This article discusses the rationale for using language diaries as a method to evaluate language use and language choice in multilingual contexts, as well as the benefits and limitations of this approach vis-à-vis other research methods. This is illustrated using examples from two contexts: Flemish Sign Language/Dutch bilinguals in Flanders and…

This study explored the attitudes of ethnic Latvian listeners towards Latvian-Russian bilinguals. Fifty-seven ethnic Latvians completed an identity questionnaire to obtain estimates of their ethnic beliefs and rated the speech of eight Latvian-Russian bilinguals for personal traits, judged how well social and ethnic labels apply to bilinguals, and…

Pieter Muysken's article on modeling and interpreting language contact phenomena constitutes an important contribution.The approach chosen is a top-down one, building on the author's extensive knowledge of all matters relating to language contact. The paper aims at integrating a wide range of factors and levels of social, cognitive, and…

Pieter Muysken's keynote paper, "Language contact outcomes as a result of bilingual optimization strategies", undertakes an ambitious project to theoretically unify different empirical outcomes of language contact, for instance, SLA, pidgins and Creoles, and code-switching. Muysken has dedicated a life-time to researching, rather…

This is an analysis of California history of the shifting of language policies from Spanish to English, as an Official Language The focus is English as an imposed language that from the beginning of schooling policies stifle a process of language acquisition for the majority of Spanish speakers. In 1849 the California Constitution stipulated that…

This report is part of a larger, 2-year ethnography of bi- and multilingual speakers in Japan. On the basis of audio and videotape recordings of discussions among international students in a Japanese university, this study examines participants' deployment of different conversational resources to understand and talk about marginalizing…

Attempts to characterize the process of first language acquisition by children. Suggests that language learning involves the acquisition of both language knowledge and language behavior, hence of the internalized representations underlying linguistic competence and also the ability to deploy this knowledge in interpreting and speaking the language…

Surveys the linguistic attitudes and cultural identity of Cajun speakers stratified by age and sex from four communities in Louisiana. Findings reveal that Cajun identity rests fundamentally in the linguistic ability of the speakers and that the criteria established has created considerable tension within the cultural Cajun community. (32…

This study on the African child had three objectives: (1) to become familiar with the environment of the African child, (2) to investigate the vocabulary to which the child is exposed at home and at school, and (3) to compare the vocabulary of the native language with that of the school. The first part of the study constituted a linguistic study…

Following an introduction by Anthony Liddicoat on the general nature of bilingualism, three papers on the characteristics, development, and advantages of bilingualism are presented. "Psycholinguistic Aspects of Bilingualism" by Susanne Dopke, Tim Macnamara, and Terry Quinn considers the linguistic, cognitive, emotional, and educational…

The social context in which the teacher and children are mutually engaged in written language is examined to explain the teacher's use of sociocultural, sociopsycholinguistic,and sociopolitical knowledge bases. An explanation of the psychogenetic theory of the alphabetic writing system is offered, and one bilingual whole language first grade…

A selection of 27 papers from 1972 to publication includes works on a variety of topics whose unifying theme is the relationship of language and ethnicity. The papers are presented in six groups, on these topics: (1) what ethnicity is and how it is linked to language: phenomenological and socio-historical considerations; (2) language maintenance…

This article examines the multiple factors necessary to attainment of transcultural competence for language specialists in educational settings. Issues discussed include structural linguistics, psycholinguistics, social psychological issues, and, most important, sociolinguistics. Cultural issues in the client-therapist-teacher relationship are…

To examine the process of language shift (bilingualization) in an area where there is a local dialect equivalent to a "language of solidarity" and a national language equivalent to a "language of power," language interactions in the impoverished village of San Marcos in the highlands of Guatemala were examined. Although Spanish…

Discusses strategies of social mobility involving education, occupational or residential change, and migration as well as the implications for language behavior of these strategies. The article assesses current theories of language maintenance and shift, drawing on network concepts and referring to change in an Irish-speaking community in…