan and Basque in the early 1980s, minority languages have gradually gained a new prominence, particularly in Europe. As globalisation has developed, questions concerning such languages and the effect that the media might have on them have become more urgent. This book is the first general study of the many issues raised by this situation. Fourteen researchers from across Europe and the USA examine questions such as the media needs of minority languages, the role of the media in language maintenance, the impact of digital media, and problems raised by translation. Case studies range from the representativeness of drama on Welsh television to Sign Language in the media. Taken as a whole, this book establishes the field of minority language media studies and forms an important basis for future research.

This book is a case study carefully detailing the French/English bilingual and biliterate development of three children in one family beginning with their births and ending in late adolescence. The author and researcher is the children’s French/English bilingual American father, who was aided by his bilingual French Canadian wife (also the children’s mother). We reared our three children in two different cultures— essentially monolingual English-speaking Louisiana, and totally monolingual French-speaking Québec. The family spent academic years in Louisiana, and the summer months in Québec. Our strategy was to speak only French to our son and our identical twin daughters. We artificially orchestrated and manipulated both the strategies, and to the extent possible, even the children’s environments to ensure the success of our project. Additionally, I carefully documented our progress using a variety of research tools, including audio and videotape recordings, teacher and child surveys, interviews with teachers, fieldnotes, psychological and diagnostic testing, and standardized assessment instruments.

The translation of law has played an integral part in the interaction among nations in history and is playing a greater role in our increasingly interconnected world today. The book investigates legal translation in its many facets as an intellectual pursuit and a profession. It examines legal translation from an interdisciplinary perspective, covering theoretical and practical grounds and linguistic as well as legal issues. It analyses legal translation competence and various types of legal texts including contracts, statutes and multilateral legal instruments, presents a comparative analysis of the Common Law and the Civil Law and examines the case law from Canada, Hong Kong and the European Court of Justice. It attempts to demonstrate that translating law is a complex act that can enrich law, culture and human experience as a whole.

The Southwest Pacific from Southern China through Indonesia, Australia and the Pacific Islands constitutes the richest linguistic region of the world.  That rich resource cannot be taken for granted.  Some of its languages have already been lost; many more are under threat.  The challenge is to describe the languages that exist today and to adopt policies that will support their maintenance.

Linguistic Landscapes is the first comprehensive approach to a largely under-explored sociolinguistic phenomenon: language on signs. Based on an up-to-date review of previous research from various places around the world, the book develops an analytical framework for the systematic analysis of linguistic landscape data. This framework is applied to a sample of 2,444 signs collected in 28 survey areas in central Tokyo. Analytical categories include the languages contained and their combinations, differences between official and nonofficial signs, geographic distribution, availability of translation or transliteration, linguistic idiosyncrasies, and the comparison of older and newer signs, among others. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the analysis yields some unique insights about the writers of multilingual signs, their readers, and the languages and scripts in contact. Linguistic Landscapes thus demonstrates that the study of language on signs has much to contribute to research into urban multilingualism, as well as the study of language and society as a whole.

This volume contains a selection of papers analyzing language transfer, a phenomenon which results from language contact in bilingual and multilingual language acquisition and learning contexts. The main focus of the volume is on the lexical aspects of language transfer.

This book makes Relevance Theory (RT) relevant for L2 teachers and L2 teacher educators, in particular those working in foreign language teaching contexts. L2 classroom discourse data collected in seven research projects in the years 1984 – 2004 are reinterpreted in this book in the light of Relevance Theory - a theory of interpretation of the incoming messages. In this perspective the teachers’ input for instructed L2 learners facilitates shifts in the learners’ attention from meaning to form and vice versa. Such shifts of attention, according to Relevance Theory, change the level of expected optimal relevance of classroom communication, either focusing the students on form-oriented communication (accuracy), on meaning-oriented communication (fluency) or on meaning and form-oriented communication (fluency combined with accuracy). The latter is considered optimal for L2 learning/acquisition. Apart from the main focus on the relevance-theoretic interpretation of the teachers’ input, the book presents an overview of other theoretical approaches to the question of input for instructed L2 learners: the SLA approach, the communicative L2 teaching perspective, and the L2 classroom discourse approach.

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.

In this book different aspects of language and aging are discussed. While language spoken by and language spoken with elderly people have been treated as different areas of research, it is argued here that from a dynamical system perspective the two are closely interrelated. In addition to overviews of research on language and aging, a number of projects on this topic in multilingual settings are presented.

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 is a sequel to the author’s best-selling A Practical Guide for Translators first published in 1993 and now in its 4th edition. Managing Translation Services looks at how to successfully make the change from being a single freelance translator to developing a translation company offering a range of value added services. The book is intended principally for those who presently work as a freelance translator with all the inherent limitations this presents in terms of income and being reliant on the limited range of skills that the individual can offer. While some business skills will have been accumulated by virtue of working in a commercial environment, the transition from being responsible for oneself and taking the bold step of employing additional resources can be quite daunting. However, the opportunities this offers in terms of income and personal satisfaction are considerable. This book considers the initial Ssteps towards business development, exploiting these opportunities and the rewards they can offer. Advice is given on setting up a translation business, organisational development, what a business plan needs to consider for successful growth, how quality management needs to be approached, managing human resources, customer relations and other topics. The book provides a wealth of ready-made examples of quality procedures, forms that support business management and sources of further information. It also considers an exit strategy and related long-term planning when disposing of the business. Managing Translation Services is based on the many years of experience gained by the author working as a staff translator, freelance translator, university lecturer in translation studies, and former head of an award-winning, ISO 9001 accredited company. As a result, it covers a range of management issues relating to providing professional translation services.

This volume brings together scholars from around the world to juxtapose the voices of classroom participants alongside the voices of ruling elites with the aim of critically linking language policy issues with classroom practice in a range of contexts. The volume is suitable for postgraduate students, researchers and educators in a range of areas.

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.

Joshua Fishman is perhaps best known and loved for his pioneering and enduring work in language loyalty and reversing language shift. This volume brings together a selection of his recent writings on these topics and some of his personal perspectives on the field of sociolinguistics, along with an interview dialogue with the editors in which Fishman reflects on his lifetime’s work

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.

Controversy erupted in 1996 when the Oakland Unified School District’s ‘Ebonics Resolution’ proposed an approach to teaching Standard English that recognized the variety of English spoken by African American students. With new demands for accountability driven by the No Child Left Behind policy and its emphasis on high-stakes testing in Standard English, this debate will no doubt rise again. This book seeks to better inform this next episode.

In Part 1, leading scholars place the debate within its historical and contemporary context, provide clear explanations of what Ebonics is and is not, and offer practical approaches schools can and should follow to address the linguistic needs of African American students. Part 2 provides original documents that accompanied the debate, including the original resolutions, legislation, organization position papers, and commentary/analyses from leading linguists. This book is written for all those whose work impacts the lives of Ebonics speakers in our public schools.

This book is a case study carefully detailing the French/English bilingual and biliterate development of three children in one family beginning with their births and ending in late adolescence. The author and researcher is the children’s French/English bilingual American father, who was aided by his bilingual French Canadian wife (also the children’s mother). We reared our three children in two different cultures— essentially monolingual English-speaking Louisiana, and totally monolingual French-speaking Québec. The family spent academic years in Louisiana, and the summer months in Québec. Our strategy was to speak only French to our son and our identical twin daughters. We artificially orchestrated and manipulated both the strategies, and to the extent possible, even the children’s environments to ensure the success of our project. Additionally, I carefully documented our progress using a variety of research tools, including audio and videotape recordings, teacher and child surveys, interviews with teachers, fieldnotes, psychological and diagnostic testing, and standardized assessment instruments.

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.

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.

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.

The essays and research papers in this collection explore current issues in Language Education, English for Academic Purposes, Contrastive Discourse Analysis, and Language Policy and Planning, and outline promising directions for theory and practice in applied linguistics. The collection also honours the life-long contribution of Robert B. Kaplan to the field.

This book examines the evidence relative to the idea that there is an age factor in first and second language acquisition, evidence that has sources ranging from studies of feral children to evaluations of language programmes in primary schools. It goes on to explore the various explanations that have been advanced to account for such evidence. Finally, it looks at the educational ramifications of the age question, with particular regard to formal second language teaching in the early school years and in ‘third age’ contexts.

This highly accessible book examines linguistic diversity in Galicia, one of the devolved regions of Spain. Its principal hypotheses are: that the Galician language is an intrinsic characteristic of Galician ethnic identity: that policy and planning impact on the behavioural practices of language users, reflected in loyalty and prestige factors: that whilst a reversal in traditional perceptions and attitudes is resulting in a reaffirmation of Galician as the autochthonous language, its sociolinguistic relationship with Castilian has not been resolved: that Galicians have to negotiate multiple identities, subject to constant change and adjustment. Through its innovative and in-depth analysis of Galician linguistic, sociolinguistic, ethnic and cultural revival and revitalisation processes, it also serves to emphasise the wider relevance of such studies to the case of minoritised languages in general.

Translation is intercultural communication in its purest form.  Its power in forming and/or deforming cultural identities has only recently been acknowledged, given the attention it deserves.  The chapters in this unique volume assess translation from Arabic into other languages from different perspectives: the politics, economics, ethics, and poetics of translating from Arabic; a language often neglected in western mainstream translation studies.

In this book different aspects of language and aging are discussed. While language spoken by and language spoken with elderly people have been treated as different areas of research, it is argued here that from a dynamical system perspective the two are closely interrelated. In addition to overviews of research on language and aging, a number of projects on this topic in multilingual settings are presented.

Spanish speakers, whether in monolingual or bilingual situations, or in majority or minority contexts, represent a considerable population worldwide. Spanish speakers in the U.S. constitute an illustrative context of the challenges faced by speech-language practitioners to provide realistic services to an increasing and diverse Spanish-speaking caseload. There is still considerable paucity in the amount of literature on Hispanic individuals with clinical relevance in speech-language pathology. Particularly lacking are works that link both empirical and theoretical bases to evidence-based procedures for child and adult Spanish users with communication disorders. Further, because communication skills depend on multiple phenomena beyond strictly linguistic factors, speech-language students and practitioners require multidisciplinary bases to realistically understand Spanish clients’ communication performance. This volume attempts to address those gaps. This publication takes a multidisciplinary approach that integrates both theoretical and empirical grounds from Speech-Language Pathology, Neurolinguistics, Neuropsychology, Education, and Clinical Psychology to develop evidence-based clinical procedures for monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish-English children and adults with communication disorders.

The complexity and diversity of the linguistic situations, practices, policies and theories of bilingual education is widely acknowledged in a country with a population of 1.3 billion people consisting of 56 officially recognised indigenous nationalities speaking more than 80 languages. This book addresses this complexity and diversity with a comprehensive examination of issues in bilingual education for both minority and majority nationalities in China and explores the links between the two major forms of bilingual education. It includes voices that are ‘emic’ or ‘etic’, local or international, and voices that come from those who work at the forefront of bilingual education or in the development of theory. All these voices are needed as different and divergent perspectives represent a reality

Translation and film adaptation of theatre have received little study. In filling that gap, this book draws on the experiences of theatrical translators and on movie versions of plays from various countries. It also offers insights into such concerns as the translation of bilingual plays and the choice between subtitling and dubbing of film.

Since the founding of television stations in Welsh, Catalan and Basque in the early 1980s, minority languages have gradually gained a new prominence, particularly in Europe. As globalisation has developed, questions concerning such languages and the effect that the media might have on them have become more urgent. This book is the first general study of the many issues raised by this situation. Fourteen researchers from across Europe and the USA examine questions such as the media needs of minority languages, the role of the media in language maintenance, the impact of digital media, and problems raised by translation. Case studies range from the representativeness of drama on Welsh television to Sign Language in the media. Taken as a whole, this book establishes the field of minority language media studies and forms an important basis for future research.

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.

A Companion to Translation Studies is the first work of its kind. It provides an authoritative guide to key approaches in translation studies. All of the essays are specially commissioned for this collection, and written by leading international experts in the field. The book is divided into nine specialist areas: culture, philosophy, linguistics, history, literary, gender, theatre and opera, screen, and politics. Contributors include Susan Bassnett, Gunilla Anderman and Christina Schäffner. Each chapter gives an in-depth account of theoretical concepts, issues and debates which define a field within translation studies, mapping out past trends and suggesting how research might develop in the future. In their general introduction the editors illustrate how translation studies has developed as a broad interdisciplinary field. Accompanied by an extensive bibliography, this book provides an ideal entry point for students and scholars exploring the multifaceted and fast-developing discipline of translation studies.

This volume brings together scholars from around the world to juxtapose the voices of classroom participants alongside the voices of ruling elites with the aim of critically linking language policy issues with classroom practice in a range of contexts. The volume is suitable for postgraduate students, researchers and educators in a range of areas.

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.

Linguistic Landscapes is the first comprehensive approach to a largely under-explored sociolinguistic phenomenon: language on signs. Based on an up-to-date review of previous research from various places around the world, the book develops an analytical framework for the systematic analysis of linguistic landscape data. This framework is applied to a sample of 2,444 signs collected in 28 survey areas in central Tokyo. Analytical categories include the languages contained and their combinations, differences between official and nonofficial signs, geographic distribution, availability of translation or transliteration, linguistic idiosyncrasies, and the comparison of older and newer signs, among others. Combining qualitative and quantitative methods, the analysis yields some unique insights about the writers of multilingual signs, their readers, and the languages and scripts in contact. Linguistic Landscapes thus demonstrates that the study of language on signs has much to contribute to research into urban multilingualism, as well as the study of language and society as a whole.

This volume addresses the methods and motives for translating the central texts of the world’s religions and investigates a wide range of translation challenges specific to the unique nature of these writings. Translation theory underpins the methodology for the analysis of a variety of scriptures and brings important and sensitive issues of translation to the fore.

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.

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.

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.

The aim of this book is to inform both scholars and the public about the nature and extent of the problem of language decline and death in Africa.  It resourcefully traces the main causes and circumstances of language endangerment, the processes and extent of language shift and death, and the consequences of language loss to the continent’s rich linguistic and cultural heritage.  The book outlines some of the challenges that have emerged out of the situation.

This book is a systematic attempt to address the issue of fossilization in relation to a fundamental question in second language acquisition research, which is: why are learners, adults in particular, unable to develop the level of competence they have aspired to in spite of continuous and sustained exposure to the target language, adequate motivation to learn, and sufficient opportunity to practice?

A Companion to Translation Studies is the first work of its kind. It provides an authoritative guide to key approaches in translation studies. All of the essays are specially commissioned for this collection, and written by leading international experts in the field. The book is divided into nine specialist areas: culture, philosophy, linguistics, history, literary, gender, theatre and opera, screen, and politics. Contributors include Susan Bassnett, Gunilla Anderman and Christina Schäffner. Each chapter gives an in-depth account of theoretical concepts, issues and debates which define a field within translation studies, mapping out past trends and suggesting how research might develop in the future. In their general introduction the editors illustrate how translation studies has developed as a broad interdisciplinary field. Accompanied by an extensive bibliography, this book provides an ideal entry point for students and scholars exploring the multifaceted and fast-developing discipline of translation studies.

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 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.

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.

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 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.