Why diachronicity matters in the study of linguistic landscapes

It is commonly argued that the proliferation of urban writing known as linguistic landscapes represents “a thoroughly contemporary global trend” (Coupland, 2010: 78). The purpose of this paper is to show that linguistic landscapes are by no means modern phenomena and to draw on our shared interest in multilingual empires to highlight the importance of diachronic inquiry and productive dialog between sociolinguists of modern and ancient societies. We will argue that while signs do operate in aggregate, the common focus on all signs at a single point in time on one street is problematic because the interpretation of signs is diachronic in nature, intrinsically linked to the preceding signs in the same environment and to related signs elsewhere, and the process of reading “back from signs to practices to people” (Blommaert, 2013: 51) is not as unproblematic as it is sometimes made to look

Bilingual episodic memory: an introduction

Our current models of bilingual memory are essentially accounts of semantic memory whose goal is to explain bilingual lexical access to underlying imagistic and conceptual referents. While this research has included episodic memory, it has focused largely on recall for words, phrases, and sentences in the service of understanding the structure of semantic memory. Building on the four papers in this special issue, this article focuses on larger units of episodic memory(from quotidian events with simple narrative form to complex autobiographical memories) in service of developing a model of bilingual episodic memory. This requires integrating theory and research on how culture-specific narrative traditions inform encoding and retrieval with theory and research on the relation between(monolingual) semantic and episodic memory(Schank, 1982; Schank & Abelson, 1995; Tulving, 2002). Then, taking a cue from memory-based text processing studies in psycholinguistics(McKoon & Ratcliff, 1998), we suggest that as language forms surface in the progressive retrieval of features of an event, they trigger further forms within the same language serving to guide a within-language/ within-culture retrieval

The Prospect of the Russian Language in Georgia. Insights from the Educated Youth

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the status of the Russian language in the new-born Republics became a central issue. In the Southern Caucasus, all the Constitutions promulgated by the three Republics opted for ethnocentric language policies that accepted the titular language as the only State Language. However, the role of the Russian language as a lingua franca remained crucial for international communication and everyday interaction. It followed that it continued to play an important role also in education. The present study focuses on Georgia, where a strong derussification policy has taken place in the last decades and aims at understanding to what extent the use of Russian among the young generations has contracted. In particular, we present an analysis conducted on data collected via (i) a survey for young people consisting of questions on their sociolinguistic background and a proficiency test in Russian, and (ii) semi-structured interviews for teachers of Russian and English as Foreign Languages on the research topics

L2 Influence on L1 in Late Bilingualism

The purpose of the present paper is to bring together several studies in an emerging area of inquiry—that of second language (L2) influence on the first language (L1) in adulthood—in order to reconceptualize the findings within a unitary theoretical framework. Previous research has convincingly established that L2 may influence and even overtake L1 in childhood L2 learning (cf. Wong-Fillmore, 1991). In the present paper, evidence is presented that similar processes may take place in adult L2 learning and use, with L2 influencing L1 phonology, morphosyntax, lexis, semantics, pragmatics, rhetoric, and conceptual representations. The processes taking place in these diverse areas are brought together within a single framework as borrowing, convergence, shift, restructuring, and loss. Possible constraints on L2 influence in adulthood are proposed and theoretical implications discussed, in particular with regard to the nature of L1 competence

Second Language Learning by Adults: Testimonies of Bilingual Writers

The article focuses on the relationship between languages and selves in adult bicultural bilinguals who learned their second language (L2) post puberty and became writers and scholars in this language. Their autobiographic narratives are used to identify and examine subsequent stages of second language learning (SLL) and the authors' current positioning. On the basis of this novel source of data an argument is presented for new metaphors of SLL, new approaches to SLL, and for the existence—in some cases—of two stages of SLL: a stage of losses and a stage of gains, with specific substages within

LINGUISTIC LANDSCAPE AND OTHER SOCIOLINGUISTIC METHODS IN THE STUDY OF RUSSIAN LANGUAGE ABROAD

Fieldwork research, including the articles in the present special issue, shows that in the past decade Russian has become one of the most popular and widely used languages in the global service in-dustry, tourism, and marketing, alongside English and Chinese. This historic moment opens up new oppor-tunities for researchers studying the uses of Russian language abroad. The purpose of the article is to survey sociolinguistic methods used in the study of Russian language abroad

Feigned incompetence:The pitfalls of evaluatingMirandacomprehension innon-native speakers of English

In 1966 the US Supreme Court ruled that custodial suspects should be advised of their rights, including the right to silence and the right to an attorney, before questioning begins. If they waive their rights and the defense can prove that they did not do so voluntarily, knowingly, and intelligently, their confession may be excluded from the evidence. Judges consider many factors in their decisions on motions to suppress, including expert testimony. In this paper, I discuss a case where two experts evaluated language proficiency of the same suspect and arrived at radically different conclusions regarding her ability to understand the warnings. I will show why one assessment was superior to the other, but the true significance of the case is in showing that a dialogic approach to delivery of the rights can reduce linguistic guesswork and help safeguard the integrity of the investigation and due process