Game geek's goss: linguistic creativity in young males within an online university forum (94/\/\3 933k’5 9055oneone)

In this paper the authors explore the use and adaptation of a language specifically developed for, and by, a community of young people who play computer games. Leet speak or 1337 5p34k, the language used by the participants in this study, incorporates symbols and numbers as substitutes for the letters contained in words. Described by the group as an ‘elite’ language or ‘leet speak’, the authors’ interest was captured by the derisive and ironic use of the language in an online forum for a tertiary first year unit of study. Rather than merely defining its participants within an elite cultural boundary, ‘leet speak’ is utilised ironically to unearth ‘wannabees’ (those seeking entrance and acceptance into the game world, generally 12 –16 year olds). Of particular fascination to the authors was that despite the clear self- demarcation of the group from the users of ‘leet speak’, and their insistence on its use solely by ‘newbs and wannabees’, the group continued to use the language to communicate with each other online. In this research, language defines the cultural group of games technology students in terms of the group’s continual subversion of the language’s very foundations whilst still using it to communicate. Perhaps most interesting was the group’s nonchalant admission that they perceived this to be the function of all languages ‘all languages are created purely for communication so dont [sic] have a cry about ppl been [sic] lazy’.

A virtual environment for cultural and linguistic inclusivity teaching in a global environment

The Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia) operational policy on 'International and Culturally Inclusive Curricula' states that Deakin will incorporate international/intercultural perspectives and inclusive pedagogies into its courses in order to prepare all students to perform capably, ethically and sensitively in international, multicultural, professional and social contexts.

This paper is about a specific project to internationalise the teacher education curriculum through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). This project is scoped in the context of the UNESCO thrust of 'Education for All' in agreeing that inclusive societies begin with inclusive education practices. In our view current strategies have been insufficient to ensure that marginalized and excluded children receive access to their right to education.

The project aims to operationalise part of the UNESCO Dakar Framework for high quality learning environments by responding to ‘…the diverse needs and circumstances of learners and giving appropriate weight to the abilities, skills and knowledge they bring to the teaching and learning process’ by minimising language acquisition barriers that can otherwise impede effective communication and learning.

In addition, we need to be mindful of the marginalisation of people from non-English speaking backgrounds and therefore, in this initiative we use ICT to bridge the 'tyranny of distance' and offer a curriculum that values cultural and linguistic diversity.

In this paper we will discuss how we intend to develop these project principles. In particular we will indicate our plans to use relatively low cost, accessible software to develop a virtual environment where students can enter text in their native language, view foreign language text in their native language, hear text in their own language and automatically encode text into MP3 files and attach the files to messages.

Prominent messages in education and applied linguistic abstracts : how do authors appeal to their prospective readers?

This study investigates the rhetorical structure of abstracts of papers published in Applied Linguistics and Education. It examines how abstract authors in these two fields emphasise the significance of their research, and how they appeal to their prospective readership. Although abstracts in both disciplinary groups are found to display a coordinate textual development they exhibit a utilization of different relational schemata to indicate the functional prominence of textual propositions. In particular, different relational patterns are seen to be employed to fulfil the two primary objectives of an abstract: to provide a synopsis of the accompanying article, and to promote it to relevant research and professional communities. The way authors demonstrate the value of their research and their professional credibility appears to be conditioned by disciplinary writing conventions. It is proposed that relational choices, which result in differences in the accentuation of communicative messages in Applied Linguistics and Education abstracts, depend on the perceived relationship between the author and the discourse community in terms of expectations of prior knowledge.

A virtual environment for cultural and linguistic inclusivity : teaching in a global environment

This paper is about a project that uses Information and communication technologies in a virtual environment where students can communicate in their own language in text and audio.

Patient assessment of medication information leaflets and validation of the Evaluative Linguistic Framework (ELF)

Objective : To obtain patient feedback about the structure and quality of medication information leaflets and validate the usefulness of the Evaluative Linguistic Framework (ELF) for improving written communication with patients.
Methods : Triangulated feedback about a set of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) medication leaflets, some developed with knowledge of the ELF, was obtained from 27 people with RA from interviews, focus group discussion and self-administered questionnaires. The principal elements of the framework were investigated: overall generic structure and functions of each stage, interpersonal relationship between writer and reader, technicality of language and density of information.
Results : Participant assessments of the leaflets aligned with the framework in terms of what constituted a good leaflet. While the main purpose of the leaflets was identified as being information provision, participants also wanted clear instructions, benefits to be highlighted and side effects to be comprehensively listed. For comprehensiveness and user-friendliness, leaflets developed with guidance of the ELF were consistently preferred.
Conclusion : According to people with RA, leaflets generated from a linguistic framework are clearer and more effective in communicating information about medications.
Practice Implications : The ELF is a user-friendly, structured analytic system that can assist with the development of effective high quality patient information materials.

Positioning, linguistic theory and Orwell's short nonfiction

It is argued, making reference to an Orwell text sample, that linguistic theory illuminates "positioning" (as term and concept), that positioning's flexibility contributes to critical textual analysis and to attempts to understand complex human processes, but how far language may constrain as well as facilitate such understanding must remain open.

Computing the numerical scale of the linguistic term set for the 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representation model

When using linguistic approaches to solve decision problems, we need the techniques for computing with words (CW). Together with the 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representation models (i.e., the Herrera and Mart´ınez model and the Wang and Hao model), some computational techniques for CW are also developed. In this paper, we define the concept of numerical scale and extend the 2-tuple fuzzy linguistic representation models under the numerical scale.We find that the key of computational techniques
based on linguistic 2-tuples is to set suitable numerical scale with
the purpose of making transformations between linguistic 2-tuples
and numerical values. By defining the concept of the transitive
calibration matrix and its consistent index, this paper develops an optimization model to compute the numerical scale of the linguistic term set. The desired properties of the optimization model are also presented. Furthermore, we discuss how to construct the transitive calibration matrix for decision problems using linguistic preference relations and analyze the linkage between the consistent index of the transitive calibration matrix and one of the linguistic preference relations. The results in this paper are pretty helpful to complete the fuzzy 2-tuple representation models for CW.

Phonology and lexicon in a cross-linguistic perspective : the importance of phonetics – a commentary on Stoel-Gammon's 'relationships between lexical and phonological development in young children'

In her interesting article, Stoel-Gammon (this issue) reviews studies concerning the interactions between lexical and phonological development. While the focus of the review is on vocabulary production from children acquiring American English, she also suggests that cross-linguistic research be undertaken to examine how universal and language-specific properties affect the interaction between lexical and phonological acquisition. In this regard, Stoel-Gammon referred to the study of Bleses et al. (2008) who found differences in receptive vocabulary development across languages, based on norming studies for the Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson, Marchman, Thal, Dale, Reznick & Bates, 2007). Bleses et al. showed that Danish children were slower in the early comprehension of words (and phrases). It was hypothesized that the phonetic structure of Danish may account for the difference in receptive vocabulary skills in this population (Bleses & Basbøll, 2004).