¡Descarga Language Planning and Language Shift: Preserving and Revitalizing Languages y más Resúmenes en PDF de Sociolingüística solo en Docsity!
SOCIOLINGUISTICA VIR
1. 2018: Enero A ............................................................................................... 1
2. 2018: Febrero B ............................................................................................ 3
3. 2017 Enero A ............................................................................................... 6
4. 2017 – Febrero B .......................................................................................... 9
5. 2017 September ......................................................................................... 12
6. 2017 Reserva septiembre .......................................................................... 14
7. 2016 – Enero A ........................................................................................... 16
8. 2016 – Febrero B ........................................................................................ 18
9. 2016 Septiembre Reserva .......................................................................... 21
10. 2015 Enero A .............................................................................................. 23
11. 2015 Febrero B .............................................................................................. 25
1. 201 8: Enero A 1º) Choose two of the following issues, explain them in your own words and provide examples. Write around 100 words for each of the two questions.
a) Explain language shift in minority languages:
It is the process whereby a community of speakers of a language shifts to speaking a completely different language, usually over an extended period of time. Language shift can give way to language loss. But language development depends not only on language policy making but also on sociocultural forces. Whether a minority language undergoes shift or maintenance, depends on a number of factors: The shift from the minority language to the dominant language is usually rather fast when:
- if the minority language belongs to an individual or a small group of immigrants.
- When the minority language lacks prestige and the dominant language offers certain social and economical advantages related to integration. The shift from the minority language to the dominant language is usually rather slow and might take a few generations fast when:
- if the minority language belongs to a large group of immigrants
- Where the language represents a strong identity value, we may find that language shift is more difficult to occur.
- When the minority language is valued as a language of culture and knowledge, the language shift will take longer to occur. b) Summarise the sociolinguistic situation in New Zealand: Almost all Maoris speak English and a lot of young people are bilingual, but many young people do not speak Maori. Maori is endangered because:
1. English is the language of education
2. Maori has not been given the status of official language.
- Maori is spoken mainly in rural areas
- People prefer to live in cities where English is spoken In 1999 the population of fluent Maori speakers was about 35.000, around 8% of the total Maori population in New Zealand. Something has been done on a private level to preserve Maori language and with it, Maori culture and traditions, but without government support, the number of children involved in a bilingual teaching programme is limited due to the low status given to language in society. c) Analyse code choice in bilingual or bidialectal speakers: Code-switching occurs when a speaker chooses one language or the other s/he masters. Language choice can be considered a way to assert some kind of right or event to resist some kind of power in places where two or more languages coexist and have equal socio-political status. In this case, language can be considered a way of “political or right expression”. The fact of being proficient in more than one language allows for the possibility of switching codes at some point. Code-switching occurs when a speaker chooses one language or the other s/he masters. The choice of language in bilingual individuals can be:
- Situational: language changes depending on contextual factors. which have nothing to do with the topic but with the given situation
- Metaphorical: the topic and the content of the communicative process are the main reasons for language choice 2º) Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 words each including some examples. a) Hypercorrection: A manifestation of linguistic insecurity. It can manifest itself by the overuse of the socially desired forms in careful speech or reading, especially in an attempt to speak or write in an educated manner. For example, “between you and I” is a hypercorrection of “between you and me”. b) Borrowing: a word or phrase adopted from one language into another. For example: ancor “anchor”, butere “butter”. Spanish language has borrowed from English many words such as Pub, rock, hobby, show, web, internet and so on. c) Synthetic language: A language is said to be 'synthetic' if inflection is the predominant way of indicating grammatical relationships. A synthetic language is called 'agglutinating' if inflectional morphemes denote but one information (like gender, person, tense, mood etc). Examples: Indo- European languages; all Kartvelian languages such as Georgian; some Semitic languages such as Arabic; Synthetic languages have a number of suffixes with carry different meanings, such as tense or case, and vary their shape according to the word they are added to. They are also known as
Sometimes, when two or more languages come into contact and a need arises for communication, limited to certain areas such as TRADE, pidginization might take place. Pidgin becomes a contact language. It incorporates words from the source languages and has a simplified grammatical structure. The pidgin is used for functional purposes in specific situations and contexts. It doesn´t have NATIVE SPEAKERS. For example, a pidgin might support just enough communication to allow Polynesians to trade with Captain Cook. Pidgins have been used for centuries and eventually, some of them, became creoles. The process of creolization takes place when that language that was originally a functional language used only for purposeful communication is acquired as a mother tongue by children who are exposed to it from birth. It must be noted that NOT EVERY PIDGIN BECOMES A CREOLE. A Creole is a fully-functional language which includes elements of its parent languages. A Creole is a native language to its speakers (although they may also speak a mother language in addition). An example of creole is Jamaican Patwa. As a result of not having an official status, a name for the Creole language used mainly in Jamaica has not been fixed to the present day and some terms like Jamaican, Jamaican Creole, Jamaican Patwa or Patois are all used. Patois developed in the 17th century, when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned and nativized the vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken by the slaveholders: Over 90% of the 2,5 millions of population of Jamaica in the late 199 0´s are descendants of slaves brought from Africa. Nowadays, this language has not got much social and socioeconomic status in Jamaica and it largely represents the speech of the peasants and laborers with little education It is not considerable as “acceptable” language for formal purposes and speakers are often considered as socially and linguistically inferior. purposes and speakers are often considered as socially and linguistically inferior.
Summarise the sociolinguistic situation in India
India gained independence from the UK in 1947 and the federal government in India established a language policy. English would be substituted by Hindi as the official language. We have to bear in mind that the country was divided in states, most of them having their own language. Each regional language would also gain the status of official language in each state. Nowadays, multilingualism is encouraged in India and many children learn English and Hindi in school. Hindi in the Devanagari script is the official language of the Union. English is an additional official language for government work alongside Hindi. States and union territories can have a different official language of their own other than Hindi or English. In fact, the constitution recognises in particular 22 "scheduled languages".
Explain the aims of language planning
Nahir sets 11th^ language planning goals which can be combined to handle the language-related problems, aspirations and/or needs of speech community. (which may vary in time)
- Language purification: to remove foreign elements or errors. It is normally controlled by a language academy. It can be divided into two types: - External purification consists of the development of prescriptions of usage in order to protect the language from unwanted foreign influence. (They try to control foreign lexical borrowings.) - Internal purification refers to the acceptance of the code as it exists at a certain point in history, protecting it from undesirable developments which are considered as non-normative (incorrect)
- Language revival to restore/ to revitalize a language with a small number of speakers (i.e., Irish and Welsh), or even a completely dead language (i.e., Hebrew and Cornish), and turn it into a normal means of communication. 3. Language reform involves the incorporation of specific changes in the language (e.g., spelling, grammar, pronunciation, etc.) to try to facilitate its use or the internationalization of the language, or other factors, It always depends on political, ideological, religious or economical factors.E.g.:Kemal Atatürk undertook the modernization of Turkey and declared it a lay country; he urged a huge reform in the Turkish lexicon and orthography, adopting the Roman script instead of the Arabic script.
4. Language standardization: to adopt a language or dialect into the major language of
a region or nation for wider communication with official, educational, commercial or other
functions.
5. Language spread involves an attempt to increase the number of speakers of a
particular language and the domains, normally at the expense of another language or
languages. It often responds to political considerations in multilingual countries. Language
spread is necessarily connected to language standardization.
6. Lexical modernization to create new terminology.
7. Terminology unification to standardize existing terminology to diminish ambiguity. (in the
technological and scientific domains).
8. Stylistic simplification to make technical or legal language comprehensible to reduce
communication ambiguity between two groups or reduce bureaucratese.
9. Interlingual communication implies the adoption of a LWC (language wider
communication) with the intention of facilitating communication between members of different
speech communities. English in European Union.
10. Language maintenance to preserve the domains in which a language is used. Language
maintenance can be exercised at two levels: first with the aim of preserving a widely spoken
language from unwanted foreign influence; and, second, as a protection of a minority ethnic
language.
11. Auxiliary-code standardization to create norms for language-related activities. The
standardization of marginal, auxiliary aspects of language, such as signs for the deaf, place
names, or rules of transliteration and transcription.
2º) Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 words each including some examples.
- Content-based ESL: A teaching/learning approach in which the contents are taught in a foreign language with the aim of developing the language skills of the learners in that foreign language at the same time as they are learning the contents required in the curriculum , as maths, history, biology, etc. It aims to develop the students’ language and academic skills and its main advantage is the provision of meaningful contexts for communication in the classroom.
- Discourse marker: Words, phrases or sounds that have no content meaning but play an important role in making conversational structure, signalling conversational intentions and assuring cooperation on the part of listeners. The types and uses frequently change across languages.
- Cultural awareness: The understanding and respect for differences between people from different countries or different cultural or linguistic backgrounds. It is supposed to break down national, ethnic and language stereotypes and widen the understanding of different kinds of societies, this is increasingly important as the world becomes more of “a global village”. Such awareness may best be achieved through simultaneous language learning. It is an advantage of the learning of second or third languages.
- Family language planning: A family’s deliberate efforts to influence the acquisition of their child’s language. This choice may take the form of a tacit understanding or of a conscious strategy about with what language to use with the child. It can be very useful to initiate, establish and maintain childhood bilingualism and is a determining factor in maintaining minority languages.
- Language loss: This term refers to a situation where language shift in a speech community ends in the total shift to another language. If a language shift ends with the total loss of a language from the world it is considered language death. In the area of individual bilingualism, it can occur in cases in which the minority language is still unstable, and the dominant language occupies most domains
- Language revitalisation: Language planning efforts made in order to revive a language that because of social or economic reasons has decreased in number of speakers or which was lost. A language shift can lead to the spread of a dominant language and the loss of the minority language. The reasons can vary but are often caused by a group’s search for cultural and/or ethnic identity. 3º) Comment, from a sociolinguistic point of view, on the following excerpt. You are expected to relate this extract to the contents of the subject in no more than 300 words.
a)Explain the four starting points that language planners have traditionally adopted in language planning. Traditionally four starting points have been adopted in language planning, they describe the processes or steps in language planning. These points are not mutually exclusive but may be complementary:
1. Selection of a norm. Multilingual countries very often need to make important decisions regarding the language or languages that will become official, or simply the language for education or any institutional purpose. One reason some states prefer a single language of instruction is that it supports national unity and homogeneity. Sometimes is necessary to introduce a lingua franca , usually the language of the former colonizer to avoid racial conflicts. (E.g.: English in India) 2. Codification. Given the circumstance described immediately above, if an indigenous language is chosen as the standard, it may be necessary to make some changes and adapt it to meet the requirements of a language for wider communication within multilingual country. Changes may be needed, for instance, to adapt the language and update its vocabulary and grammar. 3. Modernization. Technological and scientific developments probably require modernization of specific vocabulary and very often a decision needs to be made on whether to adopt loan words or to coin new terms based on indigenous roots. 4. Implementation. Once a decision has been made, the chosen language needs to be officially implemented and used in all sorts of official forums: education, parliament, media, etc. E.g.: Dictionaries and educational materials will need to be revised in schools in order to maintain effective language acquisition. Summarise the issue of pidgins and creoles in education. It is rather rare to see a pidgin or a Creole taught at school. This is because of mainly 2 reasons:
a. pidgins and Creoles are in continuous evolution or involution (creolization vs decreolization). There
is a the continuum of variation. Hence, it is difficult to establish a norm.
b. in most societies pidgins and Creoles are considered sub-varieties of the standard language, they
are associated with the lower classes and lack prestige. Children who speak pidgin or Creole at home and are taught the standard variety at school systematically suffer some degree of performance failure. It is due to the fact that these speakers are in a way disadvantaged because the language of formal education is actually a standard variety that they do not speak as a mother tongue. This is the case of AA VE (African American Vernacular English) In order to integrate pidgins and Creoles and their speakers in the educational system, a number of countries have introduced three different types of special programmes: instrumental, accommodation and awareness. b) three different types of special programmes: instrumental, accommodation and awareness.
- Instrumental programs: They employ the home variety as medium of instruction for teaching subjects such as mathematics and social sciences – in the ideal case all subjects – and children acquire literacy in and through their home variety.
- Accommodation program: It allows the use of the home language and its use is not penalized in any way, but it is, however, not employed as the language of instruction for any subject nor it is studied as a language in itself.
- The awareness program includes in the curriculum some teaching on basic sociolinguistic and socio pragmatic principles of different language varieties, and their grammatical rules and pragmatics are compared with those of the standard variety. Its aim is to raise positive awareness about the children’s home language and culture c) Analyse the dispersal, or diaspora, of English over the world. The dispersal, or diaspora, of English over the world can be divided into two phases:
1. the 1 st^ diaspora the migration of about 25.000 English, Scottish and Irish people to North
America, Australia and New Zealand. The varieties of English spoken today in these countries are not identical but still retain features of the varieties spoken by the British settlers , with the incorporation of words of indigenous origin.
2. the 2 nd^ diaspora occurred during the 18 th^ and 19th^ century, is linked to colonization and trade in
Africa, Asia and the Pacific. This situation favoured the spread of English as lingua franca among the hundreds of indigenous languages and the English-speaking traders. Standard English (RP Received Pronunciation) is the variety of English used by the media and taught in schools. In England it is considered to be the variety spoken in the South-East of the country Y. Kachru developed a model of the spread of English that has been most influential in the field of
sociolinguistics. He divides World Englishness into 3 concentric circles:
- The INNER CIRCLE refers to the countries where English is a native Lg (ENL): the USA, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, & New Zealand. The inner circle (UK, US,etc.) is 'norm-providing'. That means that English language norms are developed in these countries – English is the first language there. There are 320-380 million English speakers in the inner circle.
- The OUTER CIRCLE denotes English as 2nd Lg (ESL) countries (former English colonies), such as India, Singapore, Malaysia, S. Africa. It is 'norm-developing', easily adopting and perhaps developing its own norms. There are 150-300 million in the outer circle.
- The EXPANDING CIRCLE involves English as a Foreign Lg (EFL). Countries like China, Japan, Israel, Greece, Poland. The expanding circle (much of the rest of the world) is 'norm-dependent', because it relies on the standards set by native speakers in the inner circle. There are 100-1,000 million in the expanding circle. If we count only fluent speakers, we can obtain 100 million speakers, but if we include all levels of competency, the number could amount to as many as 1,000 million speakers. Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 words each including some examples.
- Language revival is used to restore/ to revitalize a language with a small number of speakers (i.e., Irish and Welsh), or even a completely dead language (i.e., Hebrew and Cornish), and turn it into a normal means of communication. It is estimated that from 50 % to 90 % of the world’s 6700 thousand languages will no longer be spoken by the end of this century.
- Hypercorrection: A manifestation of linguistic insecurity. It can manifest itself by the overuse of the socially desired forms in careful speech or reading, especially in an attempt to speak or write in an educated manner. For example, “between you and I” is a hypercorrection of “between you and me”.
- Language attrition: Gradual language loss in an individual. This can refer to the loss of a mother tongue that has been acquired and due to lack of use is gradually forgotten. This is often the case among second and third generation immigrants. It can also refer to a language that was learnt through formal instruction by gradually forgotten after a period of disuse.
- Content-based ESL: A teaching/learning approach in which the contents are taught in a foreign language with the aim of developing the language skills of the learners in that foreign language at the same time as they are learning the contents required in the curriculum , as maths, history, biology, etc. It aims to develop the students’ language and academic skills and its main advantage is the provision of meaningful contexts for communication in the classroom.
- Status planning: Actions aiming at raising or lowering the status of a language or dialect and which basically refers to decisions regarding the selection of particular varieties for particular purposes or communicative functions. It is closely related to corpus planning as language planning policies can never be solely corpus-orientated or status-orientated.
- Language Academy: In some countries there are institutions which play a role in safeguarding standards by trying to regulate the evolution of the language by limiting unwanted foreign influence and by trying to control how the language changes. It is more likely to be successful in written language, but the task is difficult due to the influence exerted by the media and globalisation. Comment, from a sociolinguistic point of view, on the following excerpt. You are expected to relate this extract to the contents of the subject in no more than 300 words. Whereas the study of regional dialectology can explore people in and from different, clearly defined physical locations, studying a social variable like gender requires different types of questions and sampling techniques. Gender variation is an important and ever-growing area of research in sociolinguistics, and much of this research has focused on how men and women use language in conversation. It is relatively easy in many cultures and also in many research settings to simply divide a sample into men and women. Note, however, that such divides are rarely done according to biological sex. It would be much more likely for participants to either self-identify their gender identity or for the researcher to judge using his or her own gendered beliefs to categorize participants. To prove biological sex would not only be inconvenient but incredibly intrusive. It is clear that for many social scientists, however, there is a need for an operationalized difference between sex and gender. The former, sex, is often reserved to describe a biological or physiological category. In
1. Explain the sociolinguistic situation of Maori in New Zealand. Almost all Maoris speak English and a lot of young people are bilingual, but many young people do not speak Maori. Maori is endangered because:
1. English is the language of education
2. Maori has not been given the status of official language.
- Maori is spoken mainly in rural areas
- People prefer to live in cities where English is spoken In 1999 the population of fluent Maori speakers was about 35.000, around 8% of the total Maori population in New Zealand. Something has been done on a private level to preserve Maori language and with it, Maori culture and traditions, but without government support, the number of children involved in a bilingual teaching programme is limited due to the low status given to language in society. 2. Summarise the main features of style, register and gender as variables in Sociolinguistics. Even within a specific speech community individuals have a range of choices when they speak. A. “gender” as a variable in sociolinguistics Early studies on language and gender usually considered the language or speech behaviour of women in terms of a deficiency model, that is, they considered the speech behaviour of men as stronger, more prestigious, and more desirable (Lakoff, 1975). The female style, seen as a sign of subordination and self- denial, was to be rejected. Most of the sociolinguistic studies do not apply an explicit notion of “gender.” Quite the contrary, they usually correlate phonological units (linguistic variables) with the sex of the participants; in other words, the linguistic behaviour of men and women is investigated without trying to incorporate any theoretical implications of modern gender theories Recent studies have shown that men and women process language in different ways: in the left hemisphere of the brain in men, and in both hemispheres in women. This does not seem to be the main reason behind the dissimilarity in language processing between men and women though: social and educational factors together with power, play a much more important role. Analysis of these differences suggests that typical lexical and grammatical choices, which are characteristic of men and women, lead to the formation of genderlects: men’s and women’s talk. A gender differentiation is noticeable in a number of Asian languages (Thai and Japanese among others) where words change according to the sex of the speaker. B.“register” as a variable in sociolinguistics The term register refers to specific lexical and grammatical choices as made by speakers depending on the situational context, the participants and the function of the language in the discourse. Register can be conceived from two different perspectives: When it refers to the TYPE of language used by a group of professionals, which are not so used in other settings. It is Jargon who employ certain linguistic features. to be associated with WORD CHOICE rather than syntactic order. When it refers to the SOCIAL GENRE, a sociolect, that depends on LEXICAL CHOICE and SYNTACTIC ORDERING and could be exemplified in the language of newspapers, academic prose or legal language. Registers are typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, mode, and tenor. The field describes activities and processes that are happening at the time of speech. Mode determines the role and function of language in a particular situation. Tenor describes the people that take part in an event as well as their relationships and statuses. All three variables (field, mode, tenor) taken together enable people to characterize the situational context specifically, and, thus, to recreate part of the language that is being used. C.“ “style” as a variable in sociolinguistics Style or stylistic variation is the degree of formality in speech or writing. Usually there is a specific choice on the part of the speaker as s/he will probably choose formal language for solemn events, less formal language for everyday situations and really informal or casual language for trivial conversations or relaxed matters. As a result, the speaker can decide on a level of formality (or casualness) depending on a number of factors such as: particular occasion, social differences, interlocutor’s age, type of discourse chosen (spoken or written). 3. Analyse some evidence that marks language as sexist. It should be pointed out that language should not be considered as inherently sexist, but it is used in a sexist way or even that it reflects a sexist world. Let´s see some examples:
The default case is always male, as in the linguist must gather data and be careful that he organises it properly. The labels sometimes used for women. Animal comparisons are common in metaphoric usage, but many of these have a negative connotation when used for women, e.g. stupid cow, silly duck, awful bitch. Expressions which stress women as objects of sexual desire, e.g. chick or peach. Even the fairly innocuous honey has its origin in the association of women with sweetness. The converse of this situation is the use of special vocabulary to describe women who, because of age, are not regarded as sexually desirable, consider such expressions as old hag. Speech communities have reacted in various ways, for example by using different word to indicate occupations: police officer for policeman; air hostess by flight attendant. 2º) Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 words each including some examples.
1. Language spread involves an attempt to increase the number of speakers of a particular
language and the domains, normally at the expense of another language or languages. It often responds to political considerations in multilingual countries. Language spread is necessarily connected to language standardization.
- Auxiliary language: a language (such as Esperanto or pidgin English) used for communication between persons that do not understand each other's native language. There are other instances of artificial auxiliary languages, with specialized jargon such as Business English, Maritime English or Air-traffic Control English.
- Heritage language bilingual education (x4): A bilingual education model which allows minority language children to receive instruction in their native, home or heritage language. Its goals are to develop full bilingualism and to preserve the ethnic language and culture of a community. Content is taught through the minority language which is the students’ home language and also the majority language.
- Language conflict (x1): In multilingual situations there is usually some type of conflict regarding the language due to ideological, political or economic reasons. Decisions regarding the selection of an official language or the choice of language for formal education, among others, are typical generators of problems. Many current language conflicts arise from different social statuses and the government’s preferential treatment of the dominant language.
- Corpus planning : Actions undertaken in order to partially modify the nature or characteristics of a language in some way, such as decisions regarding what pronunciation to adopt from those available; decisions regarding what syntactic or morphological patterns to use, or even what regional forms adopt as the standard. It is closely related to status planning which refers to whether the status of a language could or should be raised or lowered.
- Endangered language: A language that is at risk because the number of speakers has decreased. This can be the result of many factors, but it can normally be attributed to bad language planning. The lack of importance of a language for business can cause its death. Unless current trends are reversed, these endangered languages will become extinct within the next century. Many other languages are no longer being learned by new generations of children or by new adult speakers; these languages will become extinct when their last speaker dies. When a community loses its language, it often loses a great deal of its cultural identity at the same time. 3) Comment, from a sociolinguistic point of view, on the following excerpt. You are expected to relate this extract to the contents of the subject in no more than 300 words. For sociolinguists, engaging in realist ethnography means examining the use of locally meaningful linguistic forms within a community of speakers and then detailing how that use is inextricably linked to larger linguistic patterns and distributions in a given social context. Consider, for example, Eckert’s (1996) analysis of the emergence of linguistic style among a group of pre-teen girls in a San Francisco Bay area middle school. Eckert describes how the girls adopt certain linguistic and other stylistic devices as a way of projecting more mature, teenager like personae. Specifically, Eckert discusses the girls’ pronunciations of the low front vowel /æ/, which they produce as consistently backed and lengthened when occurring before a nasal (as in ban). This practice is significant because it parallels what adult Chicano speakers in Northem California are doing with this vowel, where they avoid the majority Anglo pattern of raising /æ/,before nasals and instead produce a distinctive backed and lengthened version. What is interesting about what the girls that Eckert discusses are doing is that they are not using backed /æ/ as a way to perform Chicana identity (as outside observers might assume). Instead, Eckert argues convincingly that the girls are in effect borrowing the salient Chicano English /æ/ pattern and recontextualizing its meaning as a way of projecting social and sexual maturity. In other words, /æ/ is a salient social marker of Chicano identity in the broader social context of California. These girls, however, are reinterpreting /æ/ in their local practice and deploying it as a symbol of “tough” and “mature” femininity. The point is that the girls would not be able to use /æ/ to do this kind of very local identity work if the variable did not already carry the wider indexical connotations that it does. And,
for government work alongside Hindi. States and union territories can have a different official language of their own other than Hindi or English. In fact, the constitution recognises in particular 22 "scheduled languages". c.- Analyse the use of pidgins and creoles in education. It is not usual to find a pidgin or a creole taught at school due to main reasons: 1.- Pidgins and creoles are in continuous evolution or involution (creolization vs. Decreolization), and it is difficult to establish a norm. 2.- In most societies pidgins and creoles are considered sub – varieties of the standard language; they are associated with the lower classes and lacks prestige. Children who speak a pidgin or a creole at home and are taught the standard variety at school, systematically suffer some degree of performance failure. In order to integrate pidgins and creoles and their speakers in the educational system, a number of countries have introduced three different types of special programmes: instrumental, accommodation and awareness. 2º) Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 words each including some examples.
- Simultaneous bilingualism: Acquisition of two languages from the early stages of childhood, usually within the family and before the age of three ; the children go from no language to speak two languages. If both languages develop equally, the result is a balanced bilingualism, and the person has the proficiency of a native speaker in both languages. It is also referred to as “infant bilingualism” or “bilingual first language acquisition”. It could be the case of a child in a family with one or some member native speakers of a certain language, and the rest of the family, speakers of the other.
- Lingua franca: A language which is commonly used by speakers who have different mother tongues and need a common language to communicate among them. In ancient times, Greek or Latin or Arabic have been some examples of lingua franca. Nowadays English is spoken throughout the world, by some as a mother tongue, and by the rest as second language or foreign language which serves as a lingua franca for international and international communication.
- Language attrition: Gradual language loss in an individual. It can also refer to the loss of a mother tongue that has been acquired and due to the lack of use, it is gradually forgotten. It happens frequently among second and third generation of immigrants. In second language learning, it can refer to the loss of a language that was learnt through formal instruction but gradually forgotten after a period of disuse.
- Language revival is used to restore/ to revitalize a language with a small number of speakers (i.e., Irish and Welsh), or even a completely dead language (i.e., Hebrew and Cornish), and turn it into a normal means of communication. It is estimated that from 50 % to 90 % of the world’s 6700 thousand languages will no longer be spoken by the end of this century. The spread of a dominant language after a language shift can lead to the loss of a minority language.
- Heritage language bilingual education: Bilingual education model which allows minority language children to receive instruction in their native, home or heritage language. Its goals are to develop full bilingualism as well as to preserve the ethnic language and culture of a community. Contents are taught through the minority language and the majority language. It aims at additive bilingualism and biliteracy. Example: New Zealand and the Maori language.
- Corpus planning: Actions undertaken to partially modify the nature or characteristics of a language in some way, such as decisions regarding what pronunciation to adopt from those available; decisions regarding what syntactic or morphological patterns to use, or even what regional forms adopt as the standard. It is closely related to status planning which refers to whether the status of a language could or should be raised or lowered. 3) Comment, from a sociolinguistic point of view, on the following excerpt. You are expected to relate this extract to the contents of the subject in no more than 300 words.
“The Effectiveness of Bilingual Education”, Colin Baker
As a consequence of globalisation, nowadays there is a growing number of (mostly Western ) countries which have designed language policies (language decisions made for political and economic reasons) tending to make their people bilingual individuals; that is: speakers who can communicate in more than one language. To achieve this goal, it is needed a language planning to institutionalise these decisions in concrete actions. But, languages reflect relationship between individuals and social groups, and this is a field full of ideology. So, ideological trends lie behind language policies, as what is a stake is the consideration of certain languages and the groups that speak them and their status in the society; Covarrubias identify four types of ideology behind language planning: linguistic assimilation, linguistic pluralism, vernacularisation or internationalism. These plans and policies regard education as the necessary institution to make bilingual individuals, but there is so wide a range of practices that some research is needed to try to determine which is the best way to get to it. This research is guided by an aim; so that, it is not neutral. Research can also be done in relation to prove if a certain bilingual programme is doing it well or not, and depending on the results, a great amount of money will go to it or not; so, it is not neutral. Besides, in any research done with human beings’ behaviour we face what Lavob called “the Observer’s paradox”: any subject who knows that is being observed, tend to modify his/her behaviour and adapt to the observer’s expectatives. So that, Colin Baker takes for sure that behind research on bilingual education there is a good deal of ideology , but the existence of bias in it does not invalidate the conclusions we can draw from it ; practice will do it.
6. 2017 Reserva septiembre 1º) Choose two of the following issues, explain them in your own words and provide examples. Write around 100 words for each of the two questions. a) Explain the difference between diglossia and bilingualism: A diglossic situation entails the co-existence of two or more codes (dialects, registers or styles) which are used in the same setting but under different circumstances. One being considered more prestigious and cultivated (high variety) than the other one (low variety, spoken by lower urban classes). There is specialization of functions for H and L varieties, which determines the appropriateness of either variety for a set of situations with few occasions for overlapping. On the other hand, when we refer to bilingualism we outline both a social phenomenon (bilingual speech communities where there are two official languages (Belgium) and an individual phenomenon (bilingual individuals, people who speak two languages. b) European language planning policy: The aim of European language planning policy is to unify millions of speakers through a common ground for interaction without losing either cultural or linguistic identity. This is not an easy task, due to the wide-range of countries (28), cultures, official languages (24) and political systems involved. Policy makers have established some guidelines to meet this goal by protecting minority and Regional Languages but also through the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages , that provides a practical tool for establishing certain standards at successive stages of learning and evaluating language knowledge (communication competences; knowledge and skills and situations and domains of communication).
c) “register” as a variable in sociolinguistics
The term register refers to specific lexical and grammatical choices as made by speakers depending on the situational context, the participants and the function of the language in the discourse.
Policy makers in multilingual nations need to make certain important decisions regarding the status of the languages in contact in a given territory: first, arises the selection of an official or national language, which can be problematic in the case of developing nations composed of different ethnic groups; second, decisions need to be made regarding instruction in schools, which will definitely determine not only the general attitude towards a language but also the point of view of coming generations; and, third, on some occasions there is also a need to decide on the standardization procedures such as the choice of an alphabet or a given variety, especially in the case of languages having scripts different to the ones of currently internationalized languages. The implementation of multilingual policies in multilingual state can have three possible outcomes that determine the degree of success or failure of a specific language policy:
a) Language maintenance as a result of a course of action, the survival of a specific language,
endangered or not, may be determined by political decisions. E.g.: In Wales where Welsh is a native language in particular areas but in others it is artificially maintained by compulsory teaching in schools.
b) Bilingualism seems to be one of the most desirable outcomes in a prolonged contact of language
groups as it guarantees the survival of the languages and seems to be the best way for multicultural and/ or multi-ethnic societies to reach a common ground on linguistic and socio-political fields. Both languages manage to survive organically with a large number of people speaking and using both.
c) Language shift seems to be another possible development and it is perhaps a less desirable outcome
as it can lead to language loss. However, it is necessary to understand that language development does not depend solely on language policy decision-making but also on sociocultural forces. More often than not, the spread of a language in terms of numbers of speakers takes place at the expense of another or other languages. Paulson (1994: 9) supports this point by stating that minority ethnic groups within a modern nation-state usually shift to the language spoken by the pre-eminent group, assuming that adequate incentive has been provided.
**7. 2016 – Enero A
- Choose two of the following issues, explain them in your own words and provide examples. Write** around 100 words for each of the two questions. 1. Explain the factors that can affect language planning. Language planning refers to various ways of influencing a language either to raise its status or to modify its system and structure. Language planning within a speech community must take into consideration the following factors: a. SOCIODEMOGRAPHIC : the number of languages spoken, and the number of speakers may favour the use of one language or the other. b. LINGUISTIC: the degree of development of one language as well as the existence of a literary tradition may be taken into account when deciding which language/s should be preserved/promoted. c. SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL: people’s attitude towards one language or the other and their acceptance in a speech community. Many languages in developing African Countries are closely identified with a single ethnic group. Other ethnic groups may develop negative attitudes towards such one language if it were to become the national language. d. POLITICAL: can influence the adoption of a specific alphabet (Latin in Turkey, or Cyrillic in middle-central Asia). e. RELIGIOUS: a language might be chosen as the official one because it is the language of the most widespread religion within the speech community. For example, in India, when Hindi was chosen as the national language speakers of other languages protested because Hindi is associated with the Hindu religion. And also, there have been wars in Sudan (an ex British colony,) due to the imposition of Arabic language on the people. 2. Explain “register” as a variable in sociolinguistics. The term register refers to specific lexical and grammatical choices as made by speakers depending on the situational context, the participants and the function of the language in the discourse. Register can be conceived from two different perspectives: - When it refers to the TYPE of language used by a group of professionals, which are not so used in other settings. It is Jargon who employ certain linguistic features. to be associated with WORD
CHOICE rather than syntactic order.
- When it refers to the SOCIAL GENRE, a sociolect, that depends on LEXICAL CHOICE and SYNTACTIC ORDERING and could be exemplified in the language of newspapers, academic prose or legal language. Registers are typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, mode, and tenor. The field describes activities and processes that are happening at the time of speech. Mode determines the role and function of language in a particular situation. Tenor describes the people that take part in an event as well as their relationships and statuses. All three variables (field, mode, tenor) taken together enable people to characterize the situational context specifically, and, thus, to recreate part of the language that is being used. 3. Explain the Relationship between: Standard English and world Englishes. Standard English (RP, Received Pronunciation) is the variety of English used by the media and taught in schools. In England it is considered to be the variety spoken in the South-East of the country, in the Thames estuary area. The dispersal of the English occurred in two phases called First and Second Diaspora. Kachru divides the world Englishes in three concentric circles: 1.- Inner Circle: where English is the native language (UK,US,Australia, New Zealand) 2.- Outer Circle: where English is the second language: Zambia, Pakistan, India, Nigeria) 3.- Expanding circle: where English is a foreign language. English is not the language of law, education, media or government, but it is considered a useful language to learn and know, and parents encourage children to learn it. 2)Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 words each including some examples.
- Content-based ESL: A teaching/learning approach in which the contents are taught in a foreign language with the aim of developing the language skills of the learners in that foreign language at the same time as they are learning the contents required in the curriculum , as maths, history, biology, etc. It aims to develop the students’ language and academic skills and its main advantage is the provision of meaningful contexts for communication in the classroom.
- Cultural awareness: The understanding and respect for differences between people from different countries or different cultural or linguistic backgrounds. It is supposed to break down national, ethnic and language stereotypes and widen the understanding of different kinds of societies, this is increasingly important as the world becomes more of “a global village”. Such awareness may best be achieved through simultaneous language learning. It is an advantage of the learning of second or third languages. 3. Ethnography of speaking: This branch of sociolinguistics studies the norms and rules for using language in social situations in different cultures. It deals with aspects like the different types of language to be used under different circumstances; how to make requests, grant permission or ask a favour; the degree of indirectness, etc. Researchers hope to provide insight into and improve cross-cultural communication. Sociolinguist believes that the study of language must move from the theoretical linguistics into the real communication in community. 4. Lingua franca: A language which is commonly used by speakers who have different mother tongues and need a common language to communicate among them. In ancient times, Greek or Latin or Arabic have been some examples of lingua franca. Nowadays English is spoken throughout the world, by some as a mother tongue, and by the rest as second language or foreign language which serves as a lingua franca for international and international communication. 5. Lexifier: This term refers to the language from which most of the vocabulary has been taken to form a pidgin or creole (superstrate). Common lexifiers are English, French, Spanish and Portuguese due to their colonial exploits. The contact between these European languages and native languages led to the development of pidgins and creoles. E.g.: Jamaican Creole and Hawaiian Creole are based on English.
- Simultaneous bilingualism: Acquisition of two languages from the early stages of childhood, usually within the family and before the age of three ; the children go from no language to speak two languages. If both languages develop equally, the result is a balanced bilingualism, and the person has the proficiency of a native speaker in both languages. It is also referred to as “infant bilingualism” or “bilingual first language acquisition”. It could be the case of a child in a family with one or some member native speakers of a certain language, and the rest of the family, speakers of the other.
A Creole is a fully-functional language which includes elements of its parent languages. A Creole is a native language to its speakers (although they may also speak a mother language in addition). An example of creole is Jamaican Patwa. As a result of not having an official status, a name for the Creole language used mainly in Jamaica has not been fixed to the present day and some terms like Jamaican, Jamaican Creole, Jamaican Patwa or Patois are all used. Patois developed in the 17th^ century, when slaves from West and Central Africa were exposed to, learned and nativized the vernacular and dialectal forms of English spoken by the slaveholders: Over 90% of the 2,5,millions of populations of Jamaica in the late 199 0´s are descendants of slaves brought from Africa. Nowadays, this language has not got much social and socioeconomic status in Jamaica and it largely represents the speech of the peasants and laborers with little education It is not considerable as “acceptable” language for formal purposes and speakers are often considered as socially and linguistically inferior. Expand on the aspects that need to be taken into account when carrying out sociolinguistic research. There are various procedures of collecting data: tests, questionnaires, interviews, classroom observations, diaries, journals, etc. Quite often, quantitative designs use tests and closed-ended questionnaires in order to gather, analyse and interpret the data. Trying to be objective and empiric. We recollect data and then we get our conclusions. Appropriately developed questionnaires have many advantages, they are one of the efficient means of collecting data on a large-scale basis and can be sent simultaneously to a great number of people. But questionnaires have some disadvantages which should be kept in mind. Sometimes the answers are inaccurate and questionable; there is usually low return rate when sent by post or email. Ambiguity and unclearness of some questions might lead to inaccurate and unrelated responses. The second main type of data to be collected in the mixed method design is the interview. It can provide in- depth information and allow good interpretative validity. But in-person interviews are expensive and time- consuming. The interview can be recorded in three ways. The first method is to tape record the interview. The second way is to take notes (to write the important points during the interview process). The final method is to attempt to write down every detail of the interview immediately after the interview. This method of recording data is not recommended because it is difficult and rather an incorrect and inaccurate way of collecting information. By using these instruments, the researchers can obtain both quantitative and qualitative data. In addition, it was argued that any researcher needs to enhance the validity and reliability of the data. Explain the relationship between bilingualism and diglossia. A diglossic situation entails the co-existence of two or more codes (dialects, registers or styles) which are used in the same setting but under different circumstances. One being considered more prestigious and cultivated (high variety) than the other one (low variety, spoken by lower urban classes). There is specialization of functions for H and L varieties, which determines the appropriateness of either variety for a set of situations with few occasions for overlapping. On the other hand, when we refer to bilingualism we outline both a social phenomenon (bilingual speech communities where there are two official languages (Belgium) and an individual phenomenon (bilingual individuals, people who speak two languages. 2) Define the following six terms taken from the glossary. Provide brief definitions of no more than 60 word each including some examples.
- Semilinguals: Bilingual speakers who display quantitative and/or qualitative deficiencies in the command of their languages in comparison with monolingual speakers. Traditionally, this term has had negative connotations since it is used to define someone who lacks competency/proficiency in either language. It is also used for people who have acquired several languages at different times but have not developed a level of proficiency.
- Language spread: It involves an attempt to increase the number of speakers of a particular language and the domains , normally at the expense of another language or languages. It often responds to political considerations in multilingual countries. Language spread is necessarily connected to language standardization.
- Language revitalization: Language planning efforts made in order to revive a language that because of social or economic reasons has decreased in number of speakers or which was
lost. A language shift can lead to the spread of a dominant language and the loss of the minority language. The reasons can vary but are often caused by a group’s search for cultural and/or ethnic identity.
- International schools : Private, selective and independent schools usually found in large cities which provide instruction in a majority language and other national or international languages depending on their location and goals. They offer a curriculum which is different from the national one, normally to prepare students for entry into European and North American universities. Students usually share a high social/economic status. The commitment is international education and bi- or multilingualism.
- Heritage language bilingual education: A bilingual education model which allows minority language children to receive instruction in their native, home or heritage language. Its goals are to develop full bilingualism and to preserve the ethnic language and culture of a community. Content is taught through the minority language which is the students’ home language and also the majority language.
- Simultaneous bilingualism: Acquisition of two languages from the early stages of childhood, usually within the family and before the age of three ; the children go from no language to speak two languages. If both languages develop equally, the result is a balanced bilingualism, and the person has the proficiency of a native speaker in both languages. It is also referred to as “infant bilingualism” or “bilingual first language acquisition”. It could be the case of a child in a family with one or some member native speakers of a certain language, and the rest of the family, speakers of the other. 3) Comment, from a sociolinguistic point of view, on the following excerpt. You are expected to relate this extract to the contents of the subject in no more than 300 words. In discussions of varieties of English it is usual to distinguish between countries where English is a native language, a foreign language, and a second language. EngIish-as-a-Foreign-Language nations are countries like Germany, Uruguay or China where English has no official status, and where it is not widely used within the country. In countries where English is a second language, most people do not have it as their mother tongue, but it does play an important role, particularly amongst educated elites, within the country itself, in politics, education, law, the media and business. It may well also have some official status. If such a country is multilingual, like India, English often plays an important role as an internal lingua franca. This means that many educated elite speakers, though they do not have English as their first language, may have it as their primary language — the one they use most.(Trudgill, 2002; 150) The most influential model of the spread of English is Braj Kachru's model of World Englishes. In this model the diffusion of English is captured in terms of three Concentric Circles of the language: The Inner Circle, the Outer Circle, and the Expanding Circle. The Inner Circle represents the traditional historical and sociolinguistic bases of English in regions where it is now used as a primary language: the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, anglophone Canada and South Africa, and some of the Caribbean territories. The Outer Circle of English was produced by the second diaspora of English, which spread the language through imperial expansion by Great Britain in Asia and Africa. In these regions, English is not the native tongue, but serves as a useful lingua franca between ethnic and language groups. Higher education, the legislature and judiciary, national commerce and so on may all be carried out predominantly in English. This circle includes India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, Tanzania, Kenya, non-Anglophone South Africa, the Philippines (colonized by the US) and others. Finally, the Expanding Circle encompasses countries where English plays no historical or governmental role, but where it is nevertheless widely used as a medium of international communication. This includes much of the rest of the world's population not categorized above, including territories such as China, Russia, Japan, non-Anglophone Europe (especially the Netherlands and Nordic countries), South Korea, Egypt and Indonesia. The use of English in the Outer and Expanding Circle societies continues its rapid spread, while at the same time new patterns of language contact and variety differentiation emerge. The different varieties range from English in the Inner circle societies to the Outer circle post-colonial societies of Asia and Africa. The World Englishes initiative, in recognizing and describing the New Englishes has been partly motivated by a consideration of the local linguistic factors and partly by a consideration of the wider cultural and political contexts of language acquisition and use. This, in turn, has involved the creative rewriting of discourses towards recognition of pluralism and multiple possibilities for scholarship. The notion of varieties in this context is similarly dynamic, as new contexts, new realities, new discourses, and new varieties continue to emerge.
