Whereas in Quebec the use of English is seen as a threat to the French language, English words are often used in France, particularly in advertising. They imply certain values: British words suggest elite status; U.S. ones promise technological progress, freedom, and fun. The adaptation of English words is described. (18 references) (Author/LB)

Refers to Bourdieu's publication "Language and Symbolic Power," to explain the unwillingness of member states of the European Union to grant another language (other than English, French, and to a lesser degree German) recognition: an official language can be considered as linguistic capital that affords holders symbolic power.…

Spanish-speaking (SS) children with language impairment (LI) present with deficits in morphology and verb argument structure. These language areas may be useful for clinical identification of affected children. This study aimed to evaluate the discrimination accuracy of spontaneous language measures with SS preschoolers to tease out what…

English has become the dominant global language of communication, business, aviation, entertainment, diplomacy and the internet. Governments as well as some scholars appear to be accepting such a spread of English uncritically. However, we argue that the increasing dominance of the English language is contributing to neocolonialism by empowering…

The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual children and deaf and hearing adults. We investigated…

It is well recognized that the incidence of atypical language lateralization is increased in patients with focal epilepsy. The hypothesis that shifts in language dominance are particularly likely when epileptic lesions are located in close vicinity to the so-called language-eloquent areas rather than in more remote brain regions such as the…

An experiment is described that is designed to test for the operation of an input switch mechanism in bilinguals. Their ability to selectively avoid processing words presented in one of their languages while they are attending to words presented in their other language is described. The 20 subjects were all French-English bilinguals. The specific…

The stability of an ethnic minority's language in a bilingual situation is viewed as a function of: (1) level of literacy in each of the two languages; (2) economic, social, and political power as related to the two languages; (3) geographic and social mobility; (4) social integration within each language group and across groups; (5) amount and…

Social attitudes marking the linguistic behavior of French Canadians living in New England during the last century are examined, including language values and stigmas, ethnocentrism, and adoption of or resistance to American attitudes. Three groups are considered: the "Little Canadas'" founders, their descendents of 50-70 years, and…

The study examined the effects of age and language dominance of the recall of 72 bilingual children, ranging from preschool to second grade, in 2 semantically different modes of presentation. (Author/NQ)

Maintains that because the field of English for specific purposes deals with the language of science, technology, and business, it is in a pivotal position regarding the use or abuse of linguistic power. (Author/VWL)

The present investigation examined the functioning of inhibitory mechanisms in younger and older bilinguals using a bilingual version of the Stroop test. The study predicted different patterns of age related decline in inhibitory mechanisms (inter- and intralingual interference) in bilinguals depending on their level of proficiency. Consistent…

Bullock and Gerfen show that two of the last speakers of French in Frenchville, Pennsylvania, systematically replace the French front mid round vowel (in words like "deux, neuf") with the rhoticized schwa of American English, their dominant language. As the authors argue, it is unlikely that this sound change would have arisen in the…

Clahsen and Felser (CF) deserve praise for their superlative synthesis of literature relating to grammatical processing, as well as for their original contributions to this area of research. CF "explore the idea that there might be fundamental differences between child L1 and adult L2 processing." The researchers present evidence that adult second…

The Hispanic population of the United States is quite diverse and with each passing year, due to (im)migration patterns, more and more students are entering language classrooms with some degree of familiarity with the language. However, because of the tendency toward intergenerational loss of Spanish, the linguistic proficiency covers the…