The uses of multilingualism in digital culture : the case of inter-language linking

Language-use has proven to be the most complex and complicating of all Internet features, yet people and institutions invest enormously in language and crosslanguage features because they are fundamental to the success of the Internet’s past, present and future. The thesis takes into focus the developments of the latter – features that facilitate and signify linking between or across languages – both in their historical and current contexts. In the theoretical analysis, the conceptual platform of inter-language linking is developed to both accommodate efforts towards a new social complexity model for the co-evolution of languages and language content, as well as to create an open analytical space for language and cross-language related features of the Internet and beyond. The practiced uses of inter-language linking have changed over the last decades. Before and during the first years of the WWW, mechanisms of inter-language linking were at best important elements used to create new institutional or content arrangements, but on a large scale they were just insignificant. This has changed with the emergence of the WWW and its development into a web in which content in different languages co-evolve. The thesis traces the inter-language linking mechanisms that facilitated these dynamic changes by analysing what these linking mechanisms are, how their historical as well as current contexts can be understood and what kinds of cultural-economic innovation they enable and impede. The study discusses this alongside four empirical cases of bilingual or multilingual media use, ranging from television and web services for languages of smaller populations, to large-scale, multiple languages involving web ventures by the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Special Broadcasting Service Australia, Wikipedia and Google. To sum up, the thesis introduces the concepts of ‘inter-language linking’ and the ‘lateral web’ to model the social complexity and co-evolution of languages online. The resulting model reconsiders existing social complexity models in that it is the first that can explain the emergence of large-scale, networked co-evolution of languages and language content facilitated by the Internet and the WWW. Finally, the thesis argues that the Internet enables an open space for language and crosslanguage related features and investigates how far this process is facilitated by (1) amateurs and (2) human-algorithmic interaction cultures.

Multilingualism and speech-language competence in early childhood: Impact on academic and social-emotional outcomes at school

This large-scale longitudinal population study provided a rare opportunity to consider the interface between multilingualism and speech-language competence on children’s academic and social-emotional outcomes and to determine whether differences between groups at 4 to 5 years persist, deepen, or disappear with time and schooling. Four distinct groups were identified from the Kindergarten cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) (1) English-only + typical speech and language (n = 2,012); (2) multilingual + typical speech and language (n = 476); (3) English-only + speech and language concern (n = 643); and (4) multilingual + speech and language concern (n = 109). Two analytic approaches were used to compare these groups. First, a matched case-control design was used to randomly match multilingual children with speech and language concern (group 4, n = 109) to children in groups 1, 2, and 3 on gender, age, and family socio-economic position in a cross-sectional comparison of vocabulary, school readiness, and behavioral adjustment. Next, analyses were applied to the whole sample to determine longitudinal effects of group membership on teachers’ ratings of literacy, numeracy, and behavioral adjustment at ages 6 to 7 and 8 to 9 years. At 4 to 5 years, multilingual children with speech and language concern did equally well or better than English-only children (with or without speech and language concern) on school readiness tests but performed more poorly on measures of English vocabulary and behavior. At ages 6 to 7 and 8 to 9, the early gap between English-only and multilingual children had closed. Multilingualism was not found to contribute to differences in literacy and numeracy outcomes at school; instead, outcomes were more related to concerns about children’s speech and language in early childhood. There were no group differences for socio-emotional outcomes. Early evidence for the combined risks of multilingualism plus speech and language concern was not upheld into the school years.

Internationalisation, multilingualism and English-medium instruction: the teacher's perspective

[EN]In the newEuropean higher education space, Universities in Europe are exhorted to cultivate and develop multilingualism. The European Commission’s 2004–2006 action plan for promoting language learning and diversity speaks of the need to build an environment which is favourable to languages. Yet reality indicates that it is English which reigns supreme and has become the main foreign language used as means of instruction at European universities. Internationalisation has played a key role in this process, becoming one of the main drivers of the linguistic hegemony exerted by English. In this paper we examine the opinions of teaching staff involved in English-medium instruction, from pedagogical ecologyof-language and personal viewpoints. Data were gathered using group discussion. The study was conducted at a multilingual Spanish university where majority (Spanish), minority (Basque) and foreign (English) languages coexist, resulting in some unavoidable linguistic strains. The implications for English-medium instruction are discussed at the end of this paper.

Beyond bilingualism : multilingualism and multilingual education.

Es una colección de ensayos sobre la educación multilingüe y el multilingüismo, que si bien comparten ciertas características con el bilingüismo y la educación bilingüe, también presentan características únicas. Esta edición proporciona bases teóricas y prácticas para la planificación y ejecución de programas de educación multilingüe, que preparan a los estudiantes para un mundo plurilingüe.

Globalization and multilingualism: the case of the UK

Although linguistic diversity has always been a defining feature of the British Isles, it has assumed new proportions in recent years, a period during which the transnational flow of people has been accompanied by a corresponding flow of languages. This paper charts the changing nature of diversity and the adaptations to which it has given rise on the part of both the host community and speakers of minority languages.

Formal linguistic approaches to L3/Ln acquisition: a focus on morphosyntactic transfer in adult multilingualism

The goal of this article is to introduce the reader to contemporary adult multilingual acquisition research within generative linguistics. In much the same way as monolingual and bilingual acquisition studies are approached within this paradigm, generative multilingual research focuses primarily on the psycholinguistic and cognitive aspects of the acquisition process. Herein, we critically present a panoramic view of the research questions and empirical work that have dominated this nascent field, taking the reader through several interrelated epistemological discussions that are at the vanguard of contemporary multilingual morphosyntax work. We finish this article with some thoughts looking towards the near future of adult multilingual acquisition studies.

Institutional multilingualism in NGOs: Amnesty International’s strategic understanding of multilingualism

Institutional multilingualism is most often associated with large intergovernmental institutions such as the European Union and the United Nations. Multilingualism in non-governmental organisations (NGOs), however, has remained invisible to a large extent. Yet these organisations have been identified as very powerful in world politics in the globalised 21st century. Like international governmental organisations (IGOs), they operate across linguistic and language borders. This raises the questions if NGOs actually use language and translation in the same way as IGOs. This article examines Amnesty International as a case study and explores what official multilingualism means for this organisation, how it is reflected in its language policy, and how it is put into practice. By gaining insight into the particular case of Amnesty International, this article aims to make a contribution to institutional translation studies.

Multilingualism and identity

The term “multilingualism” is most often used to refer to a state of linguistic knowledge, environments, or speakers in relation to which a minimum of three languages are implicated.