Post-modern ‘languagers’: the effects of texting by university students on three South African languages

The present post-modern society has witnessed a growth spurt in technology, and with the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), mobile text messaging (texting) is now seen as the norm among the youth. For these late-modern languagers (Lytra and Jørgensen 2008: 5), it has become a common if not almost natural process to send and receive an SMS (Short Message Service) in different languages. Although some studies have examined the transformation and modification of the English language by mobile communication, hardly any, apart from Deumert and Masinyana (2008), have looked at how local South African languages are being reshaped and modified through this medium. Drawing on texting data from university undergraduate students, this paper examines the ways in which three South African languages – Afrikaans, isiXhosa and Setswana – are used, transformed and modified through this medium of communication. It is argued here that the intense creativity displayed by these young cell phone users as they play with the multilingual resources at their disposal may lead to some form of language revitalisation for these languages

Seeking systematicity in variation : theoretical and methodological considerations on the “variety” concept

One centennial discussion in linguistics concerns whether languages, or linguistic systems, are, essentially, homogeneous or rather show “structured heterogeneity.” In this contribution, the question is addressed whether and how sociolinguistically defined systems (or ‘varieties’) are to be distinguished in a heterogeneous linguistic landscape: to what extent can structure be found in the myriads of language variants heard in everyday language use? We first elaborate on the theoretical importance of this ‘variety question’ by relating it to current approaches from, among others, generative linguistics (competing grammars), sociolinguistics (style-shifting, polylanguaging), and cognitive linguistics (prototype theory). Possible criteria for defining and detecting varieties are introduced, which are subsequently tested empirically, using a self-compiled corpus of spoken Dutch in West Flanders (Belgium). This empirical study demonstrates that the speech repertoire of the studied West Flemish speakers consists of four varieties, viz. a fairly stable dialect variety, a more or less virtual standard Dutch variety, and two intermediate varieties, which we will label ‘cleaned-up dialect’ and ‘substandard.’ On the methodological level, this case-study underscores the importance of speech corpora comprising both inter- and intra-speaker variation on the one hand, and the merits of triangulating qualitative and quantitative approaches on the other

Trialogue / Tryalogue

This has no beginning and no end. A trialogue, which is a conversation among three people, preferably across continents, schedules, and climate zones, is typically not started but continued. It has no first word and no last, and therefore is also not concluded but rather interrupted. One pops in and out. Another feature of the trialogue is its tentativeness: one does not have a trialogue, one tries a trialogue. And finally, trialogues typically involve the use of special terminology and particular language – not the language normally found in academic papers, but language that transcends it, then comes back to it, only to transcend it again. In other words, the trialogue is a genre that is not disciplinary, or only a bit

Creating a Live, Public Short Message Service Corpus: The NUS SMS Corpus

Short Message Service (SMS) messages are largely sent directly from one person to another from their mobile phones. They represent a means of personal communication that is an important communicative artifact in our current digital era. As most existing studies have used private access to SMS corpora, comparative studies using the same raw SMS data has not been possible up to now. We describe our efforts to collect a public SMS corpus to address this problem. We use a battery of methodologies to collect the corpus, paying particular attention to privacy issues to address contributors' concerns. Our live project collects new SMS message submissions, checks their quality and adds the valid messages, releasing the resultant corpus as XML and as SQL dumps, along with corpus statistics, every month. We opportunistically collect as much metadata about the messages and their sender as possible, so as to enable different types of analyses. To date, we have collected about 60,000 messages, focusing on English and Mandarin Chinese.Comment: It contains 31 pages, 6 figures, and 10 tables. It has been submitted to Language Resource and Evaluation Journa

Mother-tongue education in a multilingual township: Possibilities for recognising lok’shin lingua in South Africa

Abstract: Background: Mother-tongue education in South African primary schools remains a challenge to policymakers. The situation is problematic in multilingual lok’shin (township) schools where the lok’shin lingua is not recognised as ‘standard’ language. This article raises the controversial possibility of positioning of lok’shin lingua in a formal education langscape. Objectives: The article’s first purpose is to highlight recent international and local research which depicts controversies surrounding mother tongue instruction in primary schools. The second purpose is to conceptualise lok’shin lingua as a dialect present in children’s everyday vocabulary..

Autochthonous heritage languages and social media:writing and bilingual practices in Low German on Facebook

This article analyses how speakers of an autochthonous heritage language (AHL) make use of digital media, through the example of Low German, a regional language used by a decreasing number of speakers mainly in northern Germany. The focus of the analysis is on Web 2.0 and its interactive potential for individual speakers. The study therefore examines linguistic practices on the social network site Facebook, with special emphasis on language choice, bilingual practices and writing in the autochthonous heritage language. The findings suggest that social network sites such as Facebook have the potential to provide new mediatized spaces for speakers of an AHL that can instigate sociolinguistic change

Exploring the experiences and coping strategies of international medical students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Few studies have addressed the challenges that international medical students face and there is a dearth of information on the behavioural strategies these students adopt to successfully progress through their academic program in the face of substantial difficulties of language barrier, curriculum overload, financial constraints and assessment tasks that require high proficiency in communication skills.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>This study was designed primarily with the aim of enhancing understanding of the coping strategies, skill perceptions and knowledge of assessment expectations of international students as they progress through the third and fourth years of their medical degree at the School of Medicine, University of Tasmania, Australia.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Survey, focus group discussion and individual interviews revealed that language barriers, communication skills, cultural differences, financial burdens, heavy workloads and discriminatory bottlenecks were key factors that hindered their adaptation to the Australian culture. Quantitative analyses of their examination results showed that there were highly significant (p < 0.001) variations between student performances in multiple choice questions, short answer questions and objective structured clinical examinations (70.3%, 49.7% & 61.7% respectively), indicating existence of communication issues.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Despite the challenges, these students have adopted commendable coping strategies and progressed through the course largely due to their high sense of responsibility towards their family, their focus on the goal of graduating as medical doctors and their support networks. It was concluded that faculty needs to provide both academic and moral support to their international medical students at three major intervention points, namely point of entry, mid way through the course and at the end of the course to enhance their coping skills and academic progression. Finally, appropriate recommendations were made.</p

Literacy and multilingualism in Africa

Literacy and multilingualism in Africa is approached here as a field of practice rather than a unified field of research. This field presents a crucial paradox: African contexts present some of the world’s most diverse and vital multilingual situations but also feature in the world’s poorest literacy rates and are routinely said to lack a literate tradition altogether. By reviewing Africa’s script inventions this chapter offers counter-evidence for this deceptive view. Throughout Africa – from the Maghreb over West and Central Africa to the Horn of Africa – there have been significant indigenous script traditions and inventions, including Tifinagh, N’ko, Vai, Bamum and Ge’ez. In fact, some of the world’s oldest known scripts (e.g. Egyptian hieroglyphs) are African scripts. The chapter further outlines two relatively young fields of practice and research that have begun to make major contributions to literacy and multilingualism in Africa: digital literacy and linguistic landscape. These fields share a common interest in the materiality of real language as opposed to idealized images of language and in local agency and creativity in the site of struggle that is language. Like digital language practices, linguistic landscapes constitute a domain for African written multilingualism that is not generally supported or monitored by African states. Nor does either field present simple continuities from colonially inherited language policies and ideologies, in the way that classrooms do. As spaces for writing par excellence linguistic landscapes and mobile phones promise to contribute in no minor way to the development of African language literacies and multilingualism in Africa

Language endangerment and language documentation in Africa

Non peer reviewe