Sandra Silberstein

Reading-Writing Relationships in First and Second Language.

The study reported in this article examined the first language and second language reading and writing abilities of adult ESL learners to determine the relationships across languages (L1 and L2) and across modalities (reading and writing) in the acquisition of L2 literacy skills. Specifically, we investigated relationships (a) between literacy skills in a first language and literacy development in a second language (i.e., between reading in L1 and L2, and between writing in L1 and L2), and (b) between reading and writing in L1 and L2 (i.e., between reading and writing in L1, and between reading and writing in L2). The subjects, Japanese and Chinese ESL students in academic settings, were asked to write an essay and to complete a cloze passage in both their first and second languages. The results indicate that literacy skills can transfer across languages, but that the pattern of this transfer varies for the two language groups. It also appears that reading ability transfers more easily from L1 to L2 than does writing ability, and that the relationship between reading and writing skills varies for the two language groups. These data suggest that L2 literacy development is a complex phenomenon for already literate adult second language learners involving variables such as L2 language proficiency, L1 and L2 educational experience, and cultural literacy practices that may be related to different patterns of L2 literacy acquisition.

Diaspora Identities and Language

Recent developments in diaspora studies show the importance of language in constructing and negotiating diaspora identities and relationships. However, scholars in linguistics-based fields have not explored these connections as much as have scholars in the social sciences. This specialtopic issue showcases the contributions applied linguistics and sociolinguistics can make to diaspora studies. The issue introduces emerging orientations and themes from a range of new and old diaspora communities, and encourages further studies in diaspora linguistics. Traditional orientations to diaspora have anchored the concept to the homeland from which dispersal occurred. More recently has come the understanding that dispersed populations do not necessarily expect or desire a diasporic return. Clifford, for example, (1994, p. 306) points out that the “teleology of original return” does not generally apply to diaspora communities anymore. This is in one sense a social fact for many recent diaspora communities, such as the Sri Lankan Tamils studied in this special issue, who feel they don’t have a secure or even identifiable homeland to return to. The teleology of return also doesn’t necessarily apply to the archetypal communities, such as Jews and Greeks. Even Zionist Jews (see Brown & Silberstein [this issue]) do not necessarily imagine their own return. One has to ask whether it was ever true that all diaspora subjects always held a return to their homeland as their ultimate goal. This realization has motivated a more decentered, hybrid, even non-cohesive notion of diaspora. To begin with, we should not think of diaspora as having a static and stable identity tied to the homeland or the past. As Stuart Hall (1990) has pointed out, diasporas are changing

Contested Diaspora: A Century of Zionist and Anti-Zionist Rhetorics in America

This article explores the writings of four prominent Jewish American thinkers, propounding conflicting Zionist and anti-Zionist perspectives, from two different eras. Rhetorics invoked by both generations complicate the notion of a “homeland” and a teleology of return. Throughout, we take a critical approach to discourse analysis, seeing language use as a form of social practice. In the end, we argue that over much of the past century, the continuing contestation between Zionist and anti-Zionist thought, framed as it is in the Middle East, nonetheless has discursively constructed an American identity as a response to Diaspora. The article echoes themes found throughout this special issue, including the role of a “homeland” in the linguistic construction of complex, nonstatic diasporic identities as well as language shift, and the symbolic/performative role of language in identity construction.