Autochthonous heritage languages and social media:writing and bilingual practices in Low German on Facebook

This article analyses how speakers of an autochthonous heritage language (AHL) make use of digital media, through the example of Low German, a regional language used by a decreasing number of speakers mainly in northern Germany. The focus of the analysis is on Web 2.0 and its interactive potential for individual speakers. The study therefore examines linguistic practices on the social network site Facebook, with special emphasis on language choice, bilingual practices and writing in the autochthonous heritage language. The findings suggest that social network sites such as Facebook have the potential to provide new mediatized spaces for speakers of an AHL that can instigate sociolinguistic change.

Disciplinary talk:a systemic functional exploration of university seminar discussions

Despite the growth of spoken academic corpora in recent years, relatively little is known about the language of seminar discussions in higher education. This thesis compares seminar discussions across three disciplinary areas. The aim of this thesis is to uncover the functions and patterns of talk used in different disciplinary discussions and to highlight language on a macro and micro level that would be useful for materials design and teaching purposes. A framework for identifying and analysing genres in spoken language based on Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is used. Stretches of talk sharing a similar purpose and predictable functional staging, termed Discussion Macro Genres (DMGs) are identified. Language is compared across DMGs and across disciplines through use of corpus techniques in conjunction with SFL genre theory. Data for the study comprises just over 180,000 tokens and is drawn from the British Academic Spoken English corpus (BASE), recorded at two universities in the UK. The discipline areas investigated are Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and Physical Sciences. Findings from this study make theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions to the field of spoken EAP. The empirical findings are firstly, that the majority of the seminar discussion can be assigned to one of the three main DMG in the corpus: Responding, Debating and Problem Solving. Secondly, it characterises each discipline area according to two DMGs. Thirdly, the majority of the discussion is non-oppositional in nature, suggesting that ‘debate’ is not the only form of discussion that students need to be prepared for. Finally, while some characteristics of the discussion are tied to the DMG and common across disciplines, others are discipline specific. On a theoretical level, this study shows that an SFL genre model for investigating spoken discourse can be successfully extended to investigate longer stretches of discourse than have previously been identified. The methodological contribution is to demonstrate how corpus techniques can be combined with SFL genre theory to investigate extended stretches of spoken discussion. The thesis will be of value to those working in the field of teaching spoken EAP/ ESAP as well as to materials developers.

Reconstructing the past? Low German and the creating of regional identity in public language display

This article deals with language contact between a dominant standard language -German - and a lesser-used variety - Low German - in a situation in which the minoritised language is threatened by language shift and language loss. It analyses the application of Low German in forms of public language display and the selfpresentation of the community in tourism brochures, focusing on bilingual linguistic practices on the one hand and on underlying discourses on the other. It reveals that top-down and bottom-up approaches to implementing Low German in public language display show a remarkable homogeneity, thus creating a regional 'brand'. The article asks whether a raised level of visibility will in itself guarantee better chances for linguistic maintenance and survival of the threatened language. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.