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A Romanian Community in Ōsaka: A Case Study of Class Discrimination in Two Languages

Author(s): Adriana Tămăşan,Carmen Săpunaru Tămaș / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The idea for this research topic came to me after listening to a Romanian acquaintance speak first in Romanian, then in Japanese. Coming from a poor gypsy community from the south of Romania, A. had barely finished high school and her speech contained clear markers of her social background. Her Japanese, however, learned from her Buddhist priest husband and her mother-in-law, sounded cultured and elegant. Focused on field work conducted at a bar in Osaka, owned by a former Romanian hostess and tended by a Romanian man, as well as on numerous interviews, our paper will analyze the language choices made by other Romanian hostesses who tend to gather there when their regular hours are over. The concept of social class is less defined in Japan compared to other societies, but the lines and borders exist and it is our purpose to try to define them.

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A SELYEMÚT NYELVEI

Author(s): János Harmatta / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2003

The Seleucid rulers and the Graeco-Bactrian kings already realized the great possibilities of the commercial relations between China and Central Asia on the one hand, and between Central Asia and Europe on the other hand. Later, the Chinese Han Empire extended its supremacy over the Tarim Basin and opened the “Silk Routes”, both the northern and the southern ones, foe the caravan trade. The necessity of language communication in long-distance trade favoured the use and spread of some languages both along the continental “Silk Routes” and the maritime one. Thus became at first the Sogdian and the Gāndhār Prakrit, later the Khwarezmian, the Persian and the Syrian and after the Mongolian conquest the Cumanian, the Uyghur the Armenian and the Russian languages of the “Silk Route”.

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A SEMANTIC-COGNITIVE ANALYSIS OF THE CONCEPT OF UKRAINE IN THE SPEECHES OF B. OBAMA (2014)

Author(s): Anatoliy Khudoliy / Language(s): English / Issue: 16/2016

This article presents a semantic-cognitive analysis of the concept of Ukraine, verbally represented in the speeches of the American President, Barak Obama. The peculiarities of the President’s worldview are highlighted. The objective of the article is as follows. Firstly, it aims to demonstrate that the concept of Ukraine is verbally represented in the speeches of Obama. This means that Ukraine as a country, moving towards democracy despite the war with Russia, is an object of focus for American leaders. Secondly, the article suggests that there is a connection between the concept described, its pragmatic orientation and its cognitive processes. Thirdly, it describes the semantic peculiarities of the concept of Ukraine in the political speeches of the American leader, which are due to the role Ukraine plays in the local and regional context. Our research is based on the content-analysis of political speeches delivered by American President. The functional, communicative and pragmatic orientation of the speeches is highlighted. In line with the approaches of cognitive scholars, the article concludes that the concept of Ukraine is a complex semantic-cognitive structure that consists of core, transition zone and periphery. During the research for this article, fifteen speeches made by Obama in 2014 were analysed. This research presupposes the application of content analysis. It is relevant in the analysis of international relations with respect to the notions used by President Obama in his speeches delivered during 2014 in the relations between: the USA – Ukraine, Ukraine – Russia, the USA – Russia, and Europe – Ukraine.

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A Semiotic Approach to Language Ideologies: Modelling the Changing Icelandic Languagescape

Author(s): Stephen Pax Leonard / Language(s): English / Issue: 2-4/2020

Attempts have been made to examine how speakers frame linguistic varieties by employing social semiotic models. Using ethnographic data collected over many years, this article applies such a model to Iceland, once described as the ‘e-coli of linguistics’ – its size, historical isolation and relative linguistic homogeneity create conditions akin to a sociolinguistic laboratory. This semiotic model of language ideologies problematizes the prevailing discourse of linguistic purism at a time of sociolinguistic upheaval. The analysis shows how an essentializing scheme at the heart of Icelandic language policy ensured that linguistic “anomalies” such as “dative disease” and “genitive phobia” indexed essential differences. “Impure” language was indicative of un-Icelandicness. Once monolingual (indeed monodialectal), the Icelandic speech community is increasingly characterized by innovative linguistic transgressions which thus far have not been instrumentalized by language policy makers. It is shown how a semiotic model can help us analyse the function of language ideologies more generally.

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A Socio-Cultural Aspect of Anti-language

Author(s): Monika Piechota / Language(s): English / Issue: 8/2019

The article has been devoted to the phenomenon of anti-language and the focal point of the paper refers to the analysis of socio-cultural processes involved in the formation and reception of anti-language. The analysis has been aimed at defining the circumstances of the occurrence of anti-language as well as determining its role and functions at both individual and collective levels. My general approach to the study of anti-language outlines the social functions which govern the emergence of anti-languages with the explicit reference to language, context and text. Kenneth Burke (1966) defines man as a symbol-using animal. In his “Definition of Man”, Burke draws attention to the concept of negativity when he argues that negatives do not occur in nature and they are solely a product of human symbol systems. According to Burke, “(...) language and the negative ‘invented’ man (...)” (Burke 1966: 9). The study has begun with the premise that anti-language permanently depicts an antagonistic attitude towards the official language, whereas the negative attitude towards anti-language translates directly into stigmatisation of its users. The negativity of the affix anti—in anti-language has been culturally and socially structured as antithetical to language. Nevertheless, language and anti-language do not necessarily forge a typical antithesis in a polar sense. Victor Turner (/1969/ 1975) employs the affix anti—for his term anti-structure and explains that the affix has been used strategically and does not imply radical negation. This paper seeks to revise the one-dimensional attitude towards anti-language and fortify its social significance with a new quality. The basis for the study of anti-language has been its multi-functionality and multifaceted character. A small corpus of anti-languages has been analysed in order to illustrate a complex and polysemic nature of this phenomenon.

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A sociolinguistic investigation of Arabic ‘professional reputation’

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A sociolinguistic investigation of Arabic ‘professional reputation’

Author(s): Ahmad Khalaf Sakarna / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2013

The current work attempts to investigate the vital role of linguistics in saving and defending ‘reputation’ as an important social and cultural phenomenon that is widely known in Jordan as al-isim ‘the name’ or al-sum‘a ‘the reputation’. A good example that illustrates the common application of this social phenomenon in the Arabic culture is an ordinary job known as samsara, i.e., the act of marketing a property, which, to the best of my knowledge, has not been studied in the linguistic literature. The study attempts to shed lights on the different linguistic features associated with the struggle to save ‘reputation’ within the field of samsara. It argues that it is a big challenge for alsimsār, ‘the dealer’, to resist losing ‘reputation’, as maintaining it requires mastering the skill of using certain linguistic strategies and structures, which I call linguistic power, to maintain al-isim or al-sum‘a as an important social and cultural value. It is an interesting case where three different fields (business, linguistics, and sociology) interact in which business appeals to using linguistic and social tools to survive socially and professionally.

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A Sociolinguistic View on the Romanian Young Adults' Language

Author(s): Bettina Ene / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2020

The present study explores the linguistic changes that have ocurred in contemporary Romanian in the last few years and illustrates the major impact of Anglicisms and Americanisms in the Romanian young adults’ everyday speech. We wish to offer a brief insight into the actual social contexts in which these language patterns occur and discuss briefly the theoretical framework that supports our investigation. The aim of the present study was to explore in more detail the discourse patterns frequently used by our target group, namely a homogeneous group of young adults (predominantly students, teenagers or young employees), and gather tangible data that supports our initially stated hypothesis.

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A Structural Analysis of Newspaper Articles

Author(s): Madalina Cerban / Language(s): English / Issue: 1-2/2015

This article analyses the structure of newspaper articles as text organization, taking into account the three elements of structure which represent the minimal unit of interaction in written texts. The term ‘exchange’ is used as referring to its structure that is made up of three parts: initiation, response and follow-up. The second part of the article focuses on text analysis, explaining that the triad consists of three turns or elements, namely, Lead, Follow, and Valuate, serving distinctive functions of initiation, follow-up, and evaluation. The last part of the article refers to triad combinations that form the text itself.

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A study of appropriacy of cultural conceptualizations of taboo topics in EFL classes

Author(s): Elaheh Rahimi / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2019

The cultural practices related to local uses of certain topics are a socially communicative minefield for English learners. The purposes of this study were twofold. First, the cultural linguistics framework was employed to investigate the appropriateness of cultural conceptualizations (CCs) of taboo topics in Iranian EFL classes. A revealing result was that students do not feel embarrassed or uneasy about using CCs of taboo topics. Second, the study attempted to explore teachers’ and students’ perceptions about the effects of employing taboo topics in EFL classes by means of interviews. The results indicate that teachers need to be cognizant of the forbidden nature of these topics and approach them critically via CCs to avoid insulting students. They also provide a basis for pedagogical implications for instructors in Iran teaching English as a foreign language.

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A Study of Assyrians’ Language Use in Istanbul

Author(s): Arda Arikan,Ozan Varli,Eyüp Yaşar Kürüm / Language(s): English / Issue: 10/2017

Being one of the oldest Christian communities in the Middle East, Assyrians have continued to live in various parts of Turkey for thousands of years. Today, the estimates related to the number of Assyrians living in Turkey vary between 4,000–25,000 while they cannot benefit from the rights put forward by the Lausanne Treaty among which schooling is the most important. Assyrian community can be said to be deteriorating in number. This decline in the number of Assyrians living in Turkey raises the question of whether they could maintain their ethnic identity while maintaining their language (Syriac). No studies so far have been carried out to find out the linguistic practices of Assyrian community living in Turkey, as well as their attitudes toward the languages they use. This study aims at shedding light on the present situation of Syriac used among the Assyrian community living in Turkey. The participants are limited to those living in Istanbul due to practical reasons. In this study, language attitudes and language use practices of Assyrian community living in Istanbul are found out through a language attitudes questionnaire. It is hoped that the results of the study will provide the current situation of the Syriac language in terms of its ethnolinguistic vitality as spoken among the community. It is also hoped that the results of the study will provide useful data for those who would like to help protect the ethnolinguistic identities of Assyrian minority in Turkey, as well as all those dispersed around the world, which seems to have become increasingly important for such a country at the gates of the European Union as Turkey.

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A Study of Gender-Conditioned Use of Inflectional and Periphrastic Forms in English Adjective Comparison

Author(s): Jelena Grofulović,Vladimir Ž. Jovanović / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2016

First introduced to the study of language by Robin Lakoff in her 1975 book Language and Woman's Place, gender has gained a status of a significant variable when it comes to language realization (Frank, 1978). As such, gender is an object of many sociolinguistic studies (Jespersen, 1922; Kramer, 1974; Edelsky, 1976; Thorne et al, 1983; Crawford, 1995) and is assumed not only to play a role in the pragmatics of language usage, but also to influence the frequency and nature of different lexical and structural realizations, resulting in what Kramer termed “a genderlect” (Kramer, 1974). The aim of this paper is to present the results of a case-study of periphrastic and inflectional instances of the grammatical category of comparison in English, attempting at answering the question whether gender causes a preference for periphrasis in language usage, which, in the broadest sense, presents a multi-unit alternative to a single-unit meaning, be the meaning lexical or grammatical, and the unit a word or a bound morpheme. We analyzed a sex-wise and quantity-wise symmetrical corpus, comprised of different registers and genres – fiction, scientific non-fiction, and on-line magazine articles, encompassing a million words approximately per sex, and looked for the frequency of periphrastic instances of the two categories. Our assumption is that gender on its own, with all other social and textual variables excluded (discourse, register, author’s age and social groups, personal language background) is not a sufficient factor to unambiguously and conspicuously determine an author’s/speaker’s preference for the periphrastic form of the studied grammatical values.

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A szlovák nyelv és a szlovák–magyar kétnyelvűség, A beszélt szlovák nyelv szociolingvisztikai vizsgálata a Nagykürtösi (Veľký Krtíš) járásban

Author(s): Ladislav György / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2019

The contribution takes a comparative stance; it provides general characterization of the Slovak-Hungarian bilingualism in the ethnically mixed territory of Slovakia. Within the studied diglossia and bilingual processes, the problems of describing the language users (monolingual and bilingual speakers), their [speakers’] classification according to particular types of bilingualism, and the categorization into the specific groups of bilingual families etc. are specified. The work deals with the systemic and structural analysis of the monolingual and bilingual speakers’ spoken communication and explains the question of diglossia and bilingual communication in detail from the point of view of the description of various transference phenomena. It also offers opinions including general characteristic of the spoken Slovak in district Veľký Krtíš.

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A szlovákiai magyar középiskolai anyanyelvtankönyvek állapotáról

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A szlovákiai magyar középiskolai anyanyelvtankönyvek állapotáról

Author(s): Veronika Jakab / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2019

The subject of this study are the mother tongue textbooks of secondary grammar schools and vocational schools with Hungarian as the language of instruction, in particular the study-aid for the second grade. In order to map the pedagogues´ opinion regarding the content, structure and methodological solutions of the examined textbooks, I conducted a survey in January 2019, and this study is intended to present the collected data.

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A token-based investigation of verbal plurality in Lithuanian dialects

Author(s): Kirill Kozhanov,Björn Wiemer / Language(s): English / Issue: 72/2019

This paper examines the use of the verbal suffixes -(d)inė- and dav in Lithuanian dialects. Both suffixes express pluractionality, although of different types, and their distribution in Lithuanian dialects differs as well. Using corpus data, we find that in South Aukštaitian dav is rarer and -(d)inė is more frequent than in East Aukštaitian; in Lithuanian dialects of Belarus -dav- is almost absent. We argue against the assumption that -(d)inėforms have extended into the domain of the past habitual at the expense of dav forms; a slightly higher token frequency of -(d)inė in South Aukštaitian seems to apply irrespective of any particular tense. We also argue that only token-based analyses can substantiate claims concerning areal distribution of certain grammatical forms and constructions.

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A typology of contact phenomena in medieval personal names (A historical onomastic survey based on medieval
documents from Hungary)

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A typology of contact phenomena in medieval personal names (A historical onomastic survey based on medieval documents from Hungary)

Author(s): Mariann Slíz / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2020

Medieval Hungary was a multicultural country: beside the Hungarian majority it also had Turkic, German, Slavic, Walloon, Italian, etc. inhabitants. Although the majority of medieval documents were written in Latin, there are a number of charters written in other languages, such as German. This cultural and linguistic diversity provides an opportunity to investigate contact phenomena among different languages based on personal name phrases. The paper outlines the methodological adaptability and the limits of using given names, bynames or family names and name phrases in the investigation of contact phenomena. It introduces language and discourse contact phenomena on the level of spelling and orthography and the morphology and syntax of name phrases, based upon examples from charters written in Latin and German.

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A vajdasági magyar ötödik és nyolcadik osztályos tanulók pozitív nyelvjárási attitűdje

Author(s): Eleonóra Kovács Rácz / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 3/2015

The paper summarizes the results of a study carried out among 300 (fifth and eighth grade) Hungarian elementary school students studying in their native language in eight towns in Vojvodina. The results show that the respondents consider their own dialect appealing, they like it, they are used to it, and in their towns they gladly and often speak it in informal situations. In addition to all this, a dialect is also an expression of local awareness of identity.

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A warum You nicht ballare?! Makaronizam, jezični mimetizam i ludizam u hrvatskoj popularnoj glazbi

Author(s): Ivo Žanić / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 1-2/2015

Lyrics in popular music are an important site of language contacts, of hybridization and of symbolic and ludic use of linguistic material. They are a source and a vehicle of linguistic innovations. However, the study of lyrics mostly focuses on their relation with the global expansion of English, although various historically existing language practices in the receiving societies can shed additional light to the topic: in the case of Croatia, this would concern the contact points with Italian and German. The paper analyses examples from various music genres, and shows analogies with early modern and post-modern macaronic poetry and the linguistic witticism of popular and élite cultures, including the use of phonetic analogies and other selected features to create linguistic metonymy. On that basis, the paper argues that popular music should be both synchronically and diachronically integrated into culture, and proposes a typology of linguistic interpolations and interferences.

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Academic event report

25th annual conference of Australasian Humour Studies Network, 6–8 February 2019, Melbourne, Australia

Author(s): Kerry Mullan / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2019

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Academic event report

The Second National Conference on Historical Humour (II Ogólnopolska Konferencja “Komizm Historyczny”), 26-27 October 2017, Warsaw, Poland

Author(s): Anna Krasowska / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2018

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ACADEMIC WRITING AND NEW ENGLISHES: UNIFYING THE CONTRASTS

Author(s): Josef Schmied / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2011

This contribution tries to unify two recent research strands in English linguistics: studies in academic writing and in New Englishes. This is useful because, in line with the prominent theory of social constructionism, discourses in both strands can be seen as practices of communities that negotiate their cultural norms. The relationship between language, cognition, and (national) culture is illustrated on the basis of several models, research and its application in teaching is discussed. A proposed socio-cognitive model offers new insights into old concepts and stimulates exchange in academic discourses between researchers from different cultures.

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