WHAT MAKES SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION COMMUNICATIVE POWER: NATURE? NURTURE? INTERACTION? OR ALL TOGETHER? PRAGMATIC APPROACH TO TESOL IN COMPARATIVE MULTILINGUAL PRACTICES

The article discusses theories of second language acquisition within the framework of nature, nurturing, and interactionist views to language learning and reveals the results of their application to non-native multilingual people’s language acquisition experiences in communicative and meaningfully absorbing environments. The research proposes the necessary space for the discussion of practicality and authenticity of nature, nurture and interactionist theories in language learning, which can be conducted as an integral examination of second language learner efficacy. KEY WORDS: second language, acquisition, nature, nurture, interactionist, technique, authentic, skill and knowledge, experiences, environments, learn, acquire, comprehensible input and output, meaningful language acquisition, autonomous learning

BILINGUALISM AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES OF RESIDENTS OF THE REPUBLICS OF SOUTHERN SIBERIA IN THE CONTEXT OF URBANIZATION

Statement of the problem. The article examines the problems of co-functioning of the state languages of the republics of Southern Siberia in the context of urbanization processes that affect the acceleration of ethnocultural and linguistic assimilation of minority ethnic groups. The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the development of national-Russian bilingualism in the context of the linguistic attitudes of the speakers of the second state languages – Altai, Tuvan and Khakass, in the urban communicative space of the republics of southern Siberia. Research results indicate the commonality of bilingualism development in the three republics of Southern Siberia, determined by its legislatively enshrined status. The features of the actual use of its components correlate with the historically established ethno-demographic structure of the population, the pace and monocentrism of urbanization in the capital cities. Language attitudes of urban residents of the three republics in relation to the second state languages are generally positive, however, they are differentiated in the context of the ethnicity of the respondents, correlating with the ingrained social and ethno-identification attitudes in relation to languages of different status, which determines their communicative power. The metropolitan respondents of the titular nationalities demonstrate more positive linguistic attitudes in terms of their readiness to support the second state languages in comparison with the Russian respondents. At the same time, the level of fluency in all types of speech activity in native languages among young people in the capitals of the republics of Southern Siberia is lower than in rural areas.

Voices of a generation the communicative power of youth activism

Drawing from interviews with 31 young leading climate activists from 23 countries across the world this article aims to capture the contribution of the recent youth climate movement to communicating climate science and politics. We show that from the point of view of the youth activists, the movement powerfully connects personal and local experiences and emotions with climate science. This has enabled the activists to construct an authentic, generational and temporal identity that has helped them to carve out an autonomous position and voice with considerable moral authority among existing climate policy actors. Claiming to represent the future generation, we conclude that activists have offered an important added value to climate science as new ambassadors for scientific consensus and climate mitigation. The youth movement and the added value it brings communicating climate science is an example of the dynamics of the formation of “relational publics” and emphasizes the need to understand better the networked communication landscape where climate politics is debated.

TRANSLATING MOCHTAR LUBIS’S SHORT STORY “KULI KONTRAK” INTO ENGLISH: A NOVICE TRANSLATOR’S AUTOETHNOGRAPHY

This article is of reflection category exploring the common mistakes often occur in translating Indonesian literary texts into English by a non-native speaker of English. It argues that translation of literary texts is meticulous as it should involve interpretation and fluency in both source and target languages as well as creativity in order that the translated texts communicate equally well. It is the communicative power of translation that makes this undertaking of language transfer miraculous. Applying sufficient principles in translation and creative writing method, this article exemplifies the translation process of Mochtar Lubis’s short story “Kuli Kontrak” into “The Contract Coolies” that appears in the Your Story page of California-based Dalang Publishing bi-lingual website. Autoethnography is the method used in reporting the results. Three main problems that ensue in the Indonesian-English translation of this short story include (1) the concept of time, (2) the non-idiomatic use of body-parts, and (3) the unnecessary use of object construction/ passive voice that often do not translate well in English. By tackling these problems, the English reader may hopefully obtain the meaning-message of the short story as closely as possible to that acquired by Indonesian readers.

SymptomSpeak: Women’s Struggle for History and Health in Kosovo

What are the linguistic dimensions of pain, and what kind of articulations arise from these painful experiences? How does the language of pain circulate, connect, and reach across histories, gendered realities, and social politics? In what ways might the language of pain act on and transform the world by shaping and changing socio-political agendas? I explored these questions among women in Kosovo and discovered a unique symptomatic language which I call SymptomSpeak. SymptomSpeak is a powerful language evoked, shared, and exchanged by women to articulate political, social, and economic grievances, to challenge societal norms, and to demand justice. The language itself consists of a detailed symptom vocabulary which is variously assembled into meaning complexes. Such assemblages shift depending on the social context in which they are conveyed and are referred to as nervoz (nervousness), mërzitna (worried, sad), mzysh (evil eye), and t’bone (spell). I describe in detail how women variously combine and exchange components of SymptomSpeak and, thereby, question dominant framings of reality. Thereby, my intention is to contribute to a new understanding of pain as language which straddles the fine line between socio-political commentary and illness; produces gendered political realities; and challenges the status quo through its communicative power.

Resisting

This chapter, ‘Resisting’, unravels how negotiating Sudan’s Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the early years of conflict in Darfur were entwined. It examines how a simplified ‘north-south’ deal sought by foreign peacemakers was resisted by the SPLM/A through surrogate violence in Darfur. The chapter argues that the logics of peacemaking may give new and different communicative power to forms of violent resistance. It shows this at close range in how the SPLM/A attached power to surrogate violence in Darfur in ways that forcefully communicated its resistance to a reductive ‘north–south’ peace, with some success. Equally, the Sudanese government’s brutal counter-insurgency in Darfur partly had the SPLM/A and the peace negotiations in mind. Through dynamics of violent resistance, the ends and means of the CPA’s eventual peace changed. However, this was at the expense of contributing to the escalation of Darfur’s war, and the violent means of resisting and remaking peace overran the ends.

Interlingual competition and functional incompleteness of languages.

The state of mass multilingualism has been developed now in many countries of the world, and not only in post-colonial ones. Depending on the situation, most contemporaries use (actively or passively) two or three languages. The norm today is not monolingualism, but multilingualism. At the same time many societies are characterized by bilingualism not balanced, but vertical — diglossia. Since few people speak several languages equally well, the need to use them interchangeably requires additional effort and causes mental fatigue. The state of monolingualism is more usual and comfortable for a person. Language situations in society also favor the use of predominantly one language at the expense of others. Therefore, diglossia cannot last forever. Those sociolinguists are right who regard it as a temporary condition, an intermediate stage in the transition «primary monolingualism → bilingualism → secondary monolingualism». Such a transition is an inevitable consequence of the victory of a communicatively strong language over a communicatively weak one. If we evaluate the interaction of languages from a functional point of view, it should be recognized that their essence boils down to competition. It arises due to the fact that languages are not distributed once and for all in certain areas, are not ultimately tied to a certain circle of speakers. Languages always rise at the expense of the decline of other ones. If a language expands its area of use, it means that another language leaves this area, and therefore reduces the scope of its use. Of the two competing languages, the winner is the one with the greatest communicative power. The phenomenon when a language ceases to be used in a certain communicative sphere, it is appropriate to denote by the term loss of functionality. A language that does not fulfill all the functions that should be performed by a developed literary language should be recognized as incompletely functional. The current spread of English as a single world language, its dominance in the most prestigious spheres of communication (politics, economics, trade, science, education, culture, the Internet) leads to the fact that national languages are gradually displaced from these spheres, marginalized and eventually devalued. The process can become irreversible and lead to their complete decline as functionally weak. Even those languages that also claim to be global (French, Spanish) or interstate (German, Portuguese, Russian) are losing the competition. As a result of competition, languages begin to differ in the richness of their vocabulary, the elaboration of their syntactic structure, the development of the style system, their prevalence, and their social status. But the main result is functional inequality. A language that has a large communicative load is used in a larger number of areas (or in prestigious areas) and turns out to be functionally dominant. The one that exists in fewer spheres or is used with less intensity turns out to be functionally incomplete. As a result, it turns out to be unable to satisfy all the information needs of its speakers — they are forced to resort to languages with greater communicative power.

Propaganda, obviously: How propaganda analysis fixates on the hidden and misses the conspicuous

Propaganda analysis has long focused on revealing the rhetorical tricks and hidden special interests behind persuasion campaigns. But what are critics to do when propaganda is obvious? In the late 1930s the Institute for Propaganda Analysis faced this question while investigating the public poli-ticking of A&P, then the largest retailer in the United States. While contemporary critics lambasted A&P for their secretive campaign, particularly their use of front groups, A&P used many relatively overt methods of propaganda to win political victories. Propaganda analysis then, as now, fixated on the concealed, failing to adequately critique conspicuous communicative power.

Pirate mentality: How London radio has shaped creative practice in grime music

Grime music is an Afrodiasporic performance form originating in London. While artists such as Stormzy and Skepta are now international stars, its gestation took place within a grounded network of record shops, radio stations and raves. This article argues for grime pirate radio’s role as both an oppositional channel and site of creative practice. Based on empirical work undertaken from 2017 to 2019 in London’s grime scene, it demonstrates how artists harness radio’s communicative power to engender a Black counterpublic, before outlining a framework for creative agency: afforded by a network of stations and practitioners; made meaningful through its community of listeners; and realized through improvisatory practice. Existing studies focusing on pirate radio often present these fora as domains for dissemination. In grime, however, its creative function highlights the potentiality of radio as a performance medium: a space for quotidian belonging and co-presence, but also for musical development and grassroots practice.

In the Ear of the Listener: The Role of Foreign Accent in Interethnic Friendships and Partnerships

This article examines the association between accented speech and the formation of friendships and partnerships among immigrants and native-born majority residents in Germany. Drawing on the sixth wave of the German extension of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries, we analyze a neglected aspect of language — pronunciation — and find that speaking with a foreign accent is a more important correlate of the incidence of interethnic partnerships than of interethnic friendships. We argue that beyond its primary function of understandability, accented speech possesses socially communicative power. Accent transmits signals of an individual’s foreignness and cultural differences and, thus, becomes an additional marker of social distance. Such signals serve as a greater obstacle to more consequential intimate interethnic relations such as partnerships. Our findings extend the scholarly debate on the role of symbolic boundaries in social interactions between ethnic groups by yet another important boundary maker — accent.