Social and textual aspects of the language assimilation of German exile writers are studied. Major differences concern the length of their exile, their foreign language learning ability and their attitude to assimilating, and the primary sources are letters and diaries. Descriptive analysis is performed on the prose, mainly in the area of crosslinguistic influences. Despite their differing assimilation, the prose contains similar crosslinguistic influences. There are consistent changes in crosslinguistic influences during the course of language assimilation, initially determined by the extent of second language acquisition. However, language learning factors give way to social factors with crosslinguistic infuences ultimately governed by the functional independence of the second language. Lexically triggered code-switching is usually a step towards functionally motivated code-switching. Finally a tentative, schematic model of how the process of language assimilation causes and modifies crosslinguistic influences is proposed. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

<p>This thesis aims to contrast German and Swedish youth languages, based on material from two popular Online-Communities mainly for young people,<em> SchülerVZ</em> and <em>Lunarstorm</em>, respectively. The goal is not primarily to analyze the use of written, online youth language. Rather, language use on the Internet has developed into something between written and spoken language; often with clear characteristics of spoken language. Therefore, my corpus enables me to establish general similarities and differences in spoken (and written) German and Swedish youth communication.</p><p>Many similarities can be found in the way both German and Swedish youth play with language through e.g. many innovative lexical combinations and hyperboles. A difference can be found in the use of dialect. German youth inclines to speak and write it more explicitly to establish a "youth identity". In contrast, Swedish youth applies multi-ethnic youth language in the same way to establish this identity. This finding leads to the conclusion that multi-ethnic youth language firstly, is a more accepted or developed medium in Sweden, and secondly, something young people can employ in their formation of an identity that goes beyond social, "adult" conventions. In addition, a common use of Anglo-American loan words, mainly through <em>Code Switching</em>, can be found in both languages. This occurrence of loan words ought to depend mainly on these words being more unerring or more prestigious than native alternatives. Differences in the application of these loan words are found to be on a grammatical level. The German language tends to adopt more directly imported Anglo-American loan words, whereas the Swedish language reproduces these words in order to allow integration with the Swedish language system.</p>

<p>The essay deals with different definitions of bilingualism and why people become bilingual. Both positive and negative aspects of bilingualism are considered. It also deals with the term code-switching and when bilingual people code-switch. The material used in the essay comes from the on-line CHILD corpus of child language. The charts and the graph in the essay have been produced from a study made by the author of this essay. This study includes a bilingual girl of the age one year and three months up until the age two years and seven months. It includes the mean length of her utterances, how much the child uses the different word classes and different semantic groups, as well as how much the child code-switches in different ages. The results show that the mean length of utterances in Spanish most of the time is increasing, while the mean length of utterances in English is increasing until the child is just over two years old and then it fluctuated considerably.</p>

<p>The purpose of this essay is to investigate pupils’ attitudes towards spoken English and towards speaking in front of their friends, and how these attitudes appear to be related to their oral communication and communicative behaviour in the classroom. The material was collected by video taping two classes, a questionnaire in these two classes and by interviewing their teacher.</p><p>The results show that motivation and anxiety are psychological factors that play a significant role in the learning process. Attitudes, both towards the target language and towards their own production affect pupils’ willingness to communicate, and consequently their oral production in different tasks. The larger the group is, the more anxious they become. In order to motivate pupils, a variety of exercises is needed, where the topic is of great importance to awaken their interest for communication. The teacher also needs to circulate in the classroom to avoid a situation where pupils switch to their first language. Otherwise, pupils appear to code-switch as soon as an opportunity presents itself, which was observed in the analyses of recorded lessons.</p>

<p>This thesis aims to explore the ways in which space patterns regimes of language use and language attitudes among Cameroonian immigrant children in a primary school in Cape Town. The presence of migrants in any classroom represents a significant challenge from the theoretical as well as practical point of view, given that schools are responsible for both socialization and learning (Gajo &amp / Mondada 1996). Most African countries are going through large-scale migration from rural to urban areas as well as increasing transnational migration due to recent socio-economic and socio-political trends. These flows affect the sociolinguistic economy of the places concerned, not only the individuals within them. Thus immigrants&rsquo / movement into an urban area not only affects their repertoires, as they find themselves confronted with the task of acquiring the communicative resources of the autochthonous population, but also those of the autochthonous population who find themselves confronted with linguistic communicative processes and resources &lsquo / alien&rsquo / to their environment. Similar effects are felt by local educational and other institutions, now faced with learners with widely varying degrees of competence in the required communicative skills. The participants in this study are a group of young migrants from Cameroon where English and French are the two official languages. These learners already have some languages in their repertoire, which may include their mother tongue or either of the two official languages. My focus will be on the multilingual resources of these learners and how they make use of these in the daily life of their new spaces, the school, the homes and community spaces, to construct new social identities.</p>

This thesis aims to contrast German and Swedish youth languages, based on material from two popular Online-Communities mainly for young people, SchülerVZ and Lunarstorm, respectively. The goal is not primarily to analyze the use of written, online youth language. Rather, language use on the Internet has developed into something between written and spoken language; often with clear characteristics of spoken language. Therefore, my corpus enables me to establish general similarities and differences in spoken (and written) German and Swedish youth communication. Many similarities can be found in the way both German and Swedish youth play with language through e.g. many innovative lexical combinations and hyperboles. A difference can be found in the use of dialect. German youth inclines to speak and write it more explicitly to establish a "youth identity". In contrast, Swedish youth applies multi-ethnic youth language in the same way to establish this identity. This finding leads to the conclusion that multi-ethnic youth language firstly, is a more accepted or developed medium in Sweden, and secondly, something young people can employ in their formation of an identity that goes beyond social, "adult" conventions. In addition, a common use of Anglo-American loan words, mainly through Code Switching, can be found in both languages. This occurrence of loan words ought to depend mainly on these words being more unerring or more prestigious than native alternatives. Differences in the application of these loan words are found to be on a grammatical level. The German language tends to adopt more directly imported Anglo-American loan words, whereas the Swedish language reproduces these words in order to allow integration with the Swedish language system.

Observations of adolescent's language in upper secondary school in Sweden. Do teenagers stule-shift when speaking in different communicative settings; that is the core of this essay. Five informants have been observed in three different speaking sessions, and their language is analyzed, discussed and compared to secondary sources.

In a study involving two languages: French and Arabic, this thesis examines the patterns and meanings of Arabic religious expressions as a code alternation practice in Algerian television interviews. It is concerned with investigating what participants may accomplish by selecting Arabic over French in some points of interaction to deploy religious expressions in their utterances. It also aims at exploring what the function is that these expressions may achieve for the organization of talk-in-interaction. Based on their manifestation in the participants’ utterances, the current study identifies four categories of the use of religious expressions in Algerian media talk where they appear as: transition words to switch to Arabic to keep going on in interaction; in adjacency pairs as a result of a reciprocal invocation between participants; devices to hold the floor and continue turns in interaction; and finally, signals for closing turns and shifting topics where a speakership change or a move to a new topic is possible.

The aim of this essay is to examine why Swedish-English code-switching occurs, focusing on one person. The idiolect examined is Simon Davies, hosting the TV-show Design: Simon &amp; Tomas where Simon Davies and his colleague Tomas Cederlund travel around Sweden helping Swedes with interior design. Season three of the show was transcribed into written data and theories were later used when analyzing the data transcribed from the TV-show. The data was analyzed from a qualitative and a quantitative aspect as well as mixed and unmixed utterances. This was done in order to see if there is a pattern in the way Davies switches as well as further understand what kind of items are switched. As this is done, the essay analyses the possible reasons for why Davies switches using the theories displayed earlier. The results show that Davies’ idiolect does not fully follow any specific pattern, however most of the words switched are nouns and the least common word class is prepositions. However, theories applied show that Davies’ switching could be a way for him to create an identity and connect with Swedes. The use of Swedish could help him seem friendlier and less like a stranger.

The present study aims to redeem social indexical meanings of language choice and language alternation in the light of indexical order, a notion proposed by Silverstein (2003). Many researchers have agreed that language varieties are indexical of certain macro-social relations and that code-switching even within a speech event can also be socially meaningful. Nonetheless, some issues such as how the indexical associations have been formed and how the associations are dynamically transformed into indexical effects have been less extensively discussed. Based on the framework of indexical order, together with some code-switching approaches and concepts, this thesis examines two opening speeches made for two international sports events held in Taiwan. The two speeches were delivered by the mayors of the host cities. Each speech involved more than one language, including cases of both code-switching and crossing (Rampton, 1998). The notion of indexical order has helped unveil the dialectical nature of how the indexical meanings are produced in code-switching or language-choice practices. Besides, the analyses of this study will demonstrate how the framework of indexical order may enrich the code-switching approaches and general code-switching studies.