Away with linguists! Normativity, inequality and metascientific reflexivity in sociolinguistic fieldwork

This paper addresses the fact that in spite of the descriptive and well-intentioned ambitions of much sociolinguistic-ethnographic research, members of studied groups often continue to interpret such research as a largely vertically organized socio-political activity that communicates a prescriptive social and linguistic normativity the researcher is inevitably taken to embody. We argue that while many researchers agree that sociolinguistic fieldwork is inherently political, actual descriptions of informants' awareness of this are still rather scarce. In the process, we demonstrate how members' metascientific reflexivity can be particularly active precisely in and during fieldwork encounters and in the entire research event, complicating the idea of a pure and disinterested description and understanding

Miguel Pérez-Milans. Urban Schools and English Language Education in Late Modern China: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography. New York/Abingdon, U.K.: Routledge. 2013. 196 pp. Hb (9780415502221) US$135.00.

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Linguistic diversity in the classroom: the wise teacher’s dilemma

Urban schools in Belgium have become increasingly multilingual. This invites pedagogical challenges as pupils struggle with the instruction language, but it leads to ideological anxieties in Dutch-medium schools especially. Recent studies show that Flemish teachers have negative attitudes towards the use of other languages than Dutch. These studies call for anti-bias training and for a teacher education that lives up to the current multilingual reality. There are good reasons however for expecting that teachers will waver ambivalently between linguistic uniformity and diversity, because they associate both ideas with important, albeit competing, educational purposes. Developing positive attitudes towards multilingualism is possible. But the effects of such an endeavor may be limited, and the expectations about what teachers are capable of unrealistic, if it is ignored that teachers will also attend to linguistic uniformity, at least in the present circumstances. Policy debate needs to take into account that teachers have to strike a balance between competing pedagogical purposes and societal concerns. Advocates of multilingualism at school may be more effective if they associate linguistic diversity not just with attitudes of tolerance and respect, but also with knowledge, qualification, and assessment

Playing with language in a mediapromoted standardisation context: public broadcasting and adolescent linguistic practices in Flanders

It is illustrated how the Flemish Belgian public broadcasting corporation intensifies an already marked project of linguistic standardisation, explicitly identifying substandard language use as sloppy. This standardising ambition can be said to backfire, however, when one observes the language games of a group of adolescents at school. For the latter, the traditional focus on Standard Dutch has made this variety available for play and masquerade. The broadcasting corporation’s renewed standardisation attempts therefore only seem to harm its own mission, marking substandard varieties as available for relief, enjoyment, and less status freighted interaction

Inferior outcome of addition of the aminopeptidase inhibitor tosedostat to standard intensive treatment for elderly patients with aml and high risk mds

Treatment results of AML in elderly patients are unsatisfactory. We hypothesized that addition of tosedostat, an aminopeptidase inhibitor, to intensive chemotherapy may improve outcome in this population. After establishing a safe dose in a run-in phase of the study in 22 patients, 231 eligible patients with AML above 65 years of age (median 70, range 66–81) were randomly assigned in this open label randomized Phase II study to receive standard chemotherapy (3+7) with or without tosedostat at the selected daily dose of 120 mg (n = 116), days 1–21. In the second cycle, patients received cytarabine 1000 mg/m2 twice daily on days 1-6 with or without tosedostat. CR/CRi rates in the 2 arms were not significantly different (69% (95% C.I. 60–77%) vs 64% (55–73%), respectively). At 24 months, event-free survival (EFS) was 20% for the standard arm versus 12% for the tosedostat arm (Cox-p = 0.01) and overall survival (OS) 33% vs 18% respectively (p = 0.006). Infectious complications accounted for an increased early death rate in the tosedostat arm. Atrial fibrillation w

Linguistic dilemmas and chronic ambivalence in the classroom: Special issue of Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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Linguistic dilemmas and chronic ambivalence in the classroom: Introduction

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