This study draws on ethnographic methods to provide background information for the English as a Second Language teacher who looks out at the classroom and asks, 6 Who are these Chinese students?" The goal is to let Chinese students describe for themselves their experiences learning English, both in China and in the United States.

Written language provides a snapshot of linguistic, cultural, and current events information for a given time period. Aggregating these snapshots by studying many texts over time reveals trends in the evolution of language, culture, and society. The ever-increasing amount of electronic text, both from the digitization of books and other paper documents to the increasing frequency with which electronic text is used as a means of communication, has given us an unprecedented opportunity to study these trends. In this dissertation, we use hundreds of thousands of books spanning two centuries scanned by Google, and over 100 billion messages, or ‘tweets’, posted to the social media platform, Twitter, over the course of a decade to study the English language, as well as study the evolution of culture and society as inferred from the changes in language. We begin by studying the current state of verb regularization and how this compares between the more formal writing of books and the more colloquial writing of tweets on Twitter. We find that the extent of verb regularization is greater on Twitter, taken as a whole, than in English Fiction books, and also for tweets geotagged in the United States relative to American English books, but the opposite is true for tweets geotagged in the United Kingdom relative to British English books. We also find interesting regional variations in regularization across counties in the United States. However, once differences in population are accounted for, we do not identify strong correlations with socio-demographic variables. Next, we study stretchable words, a fundamental aspect of spoken language that, until the advent of social media, was rarely observed within written language. We examine the frequency distributions of stretchable words and introduce two central parameters that capture their main characteristics of balance and stretch. We explore their dynamics by creating visual tools we call ‘balance plots’ and ‘spelling trees’. We also discuss how the tools and methods we develop could be used to study mistypings and misspellings, and may have further applications both within and beyond language. Finally, we take a closer look at the English Fiction n-gram dataset created by Google. We begin by explaining why using token counts as a proxy of word, or more generally, ‘n-gram’, importance is fundamentally flawed. We then devise a method to rebuild the Google Books corpus so that meaningful linguistic and cultural trends may be reliably discerned. We use book counts as the primary ranking for an n-gram and use subsampling to normalize across time to mitigate the extraneous results created by the underlying exponential increase in data volume over time. We also combine the subsampled data over a number of years as a method of smoothing. We then use these improved methods to study linguistic and cultural evolution across the last two centuries. We examine the dynamics of Zipf distributions for n-grams by measuring the churn of language reflected in the flux of n-grams across rank boundaries. Finally, we examine linguistic change using wordshift plots and a rank divergence measure with a tunable parameter to compare the language of two different time periods. Our results address several methodological shortcomings associated with the raw Google Books data, strengthening the potential for cultural inference by word changes.

Thesis (M.ED.) --University of Limpopo (Turfloop Campus), 2008 / Argument directed to bilingual instruction in South Africa is not new. The issue of eleven official languages in education remains contested. The apartheid language in education policy infused with imbalance proficiency demands for educators and learners’in the country. The policy was replaced in 1997 with a new policy based on non –discriminatory language use and the internationally accepted principle of home language education in the contest of bilingual or multilingual framework. The policy was designed to accommodate home language (HL)maintenance, proficiency and first additional language (FAL), English for the majority of learners and optimal cognitive development. The policy has not been accompanied by any significant government or language department to ensure the implementation plan. It has however been met with several arguments of bilingual resource and well –trained educators. The argument paved a way into publications which have been used to deflect government’s responsibility regarding bilingual instruction .The difference in language policy however disregard the fact that South Africa is multilingual and that home language is the most appropriate language of learning everywhere in the world. The implementation and understanding of bilingual and linguistic interdependence of both English and African languages have a role to pay in the development and sustainability of democratic country. The underlying implication is that since English and Afrikaans as the media of instruction that disadvantaged the majority of South African citizens over the years, it is time African languages be implementated alongside English or Afrikaans in education system. South Africa’s new language in Education policy (LiEP) has been regarded as one of the best progressive in the world. The dissertation describes research that investigates the gap between the policy expections and what is prevailing at some private and public primary school in Limpopo Province.

Abstract not available

This study brings together two approaches to linguistic variation, Hallidayan systemic-functional grammar and Labovian variation theory, and in doing so brings together a functional interpretation of language and its empirical investigation in its social context. The study reports on an empirical investigation of the concept of text. The investigation proceeds on the basis of a corpus of texts gathered in sociolinguistic interviews with fifty adult speakers of Australian English in Sydney. The total corpus accounted for in terms of text type or genre numbers 420 texts of varying length, 125 of which, produced in response to four narrative questions, are investigated in greater detail in respect both of the types of text they constitute as well as of some of their linguistic realisations. These largely narrative-type texts, which represent between two and three hours of spoken English and total approximately 53000 words, are presented in a second volume analysed in terms of their textual or generic structure as well as their realisation at the level of the clause complex. The study explores in some detail models of register and genre developed within systemic-functional linguistics, adopting a genre model developed by J.R. Martin and others working within his model which foregrounds the notion that all aspects of the system(s) involved are related to one another probabilistically. In order to investigate the concept of text in actual discourse under conditions which permit us to become sufficiently confident of our understanding of it to proceed to generalisations about text and its contextual conditioning in spoken discourse, we turn to Labovian methods of sociolinguistic inquiry, i.e. to quantitative methods or methods of quantifying linguistic choice. The study takes the sociolinguistic interview as pioneered by Labov in his study of phonological variation in New York City and develops it for the purpose of investigating textual variation. The question of methodology constitutes a substantial part of the study, contributing in the process to a much greater understanding of the very phenomenon of text in discourse, for example by addressing itself to the question of the feasibility of operationalising a concept of text in the context of spoken discourse. The narrative-type texts investigated in further detail were found to range on a continuum from most experientially-oriented texts such as procedure and recount at one end to the classic narrative of personal experience and anecdote to the increasingly interpersonally-oriented exemplum and observation, both of which become interpretative of the real world in contrast to the straightforwardly representational slant taken on the same experience by the more experientially-oriented texts. The explanation for the generic variation along this continuum must be sought in a system of generic choice which is essentially cultural. A quantitative analysis of clausal theme and clause complex-type relations was carried out, the latter by means of log-linear analysis, in order to investigate their correlation with generic structure. While it was possible to relate the choice of theme to the particular stages of generic structures, clause complex-type relations are chosen too infrequently to be related to stages and were thus related to genres as a whole. We find that while by and large the choice of theme correlates well with different generic stages, it only discriminates between different genres, i.e. generic structures in toto, for those genres which are maximally different. Similarly, investigating the two choices in the principal systems involved in the organisation of the clause complex, i.e. the choice of taxis (parataxis vs. hypotaxis) and the (grammatically independent) choice of logico-semantic relations (expansion vs. projection), we find that both those choices discriminate better between types more distant on a narrative continuum. The log-linear analysis of clause complex-type relations also permitted the investigation of the social characteristics of speakers. We found that the choice of logico-semantic relations correlates with genre and question, while the choice of taxis correlates with a speaker's sex and his membership of some social group (in addition to genre). Parataxis is favoured by men and by members of the group lowest in the social hierarchy. Age on the other hand is not significant in the choice of taxis at all. In other words, since social factors are clearly shown to be significant in the making of abstract grammatical choices where they cannot be explained in terms of the functional organisation of text, we conclude that social factors must be made part of a model of text in order to fully account for its contextual conditioning. The study demonstrates that an understanding of the linguistic properties of discourse requires empirical study and, conversely, that it is possible to study discourse empirically without relaxing the standards of scientific inquiry.

<p>Studies carried out by different scholars have shown that the social roles society assigns to women and men create differences in how the genders use language. However, there is little previous research in the domain of gender and topic shift or initiation. This essay aims to investigate possible gender differences in topic shift and initiation in multiparty conversation among second language learners of English in upper secondary school. The three group discussions were recorded in a classroom setting and the data collected was transcribed. The topical shifts in the transcripts were coded using the Topical Episode Analysis (TEA) and the episode shifts in each conversation were analyzed on the basis of gender distribution and type of shift. In addition, the findings of the three groups were compared and discussed. The main result of this study was that the boys initiated 100 percent more shifts than the girls. The boys took up more linguistic space and dominated the topical shifts in the conversation which indicates that gender differences in topic shift and initiation exists, a finding that is consistent with previous research within the field of gender and language. In conclusion, gender differences were found between how the girls and the boys participating in this study shifted and initiated topics. The boys initiated more shifts than the girls in the multiparty conversations.</p>

This thesis explores young people's interaction with different individuals through a variety of media. Three girls and three boys aged 16–18, from an urban school, a rural school and a suburban school, were each observed for a week, at school, at home and during leisure activities. The data analysed consist of field notes, video and audio recordings, and texts written by the participants. The aim of the study is to investigate how young people’s use of language varies in relation to different contexts. Questions are asked about what activities they participate in, what media they use and how they use them, and how they express themselves orally and in writing in different contexts and through different media. The study is based in sociolinguistic theory and activity type theory. Data were collected using ethnographical methods, and analytical tools were drawn from a broadly defined field of discourse analysis. The investigation sheds light on the relationship between what young people are doing socially in any given situation and how they interact. Variation in linguistic styles is made visible by a study of the same individuals involved in different communicative activities. Young people are shown to be a heterogeneous group who engage in different sets of activities. The study questions prevailing definitions and categorisations of adolescents’ linguistic styles and use of electronic media. The outcome is a complex description of everyday interaction, which is found to be shaped by the frames for communicative activities, the technical characteristics of the media employed, and individual factors. In conversational turns, Internet chat messages and text messages, young people select resources from their individual linguistic repertoires in order to achieve specific goals or construct particular roles through their interaction.

This volume is a tribute to our friend and colleague Philip Shaw, Professor of English linguistics at the Department of English, Stockholm University, on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The 22 contributions to this volume by friends and colleagues worldwide bear witness to Philip’s academic versatility as well as his interests beyond academia. The first paper, ‘Narratives of Nature in English and Swedish: Butterfly books and the case of Argynnis paphia’, a genre study by Annelie Ädel and John Swales, is illustrated by Philip devoting himself to one of his favourite activities. It is followed by four other genre analyses, based on very different texts: Trine Dahl, ‘Telling it Like it Is or Strategic Writing? A portrait of the economist writer’, Paul Gillaerts, ‘Move Analysis of Abstracts from a Diachronic Perspective: A case study’, Maurizio Gotti, ‘Investigating the Generic Structure of Mediation Processes’, and Nils-Lennart Johannesson, ‘Orrmulum: Genre membership and text organisation’. The following five papers all relate to Philip’s work in the fields of English as a Second Language (ESL), English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The ESL study by Britt Erman and Margareta Lewis is titled ‘Vocabulary in Advanced L2 English Speech’, and ELF is represented by Beyza Björkman’s ‘Peer Assessment of Spoken Lingua Franca English in Tertiary Education in Sweden: Criterion-referenced versus norm-referenced assessment’. The three following papers relate to Philip’s work on academic writing: Magnus Gustafsson &amp; Hans Malmström, ‘Master Level Writing in Engineering and Productive Vocabulary: What does measuring academic vocabulary levels tell us?’, Akiko Okamura, ‘Philip Shaw’s Writing Expertise in Academic Discourse’, and Diane Pecorari, ‘Additional Reasons for the Correlation of Voice, Tense and Sentence Function’. The three papers to follow address issues within the fields of dialectology and sociolinguistics, representing different speech communities in the English-speaking world: Joan C. Beal, ‘Tourism and the Commodification of Language’, Peter Sundkvist, ‘“Ridiculously Country”: The representation of Appalachian English in the Deliverance screenplay’, and Sandra Jansen, ‘“I don’t sound like a Geordie!”: Phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of Carlisle English’. This naturally leads on to studies on World Englishes, represented by papers by Kingsley Bolton, ‘World Englishes, Globalisation, and Language Worlds’, Gunnel Melchers, ‘The North Wind and the Sun: A classic text as data for World Englishes’, Christiane Meierkord &amp; Bridget Fonkeu, ‘Of Birds and the Human Species – Communication in Migration Contexts: English in the Cameroonian migrant community in the Ruhr area’, and Augustin Simo Bobda, ‘The Emergence of a Standardizing Cameroon Francophone English Pronunciation in Cameroon’. The five final papers deal with a variety of linguistic topics all close to Philip’s heart but not so easily accommodated into the above sections. They are: Maria Kuteeva, ‘Tolkien and Lewis on Language in their Scholarly Work’, Karin Aijmer and Anna Elgemark, ‘The Pragmatic Markers Look and Listen in a Cross-linguistic Perspective’, Magnus Ljung, ‘Goddamn: From curse to byname’, Christina Alm-Arvius, ‘Opposites Attract’, and Erik Smitterberg, ‘Non-correlative Commas between Subjects and Verbs in Nineteenth-century Newspaper English’.

Especially for the last twenty years, the studies of Linguistic Landscapes (LLs) have been gaining the status as an autonomous linguistic discipline. The LL of a (mostly) geographically limited area – which consists of e.g. billboards, posters, shop signs, material for election campaigns, etc. – gives deep insights into the presence or absence of languages in that particular area. Thus, LL not only allows to conclude from the presence of a language to its dominance, but also from its absence to the oppression of minorities, above all in areas where minority languages should – demographically seen – be visible. The LLs of big cities are fruitful research areas due to the mass of linguistic data. The first part of this paper deals with the theoretical and practical research that has been conducted in LL studies so far. A summary of the theory, methodologies and different approaches is given. In the second part I apply the theoretical basis to my own case study. For this, the LLs of two shopping streets in different areas of Hong Kong were examined in 2010. It seems likely that the linguistic competence of English must be rather high in Hong Kong, due to the long-lasting influence of British culture and mentality and the official status of the language. The case study's results are based on empirical data showing the objectively visible presence of English in both examined areas, as well as on two surveys. Those were conducted both openly and anonymously. The surveys are a reinsurance measuring the level of linguistic competence of English in Hong Kong. That level was defined before by an analysis of the LL. Hence, this case study is a new approach to LL analysis which does not end with the description of its material composition (as have done most studies before), but which rather includes its creators by asking in what way people's actual linguistic competence is reflected in Hong Kong's LL. / Das Forschungsfeld der Linguistic Landscape (LL) hat sich vor allem in den letzten zwanzig Jahren als autonome Disziplin im Bereich der Sprachwissenschaft emanzipiert. Die LL eines meist geografisch eingegrenzten Gebietes – die beispielsweise aus Reklametafeln, Plakaten, Ladenschildern, Wahlkampfpropaganda, etc. besteht – erlaubt tiefe Einblicke in die An- oder Abwesenheit von Sprachen auf dem jeweiligen Gebiet. Die LL lässt dadurch nicht nur Rückschlüsse auf die Dominanz einer Sprache aufgrund ihrer Anwesenheit zu, sondern auch auf die Unterdrückung einer Minderheit durch die Abwesenheit ihrer Sprache an Orten, an denen die Minderheitensprache demografisch gesehen eigentlich sichtbar sein müsste. Wegen des Überflusses an linguistischen Daten in den LLs großer Städte sind diese ergiebige Tätigkeitsfelder für die Disziplin. Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich im ersten Teil mit der theoretischen und praktischen Forschung, die es bislang zu diesem Thema gab. Sie prüft den Stand der Theoriebildung, fasst Methodiken zusammen und gibt einen Überblick über verschiedene Ansätze. Im zweiten Teil wird die theoretische Basis auf eine eigene Fallstudie angewendet. Für diese wurden 2010 die LLs zweier Einkaufsstraßen in unterschiedlichen Gegenden Hong Kongs untersucht. Durch den dort lange währenden Einfluss der englischen Kultur und Mentalität und den offiziellen Status der Sprache liegt der Schluss nahe, dass die Sprachkompetenz des Englischen in Hong Kong eher hoch sein muss. Die Ergebnisse der Fallstudie basieren sowohl auf der Erhebung von statistischen Daten, die die objektive Anwesenheit des Englischen in der LL beider untersuchten Gegenden zeigt, als auch auf zwei daraus resultierenden Befragungen. Diese wurden zum einen offen, zum anderen anonym durchgeführt. Die Befragungen stellen eine Rückversicherung dar, die den Grad der Sprachkompetenz des Englischen in Hong Kong misst, welcher zuvor anhand der LL festgestellt wurde. Damit bietet die Fallstudie einen neuen Ansatz der Untersuchung einer LL, der im Gegensatz zu vorangegangenen Studien nicht bei der Beschreibung ihrer materiellen Beschaffenheit endet, sondern auch ihre Schöpfenden miteinbezieht und sich fragt, inwiefern die LL von Hong Kong die tatsächliche Sprachkompetenz der Menschen widerspiegelt.

The first Speak Good English Movement, SGEM, took place in 2000, and has been organized annually ever since. Speaking a “standard” form of English is considered to bring increased personal power. However, the SGEM wants the Singaporeans to use “standard” English in their private life as well. A decade after the beginning of the campaign, a Speak Good Singlish Movement was started. Based on studies of language and identity, it is understandable why some Singaporeans might feel the SGEM threatens their identity. However, the reactions towards the campaign are mainly positive. For the purposes of this analysis, Twitter messages, Facebook pages, and newspaper articles from The Straits Times were collected. The SGEM has hailed both direct and indirect praise and criticism in both social and traditional media: Five newspaper articles praise the campaign while five criticize it; the results are nine and seven respectively for social media. This thesis looks at reactions towards the SGEM in both social and traditional media, analyzes how these reactions might relate to the ideas of the power of language, its variety and the relation of language and identity.