scholarly journals THE ATTITUDE OF MOTHERS IN REVITALIZING PUNJABI LANGUAGE: A CASE STUDY OF THE PUNJABI COMMUNITY IN MANJUNG DISTRICT, PERAK

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (15) ◽  
pp. 21-34
Author(s):  
Deepa Visvanathan

Punjabi is a small minority community in Malaysia among the approximately two million Indians in Malaysia. Punjabi people remain distinct from other people of Indian origins because of their religious beliefs and a strong sense of community. In the context of Malaysia, studies about the Punjabi community have not been encouraging and very minimal. As the Punjabi in Malaysia becomes more educated, the Punjabi community, which has long been undergoing a gradual shift into modern Malaysian society, and less emphasis is being placed on the ability to read and write Punjabi. The aim of this study is to obtain an overview of the language use patterns and language attitudes of Malaysian Punjabi mothers with the presence of their children. Specifically, the objective is to shed light on the importance of promoting Punjabi in the home domain by investigating whether the education and attitude of the mothers bring on the value of speaking the Punjabi language to their children in the home domain. A total of 11 respondents aged between 25 and 44 with children at or within the age of 6 were interviewed. One of the most significant findings of this study is the mismatch between language attitudes and actual language use by mothers with their children. The awareness exists in the mothers that Punjabi is important to their children to communicate with old age people and the Punjabi language is being used to do their prayers and to read their holy book. However, this positive attitude towards the language is not reflected in their language use and choice regardless of their education level. English dominated in most instances and most of the mothers claimed to be more comfortable speaking to their children in English.

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-151
Author(s):  
Mikołaj Deckert ◽  
Marek Molenda

Abstract This article looks into the interface of temporality and quantification. Drawing on the principles of Cognitive Linguistics, we use experimental as well as corpus methods to provide evidence on how the conceptual organisation and linguistic coding of content can play a role in meaning construction. With that broad agenda in mind, a major objective is to shed light on the construct of conventionalisation. For that purpose, construal coding variants are examined with a focus on nominal phrases that express time quantities. The examination involves two construal types (termed “cumulative” and “fractional”) that differ primarily in their prominence configurations, across three granularity levels of time conceptualisation. Our main finding – that the fractional and cumulative constructions are asymmetrically conventionalised – is contextualised through a qualitative analysis of naturally-occurring data to identify additional language use patterns and offer explanatory hypotheses.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika-Mária Tódor ◽  
Zsuzsanna Dégi

Abstract Language learners’ attitudes towards the language and its speakers greatly influence the language learning process and the learning outcomes. Previous research and studies on attitudes and motivation in language learning (Csizér 2007, Dörnyei 2009) show that attitudes and motivation are strongly intertwined. Positive attitude towards the language and its speakers can lead to increased motivation, which then results in better learning achievement and a positive attitude towards learning the language. The aim of the present study was to get a better insight into what regards the language attitudes of students attending Hungarian minority schools in Romania. The interest of the study lies in students’ attitudes towards the different languages, the factors/criteria along which they express their language attitudes, students’ learning experiences and strategies that they consider efficient and useful in order to acquire a language. Results suggest that students’ attitudes are determined by their own experiences of language use, and in this sense we can differentiate between a language for identification – built upon specific emotional, affective, and cognitive factors – and language for communication.


2013 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 65-79
Author(s):  
Tamás Péter Szabó

The main goal of this paper is to present a recently built interview corpus called Corpus of Hungarian School Metalanguage – Interview Corpus (CHSM-IC) and its potential in language ideology studies. This corpus was compiled during a broad survey on Hungarian school metalanguage carried out in 2009 and was recently made available for a wider research community within the CESAR (Central and South-East European Resources) project. The study investigates interactional routines used in metadiscourses on language use. Printed texts cited from prestigious handbooks and interview data from CHSM-IC are compared. Thus, widely used, culturally-inherited text fragments are detected and confronted with the interviewees’ narratives on their own communicational experiences. A case study on the discourse marker hát (‘so’, ‘well’) illustrates that there is a conflict and often a controversy between language ideologies disseminated by the Hungarian school system and the linguistic self-representation in the interviewees’ narratives. Combining Language Ideology, Conversation Analysis, Discourse Analysis and Discursive Social Psychology frameworks, the paper presents a detailed description on the emergence of metadiscourses in a school setting. The paper concludes that metalinguistic utterances (e.g., answers on grammaticality, statements on linguistic accuracy, etc.) and observable, spontaneous (or semi-spontaneous) language use patterns are regularly not in accordance with each other.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies ◽  
Nadia Sabbah ◽  
Reem Alsalem

This study aims to determine whether translation students at an undergraduate translation program have sufficient awareness of the availability and usability of online vocabulary and terminology search tools that can be of valid assistance to a translator. The study surveyed 50 female translation students of the Translation Program at Prince Sultan University, Saudi Arabia. The survey consisted of questions about knowledge and use patterns and included texts for translating between English and Arabic. Results show that although the students know and use a variety of online resources, they still lack in awareness of some of the very useful ones, and a small minority of the students does not use monolingual dictionaries at all. Analysis of the students’ translations of selected terms reveals that availability of excellent online resources is not enough to prevent mistranslations if the students cannot select the right equivalent. The study has implications for lexicographers about the dictionary features most frequently used by translators-to-be. It also provides pedagogical tips for translator trainers who should guide their students to making use of the full potential of online dictionaries and term banks in order to achieve better translation outcomes.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Rentz

This dissertation provides an analysis of language attitudes of 1.3% of the adult population of the island of Pohnpei in the Federated States of Micronesia. It presents both quantitative survey and qualitative interview data collected July–August 2016 and July–August 2017. The results are situated within a poststructuralist, postcolonial theoretical framework that critically evaluates the colonial history of the island and its ideological effects on language use, as well as highlighting the diversity of opinions found on the island. Because of this framework, the dissertation does not aim to construct a monolithic narrative of language attitudes on Pohnpei, but rather seeks diversity wherever possible. To carry out these goals, the dissertation adapts quantitative methods (multidimensional scaling, cluster analyses, correspondence analysis, and poststratified Bayesian generalized hierarchical modeling) and combines them with critical theoretical tools such as sociolinguistic scale and translanguaging. The results showed two main different ideological groups both in terms of language use and language attitude patterns. Both groups highly value Pohnpeian, English, and other local languages generally. However, the first group values English over Pohnpeian and other local languages. They in general only use Pohnpeian to connect with Pohnpeians and in situations related to the soupeidi system, but use English for most other situations including education, work, media, and government. This group’s language use patterns with scale-based language ideologies, where local levels of scale (such as family and kousapw) are highly multilingual, but become increasingly monolingual as scale increases toward the translocal level. The other group, conversely, finds Pohnpeian to be the most important language for them overall and tend to find Pohnpeian to be the most important language in every domain. The results of the dissertation indicate a disconnect between the current mostly monolingual English-focused educational practices among both private and public schools on Pohnpei and the desire of the research participants for greater use of Pohnpeian and other local languages. The current educational system likewise devalues the symbolic resources of its students, which has perpetuated negative ideologies about local languages. These ideologies adversely affect both the students and the linguistic future of local languages including Pohnpeian.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-350
Author(s):  
Sebastianus Menggo ◽  
I Made Suastra

This study examines the language maintenance model for a local language in another language community, specifically to examine Sumbawanese language maintenance in the Balinese community. This study encompasses 1) the Sumbawanese speakers’ competence of Sumbawanese language; 2) Sumbawanese language use patterns in the Balinese community; 3) language attitudes of Sumbawanese speakers toward their language. This study focuses on Denpasar's several locations, where most of the language interaction occurred, and data were collected through observation, interviews, and questionnaires. Those data were analyzed by using a software program, namely an excel chart data series. The research subjects were both older and younger Sumbawanese speakers. An analysis of language attitudes also considered the roles of language choice and language change in maintaining cultural diversity and ethnic identity, which will psychologically provide a feeling of assurance in personal linguistic competence. In Sumbawanese speakers, the context of communicating in Balinese society will be thoroughly considered. The findings show that speakers of Sumbawa language have good competence towards Sumbawa language, rarely use Sumbawa language, and have more positive than negative attitudes towards their language. Speakers are stimulated to maintain the frequency of language use and their positive language attitudes to be competent intercultural speakers.  Keywords: Balinese, language use, language attitude, language change, Sumbawanese


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