The development of technology has created multilingual environments where digital communication a... more The development of technology has created multilingual environments where digital communication and electronic devices have become an essential component in most people’s daily life. The omnipresence of hypertext and digitised interfaces have created new affordances for the combination of communicative and linguistic resources and the production of creative writing forms. This study presents a multimodal examination of ‘creative writing forms’ on signboards collected in Singapore and Malaysia. These creative forms are categorised into (1) objects stylised to represent letters, and (2) creative word play. The results reveal that creative language forms feature simplified and visually concise communicative conventions (often prevalent in electronic communication; e.g., chat, SMS, etc.), which are becoming more visible in the physical landscape of our everyday life. Through the results presented in this study, one can gain a deeper understanding of the contemporary linguistic landscape...
TRANS-KATA: Journal of Language, Literature, Culture and Education, 2021
Taking effect immediately following Tunisia’s independence, Arabization has achieved mixed result... more Taking effect immediately following Tunisia’s independence, Arabization has achieved mixed results with Arabic institutionally empowered but still competing with French. In fact, when examining the linguistic landscape, this monolingual policy is flouted both in terms of the bilingual Arabic-French Street signage but also challenged by people’s preferences. This paper examines inconsistencies between Arabic as the ‘language of the state’ (government-decreed), and the omnipresence of other ‘languages in the state’ (observed in representation and practice) in Tunisia. Street signage artefacts and attitudinal data also illustrate how language policies are responded to and experienced by Tunisians. Data consists of different types of private inscriptions and public signs, governmental decrees, as well as attitudinal surveys and interviews. The juxtaposition of urban signs with the official policy on multilingualism provides an illustrative account of the complexities of the linguistic s...
This book focuses on the linguistic landscape as a site of conflict, exclusion, and dissent arisi... more This book focuses on the linguistic landscape as a site of conflict, exclusion, and dissent arising from mechanisms of language policy, language politics and language hierarchies. It examines the way language can be used in particular ideologies to marginalize and conceal other languages and as a vehicle for social contestation, impacting local communities as well as the ethnolinguistic vitality of particular sociolinguistic groups. The chapters engage with exclusion, covering broad socio-historical, economic, political and ideological issues that go much beyond language dimensions, such as the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. The case studies highlight the role of the linguistic landscape where words and images reflect the tension between the dominance of global capitalism and the grassroots reactions of local communities contending for visibility, social justice and economic and political survival. The book argues that concern with this aspect of the linguistic landscape helps...
TRANS-KATA: Journal of Language, Literature, Culture and Education, 2021
Taking effect immediately following Tunisia's independence, Arabization has achieved mixed result... more Taking effect immediately following Tunisia's independence, Arabization has achieved mixed results with Arabic institutionally empowered but still competing with French. In fact, when examining the linguistic landscape, this monolingual policy is flouted both in terms of the bilingual Arabic-French Street signage but also challenged by people's preferences. This paper examines inconsistencies between Arabic as the 'language of the state' (government-decreed), and the omnipresence of other 'languages in the state' (observed in representation and practice) in Tunisia. Street signage artefacts and attitudinal data also illustrate how language policies are responded to and experienced by Tunisians. Data consists of different types of private inscriptions and public signs, governmental decrees, as well as attitudinal surveys and interviews. The juxtaposition of urban signs with the official policy on multilingualism provides an illustrative account of the complexities of the linguistic situation in Tunisia, which blends top-down advocacies of Arabization, ambivalent attitudes to Arabic-French Bilingualism, as well as a growing interest in English as the emergent language of globalization.
Advances and Current Trends in Language Teacher Identity Research, 2015
In particular, research on teacher identity in TESOL has successfully shown the relevance of emot... more In particular, research on teacher identity in TESOL has successfully shown the relevance of emotions in teacher's negotiated access to professionalism (Cowie, 2011; Golombek and Johnson, 2004; Reis this volume). Following this research trajectory and building on my previous work examining the role of narratives in teacher identity development (Ben Said, 2013, 2014), this chapter explores the narrative engagement of a beginner teacher-Krystle-whose display of emotionality emerges from her reports of challenging and stressful situations experienced during her teaching practice. The choice of singling out emotions of "alienation" (Menard-Warwick, 2011), is justifi ed by the particularly increasing applicability it has in research on teacher identity (several chapters in this volume mention its relevance particularly Reis but also Bilgen and Richards, Nagatomo, Trent, and Yayli) but also based on the premise that it is through the recount of challenging episodes faced by teachers that one can capture the intricate, negotiated, and sometimes tumultuous process of teacher identity formation. What this chapter aims to show is how a novice teacher builds her professional self by imposing her identity to the multitude of antagonistic voices, from her family, peers, and superiors. Emotions, stress, and burnout This study delves into the expression of a teacher's emotions through discourse and narratives/stories. In particular, it provides insights into how emotions and their ability to capture teachers' "lived performance" (Schutz and Zembylas, 2009) constitute a window into teachers emerging 1 identities. The emotions, which are of particular interest to this research, are the ones that are the result of teacher stress, burnout, and other such feelings of frustration. Galton and MacBeath defi ne burnout as:
Indigenous Language Acquisition, Maintenance, and Loss and Current Language Policies
Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter fo... more Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter focuses on efforts by Penang's Chinese community to maintain Penang Hokkien alongside other Chinese community languages. The Malaysian Government has explicitly allowed the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Chinese-medium schools, which resulted in the reduced use of Penang Hokkien and other Chinese community languages among the Malaysian Chinese community. Such a situation has caused sociolinguistic realignment in many Malaysian Chinese families, including in Penang, and raised questions about the survival of these languages in Malaysian society. Based on interviews with participants from Penang's Chinese community, the findings reveal that although past studies have demonstrated a decline in the use of Chinese community languages, the participants expressed their willingness to regularly use them in their daily life in various domains. Despite the announced desuetude of these langu...
The visibility of bilingualism and multilingualism has increased in the urban landscape of major ... more The visibility of bilingualism and multilingualism has increased in the urban landscape of major cities, a phenomenon commonly attributed to a globalized world economy, increasingly fluid national boundaries, and the subsequent contact between people, languages, and cultures. This is no truer than in countries such as Singapore, which has a history of cultural multilingualism driven by economic imperatives. Our study employs a mixed methods approach to present the diversity of language variation on signboards in Singapore’s Chinatown having resulted from the area’s culture and history, which dates back to the early 19th century. Following our examination of display practices, we observed that the dominant languages represented were Chinese and English, while the other official language (in this case, Tamil) was represented. Chinese dialects such as Hokkien and Cantonese, which were transliterated, were also widely represented. Reasons and explanations for the chosen languages on the...
Selim ben Said national sun yat-sen university, taiwan orcid: 0000-0001-8940-077X teResa wai see ... more Selim ben Said national sun yat-sen university, taiwan orcid: 0000-0001-8940-077X teResa wai see ong Griffith university, australia orcid: 0000-0001-6723-589X tracing linguistic changes on shop signs in malaysia: a diachronic examination of george town, penang
Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape, 2015
Using the framework proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2003) on geosemiotics, i.e. ‘the meanings of... more Using the framework proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2003) on geosemiotics, i.e. ‘the meanings of all signs and symbols in the material world are anchored by their location and the way they are placed’ (p. 2), this study will examine the trends of emergency information dissemination in Japan and how these currently exclude the non-Japanese speaking audience with potentially disastrous consequences. Specifically, this study will be focused on trends present in what Landry and Bourhis (1997) define as the linguistic landscape (LL), which is ‘the language of public road signs, advertising, billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings…’ (p. 25). Although the Japanese government has promoted a policy of multiculturalism in recent years in order to welcome more tourists and professional skilled labour to her shores, this analysis of Japan’s emergency LL at Matsushima Kaigan Station, a section of Miyagi Prefecture that suffered much damage in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, has revealed that information regarding evacuation routes in the event of emergencies are still predominantly monolingual. In addition, the lack of governance with regards to the creation of such LL by any central entity of the Japanese government has also given rise to problems such as the lack of uniformity in the creation of evacuation LL and the shortage of directional signs to lead potential evacuees to the nearest and most suitable evacuation locations in the vicinity. As such, when emergencies like earthquakes and tsunamis strike, non-Japanese speaking persons might find them in the unenviable position of being unable to obtain information necessary to their survival.
(Chapter 1) provides insights into highly diverse sociolinguistic research in the United States a... more (Chapter 1) provides insights into highly diverse sociolinguistic research in the United States and proposes a distinction between two broad, overlapping areas: the sociolinguistics of society (region and dialectology; ethnicity; sexuality and gender; language change/age; community groupings; multilingualism; perception studies) and the sociolinguistics of language (phonology and phonetics; morphology and syntax; lexicon, mental grammar and language acquisition; pragmatics, discourse, and conversation). Hazen's overview ends with a call for a greater integration of sociolinguistics driven by a 'motivation towards a unified goal' (p. 7). It must be said that the rest of the book does not achieve this integrative aim with most chapters biased towards one or the other approach. The Canadian sociolinguistic situation (Chapter 2 by Elaine Gold) is selectively described with reference to the English-and French-languages communities. As a relatively new but expanding field, sociolinguistic research in Mexico (Chapter 3) has developed within three distinct paradigms-anthropological linguistic, variationist sociolinguistics, and most recently the 'sociolinguistics of conflict'-but, as explained by José Antonio Flores Farfán, an imbalance remains with more studies examining Spanish rather than the indigenous languages of Mexico. The author subsequently gives a taste of future research directions in an area he labels as 'militant sociolinguistics' (p. 39), by explaining the need to address difficulties and challenges of linguistic and cultural revitalization initiatives of endangered languages in Mexico. The sociolinguistics of language endangerment and revitalization is also discussed in Chapter 4 on South America. Serafin Coronel-Molina and Viviana Quinteros overview the Andean Quechuaspeaking communities mainly from the vantage point of language contact with Spanish and Quechua. In Chapter 5, Valerie Youssef describes sociolinguistic research in the Anglophone Caribbean area. Following an overview of Creole studies, Youssef discusses the emergence of new influences on Carribean
Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature
Recent interest in teacher identity in general and language teachers' identity in particular has ... more Recent interest in teacher identity in general and language teachers' identity in particular has shown that although identity research can be contentions, its examination can cast light on the process of teacher development. In fact, the role of identity in teacher development has been promoted as a key analytical framework. In this study exploring narratives elicited from interview data, I examine how a novice teacher develops more confidence in her role(s) as a teacher by recounting stories based both on her imagined identity as a teacher but also on her practical experience in the classroom. Along with the stories shared by the teacher, she intuitively reflects on her professional identity through the use of metaphors and anecdotes. These under-researched aspects of narrative inquiry are presented in the paper as symbolic discursive proxies that the teacher uses to carve out a space of self-definition within the teacher community of practice.
The development of technology has created multilingual environments where digital communication a... more The development of technology has created multilingual environments where digital communication and electronic devices have become an essential component in most people’s daily life. The omnipresence of hypertext and digitised interfaces have created new affordances for the combination of communicative and linguistic resources and the production of creative writing forms. This study presents a multimodal examination of ‘creative writing forms’ on signboards collected in Singapore and Malaysia. These creative forms are categorised into (1) objects stylised to represent letters, and (2) creative word play. The results reveal that creative language forms feature simplified and visually concise communicative conventions (often prevalent in electronic communication; e.g., chat, SMS, etc.), which are becoming more visible in the physical landscape of our everyday life. Through the results presented in this study, one can gain a deeper understanding of the contemporary linguistic landscape...
TRANS-KATA: Journal of Language, Literature, Culture and Education, 2021
Taking effect immediately following Tunisia’s independence, Arabization has achieved mixed result... more Taking effect immediately following Tunisia’s independence, Arabization has achieved mixed results with Arabic institutionally empowered but still competing with French. In fact, when examining the linguistic landscape, this monolingual policy is flouted both in terms of the bilingual Arabic-French Street signage but also challenged by people’s preferences. This paper examines inconsistencies between Arabic as the ‘language of the state’ (government-decreed), and the omnipresence of other ‘languages in the state’ (observed in representation and practice) in Tunisia. Street signage artefacts and attitudinal data also illustrate how language policies are responded to and experienced by Tunisians. Data consists of different types of private inscriptions and public signs, governmental decrees, as well as attitudinal surveys and interviews. The juxtaposition of urban signs with the official policy on multilingualism provides an illustrative account of the complexities of the linguistic s...
This book focuses on the linguistic landscape as a site of conflict, exclusion, and dissent arisi... more This book focuses on the linguistic landscape as a site of conflict, exclusion, and dissent arising from mechanisms of language policy, language politics and language hierarchies. It examines the way language can be used in particular ideologies to marginalize and conceal other languages and as a vehicle for social contestation, impacting local communities as well as the ethnolinguistic vitality of particular sociolinguistic groups. The chapters engage with exclusion, covering broad socio-historical, economic, political and ideological issues that go much beyond language dimensions, such as the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring. The case studies highlight the role of the linguistic landscape where words and images reflect the tension between the dominance of global capitalism and the grassroots reactions of local communities contending for visibility, social justice and economic and political survival. The book argues that concern with this aspect of the linguistic landscape helps...
TRANS-KATA: Journal of Language, Literature, Culture and Education, 2021
Taking effect immediately following Tunisia's independence, Arabization has achieved mixed result... more Taking effect immediately following Tunisia's independence, Arabization has achieved mixed results with Arabic institutionally empowered but still competing with French. In fact, when examining the linguistic landscape, this monolingual policy is flouted both in terms of the bilingual Arabic-French Street signage but also challenged by people's preferences. This paper examines inconsistencies between Arabic as the 'language of the state' (government-decreed), and the omnipresence of other 'languages in the state' (observed in representation and practice) in Tunisia. Street signage artefacts and attitudinal data also illustrate how language policies are responded to and experienced by Tunisians. Data consists of different types of private inscriptions and public signs, governmental decrees, as well as attitudinal surveys and interviews. The juxtaposition of urban signs with the official policy on multilingualism provides an illustrative account of the complexities of the linguistic situation in Tunisia, which blends top-down advocacies of Arabization, ambivalent attitudes to Arabic-French Bilingualism, as well as a growing interest in English as the emergent language of globalization.
Advances and Current Trends in Language Teacher Identity Research, 2015
In particular, research on teacher identity in TESOL has successfully shown the relevance of emot... more In particular, research on teacher identity in TESOL has successfully shown the relevance of emotions in teacher's negotiated access to professionalism (Cowie, 2011; Golombek and Johnson, 2004; Reis this volume). Following this research trajectory and building on my previous work examining the role of narratives in teacher identity development (Ben Said, 2013, 2014), this chapter explores the narrative engagement of a beginner teacher-Krystle-whose display of emotionality emerges from her reports of challenging and stressful situations experienced during her teaching practice. The choice of singling out emotions of "alienation" (Menard-Warwick, 2011), is justifi ed by the particularly increasing applicability it has in research on teacher identity (several chapters in this volume mention its relevance particularly Reis but also Bilgen and Richards, Nagatomo, Trent, and Yayli) but also based on the premise that it is through the recount of challenging episodes faced by teachers that one can capture the intricate, negotiated, and sometimes tumultuous process of teacher identity formation. What this chapter aims to show is how a novice teacher builds her professional self by imposing her identity to the multitude of antagonistic voices, from her family, peers, and superiors. Emotions, stress, and burnout This study delves into the expression of a teacher's emotions through discourse and narratives/stories. In particular, it provides insights into how emotions and their ability to capture teachers' "lived performance" (Schutz and Zembylas, 2009) constitute a window into teachers emerging 1 identities. The emotions, which are of particular interest to this research, are the ones that are the result of teacher stress, burnout, and other such feelings of frustration. Galton and MacBeath defi ne burnout as:
Indigenous Language Acquisition, Maintenance, and Loss and Current Language Policies
Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter fo... more Aiming to understand the phenomena of language maintenance and shift in Malaysia, this chapter focuses on efforts by Penang's Chinese community to maintain Penang Hokkien alongside other Chinese community languages. The Malaysian Government has explicitly allowed the teaching of Mandarin Chinese in Chinese-medium schools, which resulted in the reduced use of Penang Hokkien and other Chinese community languages among the Malaysian Chinese community. Such a situation has caused sociolinguistic realignment in many Malaysian Chinese families, including in Penang, and raised questions about the survival of these languages in Malaysian society. Based on interviews with participants from Penang's Chinese community, the findings reveal that although past studies have demonstrated a decline in the use of Chinese community languages, the participants expressed their willingness to regularly use them in their daily life in various domains. Despite the announced desuetude of these langu...
The visibility of bilingualism and multilingualism has increased in the urban landscape of major ... more The visibility of bilingualism and multilingualism has increased in the urban landscape of major cities, a phenomenon commonly attributed to a globalized world economy, increasingly fluid national boundaries, and the subsequent contact between people, languages, and cultures. This is no truer than in countries such as Singapore, which has a history of cultural multilingualism driven by economic imperatives. Our study employs a mixed methods approach to present the diversity of language variation on signboards in Singapore’s Chinatown having resulted from the area’s culture and history, which dates back to the early 19th century. Following our examination of display practices, we observed that the dominant languages represented were Chinese and English, while the other official language (in this case, Tamil) was represented. Chinese dialects such as Hokkien and Cantonese, which were transliterated, were also widely represented. Reasons and explanations for the chosen languages on the...
Selim ben Said national sun yat-sen university, taiwan orcid: 0000-0001-8940-077X teResa wai see ... more Selim ben Said national sun yat-sen university, taiwan orcid: 0000-0001-8940-077X teResa wai see ong Griffith university, australia orcid: 0000-0001-6723-589X tracing linguistic changes on shop signs in malaysia: a diachronic examination of george town, penang
Conflict, Exclusion and Dissent in the Linguistic Landscape, 2015
Using the framework proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2003) on geosemiotics, i.e. ‘the meanings of... more Using the framework proposed by Scollon and Scollon (2003) on geosemiotics, i.e. ‘the meanings of all signs and symbols in the material world are anchored by their location and the way they are placed’ (p. 2), this study will examine the trends of emergency information dissemination in Japan and how these currently exclude the non-Japanese speaking audience with potentially disastrous consequences. Specifically, this study will be focused on trends present in what Landry and Bourhis (1997) define as the linguistic landscape (LL), which is ‘the language of public road signs, advertising, billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings…’ (p. 25). Although the Japanese government has promoted a policy of multiculturalism in recent years in order to welcome more tourists and professional skilled labour to her shores, this analysis of Japan’s emergency LL at Matsushima Kaigan Station, a section of Miyagi Prefecture that suffered much damage in the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, has revealed that information regarding evacuation routes in the event of emergencies are still predominantly monolingual. In addition, the lack of governance with regards to the creation of such LL by any central entity of the Japanese government has also given rise to problems such as the lack of uniformity in the creation of evacuation LL and the shortage of directional signs to lead potential evacuees to the nearest and most suitable evacuation locations in the vicinity. As such, when emergencies like earthquakes and tsunamis strike, non-Japanese speaking persons might find them in the unenviable position of being unable to obtain information necessary to their survival.
(Chapter 1) provides insights into highly diverse sociolinguistic research in the United States a... more (Chapter 1) provides insights into highly diverse sociolinguistic research in the United States and proposes a distinction between two broad, overlapping areas: the sociolinguistics of society (region and dialectology; ethnicity; sexuality and gender; language change/age; community groupings; multilingualism; perception studies) and the sociolinguistics of language (phonology and phonetics; morphology and syntax; lexicon, mental grammar and language acquisition; pragmatics, discourse, and conversation). Hazen's overview ends with a call for a greater integration of sociolinguistics driven by a 'motivation towards a unified goal' (p. 7). It must be said that the rest of the book does not achieve this integrative aim with most chapters biased towards one or the other approach. The Canadian sociolinguistic situation (Chapter 2 by Elaine Gold) is selectively described with reference to the English-and French-languages communities. As a relatively new but expanding field, sociolinguistic research in Mexico (Chapter 3) has developed within three distinct paradigms-anthropological linguistic, variationist sociolinguistics, and most recently the 'sociolinguistics of conflict'-but, as explained by José Antonio Flores Farfán, an imbalance remains with more studies examining Spanish rather than the indigenous languages of Mexico. The author subsequently gives a taste of future research directions in an area he labels as 'militant sociolinguistics' (p. 39), by explaining the need to address difficulties and challenges of linguistic and cultural revitalization initiatives of endangered languages in Mexico. The sociolinguistics of language endangerment and revitalization is also discussed in Chapter 4 on South America. Serafin Coronel-Molina and Viviana Quinteros overview the Andean Quechuaspeaking communities mainly from the vantage point of language contact with Spanish and Quechua. In Chapter 5, Valerie Youssef describes sociolinguistic research in the Anglophone Caribbean area. Following an overview of Creole studies, Youssef discusses the emergence of new influences on Carribean
Bellaterra Journal of Teaching & Learning Language & Literature
Recent interest in teacher identity in general and language teachers' identity in particular has ... more Recent interest in teacher identity in general and language teachers' identity in particular has shown that although identity research can be contentions, its examination can cast light on the process of teacher development. In fact, the role of identity in teacher development has been promoted as a key analytical framework. In this study exploring narratives elicited from interview data, I examine how a novice teacher develops more confidence in her role(s) as a teacher by recounting stories based both on her imagined identity as a teacher but also on her practical experience in the classroom. Along with the stories shared by the teacher, she intuitively reflects on her professional identity through the use of metaphors and anecdotes. These under-researched aspects of narrative inquiry are presented in the paper as symbolic discursive proxies that the teacher uses to carve out a space of self-definition within the teacher community of practice.
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