Research Ethics, Volume 18, Issue 3, Page 210-225, July 2022. Interview-based research in multilingual situations can present researchers with specific ethical challenges relating to language-based power play, data handling and presentation. Studies indicate favouring the L1 as an interviewing language may produce better quality data, but external pressures can favour English as the dominant research language. This article examines researcher perceptions and experiences of the ethical consequences of language choice and the practical issues involved. Interviews were (...) conducted with five European researchers working on an interview-based project with experiences of diverse interviewing scenarios. The four moral principles of respect for autonomy, justice, beneficence and non-maleficence were used as a framework for analysis. The analysis revealed a nuanced picture of ethical issues in both L1- and English-oriented scenarios. This included potential misrepresentation and deculturalisation of the data in the former, and language-based power asymmetries in the latter. The findings highlight the importance of documenting ethics-related methodological details of language use, and advocates publication practices favouring the inclusion and foregrounding of L1 data. (shrink)

Doing research in a globalized context – regardless of the discipline – requires language decisions at different stages of the research process. Many of these language decisions have ethical implications. Existing literature and ethical guidance tend to focus on ethical concerns that arise in communication with participants who use a language different from the main research language. As this article shows, language decisions with potential ethical implications can occur in many additional ways. Two questions guided this work: (...) how do language decisions and research ethics intersect at different stages of the research process, and what potential harm is related to language decisions and how can such concerns be mitigated? Relevant literature – combined with practical research experiences – show that language decisions can potentially result in harm at the conception stage of research projects, when working with participants, during data analysis, interpretation, and dissemination, as well as when managing a research project. Thus, the article highlights that the role of language-related ethical dilemmas is not only organizational (e.g., ensuring participants can understand what the research is about), but also social (e.g., developing trust and relationships in research teams) as well as ideological (e.g., awareness of power structures and diverse worldviews). In order to support researchers in globalized contexts, this article offers a reflective framework that complements regulatory guidance issued by ethical bodies and facilitates a deeper awareness of ethical implications related to language decisions in a multilingual world. (shrink)

Africa has a colonial past that renders it a linguistic melting pot, where language is not only important for communication but is inextricably related to cultural identity. In Africa, there are over 2000 languages that are still being used and spoken. Language diversity coupled with cultural diversity may affect the process of obtaining informed consent in data-intensive research. We explore some of the challenges and opportunities of multilingualism in handling informed consent in the context of data-intensive research. In (...) multilingual contexts, as in most African countries, language is exceptionally central, and translation has potential cultural, social, historical, functional and scientific importance. However, it is recognised that terminological and translation activities may not always be cost-effective or feasible. We consider alternative mechanisms of harmonisation of data-related terminology and concepts in multilingual contexts, such as iconography, graphic elicitation and other multimedia formats of information sharing. The inclusion of visual or multimedia explanations in informed consent forms can improve comprehension, enhance information transfer and learning, reduce potential vulnerabilities associated with low literacy levels or the inability to interpret technical language associated with data-intensive research, build trust with participants and their communities, and promote autonomy of potential participants. We recognise that the inclusion of visual or multimedia content to facilitate information transfer is only one component of the informed consent process for data-intensive research. Research ethics committees (RECs) should be mindful of other key considerations and challenges of informed consent for data-intensive research in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and to explore whether these alternative forms of consent are ethical and effective in multilingual contexts. (shrink)

This book presents the methodological framework of combining Multimodal Conversation Analysis (MCA) with Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to interpretively analyse translanguaging practices in educational contexts. Beginning with an overview of the three uses of translanguaging - translanguaging as a theory of language, as a pedagogical practice and as an analytical perspective - the book goes on to critically examine the different methodological approaches for analysing translanguaging practices in multilingual classroom interactions. It explains how MCA and IPA are useful methodologies (...) for understanding how and why translanguaging practices are constructed by participants in the classroom and discusses types of data collected and data collection procedures. The author, Kevin W. H. Tai, shows how combining these approaches enables researchers to study how translanguaging practices are constructed in multilingual classrooms and how teachers make sense of their own translanguaging practices at particular moments of classroom interaction. This detailed and concise guide is indispensable for students, practitioners, policymakers, and researchers from across the globe, particularly those working in the fields of applied linguistics and language education. (shrink)

Providing high-quality education for students with emergent proficiency in the language of instruction (referred to here as multilingual students) presents a challenge to inclusion for educational systems the world over. In Austria, a new German language support model was implemented in the school year 2018/19 which provides language support in separate classrooms up to 20 h a week. Since its implementation, the model has been strongly criticized for excluding multilingual students from the mainstream classroom, which is argued to (...) reinforce the educational disadvantages that they face. The study presented here provides unprecedented qualitative insight into how schooling for students within the so-called German language support classes (GLSC) was organized during the COVID-19 pandemic. It builds on results of a previous large-scale quantitative study (n= 3,400 teachers), which was conducted during the first lockdown (spring 2020) and indicated a high risk of exclusion for marginalized students, especially for multilingual students in GLSC. To gain deeper insights into the situation of these students during school closures, 37 teachers who work in these classes at both primary and lower-secondary schools in Vienna were interviewed, of which 18 interviews were considered for analysis. The interviews focus on the situation during the first and second school closures in the city of Vienna. A thematic analysis of the interview data reveals teachers’ perceptions of aspects which harmed or promoted inclusion for students in GLSC during these periods of school closure. Teachers’ perceptions of the most harming factors for students included strong language barriers between teachers and students, restricted access to technical equipment and supportive learning spaces, and low parental engagement. A development that promoted inclusion of these students was the option to allow them to come to school during the second school closure. Since existing studies on the schooling of students during school closures have hardly addressed the situation of students in GLSC, this study contributes to closing this research gap. (shrink)

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of studies that investigates how multilingual speakers construct emotions in their talk as a joint discursive practice. The contributions draw on the well established, converging traditions of conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership categorization analysis together with recent work on interactional storytelling, stylization, and multimodal analysis. By adopting a discursive approach to emotion in multilingual talk, the volume breaks with the dominant view of emotions as cognitive and intra-psychological (...) phenomena and their study through self-report. Through detailed analyses of original recorded data, the chapters examine how participants produce emotion-implicative actions, identities, stances, and morality through their interactional work in ordinary face-to-face conversation, computer-mediated interaction, institutional talk in medical, educational, and broadcast media settings, and in research interviews. The volume addresses itself to students and researchers interested in language and emotion, multilingual speakers and settings, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. (shrink)

This edited volume addresses lacunae given the momentum translanguaging has already gained internationally in publications on school contexts for pupils aged 4 to 18. In this book, the epistemologi...

This paper investigates the impact of the historical factor on language choice in Protestant Churches in Cameroon. It is based on the postulate that religious languages are more stable than their secular counterparts, not only in their forms, but also in their variety. Therefore, it was hypothesized that the first language group to come in contact with the mother mission society of a religious variety is likely to remain the major group in the church, and its language, the liturgical language. (...) To verify this hypothesis, the researcher analysed language use in three Protestant parishes located in the Yaoundé metropolis: the Oyom-Abang parishes of the Eglise Evangélique du Cameroun and Eglise Presbytérienne Camerounaise, and the Yaoundé-Melen-Philadelphie parish of the Eglise Protestante Africaine. The data were collected via participant observation and informal interviews. Their analysis revealed that the use of indigenous languages for key parts of a church service in the three parishes selected was usually associated with the place where the Church was founded, which is the area where its mother mission society first settled in the country. In that vein, the following languages were reported: Bamileke at EEC Oyom-Abang, Basaa at EPC Oyom-Abang, and Ngumba at EPA Yaoundé-Melen-Philadelphie. (shrink)

En nous appuyant sur la production et la diffusion de corpus audiovisuels via Internet, nous discutons d'une manière pratique et succincte la question de l'ouverture d'oeuvres intellectuelles monolingues qui possèdent un profil textuel bien déterminé à un « marché » de connaissances intrinsèquement multilingue et multiculturel qui est celui de l'Internet. Nous développons, plus particulièrement, la notion générale de la republication de corpus audiovisuels au sens de son adaptation - aussi bien linguistique et culturelle - sous forme de genre de (...) publication approprié à des contextes d'usage circonscrits. Des exemples du programme Archives audiovisuelles de la recherche et de projets de R&D européens et français nous serviront pour étayer notre propos.Relying on the production and dissemination of audiovisual corpus via the Internet, we discuss a practical and brief the issue of opening of intellectual works have a profile monolingual text well defined to a "market" inherently multilingual and multicultural knowledge that is the Internet. We develop, in particular, the general notion of republication of visual corpus within the meaning of adaptation - both linguistic and cultural - as a kind of publication in appropriate contexts of use contained. Examples of program Audiovisual Research Archives and R & D projects European and French will serve to substantiate our discussion. (shrink)

On the surface, bi- and multilingualism would seem to be an ideal context for exploring questions of typological proximity. The obvious intuition is that the more closely related two languages are, the easier it should be to implement the two languages in one mind. This is the starting point adopted here, but we immediately run into the difficulty that the overwhelming majority of cognitive, computational, and linguistic research on bi- and multilingualism exhibits a monolingual bias (i.e., where monolingual grammars (...) are used as the standard of comparison for outputs from bilingual grammars). The primary questions so far have focused on how bilinguals balance and switch between their two languages, but our perspective on typology leads us to consider the nature of bi- and multi-lingual systems as a whole. Following an initial proposal from Hsin ( 2014 ), we conjecture that bilingual grammars are neither isolated, nor (completely) conjoined with one another in the bilingual mind, but rather exist as integrated source grammars that are further mitigated by a common, combined grammar (Cook, 2016 ; Goldrick et al., 2016a, b ; Putnam and Klosinski, 2017 ). Here we conceive such a combined grammar in a parallel, distributed, and gradient architecture implemented in a shared vector-space model that employs compression through routinization and dimensionality reduction. We discuss the emergence of such representations and their function in the minds of bilinguals. This architecture aims to be consistent with empirical results on bilingual cognition and memory representations in computational cognitive architectures. (shrink)

In order to exchange knowledge, humans need to share a common lexicon of words as well as to access the world models underlying that lexicon. What is a natural process for a human turns out to be an extremely hard task for a machine: computers can’t represent knowledge as effectively as humans do, which hampers, for example, meaning disambiguation and communication. Applied ontologies and NLP have been developed to face these challenges. Integrating ontologies with (possibly multilingual) lexical resources is (...) an essential requirement to make human language understandable by machines, and also to enable interoperability and computability across information systems and, ultimately, in the Web. This book explores recent advances in the integration of ontologies and lexical resources, including questions such as building the required infrastructure (e.g., the Semantic Web) and different formalisms, methods and platforms for eliciting, analyzing and encoding knowledge contents (e.g., multimedia, emotions, events, etc.). The contributors look towards next-generation technologies, shifting the focus from the state of the art to the future of Ontologies and Lexical Resources. This work will be of interest to research scientists, graduate students, and professionals in the fields of knowledge engineering, computational linguistics, and semantic technologies. (shrink)

This article introduces the LITMUS-MAIN and motivates the adaptation of this instrument into Chinese languages and language pairs involving a Chinese language, namely Cantonese, Mandarin, Kam, Urdu. We propose that these new adapted protocols not only contribute to the theoretical discussion on story grammar and widen the evidential base of MAIN to include more languages in studying bilinguals, they also offer new methods of assessing language development in young children that have the potential to tease apart the effects of language (...) impairment and bilingualism and improve the identification of Developmental Language Disorder. These new protocols are the first tools to be designed for the dual assessment of language skills in these particular languages, in particular narrative skills in bilingual children speaking these languages. By catering to under-researched languages and over-looked groups of bilingual children, these new tools could improve the clinical management for certain bilingual ethnic minority children such as Urdu-Cantonese and Kam-Mandarin bilinguals, as well as promote the study of these groups and their acquisition issues. Advances in understanding the theoretical and acquisition issues in childhood bilingualism can also be made possible using these new tools. (shrink)

The introduction and tracking of individuals over extended discourse, known as referential movement, is a central feature of coherence, and accounts for 'about every third word of discourse'. Located at the intersection of pragmatics and grammar, reference is now proving a rich and enduring source of insight into second language development. The challenge for L2 learners involves navigating the selection and positioning of reference in the target language, continually shifting and balancing the language used to maintain coherence, while remaining acutely (...) sensitive to the discourse and social context. The present volume focuses on how L2 learners meet that challenge, bringing together both eminent and up-and-coming researchers in the field of L2 acquisition. The chapters address a range of problems in SLA (e.g. form-function mapping, L1 influence, developmental trajectories), and do so in relation to various theoretical approaches to reference (e.g. Accessibility Theory, Givenness Hierarchy). The global outlook of these studies relate to the L2 acquisition of English, French, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish and cover a diverse range of situational contexts including heritage language learning, English as a Medium of Instruction, and the development of sociolinguistic competence. (shrink)

The importance of ethics in social research has increased in recent years, something reflected, among other things, in the progressive codification and institutionalization of research ethics and the growing literature on this topic. We argue that despite increasing ethical regulation and ethical reflection in social research, ethical challenges also arise, i.e., difficult situations connected with selecting ethically appropriate behavior. The aim of this special issue is to invite social researchers to reflect upon and discuss ethical challenges in (...) contemporary social research. The contributions in this issue concern vulnerability (one critically analyzing it, and another adapting the vulnerability concept to conducting research with people after a laryngectomy), the researcher and participant relationship, research ethics in multilingual world, and the ethicality of data representation where language plays a particular role in creating a form of activist research. (shrink)

The members of the International Network for the Analysis of Intergenerational Relations (Generationes) proudly present the most recent issue of the jointly produced compendium “Generations, Intergenerational Relations and Generational Policy”. This new version includes seven languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Polish (New) and Portuguese (New)). Its layout is designed for using it to translate the specific concepts and terminology of research into generations and intergenerational relations from one language into another. -/- .

Institutional discrimination matters. The purpose of this longitudinal community‐based participatory research study was to examine institutional procedural discrimination, institutional racism, and other institutional discrimination, and their relationships with participants' health during a maternal and child health program in a municipal initiative. Twenty participants from nine multilingual, multicultural community‐based organizations were included. Overall reported incidences of institutional procedural discrimination decreased from April 2019 (18.6%) to November 2019 (11.8%) although changes were not statistically significant and participants reporting incidences remained high (...) (n = 15 in April and n = 14 in November). Participants reported experiencing significantly less “[when] different cultural ways of doing things were shared, the project did not support my way” from April 2019 (23.5%, n = 4) to November 2019 (0%, n = 0), Wilcoxon signed‐rank test Z = −2.00, p < 0.05. Some participants reported experiencing institutional racism (29.4%, n = 5) and other institutional discrimination (5.9%, n = 1). Participants experiencing institutional racism, compared to those who did not, reported a higher impact of the Initiative's program on their quality of life (t = 3.62, p < 0.01). Participatory survey designs enable nurse researchers to identify hidden pathways of institutional procedural discrimination, describe the impacts experienced, and examine types of institutional discrimination in health systems. (shrink)

Background More than one in 10 of all prisoners in England and Wales are Foreign Nationals. This article discusses whether the research applications to one London prison are aimed at understanding a prisoner population characterised by significant multinational and multilingual complexity. Methods We studied all accessible documents relating to research undertaken at a women's prison between 2005 and 2009 to assess the involvement of Foreign National prisoners and women with limited English. The source of information was prison (...) research applications and protocols. We also looked at available final research reports and journal articles. Results Two key findings emerged from this study. First, studies at this prison frequently excluded Foreign National prisoners and women with limited English. Second, Foreign National prisoners were often clustered as a homogeneous category in the research reports reviewed. This is despite their diverse cultural backgrounds, their variable immigration status and their differing competence in English, all of which affect their lives. Conclusions The failure to include and/or identify social subgroups of the population can undermine the value of research, including, in the case of the study prison, funded health research. This can compromise associated needs assessments and service delivery, particularly important in already disadvantaged populations; this may encourage and/or perpetuate a range of health inequalities. There is a pressing need to examine cultural exclusion in other health and criminal justice settings, to assess the ways in which—and the extent to which—such exclusion may compromise the merit of proposed and completed health and social research. (shrink)

Dans cet article méthodologique, les auteurs reviennent sur la manière dont ils ont conduit une recherche qualitative multilingue consistant à explorer les barrières rencontrées par les personnes Sourdes en Ireland du Nord lorsqu’elles cherchent à avoir accès au système judiciaire. Dans la mesure du possible, les pratiques de recherche des auteurs ont respecté les principes d’une recherche participative prenant appui sur la communauté (CBPR). Ils explorent les défis d’une recherche réalisée en langue des signes américaine (ASL), britannique (BSL) et irlandaise (...) (ISL), en anglais parlé ou avec l’aide d’interprètes ayant la maîtrise de la langue des signes britannique et irlandaise. Centrant la recherche sur les expériences des Sourds qui apprennent à circuler dans le système judiciaire, les auteurs ont mis en place des méthodes de recherche participatives et prenant appui sur la communauté. Celles-ci ont conduit à une discussion soutenue et une action conjointe avec les auteurs et les membres de la communauté Sourde d’Irlande du Nord visant à lever les barrières auxquelles les personnes Sourdes font face lorsqu’elles interagissent avec le système judiciaire. En présentant l’approche méthodologique adoptée en Ireland du Nord, les auteurs souhaitent présenter de manière transparente leur démarche dans l’espoir que d’autres chercheurs pourront reproduire ce qui a le mieux fonctionné et éviter les obstacles qui ont été rencontrés dans la conduite d’un travail en partenariat avec les membres de la communauté Sourde dans d’autres pays. (shrink)

When Emanuel Ringelblum was born on November 21, 1900, in Buczacz, the small, multilingual and multi-ethnic Galician town was to be found on the far northeastern part of the Austrian Empire. As a mail stamp on a Correspondenz-Karte or Karta korrespondencyja of 1890 shows, the place was officially spelled in accordance with its Polish orthography. However, it was called Butschtasch in German, Bichuch in Yiddish, and still differently in Ukranian. After World War I, it was for a short while (...) part of Ukrania, and subsequently became Polish, then Soviet, and Ukranian again in the aftermath of the end of the Soviet Union. Ringelblum's cousin, Shmuel Josef Agnon, was also born in Buczacz. But their lives were to diverge in most respects. Agnon is remembered as one of the leading authors of modern Hebrew belles-lettres who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966. And one remembers Ringelblum as the one who, with utmost and relentless courage, organized the underground archive Oyneg Shabes in the Warsaw ghetto. Samuel D. Kassow, the expert on the history of Oyneg Shabes and the author of a brilliant monograph on this subject, asserts that “more than anyone else it was Emanuel Ringelblum who encouraged individuals to write, who organized and conceptualized the archive, and who transformed it into a powerful center of civil resistance”. (shrink)

Why does an argument end up in the final court decision? Was it deliberated or questioned during the oral hearings? Was there something in the hearings that triggered a particular judge to write a dissenting opinion? Despite the availability of the final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), none of these legal research questions can currently be answered as the ECHR’s multilingual oral hearings are not transcribed, structured, or speaker-attributed. We address this fundamental gap by (...) presenting LaCour!, the first corpus of textual oral arguments of the ECHR, consisting of 154 full hearings (2.1 million tokens from over 267 h of video footage) in English, French, and other court languages, each linked to the corresponding final judgment documents. In addition to the transcribed and partially manually corrected text from the video, we provide sentence-level timestamps and manually annotated role and language labels. We also showcase LaCour! in a set of experiments that explore the interplay between questions and dissenting opinions. Apart from the use cases in legal NLP, we hope that law students or other interested parties will also use LaCour! as a learning resource, as it is freely available in various formats at https://huggingface.co/datasets/TrustHLT/LaCour. (shrink)

A multilingual thesaurus’ development needs the appropriate methodological considerations not only for linguistics, but also cultural heterogeneity, as demonstrated in this report on the multilingual project of the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) in the Chinese language, which has been a collaboration between the Academia Sinica Center for Digital Culture and the Getty Research Institute for more than a decade. After a brief overview of the project, the paper will introduce a holistic methodology for considering how to (...) enable Western art to be accessible to Chinese users and Chinese art accessible to Western users. The conceptual and structural issues will be discussed, especially the challenges of developing terminology in two different cultures. For instance, some terms shared by Western and Chinese cultures could be understood differently in each culture, which raises questions regarding their locations within the hierarchical structure of the AAT. Finally, the report will provide cases to demonstrate how the Chinese-Language AAT language supports online exhibitions, digital humanities and linking of digital art history content to the web of data. (shrink)

A growing body of research on culturally and linguistically responsive social studies instruction continues to identify essential understandings regarding the teaching and learning of social studies among multilingual students. Yet a preponderance of these studies utilize ethnographic and other highly contextualized qualitative methods. In order to make this growing body of knowledge more accessible to a larger audience of researchers and educators, the present study examined pedagogical approaches and areas of curricular emphasis that social studies teachers reported using (...) in the landmark Survey on the Status of Social Studies. The results of the present study deepen insights into the differentiation that social studies teachers of emergent bilingual students employ. Data analysis reveals that teachers with beginning emergent bilingual students, teachers with intermediate emergent bilingual students, and teachers without emergent bilingual students reported using instructional strategies and engaging curricular topics with different frequencies. The findings align common social studies approaches to the scholarship on culturally and linguistically responsive social studies instruction to provide a typology that extends the literature for social studies educators. (shrink)

The step to e-research in philosophy depends on the availability of high quality, easily and freely accessible corpora in a sustainable format composed from multi-language, multi-script books from different historical periods. Corpora matching these needs are at the moment virtually non-existing. Within @PhilosTei, we have addressed this corpus building problem by developing an open source, web-based, user-friendly workflow from textual images to TEI, based on state-of-the-art open source OCR software, to wit Tesseract, and a multi-language version of TICCL, a (...) powerful OCR post-correction tool. We have demonstrated the utility of the tool by applying it to a multilingual, multi-script corpus of important eighteenth to twentieth-century European philosophical texts. (shrink)

This article leverages interview data from students of Chinese who enrolled at a UK university but pursued a period of study abroad in China, aiming to delve into their negotiation of language identities during their overseas experience. By employing Block’s structural model in our discourse analysis, this research reveals the dynamic interplay between agency and structure, shedding light on the intricate process of language learning and identity formation. The findings underscore that structural contexts are integral to shaping students’ agency, (...) highlighting specific structural spheres that pose challenges to their development of Chinese language and multilingual identities. These spheres encompass the linguistic and cultural dominance of English as well as Chinese hospitality practices. Rooted in their habitus, participants’ preconceived notions of the Chinese language and cultural aspects influence their journey, yielding either positive or negative impacts. Furthermore, participants’ backgrounds and prior language learning experiences significantly contribute to their identity development. In advocating for a comprehensive approach, this study emphasises the integration of both agency and structural contexts as necessary to fully comprehend the intricate process of identity development. (shrink)

Background: Besides regulatory learning skills, learning also requires students to relate to their social context and negotiate it as they transition and adjust to medical training. As such, there is a need to consider and explore the role of social and cultural aspects in student learning, particularly in problem-based learning, where the learning paradigm differs from what most students have previously experienced. In this article, we report on the findings of a study exploring first-year medical students’ experiences during the first (...) semester of an undergraduate problem-based learning medical program at an African medical school. Method: We employed a qualitative case study approach using in-depth interviews with 23 first-year medical students. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25 years. All students were bi/multilingual (some spoke three to five languages), with English as the learning language. We conducted an inductive thematic analysis to systematically identify and analyze patterns in the data using the Braun and Clarke framework. Results: Before medical school, students worked hard to compete for admission to medical school, were primarily taught using a teacher-centered approach, and preferred working alone. At the beginning of medical school, students found it challenging to understand the problem-based learning process, the role of the case, speaking and working effectively in a group, managing a heavy workload, and taking increased responsibility for their learning. By the end of the first semester, most students were handling the workload better, were more comfortable with their peers and facilitators, and appreciated the value of the problem-based learning approach. Conclusions: Our study highlights the importance of interrogating contextual sociocultural factors that could cause tension when implementing problem-based learning in non-western medical schools. Adjustment to problem-based learning requires a conceptual and pedagogic shift towards learner-centered practice, particularly concerning self direction, the role of the case, and collaborative learning. As such, there is a need to develop and implement research informed learning development programs that enable students to reflect on their sociocultural beliefs and practices, and enhance their regulatory learning competence to optimize meaningful and early engagement with the problem based learning process. (shrink)

The book consists of 6 chapters. Chapter One explains the reason why SLA researchers should study the language learning environment in space: population movements associated with internal and external migration and social mobility such as the circuits of commodity production and distribution create much space, in which language learning environment become diverse and uneven. With the spatial perspective, we can fully understand the interactions between language learners and the world or environments.In Chapter Two, by introducing the brief history of Critical (...) Spatial Theory, the author wants to tell us one of the key ideas in the theory: the social production of space, which views space as the product of the social relations of its era. Based on it, the author adds that the production of languages is an integral aspect of the production of space on a global scale. It can help us to understand how social mobility shapes language learning environments. From this perspective, the local environments in which languages are learned are outcomes of the production of space under the influence of mobility. It reiterates the key view that the global mobilities of physical objects (people, goods and information) produce space.In Chapter Three, the author introduces the mainstream views held by modern linguistics: languages are conceptualized as objects in the space. They hold that the spatiality of language is given by providing correct writing systems and standardized rules for various languages. Influenced by mainstream conception of language from modern linguistics, SLA tends to regard languages as self-contained objects in space. However, this view neglects the relation between language and the learning environments. The author holds that the distribution and circulation of languages and their varieties in geographical space produce the spatiality of language, which clears the ground for an environment or object-as-space view of language in Chapter Four.In Chapter Four, the author develops an alternative "objects-as-space" view and introduces three concepts to illustrate spatiality of language: flat ontology, assemblage and mobilities. The concept of flat ontology helps explain what language is and how it comes into being in the world; From assemblage perspective, the author develops the idea that everything is an object, so are human beings and languages. Language (the non-physical object) interacts with various physical objects, forming the language-bearing assemblage. This assemblage is the form of spatiality of language. The mobilities theory explains how language-bearing assemblages develop or change on a global scale because of social mobility, emphasizing the importance of learning environment in SLA. All in all, the author outlines how language makes its way into physical space in the form of assemblages, or assemblages of assemblages.Chapter Five centers on language learning environment. First, the author explains the relation between language learners and their learning environment from an ecological view: the learner is a part of the language learning environment, and second language learning is a spatial interaction between the learners and the semiotic resources provided by environment. Then, the author discusses language environment from two different perspectives. From an 'individual' perspective, environments are assembled by individuals from the spatial resources available; from an 'areal' view, environments are shaped both by local circumstances and global circulations of language-bearing assemblages. Meanwhile, the author also discusses other language environments like the multilingual city and online resources. What the author hopes to develop in this chapter is an environment perspective that grounds the contexts of language learning in space, which helps the readers think about language learning from a spatial perspective.Chapter Six contains three parts. In the first part, it outlines the work of a number of researchers from sociolinguistics and the contribution they made to the spatial theory. In the second part, the author wants to tell us how the idea of language learning environment emerges from his own research. The last part discusses the four main researching routes (areal studies, studies of individuals learning in settings, studies of the construction of individual learning environment and design-based studies) that might influence SLA research on language learning environments and some research methods. The book is in alignment with several recent "turns" occurring in the field of SLA, such as "social turn" (Block, 2003) and "multilingual turn" (May, 2014), both of which bring to the fore the social aspects involved in language learning. While the first "turn" accentuates the role of social context in shaping and influencing learner cognition, the latter highlights how the physical multilingual world remold language learning experiences, and how the mental multilingual world helps raise learners' language awareness, and facilitates their successful construction of an identity of legitimate multi-language users. The book under review joins up the two "turns" in acknowledging that language learners are persons-in-context with organic interaction with social learning environment (Ushioda, 2021). This view has research and pedagogical implications. From the point of doing research, spatial perspectives, advocated in the book, afford huge research potentials for both language teachers and (instructed) SLA researchers to conduct situated investigations, exploring the complex and dynamic nexus between language learners and their surrounding environment (not restricted to people) that play a part in their learning experience, and thus gaining insightful understanding of how individuals and learning contexts are coupled with each other, how they evolve together, and how they constitute an ecosystem that generates affordances, facilitating or constraining language learning. Pedagogically speaking, the spatial perspectives encourage language teachers to hold an ecological view of language teaching and learning, directing their attention to the individuality of each language learner and their complex, dynamic and multifaceted relationality with other learners and the physical realities, rather than solely focusing on the abstract systems (e.g., the development of cognitive aspect). This holistic view allows language teachers to take measures to address concrete questions emerging in and out of the classrooms, and stimulates them to design and experiment with pedagogical interventions that help to create a favorable environment for language learning. This view also invites language teachers to take learner agency into account (Xu & Long, 2020) and to design pedagogical activities that enable learners to take agentive actions to adapt their environments as they actively create and seek their own language learning opportunities, making the world their own (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). In turn, teachers' agency-enabling activities will ultimately help learners to autonomously access a range of resources in this new affordance-rich era to improve their language skills, and thus become more independent in their pathway to life-long learning.Beside the above benefits, the book is also theoretically and methodologically friendly. In illustrating the role of space in SLA, the author invokes a plethora of theories from such disciplines as sociology, sociolinguistics, psychology, etc. This orientation helps readers to build a transdisciplinary framework to capture the multi-layered nature of SLA, and to acquire a nuanced understanding of how language learning is influenced by multiple scales of environmental factors. Methodologically, the author proposes several specific methods that are especially apt to investigate language learning environment. These methods, together with the theoretical foundation laid by the book, will definitely help researchers and language teaching practitioners to further delve into the complex interplay between context and language learners.Admittedly, the book is not without weaknesses. It spends most of its words on illustrating the importance of physical environment in SLA. Another essential component, the virtual environment is insufficiently referenced and discussed. This lacking is undoubtedly a regret the book leaves with us, especially in these years of pandemic, where language learning in virtual spaces is becoming a norm.All in all, the book is an invaluable contribution to the field of SLA, and is worthy of recommending to language teaching practitioners, researchers, and postgraduates in applied linguistics. (shrink)

The actuality of the research topic is that for the development of Ukraine it is necessary to take into account the indisputable fact that globalization together with the information revolution has created new conditions for all types of life. Humanity continues to grow quantitatively and increase the number of independent states whose citizens use the national languages. The purpose of the study is a critical analysis of the reasons for the unprecedented complexity of language changes in Ukraine after the (...) collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of its independence. Objectives of the study - to identify the deep causes of the loss of the truth of Ukrainians about their linguistic past; to prove on the basis of the latest scientific discoveries the peculiarity of the linguistic contribution of the ancestors of Ukrainians to the emergence of the Indo-European linguistic family thousands of years ago; to fulfill the forecast for the future of international languages. The methodology of the research is the noointegral, systemic and noohistorical methods that allow a newer way to analyze the affinity of the Ukrainian language with English and to make a forecast of changes in the role of the English language in the future. Presenting main material: the result of the study is the discovery of evidence that the Ukrainian language is not just a little branch of the Russian language, but a transformed primary Indo-European language. The scientists from the West were proved that Ukrainians were the part of the inventors of agriculture in Levant. During the movement on the West they chose life on the black earths of Ukraine, joined with the Arians and created the civilization "Trypillya-1". Trypillians domesticated a horse, invented a wheel, created a metallurgy of bronze and formed the economic zone of the Greate Trypillya between the Carpathians and Western Siberia. All the common words of today about 400 Indo-European languages are a cloud of tags spread from the Great Trypillya. The article is devoted to the concept of "international language". The analysis of contemporary world language changes is carried out in order to assess the possibility of converting English into a global international language. Examples of the growth and decline of languages of certain peoples in the past are considered. The data on evolution and changes in the international language ranking in the New Times are given. The facts of the temporary leadership of the French, German and Russian languages are revealed and the main reasons for their retreat and decline are indicated. The reasons for the global use of English in the twentieth century are explained, but the assumption about the impossibility of its transformation into the universal language of humanity in the future is expressed. A forecast of the influence of progress in computer technologies and artificial intelligence on the ways of using English and other languages is made. The fact of the appearance of the first version of the computer multilingual translator Travis-1 is noted and its rapid improvement and inclusion in the software of near-future mobile devices, which spread on the planet in billions of copies, is envisaged. Conclusions - formulated suggestions for plans for the development of the education system in Ukraine. It is proposed to use positive experience in Scandinavian countries - Sweden and Finland in modernizing the teaching of English and other foreign languages. (shrink)

Achieving the global benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) will require international cooperation on many areas of governance and ethical standards, while allowing for diverse cultural perspectives and priorities. There are many barriers to achieving this at present, including mistrust between cultures, and more practical challenges of coordinating across different locations. This paper focuses particularly on barriers to cooperation between Europe and North America on the one hand and East Asia on the other, as regions which currently have an outsized impact (...) on the development of AI ethics and governance. We suggest that there is reason to be optimistic about achieving greater cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance. We argue that misunderstandings between cultures and regions play a more important role in undermining cross-cultural trust, relative to fundamental disagreements, than is often supposed. Even where fundamental differences exist, these may not necessarily prevent productive cross-cultural cooperation, for two reasons: (1) cooperation does not require achieving agreement on principles and standards for all areas of AI; and (2) it is sometimes possible to reach agreement on practical issues despite disagreement on more abstract values or principles. We believe that academia has a key role to play in promoting cross-cultural cooperation on AI ethics and governance, by building greater mutual understanding, and clarifying where different forms of agreement will be both necessary and possible. We make a number of recommendations for practical steps and initiatives, including translation and multilingual publication of key documents, researcher exchange programmes, and development of research agendas on cross-cultural topics. (shrink)

This paper explores how preschools can be purposefully designed to aid cultural learning through guided play practices. In recent literature, there has been a renowned interest in the role of the exogenous environment in psychological processes, including learning. The idea that the design of preschools can meaningfully be seen as cultural niche construction and that guided play practices in these environments can aid the preparation for cultural action is promoted, and a theoretical framework is presented. The empirical data draw from (...) a synthesis from three ethnographic research sites in multilingual communities, and data are used to explore how cultural affordances are used in designed environments as part of guided play practices. The results indicate how niche construction of affordances aid cultural learning and is achieved through both direct guided play interaction between teachers and children and also in the way of the indirect design of environments that is incorporated in children’s peer play. It is discussed what this means for play research as well as for guided play practices that aim to promote cultural learning. (shrink)

The article has two aims: firstly, it provides a holistic account of Zygmunt Bauman’s oeuvre, and secondly, it presents an extensive up-to-date and multilingual bibliography of his published writings. The authors discuss Bauman’s prolificacy, as well as the stylistic, formal and substantive heterogeneity of his work. Taking this into account, they reflect on the curious reception of his oeuvre in the wider disciplinary field of sociology. The bibliography attached to the paper provides the most complete account of Bauman’s writings. (...) Building on previous bibliographies, and drawing on archival research in the Janina and Zygmunt Bauman Papers at the University of Leeds, the bibliography spans 63 years from his first publication to his most recent. Many of these papers – both in English and Polish – are presented for the first time in the list of his works. (shrink)

English has become the first global language of international com- munication during the last decades. It is dominant in many fields as science, technology, transportation, business and tourism and diplomacy. The European Union with law applicable directly on individuals is officially multilingual. English is, however, preferred in internal communication and in communication with national experts. National laws are closely related with particular states. Related discourse is therefore realized mostly in national language. Legal education and research are thus less (...) anglicized than other university education and research. Nevertheless, increasing importance of international and supranational rules for harmonization and coordination, growing demand for comparison, pres- sure to publish in internationally recognized journals, Europe-wide research projects and rising numbers of exchange of students cause widespread resort to English also at schools of law. Unfortunately, English is language of countries with Anglo-American law which differs significantly from continental law existing in most European and other countries. Therefore, it is difficult to find adequate English words for phenomena of civil law and to stabilize their use in international discourse. (shrink)

This book presents the views of 22 women philosophers from outside the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian worlds. These eminent thinkers are from Mesopotamia, India, Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Australia, America, the Philippines and Nigeria. Six philosophers, the earliest of whom predates the Greek pre-Socratics by two thousand years, lived at “the dawn of philosophy”; another six from late Antiquity through the Classical period; five more taught and wrote during the Middle Ages up to the Age of Exploration, and yet five others (...) were active during the modern period to the mid-twentieth century. Most belonged to major philosophical traditions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Zen, or Sufism. The chapters of the book describe the life and views of the philosophers, outline the fundamental features of their respective schools, and contain translations of their writings. The book is intended for scholars of philosophy and women’s studies who wish to expand their knowledge of non-Western philosophical traditions and is ideally suited for undergraduate education. Comprehensive multilingual bibliographies of carefully documented sources offer scholars many promising resources for further research. (shrink)

The majority of research on how learning a second language (L2) has focused on the personal benefits of being bilingual or multilingual. In this paper, we focus on the potential positive effect of actively thinking in L2. Our approach is inspired by recent experimental research suggesting that actively thinking in an L2 leads to improved reasoning and decision-making, which is known as the foreign-language effect (FLE). We examine the possibility that one could selectively engage in L2 thinking (...) in order to reap these potential benefits. Integrating this research with research in positive psychology, we explain how doing so might be understood as a type of “nudge,” or intervention that one could use to increase their chances of making autonomous decisions reflecting their own best interest. Nudges have been associated with improved outcomes with respect to many aspects of our lives - for instance sticking to goals, saving money, exercising more frequently, maintaining a healthy diet. It may be that bilinguals can assume an active role in increasing their happiness or well-being by making better decisions through strategic implementation of L2 in decision-making contexts. We also discuss the ethics of using the FLE as a nudge when it has beneficial consequences, as there are instances when doing so could be beneficial with respect to public policy as well. For instance, it has been shown that people are less averse to sustainable farming and eating practices (e.g. eating insects) when actively thinking in an L2. After reviewing the current research on the FLE, we suggest that further research needs to be done because actively thinking in L2 seems to function beneficially in some circumstances but may pose cognitive disadvantages in others. (shrink)

So far, legal translation studies have generally been concerned with multilingual legislation, which they have dissected using comparative law methods. The time seems to have come for a differentiated research that recognises various types of legal translation, including the category of translation by professionals for public authorities and business concerns. This latter category’s context is rapidly changing. Globalization is aggravating the crisis of national legislation. First and foremost, networks of authorities have sprung up alongside international organisations. The texts (...) translated are regulatory rather than prescriptive. Then, in the field of international commerce, a standardization of contracts is occurring. Globalized administrative and commercial varieties of English are no longer the English of the common law but, rather, a neutral or hybrid English that needs to be further sub-classified by reference to specific legal sectors. Furthermore, by reducing costs and deadlines, globalization and digitalization have forced translation to be economically efficient. Several legislative provisions now allow the translation of legal texts by way of extracts or summaries. In multilingual monitoring translators are being asked to assess and select the documents for translation themselves. The quality required is often that which is “sufficient” to achieve the sought-after goal. All these changes must be incorporated into the university education of translators. (shrink)

Reference in extended discourse is vulnerable to delayed acquisition in early childhood. Although recent research has increasingly focused on effects of linguistic, input, and cognitive factors on reference production, these studies are limited in number and the results are mixed. The present study provides insight into bilingual reference production by investigating how production of referring expressions in the two languages of preschool bilingual children may be influenced by structural similarities and differences between the languages, frequency of referring expressions in (...) maternal input, amount of exposure to each of the languages, and working memory capacity. Using two stories in the Multilingual Assessment Instrument for Narratives, we examined character introduction and re-introduction in oral narratives of 4–6-year-old Singaporean bilingual children acquiring Mandarin Chinese and English, and in child-directed speech of the mothers. The children’s language exposure, executive function, and general bilingual proficiency were also recorded or directly tested through structured interviews with the parents or standardized assessments with the children. Data collection was conducted remotely in real time over a video-conferencing platform, supplemented by on-site audio recording to ensure sound quality. Results showed prolonged development in the production of felicitous REs for first mentions and over-reliance on overt marking of definiteness in our bilingual children. Mixed modeling revealed that frequency of felicitous REs in the input predicted children’s production of felicitous REs across languages and discourse functions, with a modulating effect of working memory. Overall, our findings are consistent with previous ones in that reference production is vulnerable in early Mandarin-English bilinguals in a multilingual society. This study also presents novel evidence that structural frequency in the input interacts with working memory in shaping patterns of reference production in bilingual children. (shrink)

The academic databases such as Scopus or Web of Science are commonly used to measure performance of universities, departments, and even single researchers. However, to what extent such databases can represent real outcomes of aforementioned units especially in the field of art and humanities where local languages and cultural phenomena play an important role is not clear. This article focuses on understanding how research in this field, as seen through the case of aesthetics in non-English speaking countries, Finland in (...) particular, is represented through major academic databases. This question is tackled by applying a data mining approach. First, we identify major academic databases, and afterwards test what is the proportion of Finnish aesthetics presented in those databases. Our approach allows us to critically look into representation of local art or humanities related research in general academic databases, and understand to what extent we can trust those sources in representing real pictures of the field. Results strengthen the well-known fact that most common academic databases draw a rather poor picture. In more particular this article shows that there are certain factors that influence analysis of the field: spread data, multilingual content, non-standard categorization, variability of venues, different publishing patterns, and unsuitable impact metrics. However, our results propose that alternative databases can be formed from university or meta-data databases. We also provide further directions for designing of such databases. (shrink)

Recent work on the application of neural networks to language modeling has shown that models based on certain neural architectures can capture syntactic information from utterances and sentences even when not given an explicitly syntactic objective. We examine whether a fully data-driven model of language development that uses a recurrent neural network encoder for utterances can track how child language utterances change over the course of language development in a way that is comparable to what is achieved using established language (...) assessment metrics that use language-specific information carefully designed by experts. Given only transcripts of child language utterances from the CHILDES Database and no pre-specified information about language, our model captures not just the structural characteristics of child language utterances, but how these structures reflect language development over time. We establish an evaluation methodology with which we can examine how well our model tracks language development compared to three known approaches: Mean Length of Utterance, the Developmental Sentence Score, and the Index of Productive Syntax. We discuss the applicability of our model to data-driven assessment of child language development, including how a fully data-driven approach supports the possibility of increased research in multilingual and cross-lingual issues. (shrink)

The territorial contraction and speaker-reduction undergone by the Welsh language during the past few centuries has resulted in its categorization by many linguists as an obsolescent language. This study illustrates that, although it is undeniably showing some signs of decline, Welsh stands in marked contrast to many previously documented cases of language death. Against this backdrop of contraction a steady revitalization is taking place. Based upon extensive fieldwork in two sociolinguistically contrasting communities, this book is the first to examine the (...) position and nature of contemporary Welsh with reference to both obsolescence-related developments and changes under way in the dialects. Jones focuses on immersion education, long heralded as the saviour of the language and, by examining the variety of Welsh being produced by immersion pupils, seeks to determine whether this claim is justified, or whether such pupils are in fact 'speaking immersion'. As well as discussing the recent linguistic change shown by contemporary Welsh within the language death framework, the author examines the ways in which the language has been standardized and their repercussions for language maintenance. By way of comparison these tensions and implications are also explored with reference to the other varieties of P-Celtic, namely Breton and Cornish. Series Information: Oxford Studies in Language Contact Series Editor: Professor Suzanne Romaine, Merton College, Oxford Series ISBN: 0-19-961466-0 Series Description: Most of the world's speech communities are multilingual, and contact between languages is thus an important force in the everyday lives of most people. Studies of language contact should therefore form an integral part of work in theoretical, social, and historical linguistics. This series makes available a collection of research monographs which present case studies of language contact around the world. As well as providing an indispensable source of data for the serious researcher, it contributes significantly to theoretical developments in the field. (shrink)

In dialogue with the most famous myth for the origin of different languages - The Tower of Babel - A Psychoanalytic Exploration on Sameness and Otherness: Beyond Babel provides a series of timely reflections on the themes of sameness and otherness from a contemporary psychoanalytic perspective. How are we dealing with communication and its difficulties, the confusion of tongues and loss of common ground within a European context today? Can we move beyond Babel? Confusion and feared loss of shared values (...) and identity are a major part of the daily work of psychoanalytic psychotherapists. Bringing together an international range psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers, the book is divided into six parts and covers an array of resonant topics, including: language and translation; cultural identity; families and children; the cyber world; the psychotherapeutic process; and migration. Whereas the quest for unity, which underpins the myth of Babel, leads to mystification, simplification and the exclusion of people or things, multilingual communities necessitate mutual understanding through dialogue. This book examines those factors which further or threaten communication, aiming not to reduce but to gain complexity. It suggests that diversification enriches communication and that, by relating to others, we can create something new. As opposed to cultural and linguistic homogeneity, Babel is not only a metaphor for mangled communication, alienation, and distraction, it is also about the acceptance or rejection of differences between self and other. This book will be of great interest to psychoanalytic psychotherapists and researchers from a wide variety of backgrounds. (shrink)

Language is a powerful tool that enables communication and shapes our identity and cultural practices. The right to choose one's language is a fundamental human right that helps preserve personal and communal identities. In a multilingual nation like Ethiopia, language goes beyond communication to define administrative boundaries. Consequently, depriving Ethiopians of their linguistic rights becomes a more complex punishment than food embargoes. This research investigated the motives and means by which the Amhara Regional State-enforced a monolingual and monocultural (...) language education policy in western Tigray through the lens of linguistic genocide. The study involved interviews with ten teachers, selected using a snowball sampling method, and document analysis to reinforce the result. Political and economic factors and a desire to promote the assimilation of Tigrayans into Amhara culture and language, a process known as "Amharanization", appear to have impacted the implementation of the language education policy in western Tigray. Authorities have implemented a variety of measures, including bans, restrictions, penalties, enforcement, forced relocation, and even heinous acts, which have caused the Tigrayan community severe physical and psychological distress. Collectively, these policies, actions, and outcomes constituted an act of linguistic genocide. This study sheds light on the severe repercussions of such policies, examines their implications, acknowledges the inherent limitations, and offers valuable recommendations for future research in this crucial area. (shrink)

Georges Gurvitch, from the 1920s to the end of his life, was solving the problem of combining unity and plurality in the justification of society. He believed that individualism and collectivism represented social processes in a limited way because they were based on the preconception that the binding power of law derives respectively from a private or corporate actor's will. Gurvitch contrasted individual law with the social one, which was intended to overcome the opposition between individualism and collectivism. Social law (...) bases on legal sociology's assumption that social interactions as such are already legal relations. This conclusion allows Gurvitch to consider any social interaction as a source of law and to assert legal pluralism as a way of constructing society. The integrity of the latter is a condition for the mutual correlation of the multiplicity of legal regulations generated by internal social interactions into the unified structure of social law. In a holistic approach to comprehending social interactions, Gurvitch, in his Russian-language works in the migr period, uses the philosophical-legal interpretation of sobornost to describe society's integrity. In French- and English-language works from the 1930s, Gurvitch uses the term "totality," which he learned from Marcel Mauss, to describe social integrity. This article compares sobornost and totality as variants of denoting social integrity in Gurvitch's social law doctrine. The researcher determines that Gurvitch, using the concepts of sobornost and totality, interpreted society's development differently, 1) as anti-hierarchical sobornost equality, and 2) as a hierarchical inordination of totalities. Having analyzed the peculiarities of the interpretation of sobornost and totality in Gurvitch's works, the author concludes that these concepts should be considered multilingual equivalents in denoting communal unity as sources of law, which reflect changes in the interpretation of society in Gurvitch's social law doctrine. (shrink)

The paper analyses aspects of multilingual and multimodal narratives employed during the COVID-19 lockdown, attempting to identify how they were used in professional and public environments. More specifically, the paper looks at editing choices, photography, design, drawing, colour, and writing to get a better understanding of multimodal communication, semiotics, image analysis, and their correlation with the written text and the way it has been perceived and interpreted, be it in online or print-based contexts. Methodologically, this is a contrastively inspired (...) research project, looking specifically at Portuguese-speaking contexts of the Island of Madeira and English-speaking contexts of the United Kingdom, taking into account instructions about the COVID-19 pandemic. These are mainly bilingual English–Portuguese and multilingual texts, multimodal manifestations, and communicative and semiotic effectiveness. (shrink)

In democratic Switzerland, each of its 26 cantons (states) has its own government and its own laws. Thus there are 26 ministries of health and as many different laws regulating medical and health care practice. The Swiss Nurses' Association likewise has 13 regional chapters and a central organization that works on the national level. Medicine is private and practically all of the Swiss population is privately insured. High technology has led to high specialization with, among other results, a reduced number (...) of premature deaths, longer life span but also rising costs of health. Health professionals are also becoming much more aware of ethical issues such as cost versus quality, high technology versus compassionate care, etc. A multilingual (four national languages) and multicultural country, Switzerland's health care system relies heavily on foreign nurses, many of whom come from neighbouring France and Germany but also from England, Yugoslavia, Canada and other countries. Regulation of nursing practice is still poor. Nursing or nurses are hardly mentioned in the state laws and, when mentioned, are often put in a dependent relation to the physician. Basic nurse training is regulated nationally by cantonal delegations to the Swiss Red Cross. Although there is a good postbasic training scheme, nurses are still striving for access to the university. Meanwhile, they go abroad to acquire degrees. Research in nursing is being developed mainly by the efforts of individuals and the Swiss Nurses' Association. (shrink)

Physical education is often selected for applying multilingual initiatives through the use of the content and language integrated learning (CLIL) approach. However, it is still unclear whether the introduction of such approach might entail losing Physical Education’s essence and distorting its basic purposes. The aim of this study is to analyse the impact of CLIL on the Physical Education lessons. Given the purpose of this study, a mixed methodological approach based on a sequential exploratory design divided in two different (...) phases is used. We begin with an initial qualitative data collection (phase I) consisting in the analysis of interviews with 12 participants (8 teachers and 4 students). Based on its analysis, two foci are identified: social relationships and physical activity. Then, informed by the results obtained, a quantitative approach is used (phase II), differentiating these two sets of data to deepen on them. On one part, a sociometric questionnaire was applied to analyse the social relationships among CLIL students. On the other part, a quasi-experimental design (n = 49) was implemented using accelerometry to measure the MVPA of the PE sessions. Regarding physical activity, the results show that levels of MVPA are higher in the experimental group (CLIL) than in the control group showing light to the divergent viewpoints of interviewees. However, focusing on social relationships, the sociometric questionnaire results show that there were no statistical significative changes, although some signs of a slight effect on students’ relationships arise depending on their gender. Therefore, more research would be necessary to deepen on how CLIL affects in this regard. (shrink)

This paper examines language practices in two services offered in the main Catholic Church in the town of Sangmelima in the South region of Cameroon. The research is motivated by the need to find out what languages are used in this church and what the terms “French service” and “Bulu service” imply in the multilingual city of Sangmelima. The informants were the priests, catechists, choir leaders, and some parishioners of this church. Three main instruments were used to collect (...) data in these two church services, i.e., interview, questionnaire and participant observation. The frame adopted for the analysis was Kouega’s structural-functional approach (2008). The findings revealed that the services in this church include 28 parts. In the French service, the languages used to realise these parts were found to be French, Bulu (Sangmelima), Ewondo (Yaounde), Fang (south of Cameroon and north of Equatorial Guinea), Fe’efe’e (Bafang), Ghomala’ (Bafoussam), and Medumba (Bangangte). In the Bulu service, on the other hand, the languages used were: Bulu (Sangmelima), Ewondo (Yaounde), and French. These languages were chosen for a variety of reasons. First, a language like Bulu was chosen because it is understood by the parishioners as it is the main language of the locality. Second, French is the official language of the territory; third, some languages like Fe’efe’e, Ghomala, and Medumba were chosen on the basis of the involvement of the speakers of these ethnic languages in the activities of the church. Fourth, the availability of printed religious materials in a language was an important factor. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:History of Philosophy and the Reflective Society by Riccardo PozzoRobert R. ClewisPOZZO, Riccardo. History of Philosophy and the Reflective Society. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2021. vi + 231 pp. Cloth, $94.99In a forward-looking proposal, Pozzo lays out his vision for a multidisciplinary history of philosophy "from a global perspective." This book is "a long position paper, an extended essay dedicated to twenty-first century policies of philosophical research (...) from a global perspective." The chosen format is a Denkschrift, that is, a memorandum in the sense of a document that experts lay out for their government to ponder. Perhaps, Pozzo suggests, the history of philosophy could even have an impact on economic authorities and policymakers. Indeed, the work seems driven by the laudable aim of promoting access and equality around the world. The author reveals a just concern for migrants in particular, since they bring [End Page 156] with them their intellectual traditions and philosophical texts, which can be translated and thereby foster intercultural dialogue.The book consists of an introduction (chapter 1) followed by nine chapters. It has a thirty-page references list as well as subject and name indexes. In part one, Pozzo argues for the need for new narratives in the history of philosophy (chapter 2), in order to establish its role in addressing migration (chapter 3). The second part concerns reflective society (chapter 4). It considers societal readiness (chapter 5) and cultural innovation (chapter 6). Part three explores the paradigm shift from a close reading of texts to a "distant" reading of corpora (chapter 7), a shift Pozzo endorses. It examines implications for the translation of languages (chapter 8) and the translation of studies (knowledge) and competencies (chapter 9). Chapter 10 concludes by briefly reflecting on the notions of the "fluidity" of peoples and their ideas, biodiversity (and food), and spiritual humanism based on dignity.Scholars in the history of philosophy "should be open to the idea of a pluriversum of a history of facts and places, whereby history of philosophy finds its grounding in spatial heterogeneity." Nowadays, when people migrate and transfer competencies at increasing velocity, the "history of philosophy can be usefully reinvented on the basis of its consideration of intercultural dialogue." Pozzo considers the World Digital Library to be "one of the most exciting examples of corpora that talk to each other"—an idea he uses not merely metaphorically. By "corpora" is meant not just the sum of separate books, but XML-accessible complete collections of traditions of texts, with corresponding dictionaries, thesauri, and reference works, which make it possible to analyze a number of original texts as well as transliterations into other alphabets or hanzi characters. The result would be a "data-driven" history of philosophy.Given that history of philosophy is a product of culture, it is influenced by migrating peoples, who bring philosophical ideas and religious traditions with them. Research on migration thus ought to also consider translations of texts and competencies from one to another context, be it linguistic, economic, political, or cultural. The humanities, and a reflective society more generally, might provide a partial basis for intercultural dialogue. The history of philosophy might even thereby improve the quality of life of citizens.Pozzo rightly emphasizes that we need multilingual philosophers and historians of philosophy. History of philosophy ought to also be based on robust lexical and historical considerations, and historians of philosophy should be trained in a number of the world's languages as well as face the challenge of dealing with multilingualism and with validating translations. Pozzo's proposed methodology, informed by computational techniques, relies on tools such as vocabularies, ontologies, concordances, frequencies, or the analysis of texts and corpora, which integrates quantitative and formal methods into the portfolio of the methods of history of philosophy and intellectual history. Since Pozzo has published [End Page 157] widely on Kant, it is fitting that he explores Kant on migration as well as the editorial contexts and translation projects concerning the philosopher's writings.As for aesthetics, Pozzo notes that the history of philosophy can reflect on migrants' cultural and artistic creations. Historians of philosophy should thus start observing and interpreting phenomena created by... (shrink)

In the article, the main lines of the research and educational cooperation of the linguists of the Bashkir State University and the St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Turnovo are considered. The prospects of these contacts are determined by capabilities of joint development of the long-term research programs in comparative linguistics, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, which can be implement as collective monographs, Ph.D. theses, textbooks of the Russian and the Bulgarian languages, dictionaries (including the multilingual dictionaries). (...) A program of the double diplomas in the specialized training of undergraduates ‘Applied Slavic philology (translation study)‘ as a new form of the cooperation is also considered. (shrink)

This article aims to describe the construction and annotation of a multimodal and multilingual (French, English, and Mandarin Chinese) corpus for the study of second language acquisition and professional development in language teaching. The corpus was built within a research project whose main objective is to determine which techno-semio-pedagogical competencies are developed informally and which ones require formal training. In this paper, we explain the theoretical framework adopted, characterized by an ecological approach to the interactive environment. We subsequently (...) illustrate the procedures for the collection of audio, video and eye-tracking data. We also provide details of the annotation of raw data to produce a corpus of analysis drawing on different automatic and semi-automatic annotation tools. Finally, we explain how such a corpus enables us to study the development of learners’ multimodal competence and tutors’ techno-pedagogical competence and point to some other possible research questions. (shrink)