How do people define ethnicity and its membership? Primordialists argue that people group themselves using "primal" or permanent characteristics like physical similarity or a common language, religion, or history. Social mobilizationists, however, see ethnicity as more situational social phenomena, as an informal organization whereby…

Studies on academic biliteracy have had a tendency to focus on multilingual scholars' current status of academic biliteracy and not on their prior experiences in their home countries. However, these experiences are vital to understanding their current status of academic biliteracy because the multilingual scholars' distinctive experiences in…

Using data from the work of a Language Commission set by the Faroese Government in 2005 to formulate a proposal for an official Faroese language policy and findings from my own study on language use among young Faroe Islanders, this paper questions whether the present language policy in the Faroes is an effective strategy to maintain and protect a…

Formulaic language is widely recognized to be of central importance to fluent and idiomatic language use. However, the mechanics of how formulaic language is acquired are not well understood. Some researchers (e.g. Nick Ellis) believe that the chunking inherent in formulaic language drives the language learning process. Others (e.g. Wray) claim…

Ontario's new Character Development Initiative is analyzed to determine whether it can be characterized as political spectacle. Examination of official policy texts, media reports, speeches, web pages, webcasts, and events at the Character Development Symposium suggests that the Initiative contains many elements of political spectacle; however,…

Objective: To examine differences in accessibility of positive and negative schema in parents with high and low risk for child physical abuse (CPA). Methods: This study combined picture priming and lexical decision making methods to assess the accessibility of positive and negative words following presentation of child and adult faces. The child…

The author, a teacher educator, explains that because of a lack of training in language studies, many teachers do not view language as linguists do. She identifies three misconceptions (and the implications they have for English language learners) that still persist in education: Standard English is the best and most correct form of English,…

In Japan critical views of the dominance of English are only infrequently voiced, and the use of English is promoted for the benefits associated with it. This paper discusses the issues of language and power in intercultural communication on the basis of a case study on the Ship for World Youth, an intensive "international exchange"…

This paper focuses on issues of reproduction and the manufacturing of national/ethnic and religious identities in the deterritorialized space of the Moroccan immigrant diaspora. More specifically, this paper examines Moroccan immigrant children's language socialization into pan-Arabic and Islamic identities in relation to the teaching of the…

Researchers have long debated the mechanisms underlying the learning of syntactic structure. Of significant interest has been the fact that passive constructions appear to be learned earlier in Sesotho than English. This paper provides a comprehensive, quantitative analysis of the passive input Sesotho-speaking children hear, how it differs from…

This study examined a language and cultural literacy program for Hispanic fathers to promote their children's literacy development. This study had two phases: (a) training the teachers and (b) educating the fathers. The results indicated that the fathers learned how to promote their Hispanic children's literacy development using their family's…

We report an analysis of the language used by two instructors teaching two undergraduate mathematics classes that exhibited high student participation yet differed in their level of dialogical engagement. We focus on the way instructors' language contributes to opening or closing the opportunities for students' engagement with mathematical dialog,…

Biostatistics is traditionally a difficult subject for students to learn. While the mathematical aspects are challenging, it can also be demanding for students to learn the exact language to use to correctly interpret statistical results. In particular, correctly interpreting the parameters from linear regression is both a vital tool and a…

This study examines language attitudes among Mongols in Inner Mongolia, using an extensive questionnaire. Forty Mongolian students who are studying at Inner Mongolia Normal University participated in this study. The results show that Mongols hold more positive attitudes toward putonghua and English than toward the Mongolian language in many…

The paper focuses on bilingualism among the Slovene majority in Slovene Istria approximately 50 years after the Italian community living there were granted official minority status. This empirical research shows a high level of Slovene-Italian bilingualism in the observed population. It reveals that a high level of communicative competence in one…