Spaces of Multilingualism

This innovative collection explores critical issues in understanding multilingualism as a defining dimension of identity creation and negotiation in contemporary social life. Reinforcing interdisciplinary conversations on these themes, each chapter is co-authored by two different researchers, often those who have not written together before. The combined effect is a volume showcasing unique and dynamic perspectives on such topics as rethinking of language policy, testing of language rights, language pedagogy, meaning-making, and activism in the linguistic landscape. The book explores multilingualism through the lenses of spaces and policies as embodied in Elizabeth Lanza’s body of work in the field, with a focus on the latest research on linguistic landscapes in diverse settings. Taken together, the book offers a window into better understanding issues around processes of change in and of languages and societies. This ground breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multilingualism, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics

As Below So Above: Reconstructing the Neo-Babylonian Worldview

To add to our knowledge about a Near Eastern culture, this project examines through textual evidence how the early first millennium BCE Neo-Babylonians thought, reasoned, and wrote in order to partially reconstruct the shared, generally held worldview of the Neo-Babylonian people using the transdisciplinary approach of worldview analysis. Worldviews are what we use to think with, not what we think about. Underlying surficial cultural behaviors are deeper levels of cognition regarding how to reason, perceive the world, prioritize values, prescribe behavior, and explain all of life. Specifically, this work examines the language and logic reflected in the textual archive, believing that this is the foundational level of any worldview. I argue that one finds two related components: (1) that they were linguistically programmed to be attuned to the full context over particularities, verbal actions over agential subjects, the continuity of substances over discrete objects, the standard use of maleness over femaleness, and the affective power of spoken or written words, and (2) that they were logically programmed to prefer gradations over distinctions, functional properties over inherent attributes, radials and/or rhizomes over linearity, and relationships and/or comparisons over abstractions and algorithms. By addressing this underlying, implicit cognitive software the Neo-Babylonians used, one is better able to understand the society’s more observable and obvious religious, ethical, legal, political, and social features. This has the potential to present a more contextualized view of Neo-Babylonian civilization. Reconstructing the ancient Neo-Babylonian worldview allows scholars to compare and contrast the linguistic and logical features to other ancient nearby cultures in order to understand continuities and differences and what accounts for them. One can open a dialogue between these ancient societies at a deeper level. It demonstrates the uniqueness of Neo-Babylonia. And it provides a basis for understanding how Neo-Babylonians contributed to the roots of Western civilization and thought. Most current worldview analysis examines modern or postmodern worldviews. By examining an ancient worldview, one can begin to more clearly understand any common aspects which exist for all worldviews and any elements that exist in ancient ones which are missing from cataloging more modern worldviews. Thus, the cataloging of an ancient worldview helps to open new vistas within worldview studies. This study invites similar ones within ancient Near Eastern studies and within ancient studies in general

Speaking while listening: Language processing in speech shadowing and translation

Contains fulltext : 233349.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access)Radboud University, 25 mei 2021Promotores : Meyer, A.S., Roelofs, A.P.A.199 p

Weathered Words : Formulaic Language and Verbal Art

Formulaic phraseology presents the epitome of words worn and weathered by trial and the tests of time. Scholarship on weathered words is exceptionally diverse and interdisciplinary. This volume focuses on verbal art, which makes Oral-Formulaic Theory (OFT) a major point of reference. Yet weathered words are but a part of OFT, and OFT is only a part of scholarship on weathered words. Each of the eighteen essays gathered here brings particular aspects of formulaic language into focus. No volume on such a diverse topic can be all-encompassing, but the essays highlight aspects of the phenomenon that may be eclipsed elsewhere: they diverge not only in style, but sometimes even in how they choose to define “formula.” As such, they offer overlapping frames that complement one another both in their convergences and their contrasts. While they view formulaicity from multifarious angles, they unite in a Picasso of perspectives on which the reader can reflect and draw insight.Peer reviewe

Discourse in Translation

This book explores the discourse in and of translation within and across cultures and languages. From the macro aspects of translation as an inter- cultural project to actual analysis of textual ingredients that contribute to translation and interpreting as discourse, the ten chapters represent different explorations of ‘global’ theories of discourse and translation. Offering interrogations of theories and practices within different sociocultural environments and traditions (Eastern and Western), Discourse in Translation considers a plethora of domains, including historiography, ethics, technical and legal discourse, subtitling, and the politics of media translation as representation. This is key reading for all those working on translation and discourse within translation studies and linguistics

The Arabic (Re)dubbing of Wordplay in Disney Animated Films

Although audiovisual translation (AVT) has received considerable attention in recent years, evidence suggests that there is a paucity of empirical research carried out on the dubbing of wordplay in the Arabophone countries. This piece of research sets to identify, describe and assess the most common translation techniques adopted by translators when dubbing English-language animated films into Arabic. The focus is on the special case of dubbing Disney animated films into Egyptian Arabic (EA) and their subsequent redubbing into Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), during the 1975-2015 period. The ultimate goal is to ascertain the similarities as well as the differences that set the two versions apart, particularly when it comes to the transfer of wordplay. To reach this objective, the methodological approach adopted for this study is a corpus of instances of wordplay that combines a quantitative phase, which has the advantage of identifying correlations between the types of wordplay and particular translation techniques and results and is then followed by a qualitative analysis that further probes the results and determines the different factors that contribute to the way wordplay is translated. The analysis reveals that, in their attempt to render this type of punning humour, in both Arabic dubbed versions, Arabic translators resort to a variety of translation techniques, namely, loan, direct translation, explication, paraphrase, substitution and omission. The examination of the data shows that achieving a humorous effect in the target dialogue is the top priority and driving factor influencing most of the strategies activated in the process of dubbing wordplay into EA. Dissimilarly, there is a noticeable lower amount of puns crossing over from the original films to the MSA dubbed versions, highlighting the fact that the approach generally taken by the dubbing teams seems to give priority to the denotative, informative dimension rather than the socio-pragmatic one. By shedding light on the intricacies of dubbing, it is hoped that this study would contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the translation of wordplay in the Arabophone countries and, more specifically, in the field of dubbing children’s programmes

Passionate Encounters: Emotion in Early English Biblical Drama

This thesis seeks to investigate the ways in which late medieval English drama produces and theorises emotions, in order to engage with the complex nexus of ideas about the links between sensation, emotion, and cognition in contemporary philosophical and theologial thought. It contributes to broader considerations of the cultural work that religious drama performed in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century England in the context of the ongoing debates concerning its theological and social relevance. Drawing on recent research in the cognitive sciences and the history of emotion, this thesis conceives of dramatic performances as passionate encounters between actors and audiences – encounters which do not only re-create biblical history as a sensual reality, but in which emotion becomes attached to signs and bodies through theatrical means. It suggests that the attention paid to the processes through which audiences become emotionally invested in a play challenges assumptions about biblical drama of the English towns as a negligible contribution to philosophical and theological thinking in the vernacular. The analysis is conducted against the background of medieval and modern conceptions of emotions as ethically and morally relevant phenomena at the intersection between body and reason, which is outlined in chapter one. Each of the four main chapters presents a detailed examination of a series of pageants or plays drawn mainly from the Chester and York cycles and the Towneley and N-Town collections. These are supplemented, on occasion, with analysis of individual plays from fragmentary cycles and collections. The examinations undertaken are placed against the devotional and intellectual backdrop of late medieval England, in order to demonstrate how dramatic performances of biblical subject matter engage with some of the central issues in the wider debate about the human body, soul, and intellect. The second chapter focuses on the creation of living images on the stage, and specifically on didactically relevant stage images, in the Towneley Processus Prophetarum, the Chester Moses and the Law, and the N-Town Moses. The third chapter shifts the focus to the performance of the Passion in the N-Town second Passion play and the York Crucifixio Christi, concentrating on the potential effects of the perception of physical violence on audience response. The subject of chapter four is the emotional behaviours and expressions accorded to the Virgin Mary in the Towneley and N-Town Crucifixion scenes, and those of her precursors, the mothers of the innocents, in the Digby and Coventry plays of the Massacre of the Inncocents. In chapter five, the analysis finally turns to dramatisations of the Resurrection, examining its realisation on stage in the Chester Skinners’ play, as well as staged responses to the event by the apostles and the Marys in the N-Town The Announcement to the Three Marys; Peter and John at the Sepulchre and the Towneley Thomas of India. These four central chapters pave the way for a summary, in the conclusion, of the central problematic underpinning this thesis: how the evocation of emotion in an audience is linked to embodiment in theatrical performance, and tied to a certain awareness, on the part of playwrights, of the popular biblical drama’s potential as a locus of philosophical-theological debate

Learning collocations through interaction: The effects of the quality and quantity of encounters

This study examined how short-term and long-term retention of two types of collocations (verb-noun and adjective-noun) was affected by the learning context. The experimental research design of the study involved two major experiments. In Experiment 1 (EX1), 109 male Emirati college students were randomly assigned to an experimental group (task-based activities) or a control group (mainstream exercises). EX1 involved 20 verb-noun collocations and consisted of two sub-experiments. In experiment 1a both the control and experimental groups were exposed to 20 verb-noun collocations four times. To clarify the effects of the instructional context, a second experiment (EX1b) was conducted where participants encountered the same collocations four times for the experimental group and eight times for the control group. As for Experiment 2 (EX2), it involved 108 male Emirati college students and targeted 20 adjective-noun collocations, and similarly, in Experiment 2a, both the control and experimental groups encountered the adjective-noun collocations 4 times, whereas Experiment 2b offered the experimental and control groups four and eight collocation encounters, respectively. The treatment consisted of exposing participants in both experiments to the target collocations using two different teaching methods. The experimental groups used four task-based activities that presented collocations as whole units (Ellis’s, 2003 chunking principle) while the control groups used mainstream textbook exercises to learn these sequences, breaking them down into their two constituents (verb + noun and adjective + noun). The experiment was carried out over a two-hour period during students’ regular English classes.The results showed that the experimental group learners in both EX1 and EX2 who used task-based activities to learn the collocations, and were exposed to these sequences four times only as whole units, further outscored their control group peers in all collocation measurements. Statistical analysis of participants’ test responses also showed that the long-term receptive knowledge category of the target verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations in both experiments was higher than the productive knowledge for all experimental groups. This study fills a gap in the research about the importance of the quality of encounter vs. the quantity of encounter in collocation learning and identifies an instructional method that is optimal for learning. The overall results suggest that task-based activities were superior to mainstream exercises and that the quality of encounter appears to be more important than the number of encounter in collocation learning; four highly interactive tasks presenting collocations as whole units, with only four encounters, could be more effective to retain unknown collocations than mainstream exercises (e.g., matching and fill-in) that offered learners eight encounters to the collocations broken down into their constituents. The implications for teachers may be that task-based activities, exposing learners to collocations as whole units, should be part of their language instructional pedagogy if they want learners to retain collocations in their long-term memory. For material designers, a well-balanced course would be one that prioritises collocations as chinks through interactive task-based activities

The role of phonology in visual word recognition: evidence from Chinese

Posters - Letter/Word Processing V: abstract no. 5024The hypothesis of bidirectional coupling of orthography and phonology predicts that phonology plays a role in visual word recognition, as observed in the effects of feedforward and feedback spelling to sound consistency on lexical decision. However, because orthography and phonology are closely related in alphabetic languages (homophones in alphabetic languages are usually orthographically similar), it is difficult to exclude an influence of orthography on phonological effects in visual word recognition. Chinese languages contain many written homophones that are orthographically dissimilar, allowing a test of the claim that phonological effects can be independent of orthographic similarity. We report a study of visual word recognition in Chinese based on a mega-analysis of lexical decision performance with 500 characters. The results from multiple regression analyses, after controlling for orthographic frequency, stroke number, and radical frequency, showed main effects of feedforward and feedback consistency, as well as interactions between these variables and phonological frequency and number of homophones. Implications of these results for resonance models of visual word recognition are discussed.postprin

Interactive effects of orthography and semantics in Chinese picture naming

Posters - Language Production/Writing: abstract no. 4035Picture-naming performance in English and Dutch is enhanced by presentation of a word that is similar in form to the picture name. However, it is unclear whether facilitation has an orthographic or a phonological locus. We investigated the loci of the facilitation effect in Cantonese Chinese speakers by manipulating—at three SOAs (2100, 0, and 1100 msec)—semantic, orthographic, and phonological similarity. We identified an effect of orthographic facilitation that was independent of and larger than phonological facilitation across all SOAs. Semantic interference was also found at SOAs of 2100 and 0 msec. Critically, an interaction of semantics and orthography was observed at an SOA of 1100 msec. This interaction suggests that independent effects of orthographic facilitation on picture naming are located either at the level of semantic processing or at the lemma level and are not due to the activation of picture name segments at the level of phonological retrieval.postprin