The subject of the master thesis is language attitudes. The focus is put on how language attitudes can affect the way how the language is changing, how they can be expressed and which factors play important roles in forming of language attitudes. There have been a number of sociological and sociolinguistic case studies in this field in Norway. Based on them, I compare the Norwegian and Czech attitudes to the latest trends in language change such as globalization, regionalization and others. The main questions are: how do factors forming language attitudes to language varieties differ when compared Norwegian and Czech? How are language attitudes affected by differencies in history and culture in these two lands? Hypothetical, the factors connected to contact with English would be quite similar both in Norwegian and Czech. On the other hand the relationship between standard spoken language and dialects would differ more mostly because of these varieties have a different status in Norwegian and Czech context.

L'enseignement du français comme une langue étrangère constitue une nécessité dans un pays plurilingue comme le Liban. La constitution libanaise a donné une place privilégié à la langue française dans le cadre de l'enseignement public en stipulant que : «l'enseignement des deux langues: l'arabe et le français sont obligatoires dans toutes les écoles nationales». Toutefois, à l'école publique, plus précisément au cycle primaire, les apprenants souffrent d'un niveau médiocre en français. Plusieurs facteurs entravent le processus d'enseignement/apprentissage du français ; nous avons délimité ces facteurs par les trois champs d'investigation suivants : l'apprenant, l'enseignant et le milieu scolaire. Notre recherche expérimentale tente d'établir une corrélation entre le niveau médiocre en français des apprenants de l'école publique et ces trois champs d'investigation. Elle vise à expliciter avec minutie les causes qui sous-tendent ce niveau médiocre en français notamment chez les apprenants de l'école publique. / Teaching French as a foreign language is a necessity in a multilingual country like Lebanon. The Lebanese Constitution gave a privileged place to the French language in the context of public education by stipulating that: "the teaching of two languages: Arabic and French are mandatory in all national schools." However, public schools, specifically in the primary grades, students suffer from a poor level in French. Several factors impede the process of teaching / learning French, we have defined these factors by the following three areas of investigation: the learner, the teacher and the school. Our experimental research attempts to establish a correlation between the level of poor learners in French public schools, and these three areas of investigation. It aims to explain carefully the reasons underlying this poor level in French particularly among public school students.

Notre travail de recherche traite de la problématique du contact de langues dans l'enseignement et l'apprentissage du français, en l'occurrence en milieu scolaire guyanais. Ainsi, l'objectif de notre travail de recherche est d'une part comprendre comment les phénomènes de contact de langues s'opèrent dans les situations d'apprentissage de type exolingue c'est-à-dire là où le jeune apprenant fait l'expérience de l'apprentissage d'une langue non maternelle dès le niveau préscolaire et d'autre part, voir comment les adultes (enseignants - atsem) ont recours à des codes linguistiques hétérogènes pour communiquer en classe. Notre travail de recherche est guidé par une problématique précise : « Quel est le rôle de l'alternance codique dans les pratiques de transmission de connaissances, linguistiques et extra-linguistiques ? ». Cette question représente l'ossature de notre recherche et de celle-ci se dégagent plusieurs lignes directrices à savoir en quoi l'alternance se présente comme une ressource langagière dans les échanges didactiques en contexte exolingue. Cette recherche emprunte essentiellement les apports de la linguistique suisse dans laquelle s'inscrivent les travaux de Jean-François de Pietro (1988) et Bernard Py (1986, 2004, 2005) sur le contact de langues, l'apprentissage et l'interaction et Marinette Matthey (2003) sur l'acquisition des langues secondes à l'école. Sur la base d'une démarche fondée sur une approche ethnographique, nous partons de l'observation et de la description des réalités socio-culturelles des situations de communication en classe culturellement signifiantes pour en décrire soigneusement les pratiques d'enseignement et d'apprentissage. Notre recherche se réclame avant tout d'un positionnement d'inspiration interactionniste, dans la mesure où nous cherchons notamment à appréhender un objet attaché aux interactions, à travers lesquelles se négocient et se construisent les connaissances et les compétences lors du passage d'une langue à l'autre. / Our research deals with the problem of the contact of languages in the teaching and learning of french, in this case in the Guyanese school environment. Thus, the objective of our research work is to understand how the phenomena of contact of languages that occur in learning situations of exolingual type, that is to say where the young learner is doing the experience of learning a non-maternal language from the pre-school level on the other hand, and how adults (teachers-atsem) use heterogeneous linguistic codes to communicate in the classroom. Our research work is guided by a specific problem: "What is the role of code-switching in the practices of transmission of knowledge, linguistic and extra-linguistic? ". This question represents the backbone of our research and it gives rise to several guidelines on how alternation presents itself as a linguistic resource in didactic exchanges in exolingual contexts. This research essentially borrows from the contributions of Swiss linguistics in the work of Bernard Py (1986, 2004, 2005) on language contact, learning and interaction and Marinette Matthey (2003) on acquisition of second languages at school. Based on an ethnographic approach, we start from the observation and description of the socio-cultural realities of culturally meaningful classroom communication situations in order to describe carefully the teaching and learning practices. Our research focuses above all on a positioning of interactionist inspiration, insofar as we seek in particular to grasp an object attached to the interactions, through which knowledge and skills are negotiated and constructed during the passage of a language to the other.

The current study addressed several questions about the use of language intermingling in child-directed speech and its influence on children's English and Spanish language acquisition on children's language code-switching, Participants were 65 children (Mean age=30.93 months, SD=0.44, 28 boys and 37 girls) who had been exposed to English and Spanish from birth and for whom at least one parent was a native Spanish speaker.... Measures of the children's lexical, grammatical, receptive, and productive language development in English and in Spanish were collected concurrently.... Consistent with sociolinguistic theories that propose that language separation is necessary for heritage language maintenance, children who were exposed to more language intermingling were more English-dominant. Both sensitivity to the language context and children's language dominance were related to children's production of mixed utterances. Children code-switched more when speaking in their less proficient language and when in the context of minority language use. / by Silvia Place. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2012. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Esta pesquisa tem como argumento o estudo da comutação de códigos, isto é, a passagem do italiano ao português e vice-versa efetuado por professores e estudantes durante as aulas de italiano como língua estrangeira. O presente estudo é baseado em um corpus constituído de registros efetuados junto aos cursos elementares, intermediários e avançados de italiano no Campus da USP. Tendo como modelo de referência a Análise da Conversação, o estudo iluminou as várias funções realizadas pela comutação enfocando o contexto discursivo. Dos exemlpos examinados emergiu que as maiorias das alterações foram iniciadas pelos alunos e não pelos professores. As categorias que foram identificadas são: alteração da gestão das atividades de classe, alteração do léxico e da gramatica, alteração como afirmação do eu pessoa. Enquanto os estudantes utilizam indistintamente o português tanto no nível elementar como avançado, os professores apresentam grande variação entre si, dependendo do estilo didático e do tipo de atividade que está realizando. Para concluir, acreditamos que o uso da língua materna durante as aulas de língua estrangeira possa representar um recurso, uma estratégia para o desenvolvimento de uma competência multi-línguas e multi-cultural mais que um obstáculo à aprendizagem. . / This research focuses on the study of code-switching, the switching from italian to portuguese and vice versa done by teachers and students during Italian foreign language classes. This work is based on a corpus of registers gathered in elementary, intermediate and advanced classes of Italian as a second language at the USP Campus. Using as a reference model Conversation Analysis, this research sheds light over several functions of code-switching under the discourse context. The data shows that most of the code-switching was initiaded by the students and not by the teachers. The categories that were assessed were: changing of class management activities, shifiting for lexical or grammar clarification, shifting as assertion of the self. While students use Portuguese indistinctly in elementary and advanced levels, teachers tend to show great variation, depending on individual didatical style and the kind of activity in course. In conclusion, we belive that the use of mother language in a foreign language context might represent a resource, a strategy for the development of multi-language and multi-cultural competences more than a hazard to learning.

Previous research claims that studies on pupil code-switching are lacking in number. Therefore, this study aimed to provide a picture of how lower secondary students in Sweden perceive code-switching inside and outside the Swedish EFL classroom, how the interlocutor affects the pupils’ code-switching as well as the pupils’ attitudes to the phenomenon. The material consists of semi-structured interviews with seven pupils at a lower secondary school. Qualitative content analysis was used as a method to process the interview data. The results show that code-switching occurs in relation to language proficiency in order to explain, annotate and exemplify second language content in the pupils’ first language and in this way enhance learning. This is done by the teachers when leading the class or by the pupils themselves in group discussions or during exercises. Furthermore, results show that interlocutors could be both enablers and be enabled to code-switch during discussions. In addition, the pupils had varied attitudes to code-switching where it was either seen as a mistake to code-switch, or that the pupils code-switched to add effect to their language. The pupils claimed to have different proficiency of the English language and spoke a varied amount of L1 during the lessons. However, all pupils agreed that English should be the primary language in the Swedish EFL classroom. The study concluded with a discussion on the pedagogical implications of the study where it could be used by teachers as a communicative resource.

This case study presents the language life history of an American woman of Mexican descent. The informant describes the ways in which her two languages, English and Spanish, developed and have been used throughout her life. She narrates how living with two languages has affected her in each period of her life. The informant's language life history provides insight into the ways in which immigrants who come to the United States live and adapt to a new country, culture, and language. The informant's narrative is a testimony of a person divided between two languages and two cultures. The methods used to elaborate the informant's language life history were ethnographic interviewing, observing, and event/network analysis. This language life history will promote understanding of issues such as bilingualism and its relationship to immigration in the United States, language maintenance or loss, language shift, and language choice and use. In the area of Teaching English as a Second Language, teachers are constantly faced with the above issues in their teaching environment. A more thorough comprehension of the experiences of second language learners could improve the skills of those teaching English as a Second Language.

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This study examined the use of an intervention, Contrastive Analysis (CA), with fourth-graders’ writing in a Central Appalachian elementary school. The purpose was to improve the use of Standard English in students’ writing in Appalachia by decreasing the number of vernacular features typically used in the writing. The researcher collected data through Consent and Assent Forms, interviews with the fourth-grade teacher, classroom observations and an accompanying CA observation evaluation rubric, pre- and post-writing prompts, selected writings and Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS), as well as communication data. Data analysis was accomplished for both the prompts, writing pieces and the WSPS scores. The primary results of the study indicated that the students’ use of vernacular features did in fact decrease after the implementation of CA. An approach that takes into account the vernacular or nonstandard dialect from the home speech of children, CA is utilized to help them perform better in writing in school. The CA approach has been used successfully with African American students primarily in large urban areas. The research results indicate that lessons from CA may be “customized” and used successfully with students who are speakers of Appalachian English. During the eleven-week study, the fourth-grade teacher implemented the intervention and a fifth-grade teacher also led a non-intervention group. A comparative analysis was done to determine whether membership in the fourth grade intervention group was a significant factor in lowering non-standard features in writing. This was a descriptive case study. At the beginning and end of the study, teachers of the fourth- and fifth-grade groups administered pre- and post-tests to their respective groups in the form of writing prompts. The researcher and a second reader did vernacular counts of the writings of both groups. A comparative analysis of the frequency of vernacular features (VFs) in the writing of the fourth-grade group showed decreases greater than the fifth-grade group in three of four categories of vernacular features in writing. The categories were: regularization of past-tense verbs, multiple negation, subject/verb agreement, and pronominal difference. There was only a 1% greater decrease of VFs for the fifth grade in the fourth category. A scale of self-efficacy in writing, the Writer’s Self-Perception Scale (WSPS), was also administered by the teachers pre- and post-study to both groups of students. The difference between the fourth- and fifth-grade pre- and post-WSPS scores was not statistically significant. The findings of the study are important because they show that the use of the CA approach, when used with students from the Appalachian subculture who are speakers of Appalachian English, does make a difference in their rate of usage of Standard English in writing.

Code-switching (CS) between French and Arabic is common across North Africa and in parts of the Middle East. Many researchers have examined this phenomenon in Tunisia (Belazi 1991, Lawson & Sachdev 2000, Belazi et. al 1994) and Morocco (Abbassi 1977, Bentahila 1983, Bentahila & Davies 1983, Lahlou 1991, Redouane 2005.) Corpus and elicited data from these two countries has helped form the basis of proposed universal constraints on code-switching, specifically the Functional Head Constraint (FHC) (Belazi et al 1994) and the Complement Adjunct Distinction (CAD) (Mahootian and Santorini 1996). However, CS between French and Moroccan and Tunsian dialects has not been directly investigated within a single study. This study is a step in filling that gap. Using a web-based survey, the present study examines native dialect speakers’ ratings of authenticity of sentences that contain both French and Arabic with a switch occurring in the Determiner Phrase (DP). The syntactic structure of the DP in the dialects examined is the same, (DP = D (D) N (A)). This is similar to the DP in French (DP = D (A) N (A)) with a few key differences that make it possible to test the FHC and CAD within the DP alone. An example of one of the eight possible switch types, between an Arabic Demonstrative Determiner and a French Definite Determiner, is seen here between Moroccan Arabic and French: Men dima had l’homme n’aime pas les chiens. (Since always this the man doesn’t like dogs.) A mixed-model ANOVA performed on the participants’ ratings reveals main effects for dialect, sex and switch type. Significant interactions also exist, including an interaction between switch type, sex and dialect. While further research is needed, the results indicate that syntactic constraints may not be the only way to understand the practice of CS. Instead, a typological approach, as suggested by Muysken (2000), may lead to a more complete understanding of why and how communities use multiple languages. / text