Applied Linguistics - current issue

Textual Appropriation and Citing Behaviors of University Undergraduates

Shi, L. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

This article explores the citing behaviors of 16 undergraduates in a North American university. After completing a research paper for their disciplinary courses, each participating student was interviewed to identify in his/her writing words and ideas borrowed from source texts and to explain why and how the relevant texts were appropriated with or without citations. Analysis of students’ writing and comments illustrates how they relied on source texts for various aspects of their essays, some of which they believed required citations while some of which did not. Results showed that they tried to strike a balance between the need to cite published authors to gain credit for the scholarly quality of their writing and the desire to establish their own voice by limiting the extent to which they cited other texts. Some students also reported how they chose between quoting and paraphrasing (though the latter sometimes contained direct copying) on the basis of their ability to rephrase other's words and their understanding of the different roles played by the two. The study indicates the degree to which citational acts are discursive markings of learning and knowledge construction.

Practices of Other-Initiated Repair in the Classrooms of Children with Specific Speech and Language Difficulties

Radford, J. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Repair practices used by teachers who work with children with specific speech and language difficulties (SSLDs) have hitherto remained largely unexplored. Such classrooms therefore offer a new context for researching repairs and considering how they compare with non-SSLD interactions. Repair trajectories are of interest because they are dialogic sites where the child's meaning is being negotiated and, therefore, where adults might create opportunities for language learning. The interactions take place during activities, such as story writing, where teachers elicit children's ideas and orient to their lack of clarity. From a data set of 78 cases, four significant patterns of teacher repair initiation emerged. First, non-specific repair initiators (RIs), such as ‘say that again’, target any aspect of the prior turn and reveal the adult's lack of grasp of its content. Next, specific RIs (‘she has’) that are constructed with minimal components of the child's turn, pinpoint the location of the trouble but provide no new lexical information. In contrast, specific RIs that are constructed as ‘wh’ questions (‘down where’), target the nature of the trouble and elicit further information. Finally, offers of candidates (‘do you mean X’) do provide new models of lexis but do not elicit repetition from the child.

Style Shifts among Japanese Learners before and after Study Abroad in Japan: Becoming Active Social Agents in Japanese

Iwasaki, N. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Previous studies on L2 Japanese sojourners often reported that learners overuse the plain style or haphazardly mix the plain and polite styles upon return. These styles, which are often associated with formal or informal contexts, also index complex social and situational meanings, and native speakers are reported to shift their styles to create desired contexts. In order to better understand L2 development of the use of the plain and polite styles during study abroad, the current study examined the use of the polite/plain styles and style shifts among five English-speaking male students who studied in Japan for one academic year by comparing their performances both quantitatively and qualitatively in oral proficiency interviews before and after they studied abroad. Upon return, three predominantly used the polite style talking to the interviewer (their former teacher), while two primarily used the plain style. Though the quantitative analysis may lead one to conclude that these two students regressed in their pragmatic competence, the qualitative analysis revealed that all five learners gained some understanding of social meanings of the plain and polite styles and became more active social agents who make decisions to shift the styles.

The Relationship between Applied Linguistic Research and Language Policy for Bilingual Education

Johnson, D. C. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Currently, restrictive-language policies seem to threaten bilingual education throughout the USA. Anti-bilingual education initiatives have passed easily in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, while one was closely defeated in Colorado, and federal education policy has re-invigorated the focus on English education for English language learners, while concomitantly obfuscating the possibility of native language maintenance and developmental bilingual education. This is the educational landscape within which bilingual education researchers, educators, and students must face the formidable challenge of preserving educational choice and bilingual education. Thus, substantive research is needed on how bilingual educators navigate this challenging ideological and policy landscape. Based on an ethnographic study of bilingual education language policy, this article takes up this challenge by focusing on how beliefs about Applied Linguistics research influence the interpretation and appropriation of federal language policy in one US school district. The results have implications for the relationship between the Applied Linguistic research community and language policy processes.

Seizure, Fit or Attack? The Use of Diagnostic Labels by Patients with Epileptic or Non-epileptic Seizures

Plug, L., Sharrack, B., Reuber, M. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

We present an analysis of the use of diagnostic labels such as seizure, attack, fit, and blackout by patients who experience seizures. While previous research on patients’ preferences for diagnostic terminology has relied on questionnaires, we assess patients’ own preferences and their responses to a doctor's use of different labels through the qualitative and quantitative analysis of doctor–patient interactions in a realistic clinical setting. We also examine whether two sub-groups of patients—those with epileptic seizures and those with (psychogenic) non-epileptic seizures—show different behaviours in this respect. Our findings suggest first that patients make fine lexical distinctions between the various diagnostic labels they use to describe their seizure experiences; secondly, that patients play an active role in the development and application of labels for their medical complaint; and thirdly, that attention to patients’ lexical choices and interactive use or avoidance of labels can be relevant for the differential diagnosis of seizures.

English in Advertising: Generic Intertextuality in a Globalizing Media Environment

Kuppens, A. H. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Across the globe, the use of English is a popular advertising technique. The ever expanding body of studies on this topic has revealed a number of explanations for the use of English in the advertising. It can be related to the larger marketing strategy of a campaign, to the cultural connotations English carries, or English can be used for creative-linguistic reasons. The current article, however, will present an analysis of four examples of advertisements in which English is used for reasons that have not been discussed in the scholarly literature so far. More specifically, in these advertisements, which intertextually refer to a range of British and American media genres, specific registers of English are used to mark the generic intertextuality of the ads. The analysis, I believe, sheds new light on the use of English in the media, and more particularly on issues such as viewers’ agency and linguistic superiority.

A Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Comprehension of wh-Questions by Korean Learners of English

Lee, J.-H. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Previous studies on English as a second language (L2) argue for the relative ease of object wh-questions based on the finding that L2 learners are more accurate and faster in judging the grammaticality of object wh-questions than that of subject wh-questions in English. This article re-examines this claim by investigating L2 learners’ comprehension of long-distance wh-questions at different stages of English acquisition. A total of 113 Korean-speaking learners of English with different years of English instruction participated in a picture-based comprehension task. Contrary to previous studies, the results of the present study point toward a strong preference for subject wh-questions to object wh-questions. The learners were more accurate and improved faster in subject wh-questions than in object wh-questions. In addition, they showed a strong tendency to interpret object wh-questions as subject wh-questions. These results are in line with distance-based accounts of processing complexity. Subject wh-questions are easier to process because the distance between the wh-word and the gap is shorter and therefore poses less burden on working memory in subject wh-questions than in object wh-questions.

F. Christie and J. Martin (eds): Language, Knowledge and Pedagogy: Functional Linguistic and Sociological Perspectives.

Barwell, R. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds): Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages.

May, S. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Alison Wray: Formulaic Language: Pushing the Boundaries.

Durrant, P. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Ruth Wodak, Rudolf de Cillia, Martin Reisigl and Karin Liebhart: The Discursive Construction of National Identity. Second Edition. Transl. by Angelika Hirsch, Richard Mitten and J. W. Unger.

Galasinska, A. — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST

Notes on Contributors

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:36:02 PST