Aneta Pavlenko

New approaches to concepts in bilingual memory

In the last decade there has been a significant surge of interest in the psycholinguistics of bilingual memory which has resulted in a number of models of the relationship between words and concepts in the bilingual lexicon. Recently, authors such as Paradis (1997) and Grosjean (1998) have pointed out that many of these models do not distinguish between the semantic and the conceptual level, and that they suffer from confusion between processing and representation.

Imagined Communities, Identity, and English Language Learning

This chapter introduces the notion of imagined communities as a way to better understand the relationship between second language learning and identity. It is argued that language learners’ actual and desired memberships in imagined communities affect their learning trajectories, influencing their agency, motivation, investment, and resistance in the learning of English. These influences are exemplified with regard to five identity clusters: postcolonial, global, ethnic, multilingual, and gendered identities. During the course of this discussion, we consider the relevance of imagined communities for classroom practice in English education.

Emotion Vocabulary in Interlanguage

Recent research in linguistics singles out emotion words as different from other abstract words. The goal of this article is to examine five factors that may impact the use of L2 emotion vocabulary. The first study considers the impact of language proficiency, gender, and extraversion on the use of emotion words in the advanced French interlanguage of 29 Dutch L1 speakers. The second examines the influence of sociocultural competence, gender, and type of linguistic material on the use of emotion vocabulary in the advanced English IL of 34 Russian L1 speakers. Combined, the results of the two studies demonstrate that the use of emotion words in IL is linked to proficiency level, type of linguistic material, extraversion, and, in some cases, gender of IL speakers.

Multilingualism, Second Language Learning and Gender

This volume presents a comprehensive introduction to the study of second language learning, multilingualism and gender. An impressive array of papers situated within a feminist poststructuralist framework demonstrates how this framework allows for a deeper understanding of second language learning, a number of language contact phenomena, intercultural communication, and critical language pedagogy. The volume has wide appeal to students and scholars in the fields of language and gender, sociolinguistics, SLA, anthropology, and language education.

Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries: Language Revival, Language Removal, and Sociolinguistic Theory.

In December of 2007, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine announced that starting in 2008 all foreign-language movies shown in the country will have to be translated into Ukrainian via dubbing, subtitles, or synchronous translation. There would be nothing attention-worthy about this announcement if the ‘foreign language’ category didn’t also include Russsian, the native language of 30% of the population of Ukraine (www.ukrcensus.gov.ua), and one used and understood by the majority of the remaining 70%. The new law thus was not driven by linguistic needs, as it would be in the case of movies in French, Danish or Hindi. Nor was it driven by economic needs the demand for Russian-language books and media continues to be high in Ukraine, and the measure may actually be detrimental to the already struggling film industry. In fact, it is the popularity of the Russian-language media inconsistent with Ukraine’s nationalizing agenda and political aspirations and alliances that drives the new law whose purpose is to ensure that Ukrainian citizens live in a Ukrainian-language environment. The announcement sparked a stormy debate in the media. Russian media have decried the law as yet another illiberal step taken by the Ukrainian government to deprive consumers of free choice and to impinge on the rights of Russian speakers. President Yushchenko contradicted this accusation stating that Ukrainian language policy conforms to all liberal European standards and that Russian is the language of another country that would not allow Ukrainians to identify themselves as Ukrainian. This heated discussion is not unusual rather, it is just another chapter in the ongoing saga of the Russian language in Ukraine (Bilaniuk & Melnyk, 2008). Nor are concerns about language status, policies and rights in the postSoviet space limited to Ukraine. As will be shown in this collection, in the past two decades, post-Soviet countries as a whole have emerged as a contested linguistic space, where emotional exchanges over language-related issues are fodder for the daily news and where disagreements over languageand

'Language of the Enemy': Foreign Language Education and National Identity

The focus of the present paper is on the relationship between national identities and foreign-language education policies and practices. The paper examines this relationship through a juxtaposition of three sociohistoric contexts in which sociopolitical events led to major changes in foreign-language education: post-World War I United States, post-World War II Soviet Union, and post-communist Eastern Europe. On the example of these case studies, it is argued that shifts in national identity images and sociopolitical allegiances have implications for foreign-language policies and practices. It is also argued that foreign-language learners may choose to construct oppositional identities in language classrooms: some, for patriotic reasons, may reject the languages imposed on them, while others may instead reject the dominant national identity and create an alternative one through the means of a foreign language.

Bilingualism, gender, and ideology

The purpose of the present paper is to theorize the relationship between bilingualism and gender within a feminist post structuralist framework. I suggest that all language contact phenomena, including bilingualism, acquire different meanings indifferent contexts and can be linked to gender only indirectly. In some contexts, where bilingual skills are highly valued, they may become a means for one group to dominate the other, while in others bilingualism and cultural mediation are constructed as “servile” occupations and assigned to the less powerful group. Depending on gender relations in minority and majority communities, the values and benefits of monolingualism and bilingualism may be different for men and women. In some situations, knowledge of the majority language would be useful to everyone in the community, in others, the majority language is more useful for men than for women, and yet in others, it is women who profit most by shifting to the majority language. In sum, it is argued that it is not the essential nature of femininity or masculinity that defines the patterns of bilingualism, language maintenance or language shift, but rather the nature of gender, social, and economic relations, and ideologies of language and gender that mediate these relations.

Kitchen Russian: Cross-linguistic differences and first-language object naming by Russian–English bilinguals

We examined first language (L1) naming of common household objects in three groups of Russian–English bilinguals: early, childhood and late bilinguals. Their naming patterns were compared with those of native speakers of Russian and English, in order to detect possible second language (L2) English influence on L1 Russian naming patterns. We investigated whether such influence is modulated by the speakers linguistic trajectory, specifically, their age of arrival in the L2 environment, which in turn influences their relative proficiency and dominance in the two languages. We also examined whether the potential for L2 shifts can be linked to specific characteristics of the categories in the L1 or L2. L2 influence was evident in the data, increasing with earlier age of arrival but most pronounced with lowest L1 proficiency. The changes entailed both narrowing and broadening of linguistic categories. These findings indicate that L1 word use is susceptible to L2 influence even for concrete nouns referring to familiar objects, and the nature of the shift for a given word appears to be driven by several factors.

Language Conflict in Post-Soviet Linguistic Landscapes

In this article it is argued that the study of linguistic landscapes (public uses of written language) can benefit from viewing them as dynamic phenomena and examining them in a diachronic context. Based on the changes in the post-Soviet space since 1991, five processes are identified and examined with regard to language change and language conflict. It is further argued that the study of linguistic landscape offers a useful tool for post-Soviet sociolinguistics and for Slavic sociolinguistics at large, and examples are provided of the insights afforded by such inquiry.

Verbs of motion in L1 Russian of Russian–English bilinguals

This study examines the motion lexicon in narratives elicited from Russian–English bilinguals. Lexical choices made by the participants are compared to those made by native speakers of Russian and English in narratives elicited by the same stimuli. The analysis of bilinguals’ narratives shows that lexicalization of motion is not subject to L2 influence in these bilinguals. A few instances of L2 influence on L1 uncovered in the data are used to discuss the forms L1 attrition might take in the Russian motion lexicon.