Multilingual Practices in Language History: English and Beyond

In historical code-switching research, most of the focus has thus far lain on texts produced in England, with code-switching between English, Latin and/or French. Different periods in the history of English have not, however, received equal attention from researchers: texts from the Early Middle English period have been almost completely neglected. This chapter looks at the range of forms and functions of code-switching in texts from the generally under-researched ‘long twelfth century’. Locating levels at which code-switching takes place - manuscript, page, text and clause - the chapter considers patterns emerging from these multilingual practices. Despite the dominance of Latin as the main language of text production in England at this time, particular attention is paid to Latin switches embedded in the English matrix, and code-switching from English to French is also discussed, although it is quite rare.<br /

Studies in Early Middle English Loanwords: Norse and French Influences – Lectio praecursoria

The author defended his doctoral dissertation Studies in Early Middle English Loanwords: Norse and French Influences (Anglicana Turkuensia 26. Turku 2009) at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Turku, on 2nd October, 2009. The official opponent at the public defence was Professor Juliette Dor (University of Liege), and the defence was chaired by Professor Risto Hiltunen (University of Turku). The following is an English-language summary of the introductory talk delivered in Finnish at the start of the viva

L2 English learners as public speakers: generic and language-specific features in learner narratives

In working-life and especially in academic contexts, a common speech genre is monologic oral presentation. Advanced learners are expected to be able to communicate fluently in their L2 in different settings. Giving presentations is therefore often part of university-level education in foreign languages. This study focused on autobiographical narratives written during a presentation skills course. We analysed narratives written by 83 Finnish advanced learners of English in order to discover whether learners considered oral presentation skills as universal or language-specific, and which features of language were identified as challenging for their L2 speech performance. According to our findings, presentations in L2 were regarded as both similar to and different from presentations in L1. Giving a presentation in L2 both presented a challenge and provided a way of alleviating the pressure of the situation. The most typical level of L2 identified as a cause of concern by the students was pronunciation

Kielentutkimuksen menetelmiä I-IV

Filologisiksi menetelmiksi kutsutaan perinteisiä tekstintutkimuksen menetelmiä, joissa ydinajatuksena on vahvaan kielitaitoon ja tekstin syntykontekstin tuntemukseen nojaten ymmärtää, mitä tekstissä oikeastaan sanotaan. Filologian keskiössä ovat vanhat tekstit, eikä se aina ole vain kieleen kohdistuvaa tutkimusta kapeasti ymmärrettynä. Artikkelissa pohditaan, millaisia merkityksiä filologialle on annettu ja annetaan ja millaista on filologisen tutkimuksen tekeminen. | Published in Finnish in the linguistic methodology handbook Kielentutkimuksen menetelmiä, this chapter discusses philology as a field of research, its status past and present, and philological methods. </p

Managing Latin : Support and intratextual translation as mediation strategies in the history of English

Our study maps the practices of managing Latin in English texts from over a thousand years. Mediation is a communicative activity which involves explaining the content of a conversation or text to another person. In contexts of multilingual writing, this is typically self-mediation, which a writer may perform by complementing code-switches with intratextual translations in the text. The data for the study are drawn from corpora of English historical texts, dictionaries and manuscripts, and mediation is analyzed in terms of support, intratextual translation and flagging. The findings show that while cognitive support helps a reader understand all of the content of the text, intratextual translation may also have relational functions, where the reader is expected to understand both languages used, as when code-switching and translation are a vehicle for humor. Intratextual translation can also be used to add credibility to the writer's argument or to link it to a broader discussion on the topic. Mediation is also facilitated by flagging code-switching and intratextual translation metalinguistically or visually. Support is needed for Latin as a language which has always been part of relatively few English-speakers' repertoire, but these strategies are expected to apply to other language pairs as well.publishedVersionPeer reviewe