bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The importance of comparable corpora in cross-cultural studies
Authors: Moreno Ana I.
Published: March 2014

This chapter shows the importance of comparing corpora that are really comparable. The chapter conceives of texts as exemplars of situated genres and acknowledges that the rhetorical and discourse configuration of texts vary as a function of the contextual factors in which texts are situated. It argues that corpora may be considered equivalent (or similar to the maximum degree) across cultures to the extent that the text exemplars are similar in all of the relevant contextual factors. It concludes that cross-cultural corpora designs should attempt to control statistically as many of the relevant contextual factors as possible. If not, it may not be possible to say anything reliable about the possible effect of the language/culture factor on texts. Instead, possible differences found may be due to uncontrolled contextual variables.
A genre-based study of research grant proposals in China
Authors: Feng Haiying
Published: March 2014

Despite an increasing interest in the study and analysis of research grant proposals (e.g., Connor 1998, 2000; Connor & Mauranen 1999; Connor & Wagner 1999; Feng & Shi 2004), this newly emerged genre has so far not been addressed in the Chinese context. This chapter presents results of a genre analysis of nine successfully funded Chinese research grant proposals written by nine Chinese scholars. Proposals were analyzed in terms of the rhetorical moves and strategies. Interviews with the grant writers were also conducted. The study revealed some distinctive features of Chinese grant proposal writing that are attributable to various local contextualities, such as “face” and “networking” concerns, research and literacy traditions, sociopolitical structure and economic conditions.
"Long sentences and floating commas": Mexican students' rhetorical practices and the sociocultural context
Authors: LoCastro Virginia
Published: March 2014

This chapter reports on a study that takes a problem-drive approach to answer the question “What do Mexican Spanish university writers ‘do’ when they write in Spanish, their L1, and in English, their L2?” This ethnographic study examines learners’ writing practices in their educational environment. Data collection includes learner and participant observation accounts, classroom observations, and textbook analyses. In Part I, the sociocultural context of the Mexican university is described, followed by a functional discourse analysis of one representative example from a multilingual student’s essay. Part II discusses the educational setting, literacy training, and writing instruction from both teachers’ and learners’ perspectives. This chapter informs teachers and other language education professionals about multilingual writers in EFL contexts.
From Confucianism to Marxism: A century of theme treatment in Chinese writing instruction
Authors: You Xiaoye
Published: March 2014

Theme treatment is a long neglected issue in intercultural studies of school writing. Taking a historical approach, this chapter traces theme treatment in Chinese school essay writing during the 20th century. The study shows that Chinese school writing moved from neo-Confucian topics to Socialist issues for the most part of the century and that the themes always needed to be “correct,” or in alignment with the dominant Chinese ideology. Currently, Chinese students write on diversified themes reflecting a hybrid value system emerging in Chinese society. The study further reveals that theme treatment carried equal, if not more, weight to textual organization in that it often decided the selection of types of writing and dictated the layout of text structure.
Plagiarism in an intercultural rhetoric context: What we can learn about one from the other
Authors: Bloch Joel
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses how an examination of plagiarism in a cross-cultural context can reflect on some of the controversial issues in intercultural communication. It examines how rethinking our attitudes towards traditional views of how plagiarism should be viewed and how these views compare to attitudes held in other parts of the world can exemplify an alternative perspective on research in intercultural rhetoric. This alternative perspective responds to many, though not all, of the criticisms leveled against contrastive rhetoric. Pedagogical approaches based on this alternative perspective are suggested.
A conversation on contrastive rhetoric: Dwight Atkinson and Paul Kei Matsuda talk about issues, conceptualizations, and the future of contrastive rhetoric
Authors: Matsuda Paul Kei , Atkinson Dwight
Published: March 2014

This conversation took place on the evening of September 25, 2004, in an old house on an island in Maine. Because contrastive rhetoric (CR) may be at a crucial point in its history – and one which invites fundamental rethinking – we decided to match this exploratory moment with an equally exploratory genre: the academic conversation. Our intent was not to come to univocal agreement or to state a general theory; instead, we sought to develop our thoughts and feelings about CR through friendly but serious dialogue. It should be clear that both of us have complex feelings about CR. We thought that this was an opportune place from which to begin to examine its future possibilities and implications.
The occasioning of self-disclosure humor
Authors: Ervin-Tripp Susan M. , Lampert Martin
Published: March 2014

Humor can be an effective means for introducing or modulating a discussion on matters of personal importance. In this paper, we examine the circumstances under which humor appears in conversational self-disclosures with friends. In an exploratory sample of 94 cases of self-disclosing humor from natural peer conversations, we found humorous self-disclosures and self-disclosures accompanied by laughter to occur in the continuation of an ongoing topic within the contexts of humorous rounds, troubles talk, complex narration, and entertainments. We also found humorous self-disclosures to be involved in topic changes within conversation and as reactions to accidents and teasing. We provided extensive examples of each type of humorous self-disclosure and discuss these illustrations in light of prior research on gender differences. … so I walked crooked up on the stage. [other women laugh] UC Disclab WCON1
Multimodal and intertextual humor in the media reception situation
Authors: Gerhardt Cornelia
Published: March 2014

Based on natural data from media reception, the talk of television viewers watching football matches is analysed with regards to humor. Remarks on television are often greeted by (shared) laugher of the fans. However, laughter as such does not necessarily indicate humor. Instead, the celebrating fans also often laugh after goals. Principally, the fans appropriate the media text humorously either by multimodally referring to the pictures on the screen or by intertextually hinging their talk on the televised language. Formally, second person pronouns or sequences co-constructed with the sports announcers are used. Functionally, humor marks the activity as leisure. It helps the viewers negotiate world-views serving as contextualisation cue in the interpretation of the media text.
Failed humor in conversation
Authors: Priego-Valverde Béatrice
Published: March 2014

While humor in everyday conversation has been acknowledged widely as an area of linguistic research, failed humor has not received much linguistic attention. This paper describes unperceived humor and rejected humor, analyzing several examples from a conversational corpus using the double voicing approach according to Bakhtin. Unperceived humor can quickly lead to misunderstandings such as a joke being understood as a verbal attack. Rejected humor, on the other hand, is perceived but purposely ignored by one or several of the listeners, for instance in order to continue the discourse as planned. In both cases, the difference in mode of speech (bona fide communication versus non-serious communication) can be considered a major reason for the failure of humor.
Humor and interlanguage in a bilingual elementary school setting
Authors: Kersten Kristin
Published: March 2014

This article focuses on the relationship between humor and language acquisition in a bilingual immersion setting. Data stems from picture story narrations by 18 informants taking part in an English immersion program in Germany. The analysis concentrates on instances of laughter and smiling as they appear spontaneously during the child narrations. In an initial step, different categories of laughter are identified and subsequently analyzed with regard to their relation to humor and to (the second) language, respectively. A final step of analysis discusses the functions of these categories within the social interaction of interviewer and child. The results point to young language learners’ use of humor (among other functions) as a mechanism to cope with the linguistic inadequacies of their interlanguage.
Online, multimedia case studies for professional education
Authors: Russell David , Fisher David
Published: March 2014

As communication in both formal education and workplaces is more and more mediated by onlind content managements systems, it is possible to simulate online within professional education the systems of genres that characterize professional work. Our research group has been designing, teaching with, and researching online, multimedia, fictional case studies for professional education, which dynamically represent the genre systems and communicative practices of organizations. The theoretical underpinnings of the simulation and the pedagogy lie in a New Rhetoric or activity approach to genre. A qualitative analysis of students’ responses suggests that this approach may successfully address problem of the lack of transfer of genre knowledge from formal schooling to professional work.
Nation, book, medium
Authors: Burgess Miranda
Published: March 2014

This essay examines some ‘new media’ practices of the 1990s together with late twentieth-century critical commentaries on computer-mediated communication and electronic textuality. It compares both with discussions of changes in communications technologies and readerships from the turn of the nineteenth century. Based on observations about narrative form—especially the mutual metaphoricity of the nation and the book—in conjunction with the associated qualities of self-consciousness about sociability, historicity, and mediatedness that emerge from this study, I propose an understanding of genre formation as a characteristic, and under-recognized, response to the experience of media change and outline the possible contributions a more self-conscious theory of genre could make to existing theories of media, mediation, and media succession.
Critical genres
Authors: Domsch Sebastian
Published: March 2014

The genre of literary criticism has always strained under the antagonism of an inherently dialogical structure piercing its generic boundaries, and a strong monologizing tendency to gain more or less absolute critical authority. The generic markers of criticism create a distance both to their object and their addressee that tries to make answers/comments impossible. This is about to change drastically in the near future, as critical genres are migrating to the internet, and are now arguably evolving into new genres by processes of delimitation and iterative re-dialogisation. This article takes a close look at the generic changes that critical discourse experiences while being transformed by the possibilities of computer-mediated communication.
Questions for genre theory from the blogosphere
Authors: Miller Carolyn R. , Shepherd Dawn
Published: March 2014

The blog illustrates well the constant change that characterizes electronic media. With a rapidity equal to that of their initial adoption, blogs became not a single genre but a multiplicity. To explore the relationship between the centrifugal forces of change and the centripetal tendencies of recurrence and typification, we extend our earlier study of personal blogs with a contrasting study of the kairos, technological affordances, rhetorical features, and exigence for what we call public affairs blogs. At the same time, we explore the relationship between genre and medium, examining genre evolution in the context of changing technological affordances. We conclude that genre and medium must be distinguished and that the aesthetic satisfactions of genre help account for recurrence in an environment of change.
Variable-behavior Ps and the location of PATH in Old French
Authors: Burnett Heather , Tremblay Mireille
Published: March 2014

This paper investigates the interaction between lexical semantics and syntactic structure in the interpretation of prepositional phrases through a study of the lexical encoding of directionality in prepositions and particles in Old French (OF). OF had a series of locative and directional prepositions that could be used intransitively, where they were interpreted directionally or aspectually. We argue that the different interpretations available to these elements are a result of the syntactic configurations into which they are placed, not a systematic homophony in the lexicon. We first show that, for each element in the class under consideration, its interpretation can be predicted based on its transitivity properties and the type of verb with which it is paired. We then present our analysis of the OF prepositional system, and show how the lexical semantics of individual particles and general rules of composition conspire to create the semantic variation found in our data.
Adjectives and deleted nominals in Spanish
Authors: Eguren Luis
Published: March 2014

In this paper I argue against previous strictly formal accounts of adjectival modification in nominal expressions with ellipsis in Spanish, which make use of structural conditions, such as different syntactic positions for adjectives, X-bar constraints on the target of ellipsis and/or minimality effects within the DP, and propose instead that the restricted distribution of adjectives in Spanish elliptical DPs can be reduced to a contrastive focus condition on nominal ellipsis, whereby only adjectives that create Roothian sets of alternatives, giving rise to a partitive set-subset relation, can combine with an elided noun.
Autonomous typological prosodic evolution versus the Germanic superstrate in diachronic French phonology
Authors: Noske Roland G.
Published: March 2014

The traditional idea that in Early French, the Frankish superstrate had a major influence on the phonology is mistaken. Facts from Old Frankish itself show that this cannot have been the case. In addition, the phonetic concept on which the idea is based, i.e. the distinction between ‘expiratory’ and ‘melodic’ languages, is outdated and invalid. The facts for which the Frankish influence was invoked find a much more satisfactory explanation if one considers the evolution of the entire prosodic system of the language. The distinction between syllable and word languages, as proposed by Auer & Uhmann (1988), provides a fruitful framework for this.
The psycholinguistic reality of collocation  and semantic prosody (1)
Authors: Ellis Nick C. , Frey Eric , Jalkanen Isaac
Published: March 2014

Our research investigates the psycholinguistic reality in language users of the phenomena of collocation and semantic prosody shown by corpus linguistics to be pervasive in language texts. This report concerns the earliest stages of word recognition and lexical access. It uses a lexical decision task to assess whether these processes are sensitive to particular collocations and to the generalizations of semantic prosody/association. The results demonstrate that native speakers preferentially process frequent verb-argument and booster/maximizer-adjective collocations. But the same paradigm that so readily shows sensitivity to particular collocations fails to demonstrate generalization. While memory for particular lexical associations affords fluent lexical access, there are no top-down semantic generalizations upon this level of processing. Our subsequent research shows semantic access to be the earliest cognitive locus of semantic association.
Local textual functions of move in newspaper story patterns
Authors: Mahlberg Michaela
Published: March 2014

The article investigates the link between lexical and textual patterns in newspaper texts. Patterns in newspaper stories strikingly illustrate the relationship between meaning and form. The article presents an analysis of the core move follow* in a corpus of Guardian newspaper texts. The analysis looks at the distribution of move follow* across different sections of the newspaper, it describes the meanings that follow the move pattern, and it investigates the textual positions of the pattern in the newspaper articles. It is shown that the move pattern has a tendency to occur at the beginning of a paragraph and has a preference for the second paragraph in an article. The textual positions of the pattern are linked to the news values that characterise a story. By drawing on the concept of local textual functions and White’s (1997) approach to the structure of newspaper articles, the analysis illustrates how corpus linguistic and textlinguistic approaches can complement one another.
Columbia School and Saussure’s langue
Authors: Reid Wallis
Published: March 2014

This paper argues that William Diver’s signal-meaning pair is Saussure’s signe linguistique in all basic respects, and that Diver’s innovation of a grammatical system is the functional equivalent of Saussure’s langue. Thus Columbia School linguistics rests squarely on a Saussurean foundation. In the course of making this case, this paper proposes a resolution of the apparent contradiction between Saussure’s definition of the linguistic sign in terms of substance – the union of concept and acoustic image – and his dictum that “la langue is a form not a substance”.
Diver’s Theory
Authors: Huffman Alan
Published: March 2014

Diver’s “Theory” (1995) is the most comprehensive and, in fact, the final statement by the founder of the Columbia School of that school’s contribution to an understanding of the essential nature of language. The unifying idea that runs through this statement is Diver’s insistence that a theory of language consist of a set of conclusions drawn from a body of individual analytical successes, that it not be a collection of a priori categories and speculations. Diver’s anti-apriorism opens the way to understanding the workings of language in terms of innovative and language-specific categories, and it brings the normal practice of linguistics into line with that of other natural sciences.
Phonology as human behavior
Authors: Tobin Yishai
Published: March 2014

This paper summarizes the theory and methodology of Phonology as Human Behavior (PHB) (or Columbia School Phonology) and applies it to the inflectional morphology of English both synchronically and diachronically. The basic hypothesis is that inflectional morphology is both functional and frequent and should therefore be composed of phonemes that are unmarked or relatively easy to make. My second hypothesis is that this tendency for favoring unmarked phonemes in inflectional morphology should increase over time. I examine the phonological components of the inflectional morphology of Modern English and compare them with the phonological components of the inflectional morphology of Old and Middle English and then trace the parallel development of inflectional morphology in Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic to Old English.
Functional motivations for the sound patterns of English non-lexical Interjections
Authors: Joue Gina , Collier Nikolinka
Published: March 2014

Non-lexical interjections have been the focus of much research, but their apparent complexities, functional variations, and lack of content have led to different approaches to annotation and classification. This paper argues that they are discourse particles that function with strong cognitive linguistic bases and regularities in communication. They may have appeared as so complexly varied because they were assumed to be paralinguistic phenomena. We investigate our claims on two spontaneous speech corpora of English. In classifying these interjections into a taxonomy of discourse functions and using methods based on Phonology as Human Behavior, we find an interaction between the sound pattern of an interjection and its function in discourse, supporting our claim that non-lexical interjections are important linguistic phenomena.
Se without deixis
Authors: Gorup Radmila J.
Published: March 2014

Arguing that the distribution of se in Serbo-Croatian cannot be explained by invoking a priori categories reflexive, impersonal, middle voice, etc., this analysis follows García (1983) and Davis (2000) to advance a hypothesis that se is a signal in the semantic substance of Participant Focus. Whereas other pronouns in this complex system signal a variety of meanings (in several semantic systems), se says that there is a bona fide participant centrally associated in the event named by the verb but does not give any more information about it. This study claims that the opposition of substance between se and all the other Participant Focus forms accounts for its distribution in Serbo-Croatian.
A semantic analysis of Swahili suffix li
Authors: Leonard Robert A. , Saliba Leonard Wendy
Published: March 2014

This Columbia School analysis of the Swahili suffix li rests on the distinction between meaning and message, as the proposed hypothesis does not simply categorize message types as previous analyses have done, but rather posits a single meaning which accounts for the various messages to which li contributes. Our hypothesis, unlike others’, accounts for all instances of li, as well as for what has been called “double-li”. The analysis posits a new type of Control meaning. Specifically, li instructs the hearer to interpret a non-high controller at a higher, more potent level of control than if li were not used.
The structure of the Japanese inferential system
Authors: Riggs Hidemi Sugi
Published: March 2014

This paper provides an analysis of Japanese inferential auxiliaries (daroo, rashii, soo-da, yooda) that enables us to explain all occurrences of these words in discourse. Despite extensive research on these forms, grammatical analysis has not yet successfully explained their distribution. This paper demonstrates that the prevailing view of these forms as evidentials is insufficient. Instead, we postulate a new hypothesis in which the speaker’s choice of auxiliary is based on his or her desire either to strongly present inferential information or to draw attention away from it. In this analysis, the language user is seen as more active in the interpretation of messages than is traditionally assumed.
The case for articulatory gestures – not sounds – as the physical embodiment of speech signs
Authors: Eccardt Thomas
Published: March 2014

The term articulatory gestures is common among linguists, amounting to a kind of analogy with the manual gestures of sign language. This paper takes the term seriously, rejecting the notion that sounds are the physical embodiment of the linguistic sign. Making the case for the gesture as a legitimate type of sign, it shows how vocal movements are far more convincing candidates for the signifiers of human language when viewed from several different semiotic perspectives, including physiology, physics, psychology, and communication theory.
Modals and typology: English and German in contrast
Authors: Salkie Raphael
Published: March 2014

One approach to contrastive linguistics is to set up typological categories and then to compare languages in relation to these categories. After a critical analysis of prototype theory we introduce the notion ‘typological cluster’, and apply this notion to modality. We propose a set of criteria which identify the category of modality. Some English modal verbs meet all the criteria and are said to be central members of the cluster. Others frequently fail to meet the criteria and are called secondary members. Using data from a translation corpus, this analysis can explain some contrasts between modals in English and German, notably can and können, and should and sollen.
Causative make and faire: A case of mismatch
Authors: Gilquin Gaëtanelle
Published: March 2014

This chapter compares the causative verb make, as used in verbal periphrastic causative constructions, with its intuitive equivalent in French, faire. Relying on a combination of comparable and parallel corpus data, it investigates the syntactic, semantic and lexical features of the English and French constructions, and examines the equivalents selected by professional translators to express the idea of causation in the other language. The analysis reveals that the apparent equivalence between make and faire is in fact deceptive. Not only do the two verbs show marked differences in their behaviour and preferences, but they are also rarely chosen as equivalents of each other in professional translations. The chapter ends with some implications for translation and foreign language teaching.
Towards a constructionist account of secondary predication with verba dicendi et declarandi in English and Spanish
Authors: Gonzálvez-García Francisco
Published: March 2014

Drawing on data extracted from the British National Corpus and the Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual in conjunction with elicitation data from native speakers, this chapter constitutes a first step towards a constructionist, usage-based analysis of secondary predication with verba dicendi et declarandi (e.g., say, declare,decir ‘say’, declarar ‘declare’) in English and Spanish. Within this environment (the “declarative subjective-transitive” construction), at least three lower-level (i.e., item-specific) configurations can be posited in the light of coercion via a reflexive pronoun, an imperative form and the passive voice in both languages. While there is a considerable degree of similarity regarding the inventory of matrix verbs as well as the specific combinations attested in these three environments in English and Spanish, the symmetry is nonetheless far from perfect, thus corroborating the language-specific nature of constructions (Croft 2003).
The phonological and phonetic development of new vowel contrasts in Spanish learners of English
Authors: Escudero Paola
Published: March 2014

This paper reports the findings of an experimental study that investigated the perception of Standard Scottish English (SSE) /i/-/I/ by Spanish speakers. Many of the learners of this study adequately identified and discriminated the new contrast, but did so by using vowel duration, an auditory dimension that serves as a secondary cue in native SSE vowel perception. In addition, the individual L2 results patterned in a way that suggested a stage-like development in the phonological and phonetic acquisition of the new contrast. These results demonstrate that L2 learners can learn to perceive new L2 vowels phonologically in a native-like fashion and that, in same cases, they can also learn to adjust to the fine phonetic differences of such new vowels.
Age and native language influence on the perception of English vowels
Authors: Gallardo del Puerto Francisco , Lecumberri María Luisa García , Cenoz Jasone
Published: March 2014

This paper examines, within the framework of Flege’s speech learning model (SLM), the relevance of two factors – age and native language – for the acquisition align of vowel perception abilities by young Spanish learners of English in a formal instructional environment. Findings indicate that age did influence the participants’ ability to identify English vowels, but not in the expected direction and only for those vowels considered to be identical. Thus, the results do not provide evidence of the influence of the critical period for classroom learning, but they do support the SLM’s proposal concerning the influence of type of interlingual identification: that new and identical vowels will be easier than similar vowels.
The influence of voicing and sonority relationships on the production of English final consonants
Authors: Baptista Barbara O. , da Silva Filho Jair L.A.
Published: March 2014

This paper examines, within the framework of Flege’s speech learning model (SLM), the relevance of two factors – age and native language – for the acquisition of vowel perception abilities by young Spanish learners of English in a formal instructional environment. Findings indicate that age did influence the participants’ ability to identify English vowels, but not in the expected direction and only for those vowels considered to be identical. Thus, the results do not provide evidence of the influence of the critical period for classroom learning, but they do support the SLM’s proposal concerning the influence of type of interlingual identification: that new and identical vowels will be easier than similar vowels.
The sonority cycle and the acquisition of complex onsets
Authors: Carlisle Robert Stephen
Published: March 2014

The Sonority Cycle (Clements 1990), consisting of the Core Syllabification Principle (CSP) and Feature Dispersion Principle (FDP), is a model of syllable structure that systematically reveals the markedness relationships among syllable margins. This paper presents the results of two studies testing the Sonority Cycle. The first study examines the production of biliteral and triliteral onsets, the latter being more marked than the former. The second study examines the production of three biliteral onsets differing in their sonority profile. Of the three, /.st-/ is the most marked because it violates the CSP. In turn /.sn-/ is more marked than /.sl-/ because of its higher dispersion value according to the FDP. Both studies found that less marked onsets are correctly produced more frequently than are more marked onsets.
The production of compound stress by Brazilian learners of English
Authors: Silveiro Luiz Armando , Watkins Michael Alan
Published: March 2014

This paper describes an analysis of the stress patterns used by advanced Brazilian learners in the production of English compound nouns. It was predicted that the lack of distinction between composite nominals and compound nouns in Portuguese would strongly influence the participants to assign primary stress to the final constituent, regardless of the syntax. Data were collected by means of a reading activity which included the target constructions in unrelated sentences. Results confirmed a strong tendency for participants to give greater prominence to the second constituent of compounds, although exceptions to this tendency indicated that the participants’ choice of stress pattern may also have been influenced by the length of constituents and relative familiarity of the lexical items involved.
Balancing L1 maintenance and L2 learning
Authors: Sakamoto Mitsuyo
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines reasons for first language (L1) maintenance among Japanese immigrant families residing in Toronto, Canada, by conducting life history research (Cole & Knowles, 2001). The data are then analyzed using activity theory (Engeström, 1999). The findings indicate that L1 is viewed as a vehicle for establishing and retaining strong family cohesion while second language (L2) is seen as indispensable socio-economic capital (Bourdieu, 1991). As L1 is predominantly used orally at home, oral L1 development is nurtured while the written forms and honorific discourses are not actively used and enforced by some parents. This chapter explains how bilinguality among immigrant families often disappears after two generations as the language of intimacy is quickly replaced by L2. The chapter calls for a more collaborative and inclusive approach to assure ethnolinguistic vitality and continuity.
Grandparents, grandchildren, and heritage language use in Korean
Authors: Park Eunjin
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses an ethnographic and sociolinguistic study that examines the patterns of language socialization of six Korean-American families in the New York metropolitan area, particularly the ideologies and linguistic practices that surround politeness. All participating families had at least one 2– to 4–yearold child, spoke Korean as the mother tongue, and had at least one grandparent who regularly interacted with the child. The author collected 80 hours of audio/video recordings of naturally occurring family conversations and then analyzed the grandparents’ roles in the transmission of linguistic and cultural heritage in terms of politeness. Findings highlight the parents’ expectations of grandparents as linguistic and cultural resources for the family and grandparents’ actual influence on children’s cultural practices and language use.
Heritage language development
Authors: Chinen Kiyomi , Tucker G. Richard
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines the roles of: (a) ethnic identity, (b) participation in a Japanese heritage language (JHL) school, and (c) the perceived vitality of the local Japanese community in California in promoting learners’ proficiency in Japanese. Questionnaires were given to 31 JHL learners, from grades seven through eleven, who lived in California and attended a hoshuukoo (Saturday Japanese supplementary school) there. The major finding of this chapter is that attendance at a hoshuukoo promoted the development of Japanese proficiency and Japanese ethnic identity. In addition, the results also reveal that the highschool students identified themselves as more Japanese than the younger students. Attendance at the hoshuukoo appears to be increasingly important over time to the students developing their JHL proficiency – particularly developing their Japanese literacy skills.
Heritage language maintenance by Korean-American college students
Authors: Kim Eun Joo
Published: March 2014

This chapter examines what individual and social-psychological factors best predict Korean heritage language learners’ maintenance of heritage language (HL) proficiency. The examined predictors are age of immigration, length of Korean language education, degree and frequency of HL use, cultural identity, and motivation. A language background survey and a Korean language proficiency test developed by KICE (Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation) were administered to 120 Korean-American college students. The results of the study indicate that although most of the examined predictors are significantly related to Korean language proficiency, the degree and frequency of HL use is found to be the best predictor of one’s HL proficiency. The participants’ narrative responses on their HL maintenance also reveal that those who maintain a higher level of Korean language proficiency are more highly motivated to maintain Korean, have had more parental involvement in HL maintenance, and use more Korean than those who are not as proficient.
First language use and language behavior of Chinese students in Toronto, Canada
Authors: Man Evelyn Yee-fun
Published: March 2014

Many immigrant minorities are concerned with the first language (L1) maintenance of their children living in a majority language and culture. The role of the L1 has important implications for students’ linguistic, cultural and identity development. This chapter examines the relationship between Chinese students’ L1 use and behavior and the broader sociolinguistic and sociocultural environment in relation to the ethnolinguistic vitality of the Chinese community in Toronto, Canada. One hundred and fifteen Chinese students in international languages programs in Toronto participated in the study. Results indicate that the Chinese students have a positive attitude towards various factors at the sociological, socio-psychological and psychological levels which are conducive to L1 maintenance. Whether in terms of objective vitality factors, interpersonal contacts, contact with the media, heritage education support, or subjective vitality beliefs, students’ positive attitudes help facilitate their L1 use and affect their L1 behavior.
Oral historian: Neither moralizer nor informer
Authors: Rossi Leena
Published: March 2014

In this paper, I discuss oral historian’s roles in interviews in which crimes are revealed. First, I look at cases with the primary aim to collect information about statute-barred crimes. Second, I discuss cases in which the researcher does not study crimes, but the interviewee wants to disclose them. In the first case, the historian encourages the narrator to talk about crimes; in the second case she encourages her to keep silent. Oral historian should never accuse, reproach, or give therapy. She should not inform the authorities but encourage the narrator to do it herself. Finally, I suggest that the oral historian should be bound to professional secrecy.
Oral history & e-research: Collecting memories of the 1960´s and 1970´s youth culture
Authors: Avelin Liisa
Published: March 2014

Whether we like it or not, computer-mediated methods are no doubt becoming more and more a part of an oral historian’s toolbox. I describe here one online data collection method – the blog – which is part of the ever-increasing e-research family. I highlight the process, benefits, and challenges of this form of data collection and analysis with one case study, which was undertaken to collect memories and data for my cultural history study: 1960s and ‘70s disco culture in Finland.
Oral history and political elites: Interviewing (and transcribing) lobbyists
Authors: McGrath Conor
Published: March 2014

This chapter discusses some of the methodological issues which arose in my interviews with lobbyists in Washington, London and Brussels. While all research projects are different, this chapter attempts to highlight some key issues around interviewing which researchers need to consider – such as interview structure, the ethics of transcribing, and editing transcriptions for publication – and to provide an account of how they were addressed in the course of this particular project. It ends by urging that such transcripts become generally available to other researchers, as they constitute a potentially fruitful data resource of no less importance than the quantitative datasets which tend to be more commonly available.
Women soldiers and women prisoners: Oral testimonies of Ruta Czaplińska and Elżbieta Zawacka
Authors: Muller Anna
Published: March 2014

In this essay I present the stories of two women soldiers, Elżbieta Zawacka and Ruta Czaplińska, involved in the Second World War struggle who stepped out of the roles traditionally attributed to Polish women. Both were soldiers, both engaged in the anti-Communist activities after the war, and both suffered imprisonment for their actions. In the essay, I try to show how differently these two women constructed their life stories. While Zawacka saw herself as a soldier who was always determined, Czaplińska’s story is full of doubts, sadness, and reflection. I hope that these oral stories reveal how within one culture and similar set of values, defined by devotion to Poland, there is space for various models of women’s engagement.
'The stranger within my Gate': Irish emigrant narratives of exile, tradition and modernity in post-war Britain
Authors: O'Brien Sarah
Published: March 2014

This essay discusses the use of oral narrative in interpreting the Irish migrant experience in post-war Britain and reveals the extent to which oral methodology challenges established norms about the Irish Diaspora. Informing the essay is an oral history project carried out with Irish migrants in Birmingham between 2005 and 2008 and extracts from these interviews illustrate, amongst other factors, migrants’ struggle to balance the demands of the ‘homeland’ with the opportunities of modernity, and their contestation of an exile identity. Essentially, this paper demonstrates how textual analysis of oral narrative illuminates the process of identity reconfiguration that occurred in Irish enclaves and determines the significance of gender, class, religion and nationalism in informing the migrant experience.
Painting in sound: Aural history and audio art
Authors: Hardy III Charles
Published: March 2014

Placing aural history practice in the context of natural and electro-acoustic sound communication, this paper explores the intersection of audio art and aural history. It includes an analysis of the creative opportunities that electroacoustic and digital media offer aural historians, a brief introduction to pioneering works on the borderland between aural history and audio art, and a short history of the author’s own works in this field. The article concludes with an explanation of the benefits of creative work in audio art to oral historians, including a greater sensitivity to the power and wonder of sound communication, expanded audiences, and an enhanced appreciation of the tools of the aural historian’s craft.
Indexicals as sources of case markers in Australian languages
Authors: McGregor William B.
Published: March 2014

Among the well-known and widely discussed sources of case-markers are verbs,body part nouns, spatial terms (spatial adverbials and nominals denoting spatial concepts), other case-markers, and combinations of other case-markers. A less well-known source of case-markers is indexical items such as pronominals, determiners, and the like. In this paper I discuss some possible examples of such diachronic developments for oblique, genitive, and ergative markers in Australian languages. It is proposed that the first stage of this developmental pathway is a construction in which the indexical element is in apposition with an NP; over time the indexical element loses its independent status and deictic value and becomes a bound morpheme marking just a grammatical relation.
Person reference, proper names and circumspection in Bininj Kunwok conversation
Authors: Garde Murray
Published: March 2014

Proper names in Bininj Kunwok are one of a number of unmarked referring expressions in contexts of high social familiarity. In most other contexts and especially where culturally motivated circumspection is required, names are avoided in favour of a range of other referring expressions. The traditional philosophy of language view is that proper names allow speakers to avoid having to state circumlocutory identity details each time reference to an individual is made. In Bininj Kunwok however, cultural restrictions on the use of proper names in many contexts mean that speakers often use alternative expressions which frequently rely heavily on shared common ground to achieve recognition. The kind of shared cultural knowledge that is indexed for recognition of referents is spelt out in the analysis of data from a telephone conversation.
How missing is the missing verb?
Authors: Shimojo Mitsuaki
Published: March 2014

The construction containing the so-called “lonesome numeral classifier” would be a challenge for syntactic theory because of the absence of a verb which is expected for a case-marked argument. Properties of the construction have been unclear between two competing approaches, a VP analysis which favors the structural presence of a missing verb and a np analysis which claims only the semantic representation of it. In an attempt to solve the inherent difficulties associated with the previous claims, the present study integrates a discourse representation structure into semantic and structural representation, and proposes a proper linking for these structures. The proposed three-way representation captures the critical properties of the construction, rooted in the structurally absent, semantically present, and discourse-driven “missing” verb.
Words and their meanings: Principles of variation and stabilization
Authors: Robert Stéphane
Published: March 2014

This chapter, entrenched in cognitive linguistics, proposes a multidimensional approach to the layering of the lexicon and its semantic organization, explicating the principles of variation and stabilization of lexical networks. Semantic variation is considered as inherent to language structure and driven by common universal cognitive mechanisms which are accounted for by a dynamic conception of meaning construal. Intra-linguistic plasticity of meaning echoes inter-linguistic variation. The discourse level is the seat of meaning construal mechanisms which contribute to the general polysemy of lexical units and to the stabilization of their meaning within a particular utterance. Units appear to be the seat of most variations, within and across languages, because meaning is construed in extremely varied ways according to common mechanisms.
About 'Eating' in a few Niger-Congo languages
Authors: Bonvini Emilio
Published: March 2014

This article is a systematisation of the semantic notion of “eating” in Niger-Congo languages. It is based on lexical material published in dictionaries. It shows, contrary to Gouffé (1966) that “eat”, in its semantic extensions, is not basically a “controlled activity”, but is also an “undergone activity”. This in line with Pardeshi et al. (2006) findings for Asian languages. The semasiological approach shows how the lexical items meaning “eating” broaden to a larger range of polysemous meanings. This is achieved through the study of “eating” (i) as lexical units, (ii) in their linguistic co-texts and their implications for the construction of orthonyms, (iii) in the discursive context and its relations to the polysemous construction of meaning.
Innovative coinage
Authors: García Velasco Daniel
Published: March 2014

The innovative creation of lexical items is not a topic of chief relevance among those which tend to mark the development of grammatical models. Yet nonce-formations and neologisms show the speaker's remarkable ability to create new lexical items in speech interaction and should thus be accounted for by linguistic theories of functional orientation. This article deals with a particular case of innovative lexical creation: the use of proper nouns in verbal function. Following the analysis in Clark & Clark (1979), I will defend the view that verbal eponyms are contextuals, that is, expressions whose interpretation is strongly tied to the context in which they are used. Unlike authors who have argued that the meaning of these units is predictable, I will show that verbal eponyms may receive multiple interpretations out of context, and that their meaning may shift from one setting to another. Next I will examine the extent to which the observed facts can be incorporated in two functional theories of language: Construction Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar. After discarding the possibility of treating verbal eponyms as an example of coercion, a notion frequently adduced to justify a constructional approach to grammar, I will propose that the organization of Functional Discourse Grammar, which systematically links up with a conceptual and a contextual component, offers a more adequate architecture to implement the analysis proposed.