Volume 1, Issue 3

Positioned within the discipline of sociocultural linguistics, this study redefines the concept of code-switching (CS) by focusing on switches to L2 within one’s mainstream speech in L1-a phenomenon called reverse code-switching (RCS). It further studies the role that age, educational background, second language proficiency (SLP), and familiarity with second language culture (FSLC) factors play on these perceptions. Applying a mixed-method approach, a researcher-made instrument was validated through Rasch modeling and exploratory factorial analyses, and the results were computed through a multivariate regression. The older and less educated the audiences, the more they labeled RCS as a symbolic resource. The younger generation and the more educated considered it more as a metaphorical switch. Socially negative attitudes were negatively correlated with SLP, but statistically unaffected by FSLC. The study concludes with a discussion of the results and a body of implications for future research.

The use of English in Nepal was first recorded in the seventeenth century. Officially, however, it was adopted as a foreign language into the formal education system only in the first half of the twentieth century. Despite its “foreign” status until now, users of the language and related studies claim that it is anything but foreign. Its current use in all spheres of life makes the language indispensable and at par with Nepali, the only official language for wider communication. As such, its speakers advocate that English in Nepal deserves more veneration than the term offers. The article provides a socio-linguistic analysis of the English language situation in Nepal, and drawing from research and available literature, it assesses to what extent is such a claim justifiable. In the pretext of its growing popularity and dominance, the article examines its role, status and its position in the national language education policy and points out what implications its changing status has on the national curriculum and pedagogic resources.

This paper analyses part of the discourse of the ongoing independence debate between France and New Caledonia by combining Systemic Functional Linguistics and Pragma-Dialectics. It is shown how two politicians, as representatives of a more dominant social group, attempt to influence and change the social representations of the Kanak minority in order to obtain a preferred outcome by persuasively arguing their case through the use of both shared and inferred knowledge. It will become clear that tacit knowledge seems to be taken for granted by the French protagonists and that the negotiation process does not appear to constitute a cooperative dialogue. The paper aims to clarify this process in order to demonstrate how highly incongruent goals and values on both sides can create an intrinsic opposition. A quantitative systemic functional analysis is integrated as linguistic evidence into a qualitative Critical Discourse Analysis to reconstruct and critically evaluate the arguments of three political actors, as representatives of the most significant discourse communities involved in the debate: independence leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou, former French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and nickel magnate Jacques Lafleur. Shared knowledge appears to be wielded as a rhetorical ploy by the latter two to achieve free association with France.

In view of the close relationship between logical and grammatical studies in the history of linguistics, this paper highlights the logical nature of Systemic-Functional Grammar, which is characterized with “grammatical thinking” and based on “grammatical logic” rather than symbolic/mathematical logic. It discusses some of the essential characteristics of grammatical logic and concludes that such a naturally evolved logic parallels with, but is more accommodative and explanatory than, the artificially designed logic.