The current article applies interactional sociolinguistic discourse analysis to interviews with t... more The current article applies interactional sociolinguistic discourse analysis to interviews with three parents of Ukrainian families living in New Zealand to further complexify what we know about Family Language Policy (FLP) and language transmission. More specifically, this article theorizes what we call "Aspirational FLP"when the desired imagined language identities of family members will require families to adopt an FLP that goes above and beyond what might otherwise be considered practical. In the case of our participants, this involves Ukrainians living in the diaspora who discuss the homeland's "changing your mother tongue" discourse (from Russian to Ukrainian) and what this means when it involves replacing one heritage language with another when both are minority languages in the hostland. Additionally, we consider the importance of both homeland and hostland sociopolitical contexts, as the interviews reflect dominant discourses from both. Finally, our interview data occurs twice with the same participants (2014 and again in 2021), therein allowing us to investigate the participants' Aspirational FLPs diachronically, bringing further insight to the dynamism of FLP. Our findings show that participants' Aspirational FLPs are connected to both homeland and hostland sociopolitical contexts, and as such are dynamic and shifting. Aspirational FLPs also shift differently as individual family members' investments and imagined future identities also shift. Furthermore, the longitudinal nature of the data sheds light on how and why Aspirational FLPs become reality for some families while they remain aspirational for others. We conclude that both local contexts and wider world contexts are important to consider when investigating FLP, and diachronic research is highly valuable for uncovering factors that contribute to the complexity of FLP, both Aspirational and realized.
The Sociolinguistics of Iran’s Languages at Home and Abroad, 2019
The present study investigates Iranian immigrants’ family language policy toward heritage languag... more The present study investigates Iranian immigrants’ family language policy toward heritage language literacy acquisition and maintenance in New Zealand. Parental beliefs, practices, and efforts toward their children’s minority language (i.e., Persian) literacy acquisition and maintenance are investigated through Spolsky’s (2004) model of language policy. The analysis of the data, i.e., semi-structured interviews with twenty-four parents of Persian-English bilinguals (6–18 year old), reveals that it was very uncommon for the heritage speakers to have high literacy skills, which the parents attributed largely to the lack of community-based heritage language schools in the host country. Additionally, while the parents reported that they would like their children to have high levels of conversational fluency as well as cultural knowledge, few of them believed that literacy can be a vehicle for both.
Whilst diffusion probabilistic models can generate high quality image content, key limitations re... more Whilst diffusion probabilistic models can generate high quality image content, key limitations remain in terms of both generating high-resolution imagery and their associated high computational requirements. Recent Vector-Quantized image models have overcome this limitation of image resolution but are prohibitively slow and unidirectional as they generate tokens via element-wise autoregressive sampling from the prior. By contrast, in this paper we propose a novel discrete diffusion probabilistic model prior which enables parallel prediction of Vector-Quantized tokens by using an unconstrained Transformer architecture as the backbone. During training, tokens are randomly masked in an order-agnostic manner and the Transformer learns to predict the original tokens. This parallelism of Vector-Quantized token prediction in turn facilitates unconditional generation of globally consistent high-resolution and diverse imagery at a fraction of the computational expense. In this manner, we can generate image resolutions exceeding that of the original training set samples whilst additionally provisioning per-image likelihood estimates (in a departure from generative adversarial approaches). Our approach achieves state-of-the-art results in terms of Density (LSUN Bedroom: 1.51; LSUN Churches: 1.12; FFHQ: 1.20) and Coverage (LSUN Bedroom: 0.83; LSUN Churches: 0.73; FFHQ: 0.80), and performs competitively on FID (LSUN Bedroom: 3.64; LSUN Churches: 4.07; FFHQ: 6.11) whilst offering advantages in terms of both computation and reduced training set requirements.
This paper offers a closer examination of the effects of an English-dominant society on bilingual... more This paper offers a closer examination of the effects of an English-dominant society on bilingual abilities by looking at everyday family dynamics in Mexican immigrant families. Three immigrant families from Mexico currently residing in Northern California provided the data for this project through ten hours of audio recordings documenting their normal home interactions. A qualitative analysis of family interactions shows that while the youngest children are proficient in the dominant language of the society they live in, they experience a far greater degree of difficulty with bilingualism than do their older siblings. This difficulty leads to heritage language avoidance with their parents and a weakening of family interaction. As a result, middle children find it necessary to take it upon themselves to act as translators within the family in an effort to maintain cohesive family dynamics.
Syntactic variation is an area of sociolinguistics that still has much room to expand. As such, o... more Syntactic variation is an area of sociolinguistics that still has much room to expand. As such, one variable that has not been formally examined until now is the presence or absence of the preposition of in the inverted degree construction “ADJ (of) a/n NP ” (such as big of a deal).
Though various ethnicities, religions, and political groups have been discussed in the linguistic... more Though various ethnicities, religions, and political groups have been discussed in the linguistic and anthropological literature, there remains a gap when it comes to the discussion of how the LGBT community uses humor. In 1905, Freud expanded the limited study of humor when he wrote the first critical discussion of humor from the margins. Since then, scholars have conducted linguistic, psychological, and anthropological analyses of stereotypes and the responsive use of humor by marginalized groups. However, a gap when it comes to humor and sexuality remains. Thus, the current article uses the theories of intertextuality, indexicality, and audience design to contrastively analyze a case study of how a lesbian comedian uses humor in two settings. First, an analysis is presented of how humor functions when used for a known LGBT friendly audience. This is then contrasted with a discourse analysis of how humor is used when the same lesbian comedian performs for a general (i.e. not exp...
Abstract Research into sustainable translanguaging has begun to address teacher and community con... more Abstract Research into sustainable translanguaging has begun to address teacher and community concern around the use of translanguaging practices in the quest to revitalize and maintain vulnerable languages. The current article adds to this discussion through an empirical examination of translanguaging practices in te reo Māori and Samoan early childhood educational environments in New Zealand. Both communities have valid concerns and face their own challenges regarding protecting the vitality of these languages, and this has a major impact upon the work that we need to do to ensure we are making use of socially responsive translanguaging to support language revitalization and maintenance efforts. The current article presents results of our school-based ethnographies with Māori and Samoan communities in the Wellington region of New Zealand 2017–2019, as well as the pedagogical translanguaging rules that we developed based on this research. We first present our findings of spontaneous translanguaging within these educational spaces. Then, we explain how we applied these findings to the creation of translingual teaching materials for these spaces. Finally, we discuss how these resources contribute to a socially responsive translanguaging pedagogy and the importance of this for marginalized communities.
Linguistic Landscape. An international journal, 2017
The past few years have seen a redefining of the linguistic landscape to become inclusive of the ... more The past few years have seen a redefining of the linguistic landscape to become inclusive of the wide variety of semiotic encounters that people have each day. The current article partakes in this expansion by looking to the ever-shifting nature of the LL of mass-scale events, particularly protests. In particular, the current article outlines a method for designing LL studies of mass-scale events, including data collection, data analysis, and presentation of findings. The strengths and limitations of such a method are also discussed, paying particular attention to the experiential nature of mass-scale events and importance of transparent researcher positionality and reflexivity.
This edited volume is the flagship volume of Vera Regan’s new book series ‘Language, migration, a... more This edited volume is the flagship volume of Vera Regan’s new book series ‘Language, migration, and identity’. Containing fourteen chapters, this edited collection draws together a diverse range of topics and contexts, ranging from ethnographic research with the descendants of Polish immigrants in Brazil to a historical textual analysis of Irish newspapers in the United States. While this first volume includes some minor errors such as quite a few typos and the use of different citation systems throughout, the overall benefit of the volume to language and migration research outweighs the flaws. The chapters have been categorized by common research themes for the purposes of the review. It should be noted, however, that the chapters are not categorized into subthemes in the book itself, matching the editors’ goal of letting each chapter stand on its own. The introductory chapter, written by Jennifer Martyn & Chloé Diskin, provides a succinct introduction to the volume, highlighting key research areas across the chapters, such as the role of identity in an increasingly globalized world, the growing importance of transnational research, and the continued growth of poststructural approaches to investigating identity in SLA. Martyn & Diskin also highlight the fact that the idea of an ‘immigrant’ has changed from implying a single point-to-point trajectory to instead referencing a mobile trajectory (6). They also discuss the importance of a recent shift by researchers to focus on speakers’ linguistic repertoires rather than just the languages they speak (e.g. translingualism; c.f. García & Li Wei 2014). Finally, this introduction ends with a brief introduction to each chapter. Chapter 4, by Agni Skrzypek & David Singleton, also encompasses a literature review, focusing on the age factor in SLA identity research. While this review is useful in its coverage, its treatment of identity is somewhat disappointing, especially in a volume meant to be focusing on poststructural ideas of identity. Instead, this chapter takes a very static, singular view of identity, evidenced through remarks such as ‘in a twelve-year-old arrival, linguistico-cultural identity is generally well on the way to being fully formed’ (83) and ‘Since adults have a fully formed L1 identity...’ (91).
The current article applies interactional sociolinguistic discourse analysis to interviews with t... more The current article applies interactional sociolinguistic discourse analysis to interviews with three parents of Ukrainian families living in New Zealand to further complexify what we know about Family Language Policy (FLP) and language transmission. More specifically, this article theorizes what we call "Aspirational FLP"when the desired imagined language identities of family members will require families to adopt an FLP that goes above and beyond what might otherwise be considered practical. In the case of our participants, this involves Ukrainians living in the diaspora who discuss the homeland's "changing your mother tongue" discourse (from Russian to Ukrainian) and what this means when it involves replacing one heritage language with another when both are minority languages in the hostland. Additionally, we consider the importance of both homeland and hostland sociopolitical contexts, as the interviews reflect dominant discourses from both. Finally, our interview data occurs twice with the same participants (2014 and again in 2021), therein allowing us to investigate the participants' Aspirational FLPs diachronically, bringing further insight to the dynamism of FLP. Our findings show that participants' Aspirational FLPs are connected to both homeland and hostland sociopolitical contexts, and as such are dynamic and shifting. Aspirational FLPs also shift differently as individual family members' investments and imagined future identities also shift. Furthermore, the longitudinal nature of the data sheds light on how and why Aspirational FLPs become reality for some families while they remain aspirational for others. We conclude that both local contexts and wider world contexts are important to consider when investigating FLP, and diachronic research is highly valuable for uncovering factors that contribute to the complexity of FLP, both Aspirational and realized.
The Sociolinguistics of Iran’s Languages at Home and Abroad, 2019
The present study investigates Iranian immigrants’ family language policy toward heritage languag... more The present study investigates Iranian immigrants’ family language policy toward heritage language literacy acquisition and maintenance in New Zealand. Parental beliefs, practices, and efforts toward their children’s minority language (i.e., Persian) literacy acquisition and maintenance are investigated through Spolsky’s (2004) model of language policy. The analysis of the data, i.e., semi-structured interviews with twenty-four parents of Persian-English bilinguals (6–18 year old), reveals that it was very uncommon for the heritage speakers to have high literacy skills, which the parents attributed largely to the lack of community-based heritage language schools in the host country. Additionally, while the parents reported that they would like their children to have high levels of conversational fluency as well as cultural knowledge, few of them believed that literacy can be a vehicle for both.
Whilst diffusion probabilistic models can generate high quality image content, key limitations re... more Whilst diffusion probabilistic models can generate high quality image content, key limitations remain in terms of both generating high-resolution imagery and their associated high computational requirements. Recent Vector-Quantized image models have overcome this limitation of image resolution but are prohibitively slow and unidirectional as they generate tokens via element-wise autoregressive sampling from the prior. By contrast, in this paper we propose a novel discrete diffusion probabilistic model prior which enables parallel prediction of Vector-Quantized tokens by using an unconstrained Transformer architecture as the backbone. During training, tokens are randomly masked in an order-agnostic manner and the Transformer learns to predict the original tokens. This parallelism of Vector-Quantized token prediction in turn facilitates unconditional generation of globally consistent high-resolution and diverse imagery at a fraction of the computational expense. In this manner, we can generate image resolutions exceeding that of the original training set samples whilst additionally provisioning per-image likelihood estimates (in a departure from generative adversarial approaches). Our approach achieves state-of-the-art results in terms of Density (LSUN Bedroom: 1.51; LSUN Churches: 1.12; FFHQ: 1.20) and Coverage (LSUN Bedroom: 0.83; LSUN Churches: 0.73; FFHQ: 0.80), and performs competitively on FID (LSUN Bedroom: 3.64; LSUN Churches: 4.07; FFHQ: 6.11) whilst offering advantages in terms of both computation and reduced training set requirements.
This paper offers a closer examination of the effects of an English-dominant society on bilingual... more This paper offers a closer examination of the effects of an English-dominant society on bilingual abilities by looking at everyday family dynamics in Mexican immigrant families. Three immigrant families from Mexico currently residing in Northern California provided the data for this project through ten hours of audio recordings documenting their normal home interactions. A qualitative analysis of family interactions shows that while the youngest children are proficient in the dominant language of the society they live in, they experience a far greater degree of difficulty with bilingualism than do their older siblings. This difficulty leads to heritage language avoidance with their parents and a weakening of family interaction. As a result, middle children find it necessary to take it upon themselves to act as translators within the family in an effort to maintain cohesive family dynamics.
Syntactic variation is an area of sociolinguistics that still has much room to expand. As such, o... more Syntactic variation is an area of sociolinguistics that still has much room to expand. As such, one variable that has not been formally examined until now is the presence or absence of the preposition of in the inverted degree construction “ADJ (of) a/n NP ” (such as big of a deal).
Though various ethnicities, religions, and political groups have been discussed in the linguistic... more Though various ethnicities, religions, and political groups have been discussed in the linguistic and anthropological literature, there remains a gap when it comes to the discussion of how the LGBT community uses humor. In 1905, Freud expanded the limited study of humor when he wrote the first critical discussion of humor from the margins. Since then, scholars have conducted linguistic, psychological, and anthropological analyses of stereotypes and the responsive use of humor by marginalized groups. However, a gap when it comes to humor and sexuality remains. Thus, the current article uses the theories of intertextuality, indexicality, and audience design to contrastively analyze a case study of how a lesbian comedian uses humor in two settings. First, an analysis is presented of how humor functions when used for a known LGBT friendly audience. This is then contrasted with a discourse analysis of how humor is used when the same lesbian comedian performs for a general (i.e. not exp...
Abstract Research into sustainable translanguaging has begun to address teacher and community con... more Abstract Research into sustainable translanguaging has begun to address teacher and community concern around the use of translanguaging practices in the quest to revitalize and maintain vulnerable languages. The current article adds to this discussion through an empirical examination of translanguaging practices in te reo Māori and Samoan early childhood educational environments in New Zealand. Both communities have valid concerns and face their own challenges regarding protecting the vitality of these languages, and this has a major impact upon the work that we need to do to ensure we are making use of socially responsive translanguaging to support language revitalization and maintenance efforts. The current article presents results of our school-based ethnographies with Māori and Samoan communities in the Wellington region of New Zealand 2017–2019, as well as the pedagogical translanguaging rules that we developed based on this research. We first present our findings of spontaneous translanguaging within these educational spaces. Then, we explain how we applied these findings to the creation of translingual teaching materials for these spaces. Finally, we discuss how these resources contribute to a socially responsive translanguaging pedagogy and the importance of this for marginalized communities.
Linguistic Landscape. An international journal, 2017
The past few years have seen a redefining of the linguistic landscape to become inclusive of the ... more The past few years have seen a redefining of the linguistic landscape to become inclusive of the wide variety of semiotic encounters that people have each day. The current article partakes in this expansion by looking to the ever-shifting nature of the LL of mass-scale events, particularly protests. In particular, the current article outlines a method for designing LL studies of mass-scale events, including data collection, data analysis, and presentation of findings. The strengths and limitations of such a method are also discussed, paying particular attention to the experiential nature of mass-scale events and importance of transparent researcher positionality and reflexivity.
This edited volume is the flagship volume of Vera Regan’s new book series ‘Language, migration, a... more This edited volume is the flagship volume of Vera Regan’s new book series ‘Language, migration, and identity’. Containing fourteen chapters, this edited collection draws together a diverse range of topics and contexts, ranging from ethnographic research with the descendants of Polish immigrants in Brazil to a historical textual analysis of Irish newspapers in the United States. While this first volume includes some minor errors such as quite a few typos and the use of different citation systems throughout, the overall benefit of the volume to language and migration research outweighs the flaws. The chapters have been categorized by common research themes for the purposes of the review. It should be noted, however, that the chapters are not categorized into subthemes in the book itself, matching the editors’ goal of letting each chapter stand on its own. The introductory chapter, written by Jennifer Martyn & Chloé Diskin, provides a succinct introduction to the volume, highlighting key research areas across the chapters, such as the role of identity in an increasingly globalized world, the growing importance of transnational research, and the continued growth of poststructural approaches to investigating identity in SLA. Martyn & Diskin also highlight the fact that the idea of an ‘immigrant’ has changed from implying a single point-to-point trajectory to instead referencing a mobile trajectory (6). They also discuss the importance of a recent shift by researchers to focus on speakers’ linguistic repertoires rather than just the languages they speak (e.g. translingualism; c.f. García & Li Wei 2014). Finally, this introduction ends with a brief introduction to each chapter. Chapter 4, by Agni Skrzypek & David Singleton, also encompasses a literature review, focusing on the age factor in SLA identity research. While this review is useful in its coverage, its treatment of identity is somewhat disappointing, especially in a volume meant to be focusing on poststructural ideas of identity. Instead, this chapter takes a very static, singular view of identity, evidenced through remarks such as ‘in a twelve-year-old arrival, linguistico-cultural identity is generally well on the way to being fully formed’ (83) and ‘Since adults have a fully formed L1 identity...’ (91).
The goal of maintaining and even further developing heritage language proficiency has steadily in... more The goal of maintaining and even further developing heritage language proficiency has steadily increased in importance within the United States educational and political spheres, and it has become an item of focus in the past ten years (Valdés 2005; Bianco 2008; Tucker 2008; Lao & Lee 2009; Wiley & Lee 2009). Organizations such as The National Heritage Language Resource Center, The American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese, The National Foreign Language Center, the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages have focused on developing resources for heritage language teaching (Valdés 2005: 413). However, while there is great interest in maintaining heritage languages in the United States, researchers have also noted the continued reluctance in educational language policy to actually implement resources in primary schools that would promote the development of multilingual children (Valdés 2003, Tucker 2008, Wiley & Lee 2009). This thus becomes an area of ideological conflict. How can heritage language school children maintain and improve their proficiency in the heritage language when the resources needed to do so are often not accessible within schools?
This dissertation pilot research responds to a call by Valdés, González, García, & Márquez (2008) that in looking to answer this question, it is the job of the linguistic researcher looking at heritage languages to lead new investigations into the classroom to uncover the linguistic ideologies present there (127). To reach this goal, this research bridges Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics in order to examine the relationship of language, identity, and ideology as it pertains to identity development amongst Ukrainian and Russian heritage language schoolchildren in the United States. Hornberger & Wang (2008) note the importance of identity in studies of heritage language learning, stating as follows: “The notion that there are multiple selves/identities, which are situated and contextually negotiated, contested, shaped, and reshaped, becomes central in the learning of a HL [Heritage Language] and HC [Heritage Culture],” (7).
The data for this research come from 80 hours of audio and video recordings made over the course of four weeks at a partially immersive multilingual primary school in Oregon. Specifically, this ethnography focuses on third-grade classmates who are children of Ukrainian immigrant parents and who are heritage language speakers of Ukrainian or Russian. The data collection is triangulated with student and teacher journals, on-site fieldnotes, parent interviews, and a thorough background investigation of the school and community. Subsequent analysis is based on the grounded theory approach and uses the NVivo9 software to code and analyze all data.
The results of this ethnography show that these children hold a unique place in the classroom, as independent leaders, within a school that recognizes all parts of their identity. Being aware of the distinct place they hold while at the same time feeling supported in their learning environment, they are able to negotiate various language ideologies and create a new identity simultaneously joined to and independent of their American and Ukrainian identities.
In this study, we describe a current change in progress involving a previously unstudied syntacti... more In this study, we describe a current change in progress involving a previously unstudied syntactic variable. The variable under study is the presence of post-adjectival (of) in degree constructions such as “It’s not that big (of) a deal”. Our initial impressionistic and corpus observations showed that such constructions occur frequently across discursive domains in American English. A corpus search of news media from the 1940s to the present day revealed a steady increase in (of) usage, particularly in the past two decades. People’s intuitions about the relative acceptability of the feature also suggest its significance as a sociolinguistic variable.
The majority of studies in sociolinguistic variation have investigated phonological variables, such as alveolarisation of (ing) (Fisher 1958, Labov 2006) and reduction or deletion of (t/d) (Guy 1996). Adding to this, Rickford et al’s (1995) investigation of “as far as” constructions with the variable presence of “be concerned” and “go” (e.g. “as far as X is concerned/goes”) showed that syntactic variables can be successfully studied like their phonological counterparts. We took a similar approach in examining ADJ (of/O) NP constructions.
Surveys distributed to 106 randomly selected participants in the greater Washington, DC, area, consisted of 26 sentences of the type “It’s not that ADJ (of/O) a/n NP”. Participants were asked to read the sentences and rate each one on a six-point scale in reply to the question “How likely are you to say this?”. The resulting 2700 tokens were analysed and deemed to be indicative of the social patterning of (of).
Acceptability of (of) was found to negatively correlate with age: the younger participants showed a strong preference for constructions with (of), whereas older informants overall preferred (O) constructions. This suggests that this feature is part of a change in progress, with under-35 and over-35 being the relevant age categories and the younger speakers being the innovators of change.
Additionally, ethnicity was found to be a significant social factor. African-American and Latino speakers under 35 significantly favoured (of) constructions compared to older speakers of their own ethnic group. By contrast, Caucasian and Asian-American informants of all ages rated all constructions similarly, regardless of whether (of) was present. This pattern may indicate that post-adjectival (of) is more salient for African-American and Latino speakers in the United States.
Furthermore, the overall social patterning of post-adjectival (of) is reminiscent of the development of another variable: the quotative be + like (Ferrara and Bell 1995, Dailey-O’Cain 2000). While be + like was originally seen as a feature of adolescent speech, subsequent work has shown its presence in other age groups, indicating a change in progress. Our findings suggest that (of) may mirror the development of be + like as it too displays a progressive and steady age based change.
Our study provides insight into the development of a previously unstudied sociolinguistic variable. We also discuss the use of surveys in variationist sociolinguistics, and suggest bridging qualitative and quantitative methodologies in future studies on this and other variables.
Bibliography
Dailey-O’Cain, J. (2000). The sociolinguistic distribution of and attitudes toward focuser like and quotative like. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/1: 60-80.
Ferrara, K. and Bell, B. (1995). Sociolinguistic Variation and Discourse Function of Constructed Dialogue Introducers: The Case of Be + like. American Speech, 70/3: 265-290.
Fischer, J.L. (1958). Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant. Word 14: 47-56.
Guy, G. R. (1996). Form and function in linguistic variation. In Guy et al. (Eds). Towards a social science of language: papers in honor of William Labov, vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 221-252.
Labov, W. (2006 [1966]). The Social Stratification of English in New York City, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 254-261.
Rickford, J. R., Thomas A. Wasow, Norma Mendoza-Denton, and Juli Espinoza. (1995). Syntactic variation and change in progress: Loss of the verbal coda in topic-restricting as far as constructions. Language 71: 102-131.
Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts, 2019
Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts brings together researchers, practitioners,... more Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts brings together researchers, practitioners, and community stakeholders from around the world to present international case studies of multilingualism in education. This book seeks to empower the speakers and teachers of heritage, Indigenous, and minority languages around the world, as translanguaging also seeks to do. It challenges research agendas and pushes our understanding of linguistic terminology, especially in areas of social justice. At times examining classroom teaching and at times examining language policy, Embracing Multilingualism Across Educational Contexts showcases the value of and gains made when embracing multilingualism in education.
Heritage language policies define the context in which heritage languages are maintained or aband... more Heritage language policies define the context in which heritage languages are maintained or abandoned by communities, and this volume describes and analyzes international policy strategies, as well as the implications for the actual heritage language speakers.
This volume brings together heritage language policy case studies from around the world, foregrounding globalization by covering five regions: the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. The countries profiled include the United States, Canada, Argentina, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Uganda, Namibia, Morocco, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji. This volume also highlights an expanded definition of ‘heritage language’, choosing to focus on individual and community identities, and therefore including both Indigenous and immigrant languages.
Focusing specifically on language policy relating to heritage languages, the chapters address key questions such as
Are heritage languages included or excluded from the national language policy discourse? What are the successes and shortcomings of efforts to establish heritage language policies? What is the definition of ‘heritage language’ in official usage by the local/regional government and stakeholders? How are these language policies perceived by the actual heritage language communities?
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This dissertation pilot research responds to a call by Valdés, González, García, & Márquez (2008) that in looking to answer this question, it is the job of the linguistic researcher looking at heritage languages to lead new investigations into the classroom to uncover the linguistic ideologies present there (127). To reach this goal, this research bridges Applied Linguistics and Sociolinguistics in order to examine the relationship of language, identity, and ideology as it pertains to identity development amongst Ukrainian and Russian heritage language schoolchildren in the United States. Hornberger & Wang (2008) note the importance of identity in studies of heritage language learning, stating as follows: “The notion that there are multiple selves/identities, which are situated and contextually negotiated, contested, shaped, and reshaped, becomes central in the learning of a HL [Heritage Language] and HC [Heritage Culture],” (7).
The data for this research come from 80 hours of audio and video recordings made over the course of four weeks at a partially immersive multilingual primary school in Oregon. Specifically, this ethnography focuses on third-grade classmates who are children of Ukrainian immigrant parents and who are heritage language speakers of Ukrainian or Russian. The data collection is triangulated with student and teacher journals, on-site fieldnotes, parent interviews, and a thorough background investigation of the school and community. Subsequent analysis is based on the grounded theory approach and uses the NVivo9 software to code and analyze all data.
The results of this ethnography show that these children hold a unique place in the classroom, as independent leaders, within a school that recognizes all parts of their identity. Being aware of the distinct place they hold while at the same time feeling supported in their learning environment, they are able to negotiate various language ideologies and create a new identity simultaneously joined to and independent of their American and Ukrainian identities.
The majority of studies in sociolinguistic variation have investigated phonological variables, such as alveolarisation of (ing) (Fisher 1958, Labov 2006) and reduction or deletion of (t/d) (Guy 1996). Adding to this, Rickford et al’s (1995) investigation of “as far as” constructions with the variable presence of “be concerned” and “go” (e.g. “as far as X is concerned/goes”) showed that syntactic variables can be successfully studied like their phonological counterparts. We took a similar approach in examining ADJ (of/O) NP constructions.
Surveys distributed to 106 randomly selected participants in the greater Washington, DC, area, consisted of 26 sentences of the type “It’s not that ADJ (of/O) a/n NP”. Participants were asked to read the sentences and rate each one on a six-point scale in reply to the question “How likely are you to say this?”. The resulting 2700 tokens were analysed and deemed to be indicative of the social patterning of (of).
Acceptability of (of) was found to negatively correlate with age: the younger participants showed a strong preference for constructions with (of), whereas older informants overall preferred (O) constructions. This suggests that this feature is part of a change in progress, with under-35 and over-35 being the relevant age categories and the younger speakers being the innovators of change.
Additionally, ethnicity was found to be a significant social factor. African-American and Latino speakers under 35 significantly favoured (of) constructions compared to older speakers of their own ethnic group. By contrast, Caucasian and Asian-American informants of all ages rated all constructions similarly, regardless of whether (of) was present. This pattern may indicate that post-adjectival (of) is more salient for African-American and Latino speakers in the United States.
Furthermore, the overall social patterning of post-adjectival (of) is reminiscent of the development of another variable: the quotative be + like (Ferrara and Bell 1995, Dailey-O’Cain 2000). While be + like was originally seen as a feature of adolescent speech, subsequent work has shown its presence in other age groups, indicating a change in progress. Our findings suggest that (of) may mirror the development of be + like as it too displays a progressive and steady age based change.
Our study provides insight into the development of a previously unstudied sociolinguistic variable. We also discuss the use of surveys in variationist sociolinguistics, and suggest bridging qualitative and quantitative methodologies in future studies on this and other variables.
Bibliography
Dailey-O’Cain, J. (2000). The sociolinguistic distribution of and attitudes toward focuser like and quotative like. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4/1: 60-80.
Ferrara, K. and Bell, B. (1995). Sociolinguistic Variation and Discourse Function of Constructed Dialogue Introducers: The Case of Be + like. American Speech, 70/3: 265-290.
Fischer, J.L. (1958). Social influences on the choice of a linguistic variant. Word 14: 47-56.
Guy, G. R. (1996). Form and function in linguistic variation. In Guy et al. (Eds). Towards a social science of language: papers in honor of William Labov, vol. 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 221-252.
Labov, W. (2006 [1966]). The Social Stratification of English in New York City, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 254-261.
Rickford, J. R., Thomas A. Wasow, Norma Mendoza-Denton, and Juli Espinoza. (1995). Syntactic variation and change in progress: Loss of the verbal coda in topic-restricting as far as constructions. Language 71: 102-131.
This volume brings together heritage language policy case studies from around the world, foregrounding globalization by covering five regions: the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. The countries profiled include the United States, Canada, Argentina, Norway, Sweden, Ireland, Uganda, Namibia, Morocco, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji. This volume also highlights an expanded definition of ‘heritage language’, choosing to focus on individual and community identities, and therefore including both Indigenous and immigrant languages.
Focusing specifically on language policy relating to heritage languages, the chapters address key questions such as
Are heritage languages included or excluded from the national language policy discourse?
What are the successes and shortcomings of efforts to establish heritage language policies?
What is the definition of ‘heritage language’ in official usage by the local/regional government and stakeholders?
How are these language policies perceived by the actual heritage language communities?