John Gibbons

Attitudes towards languages and code‐mixing in Hong Kong

Previous research has shown that among English‐Cantonese bilingual students at the University of Hong Kong a mixture of Cantonese and English (MIX) is very common yet apparently disliked by its users. To examine this seeming conflict between attitudes and behaviour, a matched‐guise experiment was conducted. Results indicated hostility towards MIX but produced evidence that it is a useful, culturally‐neutral choice falling between English and Cantonese and that it may have covert status in this community.

Linguistic purism and language shift: a guise-voice study of the Italian Community in Sydney

In Australia, besides English, the majority official language common to all Australians, there are numerous Aboriginal and Immigrant languages used regularly in daily life. Multilingual Australia is very proud of its rieh language resources. Yet the attempts at maintaining them produce little result, äs it seems common for minority languages to be abandoned once English is acquired, albeit with different patterns of language shift. In the case of Italian, the shift is rapid, much more rapid than some of its demographic characteristics would predict. In fact numerical strength, a long history of Immigration, and dense concentrations of population would favor maintenance rather than shift (see Giles et al. 1977: 312-315). In trying to establish some rank ordering of factors affecting language ecology in Australia, Clyne (1982) explains this apparent contradiction by demonstrating that, across languages, demographic and sociocultural factors intertwine differently, and that consequently some factors are poor predictors when considered in Isolation. Our general hypothesis here is that, in the case of Italian, the relative strength of demographic factors is weakened by the fact that very few, if any, Italians in Australia speak Standard Italian, that their cohesion is broken up into numerous dialects and regional or populär varieties, and that their attitudes toward these nonstandard varieties are mostly negative. The contribution of standardization to the vitality of a language varietyhasalready been noticed in the literature (see Giles and Ryan 1982: 5).

Different Beliefs: Beliefs and the Maintenance of a Minority Language

This article examines Spanish maintenance in a group of Hispanic teenagers in Sydney. In particular, it looks at the relationship between various attitude clusters and the development/maintenance of various aspects of proficiency. Both open and closed items were used, which permitted the emergence of unexpected attitude clusters. The proficiency measures examined a range of aspects of proficiency. Beliefs in favor of bilingualism and a determination to resist the hegemony of the dominant language are significantly related to proficiency, as well as the more familiar affect, pride, status and instrumental beliefs. Vitality beliefs concerning Spanish in the local community seem to be relatively unimportant. Clusters of beliefs are also found to be related to different aspects of proficiency.

Operationalising Academic Language Proficiency in Bilingualism Research

Since minority languages are used mainly in the home and in the minority-language community,there are limited opportunities to develop register aspects of literacy which develop through schooling. This means that minority language maintenance often becomes problematic in the area of linguistic aspects of literacy,discussed here in terms of academic register. Given the limited opportunities, it is important to discover the extent to which academic register develops in minority-language children. To do so, we need first to describe the academic register of the minority-language, and then to develop instruments to measure its development. This paper looks at the means that we developed to accomplish these two tasks of description and instrument development, in a study of Spanish-English biliteracy in Australia. The task of description was performed by comparing school textbooks from early primary and mid-secondary schooling. The task of instrumentation was accomplished by developing register-sensitive multiple-choice cloze tests.

Multiculturalism and language shift: A subjective vitality questionnaire study of Sydney Italians

Abstract There is a mismatch between the language vitality of Greek, and the language vitality of Italian in Australia. Part of the explanation for the comparatively more rapid language shift in the Italian community may lie in perceptions of ethnolinguistic vitality. Giles, Rosenthal & Young (1985) have examined a Greek‐Australian community using the Subjective Vitality Questionnaire. This paper is a replication in predominantly Italo‐Australian suburbs of Sydney. It compares SVQ results for standard Italian and standard Greek in Australia in order to determine whether the substantial real difference in vitality between these two languages is reflected in perceived vitality as measured by the SVQ. Since Anglo‐Celts are a minority in many parts of Australias larger cities, our second objective was to see whether perceptions of language vitality of subjects who are not members of the SVQ target language communities differ from those of the SVQ target language communities. The results show that the differe...

Interpreting the English Proficiency Profile in Hong Kong

In a number of papers Schumann has developed the thesis that second language learning is an aspect of acculturation, and that it cannot normally take place without acculturation. He has developed a profile of factors which influence acculturation and language learn ing, namely dominance, integration, enclosure, cohesion, size of community, attitude, residence and congruence. When this ac culturation model is applied to Hong Kong it can give a convincing interpretation of differences in English acquisition between social groups. In addition to exploring this possibility, minor modifications to the Schumann acculturation model are suggested. Finally, although it is assumed that any improvement in English proficiency in Hong Kong will not be great given current social forces, sugges tions are made concerning ways of fostering positive attitudes, in creased motivation and greater exposure to English.

Australian Bilingual Education

‘Bilingual Education’ refers here to education in which more than one language is used as medium to teach non-language subjects. It will be discussed as three main types — ‘enrichment’ bilingual education, whose purpose is to add on a second language; ‘educative’ (and usually transitional) bilingual education, which uses students’ home language as medium to help them cope with their education; and ‘maintenance’ bilingual education, which has as its purpose the maintenance of a language that students bring to school, usually a minority language.

Applied Forensic Linguistics

Linguistics is the science of describing and where possible explaining the nature of language and languages. Applied Linguistics attempts to describe, explain, and work out solutions to social issues and problems related to language. Forensic Linguistics attempts to describe and where possible explain those features that distinguish the language used in legal settings from everyday language. Applied Forensic Linguistics addresses issues and problems in the legal system that are language-based.

Acting Bilingual and Thinking Bilingual An Introduction

Social psychology, by definition looks at “behind the eye” psychological phenomena, “before the eye” social structure and behavior, and their interaction. Likewise, bilingualism has been studied in two main arenas, the social and the psychological, and particularly their interaction. These themes are examined in many different ways in each of the articles in this special issue,which emerged from the 8th International Conference on Language and Social Psychology in Hong Kong, 2002. Some of the articles in this special issue focus more on bilingual behavior, essentially the study of language in society, including code choice and code mixing, and their social meaning. In the ICLASP program, we called this social arena “acting bilingual.” Other articles focus more on psychological aspects such as attitudes to two languages and issues of bilingual proficiency. This we referred to as “thinking bilingual.” All the articles also however demonstrate how these two aspects are in constant dynamic interaction: for instance the (internal) bilingual proficiency results from the (external) exposure to and use of more than one language in interaction (see the article by Gibbons and Ramirez),and at the same time,bilingual proficiency (internal) strongly influences bilingual interaction (see the article by Ng and He).