BIRACIAL – BLACK? A SURVEY OF LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES IN POLAND AND GERMANY

The paper deals with the construction of race from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics. The focus is upon the perception of mixed-race people of black and white heritage in Poland and Germany compared to the USA, and its reflection in language use. The study clarifies in how far a socially marked perception of biracial people applies in these countries with very small population of black ancestry. Among other things, the first presidential campaign of Barack Obama is used to investigate the occurrence in both countries of mental colouring of biracial people. The paper also reflects the language debate on political correctness of the press language, sparked off by the presidential campaign and its media coverage. It presents claims and arguments by proponents of various solutions regarding referring to biracial people, and paradoxes showing up in the relationship between language use and ideological positions when the race issue is at stake

Developing Cross-cultural Understanding through Sociolinguistic Dissemination: A Practice in Multicultural Education

The use of language cannot be separated from the culture of its speakers. Most experts agree that language is the cultural reflection of social community. Therefore, the language learning must involve the learning of related culture with the language being learnt. This paper describes my personal experience in teaching Sociolinguistics II for the students of the English Language and Literature Study Program, Yogyakarta State University through sociolinguistic dissemination to develop their cross-cultural understanding. One of the main issues in the teaching of sociolinguistics is to see how cultural aspects are reflected in the use of language. Realizing the importance of this course toward the understanding of the relationship between language and culture, English Language and Literature Study Program, Yogyakarta State University provides its students with this course in two semesters, sociolinguistics I and II. Unlike the teaching of sociolinguistics I which is more theoretical, sociolinguistics II is more practical. The students are expected to have an overview and experience in conducting a mini research that will be beneficial for them in writing thesis. In my experiences in teaching this subject, the students were assigned to conduct mini research on the issue of cross-cultural understanding. In this case, they were proposed to observe multicultural films from different points of view; namely language and society, bilingualism, language variation, choosing code, language and sex, and politeness and solidarity. In the end, they had to disseminate their observation result. The teaching of this course prioritized the process approach. The students were given a chance to consult their observation, present the research report, and revise it. In fact, the implementation of sociolinguistic dissemination not only shows the students on the significance of cross-cultural understanding in the process of communication but also gives them the experience of doing mini research, group work, writing a paper, consultation, and reporting the result.. Key words: developing, cross cultural understanding, sociolinguistic disseminatio

PATTERNS OF LANGUAGE CHOICE IN SEMARANG SOCIETY; STUDY ABOUT LANGUAGE SHIFT AND MAINTENANCE

Penelitian ini dimaksudkan untuk mengetahui pemilihan bahasa dalam empat domain (ranah) yaitu domain keluarga, perdagangan, pendidikan dan pemerintahan. Peneliti berusaha untuk mengetahui bagaimana penggunaan bahasa Jawa dan Indonesia dalam masyarakat diglosik Semarang. Dari hasil penelitian diketahui adanya pembagian peran dan fungsi penggunaan bahasa Indonesia dan bahasa Jawa. Peneliti menemukan bahwa Bahasa Jawa terbatas dipakai dalam domain Keluarga secara dominan sedangkan bahasa Indonesia dominan digunakan di dalam ranah perdagangan, pendidikan, dan pemerintahan. Fenomena ini menunjukan persaingan bahasa antara bahasa Indonesia dan bahasa Jawa dimana bahasa Jawa Ngoko sebagai ragam rendah, bahasa Jawa Krama sebagai ragam tinggi dan bahasa Indonesia sebagai ragam tinggi. Kesimpulan lebih menguatkan terjadinya pergeseran bahasa dibanding pemertahanan bahasa. Adanya perembesan bahasa pada domain keluarga yaitu dipilihnya bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa utama dan menurunya kuantitas dan kualitas kemampuan berbahasa jawa oleh generasi muda lebih membuktikan pada proses pergeseran Bahasa Jaw

Reaching out to the other side: Formal-linguistics-based SLA and Socio-SLA

Generative linguistics has long been concerned with the linguistic competence of the “ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly” (Chomsky 1965: 3). Research in formal-linguistics-based second language acquisition takes as its starting point the second language (L2) speaker's underlying mental representation. Here the factors of interest are influence of the learner's native language and, in generative SLA, the operation of innate linguistic mechanisms (Universal Grammar). Similar to methodology in formal syntax, lxSLA adopts techniques such as grammaticality judgment, comprehension and perception tasks supplementing spontaneously produced oral data. While there may be individual differences in oral production, tasks that tap learners' mental representations reveal commonalities across learners from a given native language background with the same amount/ type of exposure and age of initial L2 exposure. When it comes to phonology, age has long been a central factor with numerous comparative studies showing younger learners far outperforming older learners (see Piske et al. 2001). This paper discusses a case of possible non-acquisition by L2 children who had had considerable exposure to the L2. Children's non-acquisition is only apparent, and this allows us to consider the value of lxSLA methodology on the one hand, and and raises issues about what might be lacking in the current socio-SLA paradigm, on the other. We argue that only when we return to the cooperation that marked its birth in the 1960s will we have a comprehensive picture of SLA

A STUDY OF THE PERCEPTUAL BELIEFS AND THE USE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING

This paper is a temporary report of a project investigating the ICT gadgets in a survey study involving students of Senior High Schools in Central Java, Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to investigate how ICT is perceived and used by high school students as well as to disclose how the students have made use of the technological gadgets for language learning-related activities. The study employs a mixed method by which data were garnered from questionnaire surveys and focus group discussion. This is reported in the very end of the project stages and the results of which suggest that the research subjects perceive the ICT very positively and that, overall, respondents have frequently used them for various dayto-day activities. Another finding also suggests that the majority of respondents admit that they use the gadgets for various learning-related activities despite less so for learning English, bringing with it an implication on the change of policy by schools or educational policy makers to consider integrating the technology into a more purposeful learning uses

Computational Sociolinguistics: A Survey

Language is a social phenomenon and variation is inherent to its social nature. Recently, there has been a surge of interest within the computational linguistics (CL) community in the social dimension of language. In this article we present a survey of the emerging field of "Computational Sociolinguistics" that reflects this increased interest. We aim to provide a comprehensive overview of CL research on sociolinguistic themes, featuring topics such as the relation between language and social identity, language use in social interaction and multilingual communication. Moreover, we demonstrate the potential for synergy between the research communities involved, by showing how the large-scale data-driven methods that are widely used in CL can complement existing sociolinguistic studies, and how sociolinguistics can inform and challenge the methods and assumptions employed in CL studies. We hope to convey the possible benefits of a closer collaboration between the two communities and conclude with a discussion of open challenges.Comment: To appear in Computational Linguistics. Accepted for publication: 18th February, 201